Star Citizen Deadline Extended; Wing Commander Themes Encouraged!

Shipping information for Star Citizen rewards was due last Friday, but the deadline has been extended slightly. Due to the large backlog of support tickets, actual items will not be shipped immediately. So while the backlog is worked through, fans can continue to submit or change their information, as long as it can be done through the automated Account interface.

In addition to a delivery address, there is an option to customize a name or callsign on your plastic / metal commemorative card. It'd also be great if all Wingnuts added a bit of Wing Commander flair to their row of text. Up to 26 characters are allowed. So whether you choose something like "Ralgha nar Hhallas" or "Orions Rule, Retros Drool!", please send in photos of your WC-themed cards after they ship! We'd love to share your clever WC references with everyone!

Thank you all for your tremendous response to our Citizen Card & T-shirt deadline. Please be patient as we are currently working hard to process the backlog of customer support requests. We can't accept any further requests for account changes, but you can still go into your Account to upgrade your package and fill in the shipping form in order to receive your personalized card. This grace period will be the last opportunity to lock-in your personalized card.

Artist Joins Wingnuts to Remember The Darkening

Three-dimensional environment artist Michael Paul Cottam recently stopped by the CIC to share some of his wonderful history in the games industry. Mr. Cottam started his career in the mid '90s with EA Manchester working on Darklight Conflict and Erin Roberts' Privateer 2: The Darkening. The team eventually became Warthog Games, where he added Starlancer and Star Trek Invasion to his resume, among others, before moving to the US, Canada, Australia and Singapore to create art for other titles. A lively discussion is currently in progress over at the CIC Forums as Wingnuts recollect their experiences with some of these games. In addition to some of the fabulous Privateer 2 art shared below, quite a few cool & unused Starlancer art assets have been uncovered that Mr. Cottam created in tandem with Paul Jones. You can check out more at the Forums here!

Hi to all on Wing Commander CIC!

It's great to see a strong interest in the work we did so long ago. Reading your forum has resulted in a wave of modelling memories. I did a little modelling on Wing Commander when I was introduced to game modelling by Paul Steed during a visit to Origin in Austin Texas in 1993.

I worked on Privateer II the Darkening, Dark-Light Conflict and Starlancer later. I'm still making games at 50 and feel exited when I see Chris Roberts new game 'Star Citizen'! (Best wishes with that Chris)

We worked very hard on Privateer back then. Also, the equipment was not as good as today. Using an old ball mouse was painful after hours of use.

Can't believe you guys still play these games, it's great!

RSI Pledge Deadline Nears

Wingnuts who are also Star Citizen backers have a few days left to lock in a pledge level before a pending deadline. After February 15, items like physical Citizen Cards and t-shirts will be shipped. It's still possible to adjust your pledge until this milestone, however. It's also critical that people who've pledged confirm a shipping address and the name that they would like on their card. This can be done through the big red "shipping info" box in the My Account area of Roberts Space Industries. Any further questions can be answered in this new FAQ. RSI's crowdfunding campaign has brought in a combined $7.8 million to date!

What are the card levels?

• White – Scout – $30-$59
• Green – Bounty Hunter- $60-$124
• Bronze – Freelancer or Colonel – $125-$249
• Silver – Rear Admiral $250-$499
• Gold – Vice Admiral $500-$999
• Platinum – High Admiral, Grand Admiral $1000-2499, $2500-$4999
• Black – Space Marshal or Lt Commander $5000-$9999
• Titanium – WING COMMANDER $10K+

What are the cards made of?

Gold, Platinum, Black and Titanium Cards will all be made from solid brushed metal and samples look awesome! Silver Cards and below are made from credit card plastic.

Congratulations LOAF!

As noted on the February 1 episode of Wingman's Hangar with Eric Peterson, the CIC's very own Bandit LOAF has recently become engaged! Please join us in wishing him well during these exciting times!

It's a Great Time to be a Wingnut

The results are in from our annual New Year Poll, and Wingnuts have spoken! Final numbers represent the highest level of optimism among fans in the thirteen-year history of this particular survey. The number of Wingnuts with a "poor" or "unsure" outlook on the year ahead has been trending down for several years, and it's currently at the lowest measured level ever. "Great" has reached its highest percentage yet, and it's followed closely by people with a "good" feeling about 2013.

There are multiple factors that contribute to the positive results. The space sim genre is doing fairly well with the launch of Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous, among others. Here at the CIC, we've also been very impressed with the recent resurgence in fan projects. There have been more than a dozen different fan projects highlighted here in just the past month alone. This all sets a great tone for the year as the CIC zooms towards its 15th Birthday in August!

The new poll asks which game manual was your favorite. The WC series has a long history of amazing documentation, so this could be a tough one to decide! You can download these game guides and many other WC booklets here. Be sure to check them out - there's quite a few manuals that were translated into different languages or had significantly different versions in different countries or with console ports.

Strike Carriers Dominate the Front Lines

As I've said recently before, the Bengal class strike carrier is one popular ship! It also comes in many forms, and as Wing Commander has evolved over the years, fans have been incorporating more elements into their interpretations of the design. Lars started building a Tiger's Claw model in 2006 that merged Claws from the WC1 game, Movie and Academy. Now he's back with a new iteration, and this one even includes some Star Citizen touches! Unlike Klavs' version that's recently been in the news, Lars' sought to bulk up the ship in a way that he feels would better accommodate the ship's full fighter complement. Here's are the first images.

Klavs' great model of the Bengal and Star Citizen made me to go back to my own model. As I noticed that Klavs' Bengal got smaller and Star Citizen's got bigger, I thought to myself... what's a good size and how does everything fit into it?

So I went back and created the basic shape as it's seen in Claw Marks. From there my first step was to keep the 700m length (I am not doing the Claw here but one of the later ships) but fit in all the 104 fighters it's supposed to carry. Next step was to think about how high each deck would be and the stuff in between (you know where all the cables, tubes and what not are). Going from there I changed sizes again. Still fixed to keep the 700m length.

Other points I incorporated or think about are as of now:

• The number of big turrets is about the same as in the Claw Marks
• Number of AA turrets is from the movie numbers
• Side missile tubes (changed to planetary bombardment missiles keep from the time as the Bengal was a "troop transport" ) from the movie
• Under the flight deck will be a number of torpedo tubes, also kinda taken over from the movie
• Hangar will be similar to that of the movie claw
• Bridge inspired by a mix of Star Citizen and the ingame graphics
• Catapulte tubes from the game
• Still thinking about incorperating the flechette guns for missile defense as it was mentioned in the novels
• Building into the model the bridge, CIC, sleeping room and other rooms but most importendly the bar ^_^
• Creating the lower hangar decks
• Made the connection to the outer pod a bit more like the WCATV version.

Star Citizen Development Under Way

Cloud Imperium Games has settled into their new Austin offices, and that means it's time to hunker down and get to work on Star Citizen. Chris Roberts was on hand last week to officially kick off development. Although the pace of news related to the game has slowed compared to the height of their crowdfunding campaign, there are several cool new methods to interface with fans.

A new weekly show called Wingman's Hangar broadcasts live at 11 AM CST on Fridays. The inaugural episode aired January 4 with Eric Peterson, president of production, and Ben Lesnick, designer and community manager. Check it out below. Subscribers also have access to an insider newsletter by Wing Commander veteran David Ladyman.

Finally, here's a shot of the newly retextured Bengal class carrier flight deck, plus an image of Chris Roberts consulting with Mr. Ladyman. Note the Wing Commander guides and Privateer boxes piled around the office for reference!

The Wing Commander Year In Review

To celebrate the end of 2012, we've put together a "Year in Review" update highlighting a few of the notable events. 2012 started off pretty strong with rumors of a new Chris Roberts project, a potential springtime release of the Wing Commander Academy DVD set, and plenty of great fan projects!

The Story of Karga the Hero
• What Wingnut hasn't dreamed of creating the ultimate Wing Commander rig? Starting in late-2011, LOAF began work on a machine that the #wingnut regulars named "Karga". Karga has it all, from top-of-the-line Thrustmaster joysticks to five different sound cards! Read all about the assembling of Karga on the CIC front page and on the CIC Chatzone.

Wing Commander Saga Released
• After a decade in the making, the Wing Commander Saga fan mod hit the space lanes in March. Saga is a standalone product that utilizes the Descent: Freespace 2 engine with a variety of new features. The story of Saga is set in the same timeframe as Wing Commander III in 2669 at the end of the Terran-Kilrathi War. If you'd like to know more about the decade-long development cycle, Shotglass ran an interesting feature on it just before release.

Wing Commander IV Released on GOG
• Joining Privateer, Wing Commander, Wing Commander II and Wing Commander III, Wing Commander IV became the fifth Wing Commander game to be offered by GOG. When the game was posted to GOG in April, the CIC ran a full day of updates focused on Wing Commander IV. There was a ton of great stuff posted that day, so be sure to give it a look over.

Wing Commander Academy DVD Released
• The Academy TV series was a great show. For years, the only option for Wingnuts to watch the program was on VHS transfers hosted on the CIC made by LOAF more than 10 years ago. Rumblings of a DVD release started months before any official news was released and Wingnuts hopes were answered when the DVD set was released in May.

The CIC Turns 14
• The 14th birthday of the CIC will be remembered for years to come. Even before the party, Wingnuts got a special surprise in Ginger Lynn Allen posting to the Chatzone and answering fan questions. At the party itself we had a great turnout and when the time came to post the birthday updates, we crashed our own server! Through the use of the CIC social media accounts, party goers were able to meet on a backup IRC server while the CIC team brought the main server back online. This was very important because later in the evening Chris Roberts, the creator himself, stopped by #wingnut and talked with fans for several hours. You can read a log of his visit here. Despite the bumps, it was one of the best birthdays we've had.

The Passing of Paul Steed
• Only two days after the CIC's 14th birthday we received some devastating news. Paul Steed, a longtime game artist who got his start at Origin, had passed away. LOAF put together a nice tribute to his life and work that Wingnuts can read here.

Roberts Space Industries Announces Star Citizen
• Chris Roberts dropped some hints about a big announcement he had in store for a few weeks after the CIC birthday party. On October 10th, Roberts Space Industries introduced the world to Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Chris Roberts' was returning to gaming and he was going to do it in a big way. In order to raise money for Star Citizen, RSI was going to use the crowdfunding model. The initial goal was $2 million. When the campaign ended, $6.2 million had been raised! The current total now stands at over $7.2 million! While Star Citizen isn't a Wing Commander title (there's always hope!), there's clearly a lot of Wing Commander influence in the game design.

CIC Gets A Facelift
• After 14 years, the second CIC layout was starting to show its age. A major redesign was commissioned and went live at the same time as the Star Citizen announcement. It's been sitting pretty ever since.

Expansion Packs Hit GOG
• After a year of behind-the-scenes lobbying by the CIC, GOG added the expansion packs to Wing Commander, Wing Commander II and Privateer download packages. GOG users now could chase after the Sivar, quell a mutiny and find who took our Steltek gun! The games' DOSBox setups were also tweaked slightly to improve performance based on feedback from fans. If you haven't redownloaded the games to access the expansions, be sure to do so!

Wingnuts had a lot to be excited about in 2012. But what about 2013? Be sure to let us know when the new poll goes live tomorrow! Thanks for another great year! We look forward to another one in 2013!

Chris Roberts Talks Wing Commander

...And on Wing Commander

PCGN: Theoretically, if you could, would you like to buy back the Wing Commander rights?

CR: Definitely. If I could get Wing Commander back, if it was mine to control and not EA saying “Here you are, have it for a game,” then I’d definitely be interested. Part of the thing that’s frustrating is that, when you create a world and you’ve overseen it for a while, and I had to sell it when Electronic Arts bought Origin, I can’t go back and visit that world without their say-so. But they don’t care about that world, I care about that world.

That’s one of the reasons I’m doing what I did with Star Citizen. This enables me to control my IP. To me, this is not just one game. This is a world I want to constantly update and add new cool stuff to and have a community. I’d be happy if, ten years after it comes out, people are still into it, still playing it, and it’s moved on and evolved. I want to be able to be in a position to guide it because I feel like I’m best suited to know what’s best for the franchise.

If I had the opportunity to get Wing Commander back in the same way, that’d be great, but EA has different priorities, so who knows if that can happen.

In their weekly update the team at Roberts Space Industries is kicking off a couple new options for fans. Monetary pledges towards the game can now be gifted to other people, and there will soon be a weekly web show devoted to development activities at Cloud Imperium Games. Here's a preview of "Wingman's Hangar."

Chris Roberts Meet-up in Montréal

Chris Roberts will be in Montréal Wednesday morning for a press conference to talk about Star Citizen and their partnership with Behaviour Interactive. Behaviour will be working on much of Star Citizen's online and network components.

What: Meeting with Behaviour and Chris Roberts, Founder of Cloud Imperium and Legendary Creator of the Wing Commander series

Why: Learn about the Star Citizen game (http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/, which Behaviour will be working on in collaboration with Cloud Imperium in 2013

Behaviour previously worked on - among other things - Halo Waypoint, which is basically the social network for the Halo franchise through which they release all the trailers, blogs, news, and more. Waypoint is also integrated right into the games themselves and just might give an indication of the kind of connected experience we might be able to expect from Star Citizen.

The event will be held at Behaviour's offices at 10A.M. and is open to the business, tech, and gaming media. You can find more details about the event at Marketwire.

Star Citizen Hits $7 Million Milestone

Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts' fundraising initiative hit new heights this week by crossing $7,000,000 in total contributions by just over 100,000 fans. Although the formal pledge campaign ended 2.5 weeks ago, late-comers have had the ability to purchase various packages at a higher dollar value. Regular updates on the new game continue to trickle out, and the Star Citizen FAQ has been updated. Front and center this week are new images and a video of one of the game's ships: the Freelancer. It was designed by Jim Martin, who also created the concept for the Kilrathi-style fighter frequently featured in promotional materials.

We are very sorry to report that Citizen Cards will not be ready in time for Christmas as initially hoped. On upside we have tens of thousands more of you in our awesome growing community than we ever imagined and have broken crowd funding records. As a result the Citizen Card fulfillment is a much bigger job. This combined with the merging of 34,397 Kickstarter pledges are the two reasons for the delay. Kickstarter allows people two weeks to correct any billing issues after the campaign closes so we have only recently been able to start working with the data. If we went into production now the people that backed Star Citizen on Kickstarter and the people who added tiers and upgrades on Kickstarter wouldn’t get the card level they deserved.

On a positive note we want you all to have something to gift your friends, family and fellow space sim fan lovers with Christmas around the corner. We will make digital holiday cards available later in the month so that those who’ve kindly decided to gift Star Citizen will be able to do so.

Getting Caught Up With GameStar

Thra`Khrom has another batch of scans from GameStar magazine. The first article is a very lengthy flashback piece that's dedicated to The Heart of the Tiger. It's amazing how well the game still holds up today! There is also a fun feature on Wing Commander Privateer. Finally, a preview of Star Citizen does a good job recapping all information surrounding Chris Roberts' new game with a detailed information roundup, Q&A and many comparisons to Wing Commander.

This mail includes more articles from German PC magazine Gamestar. This pack includes the preview for Star Citizen that ran in last months issue (numbered 12/2012) as well as their hall of fame entries for Wing Commander 3 (06/2012) and Privateer (11/2005).

Hope You've Got Insurance!

With the long Thanksgiving weekend over, the team over at RSI has gotten back to work. There's a new Comm-Link post entitled "Insurance FAQ and Update" that provides citizens with breakdown of how ship insurance policies will work in the game. For fans who pledged before November 26, your pledge ships will have lifetime insurance policies. Supporters who purchased at least one pledge ship can add additional ships, with lifetime insurance, for the next 12 months. This means if anything happens to your ship while your exploring the Star Citizen universe, you're covered. Fans can also expect to be kept well informed of the game's development:

We will be sharing development updates as they happen, and will also give all our backers a “Weekly” report.

We also plan to bring a live webcast for our subscribers on a weekly basis, making this available to the rest of the community afterwards via our YouTube channel. Wingman, the Lamp and Sandi will all feature, as well as questions from the community about the game and interviews with various team members. We will start this webcast once we moved into our new office space in Austin next month.

Finally once all the Kickstarter Star Citizens are integrated, which will take a couple of weeks as we await final data from Kickstarter, we can bring up a “backer wall” and switch on things like Galactapedia, Engineering and the Holo-Viewer.

This is going to be a fun project to watch!

More Good Press for Roberts

The Holiday 2012 issue of PC Gamer has posted a flattering preview of Chris Roberts' new space sim. The cover includes the tagline "Star Citizen - The second coming of Wing Commander." We'll see! LOAF's holding a copy below. You can also catch LOAF standing in the background of a Fox 7 Austin news video on the game.

In the five days since the Roberts Space Industries crowdfunding drive ended, existing RSI members have added an additional $500,000 to the campaign's total, which now stands at $6,750,000. Fans that already have accounts can continue to contribute through Sunday, November 25, at the original rates. More expensive tiers with fewer bonuses go live next week.

Video Combines the Best of Both Worlds

Our recent stories have been heavily focused on Star Citizen as Chris Roberts' crowdfunding campaign wound down, but there's plenty more Wing Commander news on the horizon! As we transition back into more of that, here's a neat video that nicely combines the two. Thomas Pasligh has taken footage from the original Squadron 42 announcement trailer and paired familiar scenes with classic Wing Commander music. The result is pretty sweet!

This is the beloved Wing Commander 1 soundtrack with some Star Citizen footage.

Hitting the Highlights from a Wacky Week

The media whirlwind surrounding Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts' crowdfunding campaign has continued to take the gaming and mainstream press by storm. It even got a full writeup in Forbes. A simple Google search will bring up dozens or hundreds of related articles, but a couple caught our attention!

First up, GoodOldGames has posted a ten-question interview with Mr. Roberts. It hits quite a few good topics, and Chris' answers are extensive. Here's a couple select quotes:

You're probably best known for creating the Wing Commander series. What was the inspiration behind the first game?

The biggest inspiration is Star Wars, of course. What teenager didn't leave the theater in 1977 and dream about flying his own X-Wing? So Wing Commander was very much the culmination of that dream. Not just the technical aspects of flying a starfighter, but that idea of making you the hero, putting you in the 'movie.' My design philsophy has always been to trend towards a visceral experience, and Wing Commander taught us so much about how little things like making the hand move with you on the joystick or actually showing damage to your cockpit as you fight are incredibly important. Of course, it's not just Star Wars... Wing Commander takes a lot from the same classic World War II air combat films Lucas based his epic on, and in many ways it does so more directly. You're in an aircraft carrier in space and you're fighting an alien empire that stands in for Japan in this island hopping campaign across the stars. I like to build my games' stories on elements from history, which I think you'll see again in Star Citizen.

Will the story of Wing Commander V ever be concluded? Will we ever see a sequel for Freelander or Starlancer as well?

Wing Commander Prophecy wasn't me. I thought the team did a fantastic job carrying on the legacy for that one, but my involvement in the game series ended after Wing Commander IV. So, I've never been especially invested in the story they set up, with the new enemy replacing the Kilrathi. I'd love to make another Wing Commander – and I spent a lot time thinking what I would do story wise - but I’m only going to do that on my own terms. I created and used to own the IP. I’m only willing to go back if I can be assured of guiding it going forward.

Can we expect any kind of Easter eggs or any sort references to your earlier games in Star Citizen?

Count on it. In fact, have your readers take a close look at the trailer we released at GDC Online...

Roberts — who flew in from Los Angeles — and a small group of team members and backers were set up Monday in the downtown offices of Austin game studio LightBox Interactive, where they completed a 24-hour web-streamed celebratory countdown to the funding announcement, which they toasted with champagne in plastic cups, broadcast live to the gaming world.

“We’re going to make the best damn game ever for you guys!” Roberts told the Internet audience as the clock struck 1 p.m.

As eye-popping as Star Citizen's $6.2 million tally is, the single most amazing thing of the week might just be that Kotaku had something nice to say! "Wing Commander’s Spiritual Sequel Sets a New $5.7 Million Video Game Crowdfunding Record:"

Now, Roberts has the benefits of being synonymous with Wing Commander, one of gaming's true cultural phenomenon. But he's also making an ambitious new game on a platform that's taken for granted in a genre that's supposed to be dead and forgotten. And when news of Star Citizen first surfaced, it was impossible not to gawp at the huge sum Roberts was stumping for. So the fact that $2 million goal was eclipsed by a margin of more than double is a pretty impressive accomplishment.

Hit the Comments link below if there are any other neat articles that you'd like to point out!

RSI Total Breaks $5.7 Million And Continues To Climb!

To say this weekend has been exciting for Star Citizen is an understatement. The pledge total hit $3.5 million last Wednesday. Since then, over $2.2 million dollars was pledged to Star Citizen! The big goal behind the $5.5 million mark was the Bengal class carrier. The ship will now be unlocked in the game. One final goal remains for Star Citizen, $6 million. What will hitting $6 million do?

Six million was what it would take us to build the game we were imagining with all the bells and whistles we wanted included. Well, here we are with just over eight hours to go and that impossible goal where everything is unlocked is suddenly in sight. At six million you’ll launch the game with 100 systems, a full orchestral score and a free copy of the first Squadron 42 mission disk, Behind Enemy Lines.

There are only a few hours remaining to pledge or upgrade! Be sure to stop by the RSI site or Kickstarter site and aid the cause! Those Star Citizen and Squadron 42 t-shirts look pretty good! Why not get one or both for yourself!

Breaking: Roberts Space Industries Hits $6.23 Million!

The official end to the RSI crowd funding campaign hit at 1 PM Central Time this afternoon, and the numbers are in...credible! Chris Roberts has pulled in more than $2.1 million via Kickstarter and more than $4.1 million at the RSI site for a whopping $6.2 million total. This puts the project more than $2 million beyond the next most supported video game in history. The KS tally is now locked, although existing contributors will be allowed to make certain upgrades over the next year at the RSI site.

The conclusion capped an amazing weekend that brought in some $2.5 million alone. It was accelerated by a fun-filled webcast with a rotating lineup of Origin/Wing Commander guests and Q&As direct with the people behind Star Citizen. Congrats Cloud Imperium team!

Chris Roberts Visits Oculus Office

RSI has also posted shots from Chris Roberts' recent visit to the Oculus Rift studios. Mr. Roberts is a big fan of technology like this and plans to incorporate it into his new space sim!

I thought it would be fun to share a few photos from my trip down to see Oculus. As you know I'm a big believer in VR and a supporter of the Rift, having personally backed it when it first was rolled out. So it was a lot of fun to visit Palmer Luckey (founder) and Brendan Iribe (CEO, ex Scaleform co-founder & CEO) and the rest of the Oculus team down in Irvine, CA (which is just under an hour drive from my place in Los Angeles).

As cool as Doom 3 was, it's not going to compare to Star Citizen / Squadron 42 as we're pretty much the perfect kind of game for the Oculus. Sitting in chair looking around, is exactly what you do in a cockpit, so the Rift is just going to feel natural. And as Star Citizen already works in stereoscopic 3D right now there is almost no extra work needed to support the Rift. And who doesn't want to be sitting in their cockpit, whipping their head around to track their target, pulling back on the joystick to drop in behind their next target?

RSI Campaign Down to Last Two Days

Money continues to pour into Chris Roberts' crowdfunding campaign as it enters its final 48 hour run. More than $250,000 has been raised in just the last 18 hours, which has pushed the project into unprecedented territory. The Star Citizen Kickstarter will reach $1.5 million shortly, and the combined total at Roberts Space Industries will soon pass $4.3 million.

Details have been released on how the contribution drive will end. From a temporary headquarters in Austin, Texas, a 24-hour livestream will follow Chris Roberts and team through the final hours. There will be additional Origin and Wing Commander guests taking part as well, so tune in!

The next big milestone for the game will come at $4.5 million, when all Kickstarter stretch goals and a handful of new features unlock. These include a playable destroyer ship, a new base and race, and support for fancy flight chairs, multiple monitors, and other cockpit style interfaces. Finally, a mega goal of $5.5 million has just been set - at that point, the Bengal class carrier will become a playable ship! (for those hardcore enough to earn it!)