Making the Game - Part 57

Today we present you with the penultimate Component Manager Meeting agenda. August 8, 1997 sees all sorts of decisions that we're all ready familiar with - can color comms fit? How many CDs will the game ship on? and so forth. Most interestingly we also see Privateer 3 in development at this point. Tune in tomorrow when our 'timeline' approach to these documents ends... and prepare to start looking at some cool undated material!

Component Manager Meeting Agenda Download (2.3 MB) Date: August 8, 1997 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 6

Making the Game - Part 56

"This is everything from the walls of the War Room, updated as best as possible", writes designer Billy Cain on the cover sheet of this longer document. What was on the walls of the war room? One page for each of the game's missions, apparently, listing which movies, audio files, briefings and other elements are used. Who wants to go through the whole thing and see if it's the same as the finished version?

War Room Download (13 MB) Date: July 28, 1997 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 51

Making the Game - Part 55

Presenting... another Status Report! This one is for May 30, 1997. I'm just really interested in how these have progressed over the past several weeks of updates - we've gone from broad discussions about possible projects to things like specific dates when magazine covers need to be rendered. Fascinating stuff!

Component Manager Meeting Agenda Download (3.7 MB) Date: May 30, 1997 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 5

Making the Game - Part 54

Here's the May 9, 1997 Status Report. The script is finally finished! The coolest thing in this update is a section that quote's Origin's company-wide requirements for a game to go 'Alpha' -- it's more specific than you would expect!

Component Manager Meeting Agenda Download (3.6 MB) Date: May 9, 1997 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 6

Making the Game - Part 53

And we're back to Status Reports! This one, for May 2, 1997, begins with some good news: "A LOT of people are pumped about this game. From my copious conversations with random industry types, it sounds like we have made all the right choices." At this point the team is getting ready for an E3 demo and doing a lot of talking about graphics cards and accelerators.

Component Manager Meeting Agenda Download (2.1 MB) Date: May 2, 1997 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 5

Making the Game - Part 51

Here's a cool change - this is the US Marketing Kickoff document for Wing Commander Prophecy, which lets us see the game from a different department's perspective. It lists all the selling points and the cross-promotions that are intended to help the game shine... too bad we never saw the Wing Commander Prophecy joystick! It also has some fascinating thoughts on Wing Commander IV's marketing campaign - like the fact that Mark Hamill appearances attract Star Wars fans rather than sell Wing Commander games.

U.S. Marketing Kickoff Download (3.5 MB) Date: April 22, 1997 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 5

Making the Game - Part 50

April 18, 1997 - the Component Leads Meeting agendas are now simply Wing Commander Prophecy (!) status reports. It looks like the big news this week is the imminent arrival of Cobalt 60, the electro/industrial group scheduled to generate the game's soundtrack.

Component Manager Meeting Agenda Download (2.2 MB) Date: April 18, 1997 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 5

Making the Game - Part 49

The March 14, 1997 Component Leads Meeting agenda introduces two new stars to the Wing Commander Prophecy development team -- Dave Plunkett and Trey Hermann... both of whom are extremely cool artists who are still happy to help out the Wing Commander community ten years later!

Component Manager Meeting Agenda Download (2.9 MB) Date: March 14, 1997 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 5

Making the Game - Part 48

March 7, 1996 - it's another Component Manager Meeting agenda (actually now Component Lead Meeting agenda). This one confirms that there aren't missing reports for January and February - "and we're doing written reports again!" The 'Bing' that has everyone worried is Bing Gordon, an EA executive.

Component Manager Meeting Agenda Download (1.7 MB) Date: March 7, 1997 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 5

Making the Game - Part 47

Two months have passed! This is the Component Manager Meeting agenda for February 28, 1997. Part of the delay was Christmas vacations, part of it was a change in the organization of the team. Check out the spiffy new font! It sounds like the seeds for the electronic music soundtrack have been planted here, too: "Edel record deal looks ROCKIN ASS".

Component Manager Meeting Agenda Download (2.3 MB) Date: February 28, 1997 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 5

Making the Game - Part 46

It's the last Component Manager Meeting agenda of the year - December 6, 1996 - and, in fact, the last one for quite a while. We won't see another such document until February 28. This one also introduces the big question: "Multi-player or not. I hear that the execs like multi-player and that scares me. We need to make up our minds and stick to the same story, so we don't have a leak. Last I heard, we were going to possibly put in multi-player in the simulator. Has this changed? Will we? Should we plan another SKU to handle this?"

Component Manager Meeting Agenda Download (3.5 MB) Date: December 6, 1996 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 7

Making the Game - Part 45

Here's the November 22, 1996 component Manager Meeting agenda. One of the things that's fun at this point is that you can see the other documents you've been reading 'interacting' with the weekly updates -- there are notes about checking out the Second Draft Script and the Beat Outline and such.

Component Manager Meeting Agenda Download (3.7 MB) Date: November 22, 1996 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 8

Making the Game - Part 44

This is the Component Manager Meeting agenda for November 8, 1996. It looks like everything is going well -- the team sounds a lot happier, with less implied drama and a lot more joking around (give Frank $100). This document also includes a step-by-step process for creating new objects. Neat!

Component Manager Meeting Agenda Download (2.8 MB) Date: November 8, 1996 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 6

Making the Game - Part 43

Now we enter into another group of Component Manager Meeting agendas which will take us through to the new year. This one is from November 1, 1996 -- Rod Nakamoto is here and the first sketches from Syd Mead have arrived!

Component Manager Meeting Agenda Download (4.1 MB) Date: November 1, 1996 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 10

Making the Game - Part 38

This is the first of three updates what will fascinate nitpickers are bore everyone else. In this particular instance we're lucky enough to have the same document from three different Wing Commander Prophecy developers - Billy Cain, Jorg Neumann and John Guentzel. Why is that interesting? Because you can compare the different margin notes!

Outline Download (115 MB) Date: October 28, 1996 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 240

Making the Game - Part 37

Presenting the Component Manager Meeting agenda for May 25, 1996. You can tell it's a big week - there are two Dilberts. It sounds like the art team is struggling to stay together - this week they've lost "Michael Halley" (who apparently wasn't at Origin long enough to be credited on a single title). Seeing so many people leave to work with Digital Anvil does give you even more respect for the team members who stuck with Wing Commander...

Component Manager Meeting Agenda Download (4.4 MB) Date: October 25, 1996 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 9

Making the Game - Part 35

Here is the Component Manager Meeting agenda for October 18, 1996. There's a very interesting note from the Production Designer: "Working with Grills on the capship test, I've gotten rather worried about our spaceflight light sourcing. At the moment it's pretty ugly, guys... Are there plans to work on this further? I don't think it's currently good enough to make this game look better than WC4, and considering the reduction in texture quality we're facing, it's the ONLY thing that can!" What does this mean? Why would the texture quality be reduced from an earlier game? Can any art or programming experts enlighten us?

Component Manager Meeting Agenda Download (3.9 MB) Date: October 18, 1996 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 8

Making the Game - Part 34

The Component Manager Meeting agenda for October is a lot happier than the last one! It's full of amusing notes: "Saw Academy cartoon. Why aren't our chaff pods cool like the ones on the cartoon? Why aren't our engine fires cool like the ones on the cartoon?" And Sean Murphy is giving a 3D class! Cool! And just what is the Shrike's joke?

Another interesting note is this: "The QA guys are coming up with a list of 'What is needed to make this an Origin game?' for Alex Carloss, who now is the only person that can approve the Origin name WORLDWIDE. This is a good thing. Now to give someone responsibility for the Wing Commander name." How did this ultimately play out? It's since been claimed that the actual Privateer 2 team never received these change requirements...

Game Design Document Download (3.4 MB) Date: October 11, 1996 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 8

Making the Game - Part 33

Introducing... Rod Nakamoto! After much searching, Origin has found an outside man to replace Chris Roberts. Nakamoto was a high profile veteran of SEGA Interactive and theoretically a prize catch for Electronic Arts at the time. All isn't happy, though: "Clashes with Rich are at times difficult to take...", notes one developer. Sounds like the sort of thing you'd find at the end of a diary next to a skeleton!

Game Design Document Download (2.8 MB) Date: October 4, 1996 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 5

Making the Game - Part 31

It's another Component Manager Meeting agenda. This one is from September 13, 1996... and it looks like work is being done on the biggest and the smallest parts of the game. The team is trying to sign visual futurist Syd Mead to design the alien, they're debating 'real' versus 'CGI' for the bad guys... and they're working on a way to implement True Type fonts. It can't all be glorious!

Game Design Document Download (3.2 MB) Date: September 13, 1996 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: Billy Cain Pages: 6