Annual Call For Award Nominations

It is somehow December already, so it'll be the end of the year in no time fast. This means it's time for our call for nominees for our annual contest to recognize top fan projects of the year. Now's your chance to suggest which community undertakings were your favorite. Everyone is welcome to email news@wcnews.com with your potential suggested nominees. Also check out some of our illustrious past winners below!

Annual Call For Award Nominations

If you can believe it, we have less than weeks to go until 2022! While it might seem like 2021 has lasted several years, December is a quick month and we'll be on to bigger and better things before you know it. That also means our annual contest tradition is nearly upon us. We're now taking nominations for the 'Fan Project of the Year'. Now's your chance to suggest which community undertakings were your favorite. Email news@wcnews.com with your nominees! Here's a quick recap of our wonderful previous winners:

Escort Carrier Takes Another Lap Around the System

Here's a few more shots of the glorious Tarawa model that Mac has been experimenting with lately. It's good to see people still putting Klavs' design to good use! The main purpose seems to pretty much be setting up for some prime B-roll in future lore videos on YouTube, but it still makes for gorgeous still imagery in the mean time.

Oof, looks like I'm gonna have to get back to work on getting the Tarawa fully working!

Something that I didn't mention was that my work with the Tarawa, was actually based on the work of someone named littel_ludi on the Hard Light Production boards who imported Klav's models into Freespace/WCSaga and made it public on their forums here. At the moment all I've done is the retexturing, the glow points, and the bump maps, with the full intention of making the Tarawa into a fully working CapShip (It's missing a lot of functionality atm). Although I might end up abandoning that model and try bringing the original 3d file from Klav's pack into the game myself.

Technically that's overkill for my video making purposes, but hey why not?

And since I'm here, here's a few more screenshots I took of our girl.

Wing Commander Saga Runs Smoothly on Raspberry Pi 4

Here's an interesting video by ShivanSPS. It features the mod Wing Commander Saga running on a Raspberry Pi 4. I don't really know much about Raspberry Pies (Pis?), aside from how they're tiny little $35 microcomputers. Freespace 2 and WC Saga aren't new or especially demanding pieces of software by today's standards, but it still seems impressive that they run so well on such a cheap tiny machine. It sounds like these were made to run via FS2_Open and WXlauncher in a 64 bit Ubuntu environment, and instructions on how to get those things going on the Pi can be found here! Let us know if you get it to working on yours.

Annual Call For Award Nominations

Woah, it's December, and that means 2020 is quickly coming to an end. And while this year has been objectively dreadful is so many ways, dedicated Wingnuts have continued to create great things. It's a positive creative outlet for them, but it also helps spread Wing Commander cheer across the community. Each year we do a poll to help recognize a small handful of the fan projects that had some of the biggest impact. If you have some thoughts on which endeavors those might be, send them in to news@wcnews.com and let us know! And check out the list below for some of the fantastic projects that took top honors in years past.

Reflections on St. Helens

Today marks forty years since the eruption of Mount St. Helens. On May 18, 1980, the ground shook and thick ash rained across the Pacific Northwest. Hundreds of square miles of forest were wiped out in minutes. But we're here to briefly talk about the mountain's namesake, the TCS Mount St. Helens featured in Wing Commander 4.

While the eruption has slightly faded from the public consciousness in recent years, the event was still fresh in developers' minds as WC4 was made just fifteen years after the volcano blew. The St. Helens in WC4 was the sister ship of the TCS Vesuvius that plays a commanding role as Tolwyn's massive flagship. Fortunately, when all hope is lost, Captain William Eisen emerges from a jump point with the second heavy carrier to the rescue. She was repaired and served for nearly a decade before being lost during the second Nephilim invasion. Sadly, underlying code revealed in 1998 that the Vesuvius class ship destroyed in Secret Ops was the St. Helens.

The TCS Mount St. Helens was a massive heavy carrier and the sister ship of the TCS Vesuvius. Like her sister ship, it was designed as a highly-advanced, self-sufficient carrier that could hold its ground without the need for escorts on the front lines. She was one of the largest vessels in the Confederation Navy at the time of her construction. She was constructed at the shipyards of Orion Station at Earth's L5 Lagrange point, where Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn oversaw her progress alongside the construction of Vesuvius.

By 2673, the Mount St. Helens was approaching her final stages of construction. Her sister ship the Vesuvius was the first to be commissioned and was immediately pressed into active service. The Mount St. Helens remained in drydock as it finished construction.

During the final days of the Border Worlds Conflict, Captain William Eisen, who had defected to the Union of Border Worlds, received word that Colonel Christopher Blair on the BWS Intrepid was pursuing Tolwyn and the Vesuvius in order to stop him from securing a war declaration from the Confederation government on Earth. Eisen and his allies within the Confederation commandeered the Mount St. Helens during trials at [[Sirius[[ in order to assist the Intrepid. Many of the weapons and shield systems on the Mount St. Helens were not yet fully operational, making her vastly inferior to the completed Vesuvius. Captain Eisen was aware of the situation, but chose to continue with the interception.

The TCS Mount St. Helens jumped into the Talos System and attacked Vesuvius as she was engaged with Intrepid, allowing the Border Worlds vessel to escape to the jump point. Eisen and Blair pursued the Vesuvius to Sol, and by this point had badly damaged Tolwyn's flagship. The Mount St. Helens was then forced to retreat after sustaining critical damage, leaving the Intrepid to pursue Tolwyn alone. Despite this setback, the actions of the Mount St. Helens proved instrumental in the eventual destruction of the Vesuvius and the aversion of a Confederation war declaration against the Border Worlds.

The TCS Mount St. Helens was eventually returned to the Terran Confederation after the Border Worlds Conflict was resolved, where she was repaired, completed, and finally commissioned. The Mount St. Helens would not see any major fleet actions until 2681, when the Nephilim War broke out along the Kilrathi frontier. She served Humanity proudly through to her destruction by the Nephilim shortly after the second Nephilim wormhole in Proxima was discovered.

Annual Call For Award Nominations

GOG Goes Interstellar for Freespace Anniversary

Freespace 2 shipped on September 30, 1999, so GOG is having a big space game party to celebrate the game's twentieth birthday. Their Interstellar Sale discounts games like Space Quest, Wing Commander, System Shock, Homeworld, Masters of Orion, the X series and more by up to 85% off. As an extra bonus, Freespace 2 itself is FREE for the next 36 hours, so jump on that quick! While it's no Wing Commander, FS2 got good reviews and continues to have a following after all this time. Also something about beam weapons. Plus there's a handful of Wing Commander mods, not the least of which is the technically impressive WC Saga project. If you haven't given the game a try for one reason or another, the price is right this time! Thanks to FredDude for the tip!

Annual Call For Award Nominations

Annual Call For Award Nominations

Another busy year is flying by, and before we know it, 2017 will be coming to a close. To start to get things in order, we're now thinking about nominees for our traditional Web Site & Fan Project of the Year Awards. There are so many fans doing great things out there, so this is our chance to acknowledge some of their fantastic efforts. Send your nominations in to news@wcnews.com, and while you mull your options over, here's a peek at some of the great winners from past years!

Pilgrim Legacy Mod Assets Released

A ship pack & mods for Wing Commander Saga, based of the Wing Commander Movie canon.

I'm as done as I ever will be. There were so many grand plans. A custom UI (at one point half completed). Voice acting. Cinematics. A multi-campaign story leading to the Siege of Peron. As it is, the mod is incomplete. There are many bugs with weapons & AI behaviors, and features missing from capital ships (docking & fighterbays). But I have to admit defeat. I just don't have the time and energy to continue, so I thought I'd just release it to the world to play with!

If anyone would like to OFFICIALLY pick up the project, feel free to contact me. I'd like to thank the Hard Light community for many technical solutions, the WCSaga team for their great work as well as the bits & pieces I've borrowed, and of course the WCNews community for keeping me going this far...

Some technical info:

- LODs: I've used them to essentially 'black out' models once you get far away. This was to accompany a feature in the mission design that reduced the radar range, to give an experience much like WC1, where you'll see enemy fighters & ship engine glows before they pop up on radar. This was to avoid using autopilot & build suspense.
- There are still many bugs with capital ship weapons, notably the sloship beam cannon which should only fire along the axis of the craft, and torpedo launchers going all sorts of ways.
- Cargo pod daisy-chaining & docking is extremely sketchy. I never quite got the hang of the docking points so you'll see spinning pods, weird approaches & some really strange behaviour if you destroy docked containers.

The Saga Continues!

Crazycanuck has built something very cool: a pack that brings Klavs' Wing Commander I fighter models into the the Wing Commander Saga mod! Here's how to play:

Installation: Place the WC1ships10.vp file in your Wing Commander Saga Root directory (eg: C:\Program Files (x86)\Wing Commander Saga)

How to Use: All the ships should be viewable in the Tech Room. There is also a simple three point patrol mission in the mission simulator. For added fun try flying the mission with different ships which you can select before starting the mission. All the ships work in FRED so feel free to make additional missions and share them with the community.

Known Issues/To Do List:

• No capital ships yet.
• The weapon icons do not accuratly reflect the loadout locations on the ships.
• Placeholder shield icons used for some ships.
• Pilum FF external model is missing.

You can download the pack here (50 meg zip). Here's a look at the new fighters in action:

The next update will feature the Confederation capital ships. The Drayman, Venture and Exeter are already finished and the Bengal is in progress! Here's a look at what's to come:

Announcing 2016 Winners!

The new year is off and running and somehow we're nearly a month in. Fans have had several weeks to consider their ballots, and hundreds of votes have been cast for 2016 Wing Commander Fan Project and Website of the Year. Although all of the nominated fans did wonderful things over the past year, here's a few that Wingnuts have singled out for special recognition!

The winner of Fan Project of the year is Wing Commander Flat Universe! Their existing release is already lots of fun, but the Maslas Brothers spent a good chunk of the year steadily building towards the next big iteration. A few lucky fans even got to try out the new multiplayer mode in some preliminary testing!

Once again we've chosen to select three runners up in the Fan Project category. All three got virtually identical scores, so it would be very hard to pick just one. A tie also speaks to just how many impressive endeavors have fans excited and anxious for more.

First up in the runners up category is the Homeworld Remastered Mod. Continued improvements are making the game more dynamic and innovative than could be imagined when it debuted as a WC4 conversion for the original Homeworld more than a decade ago.

Another runner up is the Secret Ops Model Upgrade Pack. It simply looks gorgeous and breathes new life into one of the most accessible Wing Commander games. Fans also got a chance to start playtesting it recently as well.

Last, but definitely not least, is a newcomer who's being awarded for the first time. The Enhanced Soundtracks project is our final runner up. Listening to them will make you want to go back and play the originals - but you might have these soundtracks on in the background instead of the music built in!

In the website category, we've got a flip flop from last year. WCSaga.org surged to take the top spot as Wing Commander Website of the Year! They serve as an essential hub for German Wing Commander fans, and the continued work to advance the Deutsch version of the WC Saga mod, plus keep the original going with new improvements, has endeared it to fans around the world.

This year's website runner up is Daedalus Station! The pace of Destiny's Way updates may have slowed in 2016, but that's so the developers could continue their focus on Flat Universe. Expect more updates when the next big release nears!

First Service Pack for WC Saga Deutsch and WCS Plus

Annual Community Vote Begins!

Another year has quickly come to an end, but before 2016 slips away for good, we've got one more thing to do! As we all get bogged down in the day to day grind, it's sometimes hard to visualize all the tremendous things that Wing Commander fans do all year round. This is our chance to recap some of the projects that had the biggest impact over the past twelve months and help confer some much deserved recognition on the fans that work hard to keep the community engaged. It's not a complete list of everything that you all do, but based on your nominations and a couple of our own, here are the nominees for Fan Project of the Year for 2016!

• 
  Defiance's Eye Candy - Compared to some of the projects on this list, DefianceIndustries is a relative newcomer, but his models are absolutely superb. He's incorporating them into his own WC mod, but the ships also make their way into gorgeous wallpapers and other Wingnut's projects as well.
• Enhanced Soundtracks (WC2 / Privateer) - Jason Walton's remakes of the classic era's music really struck a chord with fans this year. They're a great blend of embellished notes that sound fantastic without straying too far from what made the originals great. His WC2 effort was just in time for its 25th anniversary and helped everyone ride quite a nostalgia wave for the game.
• Flat Universe - This top down fan game continued to impress players with new visuals, modes and more unveiled throughout the year. Multiple playable iterations have been available for some time, but Wingnuts eagerly await further upgrades in the future.
• Homeworld Remastered Mod - Flag Commander, the Homeworld mod, saw numerous substantial coding improvements over the past year. The project has significantly bounced back from structural changes to the core game and is taking advantage of engine enhancements to make the experience even better.
• Klavs' Fleet of Ships - The trove of models that Klavs released nearly two years ago continues to see wide usage across multiple fan projects. When time allows, Klavs himself still makes time to build a new ship or even create a fabulous wallpaper now and then!
• Ninja's Sketches - Ninja's epic drawings of Wing Commander scenes continue to be a fan favorite. He's known for cultivating a certain style in both his ships and Kilrathi warriors alike but still manages to find new ideas to inspire even more sketches.
• Prophecy Unlimited - gr1mre4per's exploits are a huge gift to fellow modders. If there's a limitation in the original Vision Engine, he's up to pushing it beyond what anyone at Origin even thought possible. The foundational research he does helps makes multiple other projects on this list possible!
• 
  Secret Ops Model Upgrade Pack - Most of the visual assets fell into place in 2016, so we have a pretty good idea of how awesome the upgrade will look. Now we're ready to play the game in all its graphical glory!
• Sins of a Solar Empire: Alliance - The Solar Empire mod is another project that's been in work for some time, but Nomada_Firefox chose 2016 to reveal it to the community. He's assembled quite a few different elements from the Confed, Kilrathi and Nephilim fleets that come together in an impressive fleet warfare package.
• WC Saga Deutsch Mod / Saga Plus Pack - The German version of WC Saga has continued to see a steady flow of updates to improve and enhance the core game. It was also recently revealed that English speakers will get to enjoy the same treatment when these enhancements are packaged up for the original release.
• WC Toolbox - We're still waiting for the next great WC1 mod to be made, and when it is, it'll probably have UnnamedCharacter's suite of tools to thank. He further improved fans' ability to manipulate data in the first WC game as well as improved potential modders' ability to visualize how the engine is handling everything in flight.
• WCDX for Kilrathi Saga - Most people play the original WC games via DOSBox or GOG these days, but there was a time when Kilrathi Saga was the much sought after option. It wasn't a perfect solution though, but Stinger has helped make it nearly so by fixing a number of bugs and hiccups that the conversion to Windows introduced. WC2 is a much tougher animal to tackle, but he started investigating how to go about fixing elements of the second WC game in 2016.
• Wing Blender - This is another program that's helping modders be more productive out there. It reached full version 2.0 release and helps fellow fans import and export Vision Engine files so that they can be more easily manipulated. In addition to helping with mod creation, it's also helped extract some neat things from the art assets included with Prophecy.

• 
  Daedalus Station - This is the flashy home of the Flat Universe mod. In addition to hosting downloads and media related to the game, it's the place to get the in-universe magazine Destiny's Way, which is a pretty darn cool project in its own right.
• Pix's Origin Adventures - Pix is dedicated to all things Origin, and that includes making time to explore the Wing Commander series in unique and exotic ways. One of his specialties is recreating authentic Wing Commander experiences on less popular platforms to appreciate the differences that these bring.
• Spaceships Universe - This is the home of Arraen's WC strategy game. It provides easy, concise and accessible information for what his fan game is about, and then leads the viewer to some really nice screenshots and videos. There are even three language options!
• WCSaga.org - In addition to being the home of WC Saga/Deutsch/Plus, this site brings two major things to the table. It serves as a vibrant German language hub to provide a place for a large population of European WC fans to congregate. There are also a set of message board forums maintained, which is no small feat in 2016. Between managing different personalities and keeping up with security threats, most people leave this level of interaction to social media these days, but not WCSaga.org!
• Wing Commander RPG Wiki - The home of capi's various role playing games gets a steady stream of updates - especially compared to the CIC's own Wiki! In addition to downloads of the existing modules, there are a couple hundred growing ever-pages of detailed material that's being developed for the Kilrathi Elegy of Sivar expansion.

Annual Call For Award Nominations

Somehow it's December already, and we're trying to be a bit more timely about our annual awards festivities this year. This is our chance to recognize many of the great things that the fan community constantly puts out. Our eighteenth annual Fan Project and Website of the Year Awards will kick off as the year comes to a close, so now's your chance to nominate. Send your nominations to news@wcnews.com. To help give you some ideas, here's a summary of all the prior winners. There's a lot of awesome stuff in the list below!

Announcing: The Wing Commander Saga Plus Pack!

Hot the heels of the WC Saga Deutsch Mod release and refinement, Luke and team have announced their project to port over all their numerous upgrades to the core WC Saga experience. The screenshots below show off some of the new features, from left: the new pilot welcome, extras menu, barracks, medals case, ship database, subtitle support, ready room, fiction viewer, text legibility improvements, and damage debris. These are just a sampling of the enhancements. Stay tuned for more info and development progresses!

What exactly is the Plus Pack? It contains all new features, improvements and bugfixes from our first project "Wing Commander Saga Deutsch" (short: WCSD) and will upgrade the international (english) version of WCS to WCSD level. [Above] you can see a few of these new features/changes.

Development and organisation will executed at our domain wcsaga.org. There we have a secure webspace, message board and some internal dev tools. FirstI I want to introduce the current WCSPP team members (in alphabetical order). In the next weeks/months we want to add more members for the departments like Beta test.

Death Angel - implementation, graphic design
Luke - implementation, programming
MajorSpawn - mission design, programming
RaudiXO - translation, implementation

WC Saga Deutsch Up To Version 1.08

Pandora Handheld Plays WC Saga

Hidden in the Pandora repo was Wing Commander Saga built for the Pandora. It's quite playable and controls quite well too as you could imagine. So not only does this play all of the games that the Shield can run, it can also play Saga.

WC Saga Deutsch Up To Version 1.07