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#3743793 - 03/01/13 07:35 PM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
Joined: Oct 2005
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Charlie_SB Offline
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Thanks for a great article and some truly classic games!

...while of the subject of crossing arms to play, I broke my (right) arm playing football on my 14th birthday. I had gotten Pirates the very same morning and spent a few weeks sailing drunkenly across the seas having to use my joystick with the wrong hand. I have a feeling the reason my wrist didn't heal quite right was because I couldn't stand being so lousy at fencing so I switched hands and ignored the pain.

-C-

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#3743850 - 03/01/13 08:59 PM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: Scott Elson]  
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baltika Offline
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baltika  Offline
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Scotland
Originally Posted By: Scott Elson

baltika,
EA owns that code so it would be up to them. Also most of my work was done with the AI and game play code so I'm not sure on what the potential issues are and how big of a pain UI and graphics changes would be.

Elf



Cool, thanks for the reply, man. I see some old stuff from EA appearing on GoG recently, so here's hoping the Jane's line is on the 'to do' list!

Happily, Jane's F-15 and F/A-18 run pretty well on my Win7 system despite the UI bugs - F-15 won't let me configure my Warthog in-game, but I am building a profile to get round that little issue wink

And I just want to second the comments here that it is great to hear about how some of the best sims produced (even still!!) were made, from a guy who was instrumental in getting the job done.

S!

Baltika

#3743929 - 03/01/13 11:20 PM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: baltika]  
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Ben_WH Offline
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USA
Hi,

Don't post here often but I have to say that this is one of the best articles I have read here. Not only because of the inside look behind these great sims but the human stories of the development team.

Cheers,

#3743971 - 03/02/13 12:17 AM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
Joined: Apr 2007
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jaegermeister Offline
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jaegermeister  Offline
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Posts: 532
Walking point
Thanks Scott,
this is a story that I needed to know. Honestly, you guys were my heroes.
For me, the thing that made "those" Janes sims, was the ambiance.
Those sims had and still have character. I loaned an ex airforce f-15 mechanic
friend my f-15 manual, he spilled kool-aid on it and some of the pages came loose.
Well that was back in 2000, but i still yell at him today. You guys were the best.
More please.

Jaeger.

#3744114 - 03/02/13 10:41 AM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
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Posts: 2,032
Rudel Offline
Leatherneck Sim Artist
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Joined: Mar 2001
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Tampa, FL
Scott, very awesome read. I was surely hoping to read about the A-10 project ending, but the 2 other Easter eggs are going to keep me busy now. Noah's Ark will be hard to find I'm sure. And especially the bucket & shovel. biggrin

On behalf of Team Super Hornet, we extremely appreciate your help you have given us. Your article is a great insight. Man, just to think... dual player aircraft. And now with Fiber connections, it can be done. I've personally exchanged a few e-mails with your friends, and they are really great guys. Todd is not whom I expected though...lol

If you or your friends ever get bored, come help us weed out the left over bugs wink

Thank you Elf, and the rest of the team!

#3744131 - 03/02/13 01:07 PM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
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CJ Martin Offline
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CJ Martin  Offline
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NAS Patuxent River, MD
Scott did a great job, and I'll second what he wrote - we had a great team in the Baltimore office. Not just super talented, but really great people. That's probably why we didn't kill each other during those long crunch times. Most development teams were far larger than our little band, and I was probably the weakest link among those coding/artist giants.

Honestly, it was hard work most of the time. A very cool job to have at my 20th HS reunion..."you make games for a living???" but the reality was long hours, missed family time and in my case a near nervious breakdown. F/A-18 nearly broke me...my teammates kept me going. We were all in it together. Scott had his own challenges to deal with...we had a programmer leave during F/A-18, one I worked a lot with as he was coding most of the avionics. Or so we thought. When he left, it was discovered most of that code just would not work with the rest of the game. On top of all the other stuff he already had, Elf took on most of that code rework. How many late nights did we sit together is his office, him coding, compliling and testing, and me going..."mmmm, no, that's not right, it needs to do this"...

The manual for F/A-18 was what nearly broke me. Elf will remember, we had hired someone out to do the manual. He wasn't in our office, but he did come in at the start and we spent a lot of time going through the massive design document. After that he would email me questions and sent some early drafts of the first couple of sections. We were deep into crunch and the early stuff we got looked good...and the writer we had wasn't new to this, he came to us highly recommended.

Until the updates stopped coming.

And the production folks needed hard numbers about the manual, page count and stuff like that.

And then our writer decided he couldn't make our deadline and quit.

And when he sent us everything he had been working on, I discovered to my horror it was an empty shell

In our producers office, I am told we are going to miss a major milestone because we have no manual

I lock myself in my office for the next 3-4 weeks (it was a blur...) and cranked out pretty much the final manual.

I am not proud of it. It is very much like a Navy Technical manual, dry boring, just the facts. It is the best I could do in the time I had. I try to add more, but we are way over our pagecount limit...there is concern the manual will not fit in the box. Cost of goods is an issue. But at least we were able to ship...

That manual is one of the few things I am not proud of. There are far more things I am proud of. The grand campaign story, the way the video montages came together, the huge cast I was able to cast for all the vocals, the campaign structure, the mission flow, all of Matt's painstaking work and endless, endless testing...more and more...

Good job Elf!

-CJ

#3744172 - 03/02/13 04:15 PM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
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531 Ghost Offline
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531 Ghost  Offline
USMC
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Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 11,273
Elizabeth City NC
Makes me want to re-install Janes F/A 18! Thanks Scott, CJ and the rest of the team for bringing us such fun memories. Many a sleepless night we spent flying because of you guys. Thanks!


Originally Posted by Abraham Lincoln
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.


#3744186 - 03/02/13 05:18 PM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
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purolator Offline
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purolator  Offline
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The Ruhr, Germany
That's a really great article and a highly interesting read, thanks a lot! smile

#3744352 - 03/03/13 01:43 AM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
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scrapser Offline
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Silver Spring, MD
I couldn't read the entire article. It was wonderful and painful at the same time. MicroProse has always been a special company to me. They were the author of the first computer sim I bought (Silent Service for the C64) and I bought most of their titles after that on sight. Once I even got a chance to talk with Bill on the phone when I called with a question about one of the sims I was playing. It was late and he decided to answer the phone even though the office was closed for the day.

I was flying ultralight airplanes at the time and we exchanged a few stories about flying (although I had nowhere's near his experience). It was exciting to talk with one of the company founders and he was a straight up guy. I still have many of their sims and a computer to play them on as I write this.

I really miss MicroProse and feel fortunate I was there from the beginning in my own way.


Edited to add:

MicroProse = Immersion

Thank you all for your efforts and dedication.


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#3744426 - 03/03/13 05:06 AM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
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Chuckles Offline
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Chuckles  Offline
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Scott, CJ, thank you for your contribution to the simulation community. F-15 SE, II, II JF-18, Fleet defender were some of the best simulators ever made. I still have most of them at home along with their companion manuals. While you were at MP, did you folks ever have the opportunity to work on Falcon 4.0? Do you folks know what career path 'Wild' Bill Steely took after the MP studios were closed down?

#3744454 - 03/03/13 06:51 AM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
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mhe_at Offline
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Vienna, Austria
This was a really enjoyable read and gives a very comprehensive insight into game development as it was back in the good old days. Thanks for this article, it is so personal and well written... smile


You don't stop playing because you grow old, you grow old because you stop playing.
#3744564 - 03/03/13 04:56 PM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
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NickMow Offline
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Berkshire UK
I just read that bouncing round in the back of an Ambulance lol, (on our way back to base no patient on board !). Fantastic insight into your world Elf. I hope you realise how grateful I/we are for the sims you produced, I had them all I think, so many happy hours had over the years flying the virtual skies. Thanks for your work and thanks again for sharing your experiences, really fascinating reading.
Nick


"If you find yourself in a fair fight..you planned it wrong" (WFO)
#3744696 - 03/03/13 11:12 PM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
Joined: Mar 2008
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damson Offline
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damson  Offline
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Posts: 957
Hiding in the bushes
For me the best article at SimHQ to date - great job Scott and thank you for the hard work you and your friends put in those magnificent games we still play today.

Fleet Defender was my favorite for many years in the '90 - I still remember one training mission that took place on halloween where you had to intercept unknown bogey which could turn out to be Cuban MIG21, an UFO or Flight 19 - lost Avenger flight (the missions had probability of appearance for objects)! I also remember the flying dragon during North Cape campaign in one of first missions (IIRC).

I really enjoyed reading through this article - especially the part with analog clock in FD and artist's response to Ned's question made me laugh hard wink - really good stuff!

#3744727 - 03/04/13 12:18 AM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
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Raintitan Offline
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Raintitan  Offline
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Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to share this.

I spent so many hours with Fleet Defender, F-15 & F-18....as an unexpected young father, I stayed up late each night to get "me" time after my daughter went to sleep. As a full time student with a job and newborn, it is ironic that my "overtime" was self-prescribed sleep deprivation with the creations you worked so hard to make. I have such fond memories of those games, especially Fleet Defender which was so great.

Loved every word of this, thanks!

H

#3744806 - 03/04/13 05:02 AM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,264
No457_Squog Offline
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Melbourne, Australia
That article ROCKED. Being a fly on the wall during the creation of those classics would be something else!

I reckon a few of you blokes should get together in a room and play through a couple of missions from each game you built and discuss various aspects. Would make a great youtube vid for SimHQ.tv smile


No457_Squog
Squadron Leader

No. 457 Squadron vRAAF
#3744812 - 03/04/13 05:27 AM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: Raintitan]  
Joined: Nov 2012
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Craters Offline
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Craters  Offline
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Beautiful job, Elf! I started reading during lunch at work and darn near missed a meeting!! I'm glad I didn't, because I woulda blamed you, and they would have asked "Who's Elf?", and I would have had to tell them, and then they'd know that I was doing fun stuff instead of working on our proposal, and who know what would have happened after that?!

I've always thought that the people in the newsgroup who complained the most were the ones who had never, ever worked on a big project or done a seriously important job -- especially one with a clueless bunch of administrators or bureaucrats promising things without knowing what they were getting everybody into. It never ceased to amaze me how you guys would maintain your cool while dealing with the bigmouths. (Heh. Of course, there were other denizens of the NG who did their share of mounting an active defense!) Every time after you guys released a new sim, we'd see you and CJ and some of the other guys there, cool as cucumbers (as we saw you, anyway!), answering questions, handling complaints, and, well, just being there. I'm sure I'm not the only one who wondered how many holes you guys kicked in your office walls after some of the stupid, mindless flames you had to deal with.

Anyway, thanks a million to you and your comrades in arms for everything you did. Doing your job is one thing, but doing a superlative job by going the extra mile(s) is another thing altogether.

Finally, it was a real honor to be mentioned in your opus. Thanks for remembering and taking the time to tell that little story!

God bless you and your special colleagues -- honorable people, all!

Craters

#3744830 - 03/04/13 06:47 AM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 1,123
Scott Elson Offline
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Scott Elson  Offline
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Hunt Valley, MD, USA
Once again I wanted to say how glad I am that you all are enjoying the article and that the games we did are still well remembered after all this time. I think since so many of us were flight sim gamers ourselves we were making a game we wanted to play and so it would appeal to other gamers like ourselves. I personally always wanted to make the worlds as alive as possible so it's particularly gratifying to know that it was worth the effort. This was one story I thought about putting in the article but thought it slowed down the beginning too much and I had told it before. Feel free to skip the rest of this paragraph if you've heard this already. One defining moment in my life was when I was playing F-19 on a roommate's computer while I was down where I went to college. I had MiGs on my tail so over flew one of our Aegis ships hoping their air defenses would take care of the bandits. Nothing happened and I realized they were really there just as decoration. I vowed then that if I ever had a chance to do a similar game I'd try to make sure if something should be able to help you it would. I also made another pilot, Ben "Dicked" Arnold, who out of frustration destroyed as much of the stuff that hadn't helped him as he could and then defected to an enemy airfield. I was hoping I'd get a newspaper post mission page about it but they probably hadn't considered it an option. Also my large negative score didn't stick around for the next mission.

Charlie_SB,
Ow! Sorry to hear about what happened to your arm and definitely understand why you'd sometimes go back to using your right hand. I'm even more sorry though if it caused your write to not heal correctly. I was lucky in that I'm somewhat ambidextrous.

Rudel,
There's not a lot I could say about the A-10 project since it was being done in Austin and we were very focused on our own project so we didn't really know much about what was going on, or at least I didn't. So that would be a better story for someone more involved with it to tell. I wish you good egg hunting.

CJ,
I definitely don't think anyone in the group thought you were a weak link. We each had our different skills, talents and knowledge base that we brought to the table which made the total more than the some of the parts. Without you the games wouldn't have been nearly as good as they were. I knew that the manual had been a particular problem for you but I hadn't know it had gotten that bad. I have the feeling there was probably a lot of "taking one for the team" going on that we each kept to ourselves. It was an honor and privilege to work with you on such great titles.

scrapser,
I definitely understand. I had a lot of bitter sweet memories while writing this. Also I shared this link on the IGDA forums and while I think they'll appreciate the stories I wonder how many of them won't be familiar with MicroProse. It's been almost 10 years since the MicroProse studio in Hunt Valley shut down but even then the last game was put out under the "Atari" brand so the last real use of the name has been even longer. Still, as evident here, there are those that fondly remember the name and what it stood for and for that I'm quite glad. That's neat that you had a chance to chat with Bill. I'm sure he enjoyed talking with you.

Chuckles,
No, I didn't have a chance to work on Falcon 4.0. It was done at the Alameda studio in California so I would have been at the wrong studio. Also I think they had also started work on it before the Spectrum HoloByte / MicroProse merger so the team would have already been in place. I believe Bill's Wiki entry gives a pretty list of what he's been doing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Stealey He recently tried to do a Kickstarter project but it didn't get funded.

damson,
Actually a number of the North Cape missions could have a dragon, or more specifically up to two. I think there was a 10% chance for each of them and if they both spawned at the beginning they'd fly towards each other. One was a "Neutral" dragon and the other was an "Enemy" dragon and if they got in range of each other they'd fight.

No457_Squog,
I'd probably need some time to remember how to fly the planes, it's been a while. ;-)

Craters,
Hey! Good to see you. I was wondering if you had a chance to read it yet. Heh, I seem to remember that in some of the more ... spirited discussions our cool would slip a bit. I know some developers got tired of dealing with some of the stuff that went on there and eventually just stopped visiting. Glad you liked it.

<looks at clock...> OK, I REALLY need to head for bed now.

Elf

#3744852 - 03/04/13 11:06 AM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
Joined: Dec 2009
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Parker Offline
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Parker  Offline
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Posts: 578
Absolutely great article!

A HUGE "Thanks" to you and the other team members for all the hard long hours you put into some of the most iconic sims in the genre.

I have enjoyed countless hours in every one of them...
I was born in 62 so I was just the right age when it all started...

One thing I have always wondered is why some of these are having the main menu problems on modern hardware and OS's?
It says a lot that many of the talented modders are trying to figure out work-arounds for us.

Thanks again and please keep the stories coming as they are a nice insiders look at the whole process.

Parker

#3745170 - 03/04/13 10:41 PM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
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LawnDartLeo Offline
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LawnDartLeo  Offline
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 158
"Nope.... too much like work."

That has to be one of the best nods of approval that a simulation developer could ever get.


LawnDartLeo
Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz CPU (oc'd 4.3)
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#3745315 - 03/05/13 04:46 AM Re: Special Feature: Real Stories of Simulation Development [Re: citizen guod]  
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 1,123
Scott Elson Offline
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Scott Elson  Offline
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 1,123
Hunt Valley, MD, USA
Parker,
You're welcome. As for why stuff stops working this is my take on it, though I'm not a systems guy so I might be missing some other factors. You can see a prime example of this in the article where I'm talking about how new drivers for the Voodoo 3 cards caused problems for JF/A-18 when it first came out. You'll remember back before Fleet Defender came out the biggest variation on a computer was what was the CPU and how fast it was running. Joysticks could have up to two buttons, the only sounds you could get came from the internal speaker and you didn't have a dedicated graphics card. As time progressed though more options became available. Some joysticks started having more buttons and hat switches. There wasn't a standard so for each brand, I think Thrustmaster and CH Products, we had to have specific code to read their joysticks and later on throttles. Sound cards also started coming out. We had Adlib, Roland and I think Sound Blaster. Once again for each one we had to have separate code to get them to work. When we started working on the Jane's stuff this is also the time Windows 95 and DirectX started coming onto the scene. The idea with DirectX was that you would use their standard interface to access input devices, sound cards and I believe communications stuff. It was still a little early for graphics cards so to access the graphics cards that were starting to show up we had to use their calls or just use software mode. Now something we learned early on is that a standard is only as good as the percentage of people that follow it and how well they follow it. Particularly with the graphics cards some manufacturers would focus on one set of features while others would focus on another. I remember our graphics guys having to spend a fair amount of time contacting the different companies trying to get them to update their drivers so their cards could handle some of the calls which other cards already were doing. So as time went along you would just DirectX or other libraries handle the general stuff which allowed you to focus on the more game specific stuff. Of course game programmers are usually trying to get a lot more out of the systems than other types of products and so the developers would be pushing the boundaries. For the systems of that time this is probably OK. As the years passed and new operating systems and drivers would come out and new cards with new capabilities would emerge, while they'd try to keep things backwards compatible I have the feeling they weren't as worried about the boundaries as much or maybe didn't have test cases which covered them. So certain calls which used to work fine are now running into issues. One good example of this is that we wrote the Jane's stuff to use DirectPlay for network calls. Hey, it's Microsoft and it's there standard, it will be around forever... or not. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb318767%28v=vs.85%29.aspx At some point the network code will stop working. Not because our code has changed but because things outside of our control changed. At some point though this makes sense. In television there used to be certain guidelines to keep things backwards compatible for people who still had black and white sets. At some point it's not worth worrying about it and if you do you're going to start losing your customers with the new equipment to someone who's producing stuff for them. It's all a balancing act. Getting back to having problems as things progress, these days in particular people are using 3rd party engines to make their games. It means you don't have to keep reinventing the wheel and it's a lot easier / faster to get to where you're actually making your game instead of just the foundation. The problem is that every time there's an engine update it might cause problems with your game. Also sometimes their stuff doesn't work as you expected but unless they give you access to their source code you can't step into things to see what the problem is and the error/information messages you might be getting back aren't always useful. I hope this made sense.

Elf

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