Just going off of vibes, it's much more likely that the art will get ported into the Confederation project then for Wing Leader to ever be finished. Howie is one of the best I've seen when it comes to 3d art, but he's only one person. He posted the project to github, so anyone with the drive could just pick it up and run with it, but I don't see that happening. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Grayson's Revenge, Pioneer, Wing Leader, Star Trek: Adventure Game Combat, and more, but he's just one man with many irons in the fire and a day job to boot. EA and CBS would be idiots for not greenlighting Wing Leader and the Star Trek game respectively, it keeps the old IP in use at least, and wouldn't cost a ton. It'd be a great way to renew some of the trademarks, I think. But what can you do, eh?
 
The stuff Howie has produced for his project is just incredible - I absolutely want to see his work ported into Confederation as best as it can be, and I hope to be leading the charge on that myself. :) If there's anything which represents what an updated but still faithful & "retro-cool" classic Wing Commander could look like, it's Wing Leader for sure.

Full disclosure though; I'm also one man with too many irons in the fire. :D My job has flexible timing, but is also kinda unstable - especially recently (amongst other IRL things). I'm trying to find ways to fix that - and fix it in a way that doesn't jeopardise my hobby work (Confederation, Originator, my upcoming WC1 patch/mod, hopefully helping with WC4 Remastered, etc.)... Wish me luck! Either way I can never see myself outright stopping; it's just that progress will continue to vary.

Anyway, I don't want to speak for Howie, but I encourage folks not to write Wing Leader off - time and interest comes and goes... It might be a while but it'll just take enough bursts of progress here and there and it could absolutely hit that critical mass where it becomes something fully-playable with (as I understand was the goal) a little self-contained campaign... And that has the potential for community expansion, which may not be a direct goal as it is for Confederation (although I don't know that for sure), but still definitely possible since Howie's opened it all up! Exciting stuff. :D
 
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AllTinker said:
Anyway, I don't want to speak for Howie, but I encourage folks not to write Wing Leader off
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I certainly haven't because I voted for it as Fan Game of the year :) I'm really glad that he open sourced it and I feel people should be making better use of that, including me. I have some experience with Unity but it's not my favorite engine to use, especially when compiling.
 
Howie asked if I could post some updates here. Some of you may be aware that I've picked this project back up. I had started on a multiplayer module and a full Unity rebuild of the game wrapped around Howard's combat system 2 year's ago. I had to stop working on it but recently some really difficult life events have forced me to take an extended break from my normal work which is vfx and game dev. As far as my game dev experience goes I solo deved a multiplayer game released about 5 years ago in Unity which has about 500k downloads and a current player base so I know Unity and multiplayer pretty well at this point. (that's before AI for those that care)

All that is to say I'm currently spending about 16 hours a day working on this rebuild and I'm recreating every system in the game from the ground up in Unity. Though it runs directly off the original games files as a mod. It seems likely I have a shot at actually getting this to a playable point in the relatively near future. My first main goal is getting the first 2 Hornet mission up and running fully end to end so you can start a new game and can play them through back to back. That and the multiplayer module is very nearly ready for testing and runs on my current games multiplayer backend so that it will be essentially free to run with a lower quantity of players.

Howies system though magnificent was still incomplete, so my nav system, missle system, cap ship turret logic, communication system, wingman system etc is all in progress.

Why am I doing this exactly well I guess Wing Commander was a huge part of my childhood and I've always wanted to experience it again. I tried at one point to play the old game but the old gameplay was just too clunky for me to really get into. Seeing Howard's engine though, it FEELS like it's the original to me, only playable and gorgeous. He's done an incredible work of art and I'm really hoping to help let the world finally experience it within the game.
 
Sorry for your job woes, but great news on this mod front. Very much looking forward to what you produce and wishing you luck in finding a new job soon, even if it does delay the project.
 
I hope things will go again well for you very soon! Also, I am sure it will be a great game since you are essentially aiming at making it feel like WC1.

As for AI, I think the bubble will burst. It is just unsustainable.
 
Maybe, but when the dot com bubble burst, the internet didnt disappear... I fear this type of AI is here to stay for better and worse. You cant put the toothpaste back in the tube.
 
Very true, LLMs won't go away neither as technology (after all research on natural language processing has been very intense and likely it will continue to be so), though they may be sidelined by the next shinning algorithm the field of ML will give, nor as corporate tools. But (fortunately!) they won't replace people entirely as we are inclined to think. LLMs are disruptive (ok I am not a big fun of corporate vernacular, but this term is appropriate), but they will not phase real developers out.

Regarding the dot com bubble, I believe that the Internet was filling a massive need for connection (and still does of course). In my opinion, LLMs are very useful, but they come nowhere close. So once the bubble bursts, their real uses will become apparent.
 
kingmakeress said:
As for AI, I think the bubble will burst. It is just unsustainable.
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wcnut said:
Maybe, but when the dot com bubble burst, the internet didnt disappear... I fear this type of AI is here to stay for better and worse.
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You are both right. Here is the usual Webpage I always share. And plenty of green numbers there come from cheating, such as Microsoft which has started to label all income generated by its Office 365 subscriptions under AI for its stakeholders, so the business looks like it actually has a large install base of users. The only companies that truly profit are the chip makers, most notably Nvidia, who are swarmed by orders from those companies trying to become the next big platform in this platform economy.

The most likely outcome at this point, after a big crash, is a few big megacorps controling the majority of the "generic AI" market and lots and lots of smaller alternatives dedicated to specific tasks (and probably pretty good at it), some of which running locally or under your own control.
The basic tech behind what we call AI is solid for some usecases and unlikely to go away, precisely because it is useful in some (limited) scenarios.
 
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cryptomax said:
Howie asked if I could post some updates here. Some of you may be aware that I've picked this project back up. I had started on a multiplayer module and a full Unity rebuild of the game wrapped around Howard's combat system 2 year's ago. I had to stop working on it but recently some really difficult life events have forced me to take an extended break from my normal work which is vfx and game dev. As far as my game dev experience goes I solo deved a multiplayer game released about 5 years ago in Unity which has about 500k downloads and a current player base so I know Unity and multiplayer pretty well at this point. (that's before AI for those that care)

All that is to say I'm currently spending about 16 hours a day working on this rebuild and I'm recreating every system in the game from the ground up in Unity. Though it runs directly off the original games files as a mod. It seems likely I have a shot at actually getting this to a playable point in the relatively near future. My first main goal is getting the first 2 Hornet mission up and running fully end to end so you can start a new game and can play them through back to back. That and the multiplayer module is very nearly ready for testing and runs on my current games multiplayer backend so that it will be essentially free to run with a lower quantity of players.

Howies system though magnificent was still incomplete, so my nav system, missle system, cap ship turret logic, communication system, wingman system etc is all in progress.

Why am I doing this exactly well I guess Wing Commander was a huge part of my childhood and I've always wanted to experience it again. I tried at one point to play the old game but the old gameplay was just too clunky for me to really get into. Seeing Howard's engine though, it FEELS like it's the original to me, only playable and gorgeous. He's done an incredible work of art and I'm really hoping to help let the world finally experience it within the game.
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Already i can guarantee that what you do to this project will be GLORIOUS! though i do wonder, will it still have a mission editor for those that want to make their own campaigns?
 
Don't mind the visual look too much I'm just trying to get things together still.

New Campaign Creator, with win loss series and missions per series.

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Individual mission builder (This shows imported Vega missions)
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Then finally conversation editor

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Guess I would also need a briefing editor or some way to try and auto generate them from your mission build nav points that's an idea. I am actually spending full time 7 days a week working on this right now.

My goal would be that we could create whole new campaigns and share them as single JSON files. I'm kind of just hoping to get as far as I can before I burn out.
 
ZacheryTheKamelide said:
I LOVE THIS! and that is a PERFECT goal.
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Think you'd spend the time to make a nice campaign? Like even with these tools it would still take some work to make a nice campaign, so I'm hoping maybe in combination with the updated combat it'll be worth it to make and share them.
 
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