August 13, 2016 - full package available
A new full package is available in the download section. Is is a repackaging of all the Standoff episodes and patches that were released over time.
October 2nd, 2011 - 1.33 patch available
A new patch is available is available through Standoff launcher's autoupdate. It contains a new version of the OpenGL renderer for Standoff, making its HDR and Enhanced Lighting options compatible with a wider array or video cards, especially ATI.
August 14th, 2011 - Completing a guide
Our beta tester Dundradal has been working on a Standoff strategy guide for years while we were working on finishing the game, but unfortunately it was never completed. Since we'd really like to have it finished, we decided to make it a community project by building it on the Wing Commander CIC WCPedia. The start of the guide can be found here. If you'd like to volunteer on the project, visit our forums's thread to learn how to help out.
August 11th, 2011 - Wing Commander: Secret Ops and Standoff for OSX
Mac gamers have been able to play Windows games for a while now using Wine, an open-source Windows API emulation layer for Unix/Linux/OSX, but it's typically a somewhat long and complex process to set up. Using existing tools and some help from other Mac gamers on the web, forums regular wcnut made his own Mac wrapper app for both Secret Ops and Standoff ! That means playing those games is now as easy as clicking on the package file (.DMG), dragging the Secret Ops and Standoff icons whereever you want it stored on your Mac and click to play ! No more complicated Wine and application setup.
You can download it here (700 megs), and leave your feedback on the Standoff forums. Special thanks for this goes to "johnniewaves" from the Mac Porting Team for his help !
February 16th, 2011 - Minor update to 1.32
A small update from 1.31 to 1.32 is now available through the game's autoupdate. It fixes a number of compatibility settings for Windows 64 bits OS that were not installing correctly in the past versions. Although these could be set manually they are now correctly set automaticly. The Help/FAQ page has also been updated.
We are also working on an update to the OpenGL renderer that should enhance its compatibility with ATI cards. It is currently being tested and could be released shortly if everything goes well.
August 17th, 2010 - Standoff trailer
Last week we released a first Standoff trailer to coincide with the Wing Commander CIC anniversary (and first year since the final episode release).
The trailer was actually created as a form of musical presentation, providing a visual backdrop for the music from Standoff, which Michael was presenting as part of one of his final university assignments (that's right - working on WC mods does get you good grades!).
While putting together the trailer, I found that most of the team thought it was excessively long, with too much story and the action starting much too late in the piece. This is a reasonable argument, and ever since finishing this piece, I have in fact been trying to find the time to re-cut it into a shorter, more action-oriented version. However, there are good reasons for the way the trailer was put together.
Firstly, I wanted to give Michael enough space for his music to unfold - just action, action, action would have meant that the whole piece would be, obviously, action music. This would help much to show off all the different themes of Standoff. A second consideration was the audience. I had to assume the people watching Michael's presentation would have no idea what Wing Commander is. The story of Standoff (which can be confusing even to WC fans, if they haven't read Fleet Action) therefore needed a lot of explanation. And finally, as great as the action is in Standoff, we always tried to emphasize the story - so it made sense to do so here, too.
All in all, we think the trailer turned out very well - but hey, judge for yourselves! You can download the trailer here (40.6Mb RAR file).
UPDATE: Added a "Trailers" section on this website under "Media". You'll find a YouTube version of the trailer there.
January 18th, 2010 - Fan Project of the Year!
The vote for CIC's annual Fan Project of the Year competition has just ended - and we have won! Thanks for voting for us this one last time! And, since Standoff is now entirely finished (eh, except bugfixing...), next year's competition will be entirely Standoff-less. About damn time!
So, here's our award image:
But wait! There's more! Apparently, the voters were also impressed with the work we put into overhauling our website, too. We didn't win Fan Website of the Year (and that's a good thing - that's not an award fan project teams are usually after...), but we did wind up as one of the Runner-Ups:
Meanwhile, you may be wondering what's been going on with the bugfixes. It's been a while since September, and we're still not done...? Most of the team has been keeping pretty busy with other things since Standoff finished. We are still there, though, and we ain't leaving until we're satisfied with a final release. Count on it!
September 7th, 2009 - Stable release
At last, Standoff as we wanted to release it almost month ago. The random crash problem that plagued the game is now resolved, as every other show stopper crashes/bugs that were reported by our testers and the community via our forums. Few minor bugs may be remaining, but we're still working on sorting the last details for a next update.
This new release should better support ATI video cards than previously: Alex has found some limitations in the Catalyst drivers he could make a workaround for. In the case of older or mobile cards, the renderer should now automaticaly ignore a visual option that isn't supported. Unfortunately we don't have access to many ATI testers so your feedback will be appreciated.
Here's the list of changes/fixes in 1.29:
- Fixes the random crashes when using the new effects.
- Removed the crazy values nagscreen in the options menu, as the crashes are now fixed.
- Fixes support for most recent ATI cards, better sopport for older and mobile versions. Cards that doesn't support the new visual effects should now ignore those options.
- Fixed the inversion of the middle and good endings.
- All the simulator missions are now enabled for the scoreboard, except simulator mission 6.
- Minor tweeks to some episode 3 missions.
We are currently rebuilding the installers with the updated material, so people that couldn't use Autoupdate for some reason can expect the updated Episode 5 and full game installers to be uploaded and available tomorrow. In the meantime, you can get the update through the autoupdate mechanism of the launcher.
UPDATE: The Episode 5 installer is now updated to the lastest version (1.29). Head over the download section of the site to get it.
August 28th, 2009 - On our way to a stable release
Almost three weeks after Episode 5 was released, we now have three patches issued though the game's autoupdate system. The latest patch, 1.28, has been issued today; it includes lots of fixes and better support for ATI video cards. A new option has been added to the "Troubleshooting" section of the launcher options menu, to help fix Enhanced Lighting for players who still have problems with it as well. We're still working on the issues some players are experiencing with HDR, hopefully we'll have a new version of the renderer in the coming weeks to solve those issues.
Now we will watch for your feedback on the latest patch; if all goes well we'll update the Episode 5 installer and full Standoff installer (Eps 1 to 5) no later than Thursday. Please bear with us!
August 10th, 2009 - Standoff Episode 5 released!
Well... it's been a long, long time coming, hasn't it? And just like Episode 4, this is another one that only barely made the release date. We'll be honest - we really, really wanted to make this release date, because it's the Wing Commander CIC's birthday. Had the release date been set to any other day, however... we would have chosen to delay this episode for another day.
We'll start with the bad, to get it out of the way: the game crashes. There's a major memory issue in there that we've been going crazy trying to fix... and failed, for now. But in the meantime - basically, if you play two or three missions in a row (especially the kind of huge missions you have in Episode 5), the game will most likely crash in the middle of a mission. You can avoid these crashes simply by quitting after every mission. It's not fun, but it seems to work. And we are working on it...
Two other small bits of bad news - first up, with all the new features in the game, we did not have time to finish testing the simulator missions. Rather than releasing something half-done, we've decided to hold off on releasing any new sim missions at all in this package. In about a week or two, we'll hopefully have them all polished and delivered to you via our launcher's built-in patching system. As it is, the sim missions are unchanged from Episode 4 - all of them are functional, but only some are enabled for the scoreboard. And the other thing is - we didn't get a full Episodes 1-5 package done for tonight, only Episode 5. However, all the additional content for previous episodes is present in this package. If you have missed out entirely on the previous episodes, we suggest you wait until the big package is available - but if you absolutely must play Standoff tonight, simply download the Episodes 1-4 package, install it, and then install Episode 5 on top of that.
Enough with the bad, let's talk good news! First up - we've got a new website, the old layout was... well, old. And the other good news, obviously, is that we've released the final episode of Standoff! It's a big package this time, over 180 MB in size - more than twice what the previous episode had taken. Apart from the big damn finale, this episode also contains a lot of fixes for various issues in previous episodes. And new cutscenes for Episodes 1 and 2. And all those great graphics improvements we mentioned in the last update. In short - it's the best damn Standoff release ever, even though we're still working on improving it!
