LOAF's Secret Diary (SCRATCH)

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November 3, 2025 (2025.307)

I've updated the Wing Commander Prophecy demo missions to the new standard and I have added a page for the 3dfx demo.

I have not been able to extract the demo missions to study with MED so some details are still needed, especially pilot profiles for the wingmen. We will need to solve this before I get to WCSO.

I'm confident in the 3dfx test information but we also need to get it running so that we can add screenshots and the other setup and advertisement screens. Coolest discovery is that there are THREE aces that spawn: one at 2 kills, one at 7 and one at 20.

I need to learn how Prophecy handles spawning: do we always see a jump flash? How does it tie particular enemy fighters to capital ships? TBD.

Also added Wing Commander Prophecy 3dfx Test (disambiguation) to divide content between the demo itself and the specific mission. More work is needed on the demo page.

Next step is to upgrade the first series Hrekkah missions to the new standard, then start on the rest of the game.

October 30, 2025 (2025.303)

Helloaf,

I've returned to working on the Wing Commander Prophecy mission project and I have upgraded all ten simulator mission pages to a new standard.

I've added a Navbox for Wing Commander Prophecy missions:

{{Navbox Wing Commander Prophecy Missions}}

Here is a spreadsheet to lock down the canonical name of every Wing Commander mission, to be used for article names: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aFAJqxt-ZqVtPojQUwv_BsQQIOKq5l6X4WPDjcNRM30/edit?usp=sharing

This work has required that I use and learn MED. Pedro created an executable that you can add to the Prophecy dev environment backup that will let you open and study the missions included in said backup.

Dev CD: https://download.wcnews.com/files/wcp/WCP_DEV_BACKUP.zip

Pedro's Addition: https://download.wcnews.com/files/wcp/med.zip

Pedro's instructions:

File > Open and then select say c2a.mis from the data/missions directory

Then select sectors

Then select a sector and hit edit.

You'll often need to zoom out as far as you can to find the nav points and then zoom back in

the zoom function seems more than a bit glitchy for me, if I get some time I'll try and figure out why

Next up, we apply these standards to the demo missions, then the WCP missions we've done and then the WCP missions we haven't!

Another side project I want to look into: studying the ECTS and E3 demo missions.

October 23, 2025 (2025.296)

Greetings Citizens,

I thought it would be useful to start a diary covering my WCpedia process as I hammer away at different areas. My dream would be for this to inspire new people to join the project, hopefully more technically talented ones! There's a tremendous amount of fun to be had for anyone that likes sorting out very small details and then thinking big things about them. I will try to add future notes above this one as they go.

I have just completed a first pass at reworking the Privateer 2 News Bulletins. I have had a burr in my saddle about adding a screenshot to go with each entry for quite a while and in the process I've upgraded everything to a new standard that includes a navbox, infobox, guide scans, disambiguous pages and redirects. We also use the text extracted from the game rather than transcribed or from Paul Hughes' external data dump.

One thing I will note for posterity is that I believe the Privateer 2 News Bulletins are VERY important. I know that they are not most folks' cups of tea but at the end of the day they are essentially an entire short novel of information about the civilian side of the Wing Commander universe in the 28th century. They're fascinating in many ways, problematic in some and incredibly hopeful in others (if you are looking for proof of LGBT inclusion in the Wing Commander universe, these are your Rosetta stone).

I was also particularly concerned with matching up the slightly altered Official Guide names with those that actually appear in the game (not beating the Tylenol allegations). We use the game name for the specific News Bulletin and then have notations and a redirect for the Official Guide version. I've included a master list below. One exciting discovery here was the 'cut' bulletin listed in the guide, I'm just an 'armless orphan, guv, is actually present in the game and simply renamed to Carts of Parts hit the Marts.

A note on the screenshots: they were all captured using the wonderful P2 save game editor to change the bulletin value one at a time. The screenshots were edited to remove the cursor from the lower right corner. I opted to include any 'blank' page when it was accessible.

Here is my spreadsheet of news data for anyone checking errors: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SOw6J1aydst5b778bzEFLCqNgMm-pDaWfYM8O1JbbiE/edit?usp=sharing

I have attempted to clear out any vestiges of previous attempts at a News Bulletin update. If you find anything left that isn't listed below, please zap it! One part of this was killing the old 'CIS Bulletin' entries and starting new ones simply because I think listing them as "CIS Bulletin (News Bulletin XXX)" is cleaner than "CIS Bulletin (X)". I have created a new disambig page and I think we should probably also do an entry for just the overall concept of a CIS Bulletin.

For future projects: I have added two new boxes specific to News Bulletins. The infobox is fairly broad and could be repurposed for generic use if so needed. I am generally unhappy with the Navbox but it may be impossible to simplify this amount of data. Due to its size, I learned how to set them to start off collapsed. We should have a general idea for when to do this should a navbox be 'too big' (which is often). It should be integrated into the Privateer 2 master category page.

  • infobox News Bulletin
  • Navbox News Bulletins

In the process of this update I have uploaded four Privateer 2-related first party documents page-by-page. They can be dropped into future pages as needed. A future version should include international versions of these images.

  • P2manual_usa-XX.png
  • P2rehabilitationguide-XX.png
  • Privateer_2_Guide_0XXX.png
  • P2guidetospacetravel-XX.png

I also added a top-of-the-page warning for pages that can't use the correct character in their actual title. Thta largely came into play here where I wanted many of the generic pages to list 'planet' in brackets instead of parentheses. Here's now it works:

{{Correct title|Altairian Rindpest hits <nowiki>[planet]|brackets}}</nowiki>

And that becomes:

The correct title of this article is Altairian Rindpest hits [planet]. The omission of the brackets is due to technical restrictions.

I intend to include in these notes a list of future plans for whatever project I have been working on. I am absolutely cursed to see everything I do as sad and horrible compared to what could be, So help me make what could be possible!

News Bulletins future:

  • Needs an overall QA/sanity check pass from someone with a good eye to detail. In particular, make sure the correct Official Guide pages are included.
  • A future version of the WCPedia should include localizations. It would be great to have the other languages of the bulletins (both screenshots and text).
  • We should reorganize/label the bulletin categories to further divide them by type (ie, generic, no impact, advertisement).
  • Add any material from pre-release screenshots of the News Bulletin system.
  • A future pass will focus on extracting lore from this material. It should start with pages for reporter names and then parse the bulletins themselvs for content.
  • We should take another pass at Privateer 2 commodities to unify their naming and other data (Titans? Titan? Titan Alloys? titan? etc.).
  • Delete anything not attached to the below pages.
  • Apply this same level of scrutiny to Privateer 2 missions, which need properly extracted data and screenshots of all text and unique ships.

My next effort is going back to work on the revamped Prophecy mission project. I need to do a second pass on the simulator and demo mission pages which will form the basis for the entire project (and each get their own front page callout as they're done).

Here's the canonical list of Privateer 2 News Bulletin pages:

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