One Week Left

There's just one week left to vote for Wing Commander Web Site and Fan Project of the Year awards. We have an impressive list of nominees this year, so check them out below and then cast your vote!

Fan Project of the Year Nominees

• The Community Replay of the Wing Commander series has been a popular new activity in 2008. Even those who haven't been playing have been joining in on the fun by reading new mission reports each week. The replay has also been a great opportunity to grab new videos and screenshots of missions throughout the series.
• Das Erwachen released Book 2 Stille in 2008 and made progress on the third adventure in this fan novel series. They even held a free book giveaway contest and have started on a backstory reference guide.
• Flight Commander has just recently been upgraded to version 1.6. The latest update contains beautiful new starscapes and powerful new editing tools for aspiring modders. The game is also more realistic than ever with an advanced damage model that affects ship systems as they are shot up and then slowly repaired.
• Privateer Ascii Sector went multiplatform in 2008 and increased its scope quite a bit. The game now sports impressive sound effects, a custom mission builder and planetside character combat!
• Privateer Gemini Gold works hard to recreate the original Privateer experience as authentically as possible. The team has been working this year to upgrade the cutscenes and character models for an even more graphically impressive look that's still true to the original.
• Standoff has made significant progress towards its final chapter this year. Major items such as fiction files, cutscene graphics and voiceovers are now complete, and Episode 5 should be on the way soon.
• WC4 Homeworld 2 Mod's graphics began getting a thorough overhaul in 2008. A number of capships have been completely retextured and TonViper is working to add impressive new lighting and shaders to the engine.
• Wing Commander Collateral Damage is a new Secret Ops mod that debuted in 2008. The goal of WCCD is to bridge some of the events between Secret Ops and Wing Commander Arena, and the result so far has been some awesome Arena models appearing in the classic Vision Engine.
• Wing Commander Pioneer's primary capships got an incredible makeover early in the year. More recently, some concept art ships that appeared in archived Origin material have been modeled for possible use in the future.
• Wing Commander Saga's gameplay portions are now functionally complete. The team is working on a major retexturing effort as it preps components like the fiction viewer for release.
• Wing Commander TacOps players had a ton of fun playing out various tactical scenarios at their Crius.net forum. Expanded rules and new tweaks continue to be rolled out as the game becomes more and more refined.

Web Site of the Year Nominees

• gulikoza's page is the home of the dxmci patch for the Wing Commander 4 DVD version. A 'final' version of the patch was released on New Years Day 2008, but gulikoza has continued to update his DOSBox build and a handful of other tweaks this year.
• HCl's Wing Commander Editing Site is the home to some of the most exotic and amazing patches, tweaks and tools for Wing Commander games. In 2008 HCl worked to make some of his programs more compatible with Windows Vista and other environments.
• Jetlag's WC CCG Site gives many fans a look at part of the series they might have missed. Even those lucky enough to pick up a few boxes of cards on eBay have a ways to go before they can complete their set. Jetlag's easy-to-navigate site lets everyone look up the stats or artwork that they need, and it even provides high resolution scans of each card.
• Paper Commander is the new Wing Commander site that spun off from Pericles' Paper Inside in 2008. It's the home to the most exciting paper models on the web! In addition to some awesome releases, Pericles has sought fan feedback this year to help determine which Wing Commander models will be built next.
• Standoff's website kicked things into high gear in the second half of 2008 to support the upcoming release of Episode 5. There have been a variety of new teaser images, status updates and a steadily filling progress meter.
• Wedge's Wing Commander is a huge reference site organized by Wing Commander game. It has a ton of original content and also links to other resources on the web. The site made some authentic updates this year with access to newly released original Origin material.
• Wing Commander Saga's website is frequently updated with news, sound samples, polls and concept art relating to the WC Saga game. It's also the main download portal for the Saga Prologue and test missions that have been released, and it does it all with a slick presentation and layout.

Vote Here!

The year is quickly coming to an end, so it's once again time to vote for our annual Web Site and Fan Project of the Year awards. We're constantly impressed by the number of fans who keep investing their time in exciting community projects, and so we love this opportunity to recognize some of them. There isn't enough space to recap every single undertaking from the last twelve months, but the items below are a great start. Reading this reminder about all the recent activity should make you proud to be a Wingnut. Skim the list below and then go cast your vote. Without further delay, here are the nominees.

Fan Project of the Year Nominees

• The Community Replay of the Wing Commander series has been a popular new activity in 2008. Even those who haven't been playing have been joining in on the fun by reading new mission reports each week. The replay has also been a great opportunity to grab new videos and screenshots of missions throughout the series.
• Das Erwachen released Book 2 Stille in 2008 and made progress on the third adventure in this fan novel series. They even held a free book giveaway contest and have started on a backstory reference guide.
• Flight Commander has just recently been upgraded to version 1.6. The latest update contains beautiful new starscapes and powerful new editing tools for aspiring modders. The game is also more realistic than ever with an advanced damage model that affects ship systems as they are shot up and then slowly repaired.
• Privateer Ascii Sector went multiplatform in 2008 and increased its scope quite a bit. The game now sports impressive sound effects, a custom mission builder and planetside character combat!
• Privateer Gemini Gold works hard to recreate the original Privateer experience as authentically as possible. The team has been working this year to upgrade the cutscenes and character models for an even more graphically impressive look that's still true to the original.
• Standoff has made significant progress towards its final chapter this year. Major items such as fiction files, cutscene graphics and voiceovers are now complete, and Episode 5 should be on the way soon.
• WC4 Homeworld 2 Mod's graphics began getting a thorough overhaul in 2008. A number of capships have been completely retextured and TonViper is working to add impressive new lighting and shaders to the engine.
• Wing Commander Collateral Damage is a new Secret Ops mod that debuted in 2008. The goal of WCCD is to bridge some of the events between Secret Ops and Wing Commander Arena, and the result so far has been some awesome Arena models appearing in the classic Vision Engine.
• Wing Commander Pioneer's primary capships got an incredible makeover early in the year. More recently, some concept art ships that appeared in archived Origin material have been modeled for possible use in the future.
• Wing Commander Saga's gameplay portions are now functionally complete. The team is working on a major retexturing effort as it preps components like the fiction viewer for release.
• Wing Commander TacOps players had a ton of fun playing out various tactical scenarios at their Crius.net forum. Expanded rules and new tweaks continue to be rolled out as the game becomes more and more refined.

Web Site of the Year Nominees

• gulikoza's page is the home of the dxmci patch for the Wing Commander 4 DVD version. A 'final' version of the patch was released on New Years Day 2008, but gulikoza has continued to update his DOSBox build and a handful of other tweaks this year.
• HCl's Wing Commander Editing Site is the home to some of the most exotic and amazing patches, tweaks and tools for Wing Commander games. In 2008 HCl worked to make some of his programs more compatible with Windows Vista and other environments.
• Jetlag's WC CCG Site gives many fans a look at part of the series they might have missed. Even those lucky enough to pick up a few boxes of cards on eBay have a ways to go before they can complete their set. Jetlag's easy-to-navigate site lets everyone look up the stats or artwork that they need, and it even provides high resolution scans of each card.
• Paper Commander is the new Wing Commander site that spun off from Pericles' Paper Inside in 2008. It's the home to the most exciting paper models on the web! In addition to some awesome releases, Pericles has sought fan feedback this year to help determine which Wing Commander models will be built next.
• Standoff's website kicked things into high gear in the second half of 2008 to support the upcoming release of Episode 5. There have been a variety of new teaser images, status updates and a steadily filling progress meter.
• Wedge's Wing Commander is a huge reference site organized by Wing Commander game. It has a ton of original content and also links to other resources on the web. The site made some authentic updates this year with access to newly released original Origin material.
• Wing Commander Saga's website is frequently updated with news, sound samples, polls and concept art relating to the WC Saga game. It's also the main download portal for the Saga Prologue and test missions that have been released, and it does it all with a slick presentation and layout.

Vote here!

Making the Games: Mollerhaug System

The third and final system is Mollerhaug, which also looks to be the most active of the group. If we can take only one thing away from this map, though, it is this and simply this: on the list of resources at the civilian space station, tacos are listed before hookers.

Thanks to Captain Johnny for both archiving and providing this material! The series is winding down, though, so if you're a former Wing Commander developer with a story to tell or a document to share, we'd love to hear from you.

Multi-Commander System Diagram: Mollerhaug Download (84 kb) Date: Unknown Project: Multi-Commander Donated By: John Guentzel Pages: 1

TacOps Scenario 2 Kicks Off

New TacOps Game Starting Up Soon

There's a total of 7 PBM players right now, which makes me think of a game of 3 Confed vs. 4 Kilrathi players (due to the underpowered Kilrathi fighters).

I'll start to host the new game on March 17. If you're new to the game, please be sure to send me your email address (preferably via the board's private messaging system)!

I also need to know on which side you'd like to play in the upcoming game (Terran/Kilrathi). And last, but not least, here's a selection of scenarios that came to my mind or have been proposed. Please choose the one you like best!

1. Asteroid Ambush: A Kilrathi and a Terran fighter patrol clash in the middle of an asteroid field. Restricted to light and medium fighters only.
2. Capship Arena: This is a pure fun game: One cruiser in the top left edge of the map, the other one in the bottom right edge. Free choice of any fighter or bomber, as long as it belongs to your faction. If you're destroyed, you get to choose a new fighter. The team destroying the enemy cruiser first wins. Since this is of course an allusion to the "Capship" mode of the great Wing Commander: Arena, be warned that random upgrades might pop up...
3. Destroyer Battle: A Confed and a Kilrathi destroyer engage each other, while their fighter escorts battle it out. This game requires one team leader per faction who takes direct control over the capship. No torpedo-carrying fighters allowed.

I'll probably announce the IRC game(s) one or two days ahead. I'd suggest simple dogfights with no more than 4-5 light or 2-3 medium fighters involved. Could be difficult, since I'm not in the US time zone, but we'll see if it'll work out nonetheless.

Point of Origin: Vol. III, No. 48

Privateer has been released! At this time, October 13, 1993, it's too early to tell how it will sell or how it will be reviewed... but the early signs are positive!

A very special thanks to Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum for making this resource available and to Electronic Arts for sending them to him in the first place!

• Dear Point Man explains why so many people are moving their offices: "As Privateer and TacOps signed off, their resources were sent packing to new projects."
• Start the Presses eagerly awaits news on Privateer: "once again, it's the quiet before the storm. Reviews should start pouring in soon for TacOps and Privateer... Egghead puts out a regular newsletter called Cue to about a gazillion of its customers every month. In a wrap-up of flight sims, Cue says Wing Academy is 'as thrilling for flight jocks as fantasy game fans.' One of the most bizarre, back-handed complimentary reviews we've ever run across is in the current issue of PC Games. In his look at Wing Academy, Cameron Crotty laments the loss of 'waiting to see what your next mission is, no more battles against impossible odds, no more clicking endlessly through useless and occasionally ham fisted plot scenes. Heaven, right? Maybe, maybe not.' Crotty says Academy is a lot of fun, but he misses Hobbes and Angel and the rest of the Wing universe. He says games like Wing and Strike 'blend ad venture and action into an unbeatable combo.'... Strategy Plus has a nice preview of Privateer in the November issue. Bill Johnson gives a pretty straightforward description of the plot and options, punctuated by big, colorful screenshots. He wraps up with: 'Decisions, decisions. At least this time, you're the one to make them.'"
• On the Road says Privateer is selling well: "In addition, Privateer has vaulted out of the gates with the top five retailers sellings around 6,000 units the first week. Reorders from Babbages are already in. We'll keep you up to date with everything happening on the road."

Point of Origin
Vol. III, No. 48 - October 13, 1993 Contents More from the Road
NEWS.TXT
Pulse Check
HR Puff and Stuff
Dear Point Man
Start the Presses
Ticker
Bucks per Bodies
Employee of the Month: Prem Krishnan

One Week Left - Get Your Votes In

Since there's so many great choices in this year's annual Web Site & Fan Project of the Year award contest, some fans might have held back on their votes to contemplate the decision. With just one week left in the year, now's the time to start thinking about which nominees to settle on. If you haven't cast your ballot yet, head over to the voting page and help pick the winners!

Fan Project of the Year Nominees
• Das Erwachen grew in 2007 with the completion of its second fan novel. In addition to coming up with this exciting story, the team behind it has conducted parties to read selected passages and has had success with printing collectable copies of the books.
• Flight Commander was upgraded to version 1.5 in 2007. New features continue to be added to this flexible Wing Commander modding engine, so it's more powerful than ever. The project has been so successful that it's spawned its own annual contest to recognize some of the best FC mods in work.
• Privateer Ascii Sector is an innovative project that takes all the excitement of Privateer and translates it into two-dimensional ascii characters. The game capitalizes on its unique environment to add new features to the Privateer mix and quickly went from announcement to playable game in 2007.
• Privateer Gemini Gold works hard to recreate the original Privateer experience as authentically as possible. A new version was released this year that adds upgraded ship models, graphical tweaks and many bug fixes.
• Queeg's Wing IV Movie quickly went from idea to three-hour production in early 2007, thanks to Queeg's experience making the Wing Commander III version in 2006. Downloads of the film generated over a terabyte of traffic in just the first week!
• Standoff is one of the most popular and long-running projects. It's a mod to 1998's Wing Commander Secret Ops and continues to impress fans with its attention to classic detail and continued expansion of the Vision Engine. Episode 4 was released this year.
• WC4 Homeworld 2 Mod's graphics are top notch and AI is getting better. This project was a surprise hit in 2006 and won last year's award. The mod received continued tweaks and upgrades throughout 2007.
• WC Saga's Prologue was released of New Year's Eve 2006 to kick off a year of activity. They have continued to release test material for their upcoming full game and have fostered the creation of fan-made missions as well.
• Wing Commander TacOps is an exciting tabletop/board game ruleset that debuted in 2007. As the year's gone by, additional markers and aids have been made to help fans play on their own. The rules continue to be refined and Wingnuts are currently testing out ways to play the game online as well.

Web Site of the Year Nominees
• gulikoza's page is the home of the dxmci patch for the Wing Commander 4 DVD version. Not content to sit back after giving fans the ability to play WC4 DVD without its original hardware decoder board, gulikoza continues to tweak the patch and provide additional help to fans who might encounter unique problems. He's also experimenting with DOSBox tweaks.
• HCl's Wing Commander Editing Site is the home to some of the most exotic and amazing patches, tweaks and tools for Wing Commander games. After ten years of unbelievable breakthroughs, HCl continues to dig deeper into his code and create new advancements.
• Jetlag's WC CCG Site gives many fans a look at part of the series they might have missed. Even those lucky enough to pick up a few boxes of cards on eBay have a ways to go before they can complete their set. Jetlag's easy-to-navigate site lets everyone look up the stats or artwork that they need, and it even provides high resolution scans of each card.
• Pericles' Paper Inside is the home on the web for an expert 3D paper artist. His physical sci-fi ship models are very impressive. Although he also builds ships for other franchises, most of his work revolves around Wing Commander.
• WC Saga's website is frequently updated with news, sound samples, polls and concept art relating to the WC Saga game. It's also the main download portal for the Saga Prologue and test missions that have been released.
• Wedge's Wing Commander is a huge reference site organized by Wing Commander game. It has a ton of original content and also links to other resources on the web. The site received a big overhaul in 2007 and moved to a new domain.

TacOps Time

Annual CIC Contest Kicks Off

There's just two weeks left in the year, so it's time again to conduct our annual Web Site and Fan Project of the Year Awards. Reading through the list of nominees really makes you realize how amazing 2007 was. It's easy to point to all the official franchise activity over the past year, but the fan activity has been just as impressive. Just look at all the great undertakings this time around. These weren't all the projects and sites that did something in 2007, but this is a good sampling of some of the most active and useful. All others have 2008 to aspire to! The CIC has set up a special voting page to conduct the vote. Each Wing Commander fan can select one option for Web Site of the Year and one for Fan Project of the Year. Good luck to all the nominees!

Fan Project of the Year Nominees
• Das Erwachen grew in 2007 with the completion of its second fan novel. In addition to coming up with this exciting story, the team behind it has conducted parties to read selected passages and has had success with printing collectable copies of the books.
• Flight Commander was upgraded to version 1.5 in 2007. New features continue to be added to this flexible Wing Commander modding engine, so it's more powerful than ever. The project has been so successful that it's spawned its own annual contest to recognize some of the best FC mods in work.
• Privateer Ascii Sector is an innovative project that takes all the excitement of Privateer and translates it into two-dimensional ascii characters. The game capitalizes on its unique environment to add new features to the Privateer mix and quickly went from announcement to playable game in 2007.
• Privateer Gemini Gold works hard to recreate the original Privateer experience as authentically as possible. A new version was released this year that adds upgraded ship models, graphical tweaks and many bug fixes.
• Queeg's Wing IV Movie quickly went from idea to three-hour production in early 2007, thanks to Queeg's experience making the Wing Commander III version in 2006. Downloads of the film generated over a terabyte of traffic in just the first week!
• Standoff is one of the most popular and long-running projects. It's a mod to 1998's Wing Commander Secret Ops and continues to impress fans with its attention to classic detail and continued expansion of the Vision Engine. Episode 4 was released this year.
• WC4 Homeworld 2 Mod's graphics are top notch and AI is getting better. This project was a surprise hit in 2006 and won last year's award. The mod received continued tweaks and upgrades throughout 2007.
• WC Saga's Prologue was released of New Year's Eve 2006 to kick off a year of activity. They have continued to release test material for their upcoming full game and have fostered the creation of fan-made missions as well.
• Wing Commander TacOps is an exciting tabletop/board game ruleset that debuted in 2007. As the year's gone by, additional markers and aids have been made to help fans play on their own. The rules continue to be refined and Wingnuts are currently testing out ways to play the game online as well.

Web Site of the Year Nominees
• gulikoza's page is the home of the dxmci patch for the Wing Commander 4 DVD version. Not content to sit back after giving fans the ability to play WC4 DVD without its original hardware decoder board, gulikoza continues to tweak the patch and provide additional help to fans who might encounter unique problems. He's also experimenting with DOSBox tweaks.
• HCl's Wing Commander Editing Site is the home to some of the most exotic and amazing patches, tweaks and tools for Wing Commander games. After ten years of unbelievable breakthroughs, HCl continues to dig deeper into his code and create new advancements.
• Jetlag's WC CCG Site gives many fans a look at part of the series they might have missed. Even those lucky enough to pick up a few boxes of cards on eBay have a ways to go before they can complete their set. Jetlag's easy-to-navigate site lets everyone look up the stats or artwork that they need, and it even provides high resolution scans of each card.
• Pericles' Paper Inside is the home on the web for an expert 3D paper artist. His physical sci-fi ship models are very impressive. Although he also builds ships for other franchises, most of his work revolves around Wing Commander.
• WC Saga's website is frequently updated with news, sound samples, polls and concept art relating to the WC Saga game. It's also the main download portal for the Saga Prologue and test missions that have been released.
• Wedge's Wing Commander is a huge reference site organized by Wing Commander game. It has a ton of original content and also links to other resources on the web. The site received a big overhaul in 2007 and moved to a new domain.

Ironduke Switches to Manual Control

Singer/songwriter Ironduke has released a new release of the manual for Wing Commander TacOps. He says:

This new version of the game manual covers some of the advanced and campaign rules, as well as enhancing, clarifying and sometimes changing the basic rules. There's still a lot of work to do, but at least we have Shelton Slides now!

He'll Be Brief(ing)

Sartha vs. Ferret

Please note that the gun stats have changed! The mass driver is now your "jack-of-all-trades" average medium gun, and I reduced the neutron gun's range while increasing its damage ratio. I hope these changes make WCTO more true to the original WC2 experience...

The manual is available for download here.

He's also running the first online practice game online - and you can follow the play-by-play here! Check out all the action as Kavok's Sartha face off against Pip's Ferrets!

You Can Counter On It

Stuck Between a Rock and a Neutron Gun

First Virtual TacOps Screenshot Released

I'm using mingw32 C++ compiler (one that comes together with DevC++ IDE) and SDL library (Simple Directmedia Layer) for graphics/mouse/keyboard support. SDL might not be top-performance but it's rather simple to use and it does it's job well. After all, running a 2D strategy game is not very demanding for the system. What is more it's a cross-system library so I'll be able to compile versions for Linux and MacOS as well.

All GUI elements were made in a hurry and there are to be replaced. That box in right upper corner is a minimap. More info coming soon.

Print Some Tabletop WC Markers

TacOps Stat Cards Released

TacOps Rules Revised

Edit: Download additional stat cards and the Kilrathi Escort Pack!

TacOps Hex Game Manual Released

DooM to Death

This weekend marks an event that gaming veterans of the 1990s all assumed would never happen: the release of the DooM movie. CIC DooM Spinoff correspondent Asher Frosty Lawson says the movie is a must see... and pretty much every movie reviewer in the world says it is not. We've all heard that before, though! More importantly, however, DooM brings 1999's Wing Commander movie to the minds of many reporters assigned to cover it. Here's three recent DooM articles that discuss our film:

Tacoma News Tribune - Big-screen 'Doom'

Wing Commander (1999) Two words: Matthew Lillard. That should be enough to keep you away from this bomb about a team of space flying aces. No? Then how about Freddie Prinze Jr.? I always thought female lead Saffron Burrows would have made a good Lara Croft, though, given the same upper-body digital enhancement Angelina Jolie received.

Any attempt at giving Maniac from "Wing Commander" a fully fleshed-out personality in a movie seems almost as silly as sticking a car chase in "The Hours." But leaving the characters without any personality or depth makes for a bland, nonstop-action pic — and that's no good, either.

But whereas the dire movie versions of Super Mario Brothers, Wing Commander and Resident Evil all represented some attempt to force the game universe to conform to cinema's rules, filmmakers are increasingly willing to let the dynamics and imagery of gaming dominate.