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The Wing Commander movie club had a great Independence Day watching Independence Day! It's one of those movies that remains just as much fun as it did when we were teenagers. It's hard to argue that it's some great piece of art or that it's especially clever… but you start watching and you're immediately having a ball.

The big connection this time around is David Arnold's Independence Day score, which was heavily used to temp track Wing Commander… presumably because Arnold was writing Wing Commander's overture! Compare the ID4 theme to the one from Wing Commander:

Chris Roberts would go on to hire ID4's alien designer, Patrick Tatopoulos, to rework the Kilrathi. The work never made it to screen but I think you can see the influence!

Maybe the most memorable 'trademark' of ID4 was the aliens' destruction of major monuments. Gamers had already blown up the White House in Command and Conquer a few months

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This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is From Russia with Love (1963) and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start at 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

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Great news: AllTinker says it's time to start putting stuff back in! Thanks to AllTinker's genius, we've been using Originator to take apart Wing Commander games for a while now, making endless discoveries in the process. Well, now the shoe is on the other foot because they've released TREKPAK v0.5, a new utility aimed at adding edited files back to those same games… an invaluable tool that should allow giant leaps for modders and preservation groups. We'll let AllTinker explain:

TREPAK is an extractor - and repacker - for TRE and PAK containers, along with (some of) the inner formats.

Note that this is still an early version, so expect bugs and shortcomings!

The goal was to achieve completely accurate repacking, to the point where the same data will produce (even with re-compression) a byte-for-byte identical package. Actually making this happen was far from trivial!

Demo

Here I've replaced some of the

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Vista Genomics has confirmed the successful conclusion of its exobiology initiative across the Sanguineous Rim.
In partnership with Faulcon DeLacy, both confirmed that pilots not only secured vast quantities of exobiological data needed to investigate genetic diversity across the region but also helped confirm that the Nomad improved planetary exploration.
Chief Engineer Frank Endis, who supervised the campaign for Faulcon DeLacy, reported that the Nomad "allowed for more efficient exobiology sampling and research to be conducted than previously experienced by explorers."
"The new Mk II Biological Scanner and Mk II Sensor modules that the Nomad provides also offered explorers and exobiologists more productive journeys thanks to their enhanced range capabilities." he added.
With the trials now concluded, Faulcon DeLacy hopes that the Nomad will quickly become a key feature of long-range

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Terri Tora, the xenobiologist credited with triggering widespread interest in the HIP 87621 system, has been released.
Tora, who has been held in custody by October Consortium since her disappearance in late 3311, was investigating rumours of a significant xenobiological discovery when she stowed away on a Consortium megaship. She was later discovered in HIP 87621, having circumnavigated the system's permit lock, and incarcerated on charges of corporate espionage.
Speaking directly to Vox Galactica, Lexi October said that Tora had been "fully cooperative in questioning" following the security breach and recognised that recent events leading to the signing of the Accords had meant it was time to release her without further charges.
Tora issued the following statement:
"Well, that was an adventure I can tell you! I am relieved to be finally free and to know that things worked out in the end. It

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Akula65 has found a new video the Wing Commander community should enjoy! It's a hardy retrospective focused on Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi from a nostalgia-tinged channel called Pixelmusement. They take a long, hard look at the game and find a lot to like... as well as some aspects that didn't quite come together. A big one of those is the game's promised adaptive difficulty which, while present, doesn't quite work the way it was intended. Still, that's just a small problem when you're talking about one of the greatest computer games ever made!