Homeworld Mod Single Player Demo Released

OK, ladies and gents, it's going to be an early Christmas: I'm pretty confident in the mission now, which is fully-playable and involves a lot of the challenges you can expect to see from the Captain's seat in the Wing Commander universe. You might have the TCS Victory, but victory itself won't come easily, trust me on that.

In any case, to start the mission, you'll simply have to select it under "Extra Missions" in the main menu. It's definitely winnable, but here, it's real war, which means that you have a limited number of assets and you will have to use them properly to win... particularly those very, very fragile Thunderbolt VII, heh heh. The mission should be relatively simple while covering a lot of the stuff you can see in the Wing Commander games, except for the poker games and the inevitable betrayals. :p

Keep in mind that this release is more a tech demo than anything else, though. Anyway, to give you an idea of the creative process for a mission, here is the structure:

• Write down a rough idea of what the mission will be.
• Write down precisely the assets of each side and what actions will need to be scripted for the mission (objectives, reactions to your presence, etc., until the victory or defeat).
• Write the scripts.
• Create the critical assets for the mission (campaign-only named ships with specific properties like the ability to jump on their own for the convoy transports) without which the game will CTD.
• Test-play the mission and debug the **** out of it to make sure all the scripts work as intended.
• Create the flavour assets for the mission that will make it releasable (icons for the new ships, possible soundbytes extracted from the other games, music, pictures, etc.), as far as I can, at least: no soundbytes, for example.

If you have ideas for a specific mission to create, what I will need will be the first two steps as detailed as possible and some time. :)

Super Ships Join Homeworld Fray

FLASH FLASH FLASH

Emergency transmission received from TCS Concordia. Last known location of the ship: Vespus System. No additional data was sent by the ship. Assume worst case scenario.

FLASH FLASH FLASH

Backbone of the Confed Fleet Remastered for Homeworld Mod

And to finish the week-end, I present you the pride of the Fleet, the Confederation-class dreadnought! Armed with eight antimatter turrets, two missile turrets and twelve laser turrets, this beast would be terrifying on its own... but the name "dreadnought" shall not be uttered in vain, as the Confederation-class can bring to bear eight short-range torpedo tubes and the infamous Phase Transit Cannon. The latter is a devastating long-range weapon able to maul any capital ship in the Kilrathi arsenal. Add to it a large hangar capacity and you soon realize why the Cats fear this ship more than anything else in the Terran fleet.

The Southampton-class destroyer is small, but a very nasty escort ship, that will prove its worth as an escort ship against any threat. Its eight laser turrets will keep a healthy fire barrage on any attackers, while its frontal antimatter turret gives it a good punch against isolated corvettes and frigates, but its real value lies in its missile armament: a dorsal Vertical Launch System allows it to fire every minute up to eight medium-range ImageRec missiles on inbound attackers, while the usual light torpedo package will fire every minute a potentially devastating salvo of four light torpedoes at close ranges, making its enemies wary of a destroyer squadron that could easily maneuver to force a torpedo attack on an unsuspecting target.

Finally, the Tallahassee-class cruiser brings the heavy firepower to the front lines, with eight laser turrets for self-protection, four antimatter batteries for heavy combat against enemy warships, the four light torpedo tubes and a spinal plasma cannon for medium range fire against critical targets.

New Confed HQ Hits Close to Homeworld

The Homeworld Remastered Mod has seen continued advancement on multiple fronts. From a feature perspective, music is now working in the game, fuel management has been added to the Kilrathi faction, and a new supply station has been added for the kats. There has also been good progress on upgrading the game's resolution to support high quality textures and models. Most of the shots below preview this higher fidelity option. Chief among these updated designs is a massive new representation of Confed Headquarters, which you can see next to the original version below. You can find even more shots everything here at the CIC Forums here or pick up version 2.45 of the mod here.

Hem, public service announcement here: I loathe your graphic cards and I want them to self-ignite with the fury of a flashpak. I present you the refurbished Confed HQ for the upcoming 3.0 version. It weights a wooping 155 MB and is, by itself, bigger than most mods for the game.

Go Big or Go Homeworld

Having recently overcome the size limitation inherent in Homeworld modding, L.I.F. has added two of the most gargantuan ships in the Wing Commander universe to his project. The massive Hvar'kann and Behemoth class dreadnoughts are now undergoing space trials. Check out the incredible laser blast effect! They're not quite implemented in version 2.1 that was just released, but their data files are present in code for people with the ability to tinker. The latest update does include functional Kilrathi AI now, and the heavy weapons platforms will be fully unveiled in a future update. Homeworld Remastered players can grab the mod here.

Also, penny for your thoughts, everyone, about how to buff the poor Border Worlders in the final version of the mod and make them a valid faction to play. I intend to add a menu option to force a game to take place in an era or another, though there would be one "free for all" with everyone authorized. Anyway, one of the ideas was to give Border Worlders access to some light Kilrathi units as Melek reluctantly sides with the Heart of the Tiger, so stuff like corvettes and frigates, but it would be hard picturing a "super-unit" like the other factions will receive. Maybe some bigger advantage in resource or some non-conventional buffs, but I'm not sure what... oooooooh, just got an idea while writing this post: a sneak capture unit. A specially modified Avenger bomber with cloak and a capture function, or some way to neutralize defences remotely, like the vanilla game capture units neutralize weaponry on the target ship after some time...

Homeworld WC Mod Gets Even Bigger

Powered by the free market and the paying mod initiative (just kidding, that mod will never, ever, ever be paying, screw that idiocy), I hereby announce great news! I've found a way to bypass the size limitation for the models, and while I'm still tinkering with it, the first results are clear: IT WORKS!

I've got a fully functional model of the Lexington heavy carrier ingame. I still have to get the textures and everything else, but the roadblock has just been demolished. Which means that I can confidently say that the Kilrathi Dreadnought and all the Confed Fleet are now within reach, though with a lot of work needed. But they are possible!

Discover what is probably the biggest model to have been integrated in Homeworld 2. Not the most beautiful or the most outwards-detailed, but a massive model with a superb interior hangar with more than 81 k faces where everyone else was limited to 65535. I took some random textures I had for other units because the test was just to see if it would work at all without a CTD.

Homeworld Mod Gets Second Wind; Remastered Version In Work

Announcement: As Homeworld Remastered has been released a few days ago on Steam, porting HW1, HW2 and, most importantly, a revamped version of both games in 4K resolution, remastered gameplay and other improvements... I have begun porting the Wing Commander mod to the Remastered engine.

You'll notice that I have still quite a lot to do to get it working completely, but I'm doing my best to get everything operational as soon as possible for the mod to work under the new user interface and the changes in engine. More to come very soon. :)

Of course, the praise must once again go to Aaron "czacen" Thomas, who did, well, 99.9999% of this mod and managed to create an excellent total conversion for a game that just came back to the spotlight it always deserved through the Remastered version of Homeworld 2. The models, the textures, the coding, the soundbites and music integration, the file architecture as a whole, everything is his colossal work, to which I came only much later to do some gameplay tinkering. Also to note that the icons are not working with the Steam version of the game, while they are obviously here for the original one (the one published by Relic a dozen years ago). I've identified where are the icons, and am currently trying to get them to be loaded, but to no avail. I'll update the mod if I get that bug fixed, though.

Call For Annual Award Nominees

Another year is quickly coming to a close, so that means there's a few annual holiday traditions that are upon us. The sixteenth annual Wing Commander Web Site & Fan Project of the Year awards will kick off soon, and it's time to start thinking about the undertakings that impressed you this year. The CIC doesn't rely on original content to keep the news page full - it's the daily activities of thousands of fellow Wingnuts that keeps everything going. In order to bring attention to and help recognize some of these working fans, we vote on the people and places who've done a lot for Wing Commander over the past year. Send your nominations to news@wcnews.com. They'll be collected and voting will begin shortly. To help give you some ideas, here's a summary of all the prior winners.

Sketching Out A Bearcat

So I went on and decided to include an actual cockpit to the model. There's no instrument panel yet, and the joystick is pretty ugly. I'm also not entirely happy with the throttle. But at least they're there! :) Also, there's ejection handles in front of the seat. Also finally added maneuvering thrusters around the fuselage.

Still haven't learned how to do proper textures yet, have a lot of school work and things going on keeping me busy. Anyway, I'm actually using Sketchup for making this model, so it's easy yet sometimes hard to use. Easy for me because it's point-and-click and it's been 8 years since my high school drafting class so I've pretty much forgotten how to use AutoCAD and all of that. Hard because sometimes I have to do incredibly redundant steps and workarounds just to get the shapes and angles that I want.

The current textures on the model are "materials" available within Sketchup. Eventually, I'll be able to give it proper textures. I have squadron paint scheme in mind for this baby. Once I get around to it, I'd like to also figure out how to add panel lines to it so it doesn't look like one solid block of metal. But for now, this is what I have. As before, any feedback or advice is appreciated.

It's Nomination Time Again

Incredibly, this year is already winding down and a new one is nearly upon us! That means it's also time for our fifteenth annual Wing Commander Web Site/Fan Project of the Year awards. The CIC doesn't rely on original content to keep the news page full - it's the daily activities of thousands of Wingnuts, dozens of active projects and a network of other dedicated websites that keeps everything going. In order to help recognize the efforts of a few of these hard working fans, our tradition is to take nominations and then vote on the people and places who've done the most for Wing Commander over the past year. Now's the time to send your nominations to news@wcnews.com. They'll be collected and voting will begin shortly. To help give you some ideas, here's a summary of all the prior winners.

Banshees Dot the Entire Landscape

The Banshee has been a fan favorite fighter since it first graced the cover of The Price of Freedom. Ever since first being imported to the Prophecy/Secret Ops Vision Engine way back in 1998, it's been featured prominently in fan mods of games such as Homeworld 2, Starlancer, Freespace 2, X3 and Empire at War. It's also starred in a number of gorgeous physical projects. For starters, you can build a Banshee out of paper thanks to Thunderchild and Péricles. Astro Commander made a fabulous Banshee mini, Herr Koos made a medium size model and elend even built a large Banshee that's fit to be a museum piece. It's got quite a following!

Nomination Period Closing Soon

The year will soon be coming to an end, and our annual Fan Project & Web Site of the Year contests are about to kick off. Submit your nominations within the next few days to help pick who will be on the ballot! Although a couple sites have gone dark over the last decade, it's always invigorating to peruse this list and be reminded of all the great things Wingnuts are doing. These are far from the only endeavors that Wing Commander fans are engaged in though, and we're looking forward to highlighting more soon!

It's Nomination Time Again

Another exciting year is blazing by, so it's time for us to start winding down 2012! This includes our annual Fan Project & Web Site of the Year contests! Wingnuts have a chance to nominate their favorites before the voting gets going. Please send in submissions here! There's a very rich history of past winners out there, and it's exciting to think about who will be added next. Check out the results from past years here:

Bearcat Factory Reactivated

As you can tell, the texture work is very preliminary with mostly placeholder assets taken from my old Excalibur model, and I still haven't modeled the wingtip guns. It always annoyed me that I'd never been able to find a decent quality Bearcat model, since even the original ingame model didn't properly reflect how the renders show it to look. They'd cropped off the back end of the engines, among others IIRC.

In other news, I may have found out what caused my Excalibur to render wrong ingame in HW2 with the new shaders. Most likely, it was a bug in the tool I used to get it ingame. I'll have to test it using another version of the tool to be sure, but I have to get around to re-installing the tools before I can test that, and they're not easy to get working on a modern system.

Play the Homeworld Mod

For Wing Commander II there was Standoff, for Wing Commander III there is Saga... but for Wing Commander IV, the great tribute mod may surprise you! czacen has built an extremely cool Wing Commander IV-themed total conversion for Homeworld 2, a space RTS! The mod isn't finished, but it's in a very playable state. You can learn more and download a copy here.

Nomination Period Winding Down

This is a reminder that the annual CIC Fan Project & Web Site of the Year contests kick off in just a week. Everyone still has a chance to send their nominations in here, and be sure to check out some of the past winners below.

Nomination Time Comes Again

It's already December, so that means it's almost time to hold our annual Fan Project & Web Site of the Year contests! Before actual voting begins, Wingnuts have a chance to nominate their picks in each category. Email your nominations here, and check out some of the past winners below.

Supercruiser's Smaller Details Redefined

Here's a couple updates to callitri's Concordia model. They show how a few secondary structures have been recently overhauled. Side hangar doors were revamped, and the smaller scale guns were sharpened up quite a bit. The third image is a comparison shot from an earlier build. Check out the simple boxy miniguns behind the main turret and blank rectangles on the side. His supercruiser has come a long way! callitri is still looking for a volunteer willing to take a crack at textures.

About this model performing in a game: it has to much detail IMO. Games like Homeworld 2 have seriously limited detailed models. They do great things with textures, which give you a sense of detail and shapes, but the models are pretty basic. I never destined the ship for games, I just wanted to be able to see it because I loved it in the movie. I hope I'll find someone to texture it for me

PS if anyone has good pictures of the Rapier and Broadswords from the movie, I would love to make them too and maybe detail the hangar in a separate setting.

Name Noteworthy Nominees Now

It's almost December, so that means it's nearly time again to vote for the Wing Commander Fan Project & Web Site of the Year! First, we need your nominations. Send in who you think should be a contender in either category: as a web site or as a fan project that did great things in 2010. Voting will kick off next month! Here are the previous winners.

Fortitudo super Omnia

I decided to darken the texture. I pretty much chose the original base color in part based on the color of a fighter surface image I had lying around, so I thought it was about time to start tweaking it to get closer to what it would be based on the color shots I have of it. I may tweak it further to make it less blue later on, but for now I like the color.

I've rounded the corners of the intakes on the engine blocks too. It's very hard to get the edges to line up properly when I add polygons between where two textures separate, and harder still when I have lines going across the divide, since I have to find the exact same position and scale for the texture when I remap it to account for the extra polygons.