New Models Shed Light on The Darkening's Ships

New Bearcat Hits The Drawing Board

Hi everyone! Haven't posted anything in a very long time, but I figured I'd share something I've been working on. With all the new stuff going on for Star Citizen and the 3D model prints through Shapeways, I started thinking about how one of my favorite fighters would work. So I give y'all the Bearcat. This is my first model, and I'm extremely new at this and still learning. Here're some of the things I changed/imagined how it would look when finished.

First, the engine thrusters. Instead of the Bearcat's six engine ports, I thought that two large thrust vectoring nozzles would be more fitting. Next, I moved the wingtip mounted tachyon guns to a more central position. I think with internal missile bays, the missiles would launch one by one out where the guns were. I also made small housing area for the guns in case anyone would want to swap the guns out (I honestly don't think I have the scale of the tachyon guns right, but that can be fixed). I haven't added the maneuvering thrusters yet. Still learning on how I could do that, but I think they'd work best right where the wings meet the fuselage and also near the cockpit. Instead of intakes right by the cockpit, I decided to make those the retro rockets for reverse thrust and leave the intakes by the engines. Finally, the last thing I can think of right now (it's 2 am) is the cockpit. Once that's finished, it's going to be a strut-less or near strut-less canopy to give the pilot an uninterrupted field of view.

Like I said, this is a work in progress, but I would appreciate any feedback on how to make this better or any ideas on features to add to the model. Also, if anyone can point me to tutorials on texturing, I have an idea on a paint scheme I want to use on this. I'm going to work on this when I can so progress might be slow, but hopefully the final product can be something everyone can use and enjoy.

Crossbow Locked & Loaded On Concordia's Deck

So here's what it looks like in the Build, and a sneak peek at Damon's Blair head, too!

The Empire Infiltrates Wing Commander Academy

Some more updates on this front :)

I managed to modify my scripts to output either 37 or 62 sprite ships. The OpenGL 3d to 2d converter outputs a image matrix with the full 62 sprites, but the second stage converter can now take a subset of these sprites and output a regular 37-sprite ship file for WCA, or a 62-sprite ship for SO2. This is good, it means that I'll be able to quickly generate a new ship file for testing on WCA, while at the same time have the necessary data to start running some tests on SO2, in order to enable asymmetric ship support for ships other than Ayer's Rock (I'll probably try to isolate the necessary changes into a COM file that will launch the main SO2 EXE... we'll see).

With this in mind, I started converting another ship: the WC4 Dralthi :D

Besides being an iconic WC ship, it has asymmetric aspects (pilot and weapons pod), which makes it a great test subject. Also, it's asymmetry is subtle enough at low resolutions that it shouldn't spoil the fun of playing with it in WCA, without asymmetry support.

As a bonus: since I had to rework my scripts to support this new approach... I decided it was time to try something else: increased resolution sprites. While my OpenGL generator used to generate 160x120 "tiles", I decided to add support for changing the size of these. For the Dralthi, these were increased to 320x240, which should make the ship hold up better when near the camera. As expected, however, the increase in resolution resulted in a larger ship in-game, which means the sprite scale factor will have to be tweaked. I haven't done this yet, which means the Dralthi in the screenshots below looks larger than it should. Other than that, the game seems to handle the new file just fine, even though it's around ~400kb (but with some RLE optimizations, the size should come down a bit).

Anyway, here are a few screenshots of the work-in-progress Dralthi. Enjoy :) (of course, comments / suggestions are always welcome)

Cybot Ships Spice Up Confed Life

• Some stuff to make bases and hangars look more live in and used.
• Privateers ship from a burning Galaxy. The Anaan reminds me of the Wasp from Prophecy. If any one wants to make a mod, maybe if you use the jump gate you get sent to Privateer 2 or somewhere. :)

Broadsword Fits In With Fleet Colors

Red Baron: Scooby's model doesn't really look very Broadsword-y when viewed from an angle because it's all sharp edges, but if you look at the silhouettes you'll see it's spot on.

ScoobyDoo: The Broadsword was bits and pieces from Lar's Broadsword and my Hwacha (which was originally a Broadsword) all mashed together.

RSI Surpasses $25 Million!

At $25 million, you allow us to build a stronger infrastructure for the Star Citizen alpha test:

Enhanced Alpha – We will use additional funding to build a wider alpha test than we had originally intended for the first phase of Star Citizen’s launch. The initial plan was to first launch servers in North America and then expand to areas such as Europe and Australia to decrease latency in these areas, perfecting the game as we improve the experience around the world. This funding will allow us to invest in a wider infrastructure for our early testing, spinning up remote servers earlier. Hitting this goal will also allow us to increase the number of remaining alpha slots. Extra alpha slots not only means more Star Citizens will travel the ‘verse at launch, but that we will receive more feedback and more stress testing. This in turn will allow us to better balance and enhance the Star Citizen experience!

Scimitar Reimagined

Just learning 3D modelling. Thought it would be fun creating a Wing Commander ship. I'm a fan of the 3D artist here at WCNews.

I used to be a fan of the scimitar. Not because it handled well, but because the take of and landing sequence reminded me of the Viper. I wanted to create a sleek version of a Scimitar. Since the old Wing Commander models all had wings and intakes, I wanted to create a version which would perform well as an atmospheric fighter.

The engine configuration is inspired by both the Dassault Rafale and the Viper of Battle Star Galactica The shape of the fuselage is partly inspired by the SR71. The wings are more or less parallel to function like a triplane. The vertical stabilizers are positioned at an angle to reduce the radar cross section. Instead of mass drivers it features two M61 Vulcan mounted under the plane.

Criticism is welcome.

Kilrathi RPG Campaign Accepting Names for Frontier Outposts

This week I continued with my efforts to get the Epsilon Sector campaign setting ready for Elegy (the campaign setting material will be acting as the "front half" of the campaign this time around, with the Elegy story and missions making up the "back half"). At the moment, that means manufacturing system maps. I didn't have an outstanding VASSAL mod competing for my time this week, so I was able to pick up work there in earnest, completing maps at a rate of four per day.

I've been working on calculating distances between various nav points and I can report that effort as current for all systems. I'm still a little up in the air over what information will be included with each system, but I have settled on system affiliation, history, bases/cities and facilities data, population and demographics data, commodities data and random encounter probabilities at the various nav points. For planets, I intend to put in their planetary characteristics. If I add any other data, it might be prominent citizenry and/or potential missions within a system. The whole idea behind adding all this information is, of course, for players to not necessarily have to play the Elegy campaign if they don't want to, but still be able to use the information to play a different campaign set in Epsilon during the same time period (Epsilon during the 2690 Nephilim onslaught might be an interesting BSG-esque tale...).

I've just gotten done with some pretty heavy labor involving planet building. I'm reasonably satisfied with the results in most cases, though there are some things that will need to be tweaked (apparently Circe V has a population of 100 and Pasqual X's atmosphere isn't breathable). I can now definitively say that there will be 86 bases total in Elegy, with some of them located on the same planet (for example, Firekka alone will contain four - these will be major cities on the planet's surface, of course).

So I've got my next problem: finding names for everything. I've got a total of 24 outposts/planets that need names, and on top of that I have 59 specific communities that need names. I figured this one is one I could toss to the community - have you ever wanted to name a place in the Wing Commander universe? Well, here's a chance. I need all kinds of names - Terran, Kilrathi, Firekkan, any others that you might want to throw out there, I can use it. I'll mention those who help out in the game's credits. If anyone's interested, just post to this thread.