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Radio Contact Re-Established
It's been more than ten years since we launched our very first InfoBurst -- an interview with CIC founders Christopher Reid and Ben Lesnick. Originally a RealAudio show, the CIC InfoBurst later returned as a free internet radio station. Tune in 24/7 to listen to random tracks from our music archive. Special shows that include the 1998/1999 telephone interviews with Chris Roberts, George Oldziey and Chris McCubbin have been archived in MP3 format.
Supported players include Winamp and VideoLan. Click here to tune in. Playlist and listener information is available from the InfoBurst section.
[CIC] [# 10050] [Discuss]
View the Standoff Scoreboards
Help develop the Wing Commander Encyclopedia
Help Translate the Tome of Sivar
WCX was inspired by the Standoff Easter Egg to attempt a translation of the Tome of Sivar. Although Prophecy provides a paraphrase of its own, it's no surprise that the glyphs depicted produce something wacky. WCX has also found some weird variations and differences between what's actually carved in stone and what's in Origin's decoder key. What do you think?
I invite others to take a stab at this. A fresh pair of eyes always helps. It’s cool that such a resource was found. Granted it’s more than a little weird that the Kilrathi would have a 26 letter alphabet, but whatever. We’ll just work with it.
However, my work is hampered by a few things:
First off, the camera angle is slanted slightly, making it tricky to determine a shadow from a shallow cut in the stone at.
Secondly, some of the letters aren’t exact matches, and other could be any of two or three characters. Still some of the letters/characters on the tome appear to be mirrored or inverted versions. And a few appear to not be on the list. I can only assume that if these is some sort of Alphabetic writing system, then it has many more than the 26 letters listed.
Now, the fact that some of them appear to be reoriented in different directions, similar to the characters seen in the movie, makes me wonder if there is some underlying element of the Kilrathi psyche at work here.
For real world example, if you take the symbol for “War” (it kind of look like a bird’s foot) and invert it, making it negative (while placing in a circle representing a continuous or endless existence) then you get the famous “Peace Symbol”. Symbology can be a fun, and at times eye-opening, excursion.
[ChrisReid] [# 9968] [Discuss (36 comments)]
Invasion Creeps Towards Nephilim Addition
Major Payne has unveiled Wing Commander Invasion's first Nephilim ship in the Empire at War game engine. The shot below shows a Tiamat firing its main plasma weapon. Right now he is testing a ten second refire delay. Each long range shot disables a hardpoint on a capship or structure, but the large Dreadnought has a weakness for coordinated fighter and bomber attacks. Here's some more information on the Nephilim faction being built into the game.
Hello again all. I finally decided to include the Nephillim as the third side (I'll go into the Border Worlds after). The reason for this is that I want to try to stay as close to the original mod as possible, and even though the Border Worlds were given consideration, I felt that the side was more of a mish-mash of Confederation ships.
With this choice I encountered one problem. All the Nephillim models from the original project were basically a pile of rubbish, so I had to find something for the new starbase model. Thank the lord for WCNews archive. Now I don't know if Nephillim ships are basically "living" entities but they sure seem to be, so the starbase is more of a "mother"-ship than anything. It will, like the other starbases, grant access to ships and upgrades at the various levels and as such the current list of ships is:
- 2 Bombers: Raynode and Heavy Skate Cluster
- 7 Capitals: Ammonite (the construction ship from the original Invasion project), Hydra, Kraken, Leviathan, Baracuda, Orca and Tiamat
- 9 Fighters: Devilray, Lamprey, Manta, Manta (red), Skate, Skate Cluster, Squid, Stingray and Moray
- 1 Special: Triton (the freighter from the original Invasion Preject)
In other news I have begun to compile the v2.5 patch. This patch already has some tweaks and a couple of minor editings, but the long part begins now. Special weapons have not been decided on at this current time, but the Sensor Jammer and Corrupt abilities may be used.
Anyway, any questions from anyone please dont hesitate to ask.
[ChrisReid] [# 10045] [Discuss]
Air Force Acquires ITTS to the Max
A new contract was announced today for the US military's purchase of Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing Systems for use on F-15 & F-16 aircraft. These futuristic systems allow a pilot to designate and lock enemy targets by simply looking in their direction. More than one pilot can wear their own specially enabled helmet in two-seater aircraft and independently targetly different opponents or attack sites. This ability can also extend to wingmates. It sounds like it'd be very effective in a Wing Commander game too!
First used in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the multirole JHMCS gives flight crew members the ability to rapidly acquire and designate a target simply by looking at it. By placing an aiming cross, projected on the helmet visor, over the desired target and pressing a button, pilots can quickly and easily aim weapons and sensors to designate and attack airborne or ground targets. The JHMCS visor also displays tactical information, aircraft altitude, airspeed, g-force and angle of attack to increase the user’s situational awareness.
[ChrisReid] [# 10046] [Discuss]
Listen to Super Wing Commander Goodness
Darkmage has successfully ripped the beautiful music from Super Wing Commander in MIDI format, and the files are very tiny. All 64 tracks and samples are only 141 kilobytes (download here, zip)! While sorting through the server, we also came across a Super Wing Commander Medley (download here, 5 meg mp3) that's absolutely delicious. The music from SWC is very similar to the classic tone of Wing Commander 1, but with a dazzle of flash added. It's based on the music by David Govett & George "Fatman" Sanger, with some enhancement by Joe Basquez, Britt Daniels & Stretch Williams for the port. Enjoy!
[ChrisReid] [# 10043] [Discuss (4 comments)]
Wing One is #1
While you're all excited about classic Wing Commander music, now would be a great time to grab The Fatman's Wing Commander soundtrack, "Wing One", through the Amie Street music service. Twenty-six tracks were released throughout the Summer of 2007. Thirty second samples of each track are available to everyone, and once you've bought a song, you can listen to the full version online or download it outright. These are plain old MP3s, free of DRM. The Amie service is a little unusual in that songs start cheap and rise in price up to $0.98 as they become popular. At the time of writing, most Wing One tracks cost "full price" when purchased individually, but the entire album's 26 tracks can be had for just $8.98! Wing Commander fans who missed out on the original premiere of this album are in for a treat. The Fatman has six more albums in his Amie Street catalog, including the soundtrack to The 7th Guest. Check them out here.
This is the soundtrack to the first Wing Commander game by Origin Systems. I was asked by the game's producer, Chris Roberts, to write something that sounded something like Star Wars and Star Trek the Motion Picture. My Team Fat writing partner, Dave Govett, had this little tune (the fanfare/theme) in his head already. It took him about a day to get finished music to me--and with that one tune, game music took what is perhaps a bigger step than it had taken before or has taken since. If you don't believe me, do the research. Try to find a soundtrack with stronger musical sensibility, better composition, or better arrangements. This game supported the then-new MT-32 sound card--this was pre-General MIDI, and most games had just used the internal FM sound card--which was considered high-quality at the time! In addition, Chris Roberts insisted on making the soundtrack interactive. There have been other soundtracks before and since, but this one stood out. Wing Commander was the hit of the CES show that year. These days, game soundtracks that attempt to imitate John Williams are commonplace. I don't like to do it anymore. But to my knowledge, this is the first one, and compositionally remains one of the better ones. I believe that for several years after this, game composers were still not asked to imitate John Williams. They were asked to imitate David Govett and Wing Commander.
You will hear the authentic, original MIDI files, playing back on a Roland MT-32 sound module, as you would have heard if you were playing a Brand New Wing Commander game on The Best Game Sound-Equipped Computer Available At The Time. A touch of Roland Sound Canvass (in MT-32 emulation mode) was added just because it was easy to do and made the tones just a tad-bit richer. Other than that...Welcome To The State of the Art in PC Audio, circa 1990!!!!
[CIC] [# 10044] [Discuss (1 comment)]
Kick Back and Ralaxath
The Ralaxath Heavy Destroyer has gotten a texture tweak for Wing Commander Collateral Damage. Turrets aren't modeled, but eventually this ship will carry more than a dozen guns. The large awkward bridge that was previously stuck on the crown of the ship has also been smoothed in lower down.
You can see I took away a little of that brownish color away and added a few details to the model. I also brought up the texture quality (sharpened, different placed items, etc...), and I changed up the metal between the parts of the ship too. To me it looks a little better, a little more uniform.
[ChrisReid] [# 10040] [Discuss (7 comments)]
Destroyer Duo Looks Familiar
The Ralaxath has been a very popular ship in Wing Commander mods lately. It's pretty interesting to see how each fan project has a distinctly different take on this Kilrathi heavy destroyer. Here's the WC Saga version in the Freespace 2 engine and the Invasion version in Star Wars: Empire at War.
[ChrisReid] [# 10041] [Discuss]
All news for March 2010 can be found here.
Older news can be found in the archive.
Wallpapers
Files
SETI@home
Music
Cheats
Links
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Added nineteen wallpapers.
Recent files added.
CIC group stats updated.
Dozens of tracks added.
Prophecy Advance and WC IV Playstation cheats added.
Fifteen links removed, ten updated, fifteen added.
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