SimHQ Contributor Scott “Elf” Elson shares stories what it was like during the “golden days” of flight simulation, and tells about working at Microprose and Jane’s Combat Simulations.

http://SimHQ.com/_commentary/all_047a.html

Awesome article. Quite a trip down memory lane. I remember all of those sims and the companies that developed them. I miss the hell out of those days, those companies, and those sims. What made them great then, and even better than the DCS sims today, was IMMERSION. Great, great immersion.

Love to see the facial hair on so many guys. Those were the days when REAL men had facial hair. I still do.

Loved every bit of the article! Janes F-15 & 18 are staples in my memory bank...and this was a nice nostalgia trip. The only problem is I couldn't stop reading it and I'm going to be carrying some sleep debt into work tomorrow!


Great read!

Great article, loved all the Jane's sims.

Recently got JF-15 running on my Win7 widescreen machine thanks to a thread here at SimHQ, great trip down memory lane, would love to see a proper update for the Jane's line for modern machines on GoG or similar.

The playability and immersion of those titles was immense, no need to do anything but squash some of the UI bugs which appear on modern DX versions, and tweak 'em to run on modern graphics cards.

How about it?

Great story one of those things i've always wanted to be part of.

I laughed at the part where you switched hands to fly. My son crosses his hands while playing FPS games lol.

Question
Do they pick people who are aviation friendly when picking the crew for a flight sim game or is it given to you?
I'd imagine you'd have to have interest in the topic....

That was a great read. Thank you for providing such a lengthy and detailed summary about your worklife back then. I do remember some heated discussions with CJ on comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.flight-sim about Janes F/A-18 back then. F-19 Stealth Fighter, Fleet Defender, F-15 and F/A-18 gave me many, many hours of quality entertainment, so thank you for that, too.

I'm glad you guys enjoyed it.

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.

Stormtrooper,
I think who gets picked depends on a lot of factors and would vary by company to company. The first question would be who's available to work on the project and what does skills does each person have. Another question would be how important is the game to the company. You might have someone who's really into flight sims but they might not have the skills the project needs or at least not at the level that the game might require. You could also have someone who's perfect for the project but is also the best person for another project the company has going which is a lot more important to the health of the company. Of course if a person is that useful to the company management is going to want to make sure that he's happy so he sticks around and that will be a factor as well. Sometimes compromises happen. There was a time I was promised I'd be on this one game but they really needed me to work on another so they let me do part time on each (and for a while it looked like there might be a third). In the end it's all a balancing act. If possible though you'd want to have people who are really into that type of game working on it. If not then it can turn into "just a job" and while you could still wind up with a good game I think there's a better chance of that if you have people on the team that really care about it. Even there you could run into a problem if people have different visions of what the game should be.

Elf

That brings back a lot of memories for me as well back in days of dial up BBS's. We had many a conversation with McConkey when F-15 III was the game of choice and really introduced me to multiplayer, even though it was over a modems with endless hours of changing modem strings. Ahh,...good times. It's there I met Wrecking Crew who as it turned out only lived 45 minutes from me at the time, a friendship that continues to this day. Those were the days when there was some really exciting content happening, not the eye candy improvements and never ending string of FPS's seen today. I'll not go into my disappointment with FD and Janes F-15 NOT having multiplayer but there was still some good times had. Nice flashback Scott.

Thanks for this write up, Elf. It brought back not only great memories flying all those amazing sims you guys made, but for me it also brought back a lot of memories of the people who made the sims possible and who I knew and flew with during that time frame in the mid 90s, especially in Warbirds. CJ, Wags, Sean Long (who became my wingman for several 2v2 tournaments over the years.) Joe "Quiz" Enzminger which I'm sure you met when you were talking to TK during Longbow IIs development, he was also from the development team of Warbirds. I remember during an E3 when Wild Bill took over he grabbed me and challenged me to a duel in the pods they had setup there, and kept bugging me about flying against him, he was so serious. I didn't realize at the time, but waxxing him in the duels would later give me the same satisfaction that I'm sure that guy felt punching his cardboard cutout face. It was defiantly a golden time, and golden people. Thanks for making our digital crack back then, It facilitated life long friendships and memories.

Drex

Very enjoyable read! Your hard work gave me many hours of fun flying in your virtual skies.

Thanks for writing the article elf!

ps When you were talking about working next to the mental health clinic...you were speaking in metaphor, right?-)

What a great read.

One simple word for all those involved: thanks.

You guys were responsible for me wasting some of the best years of my life.

Birdski,
Yeah, Jim is a good guy, though I haven't seen him in years. I completely understand your disappointment of not having co-op multiplayer in FD or JF-15 but there were tricks they could do for F-15 III that got a lot more problematic with the advances we made in certain parts of the later games as well as other limitations of the time. If you haven't seen the write up I did talking about why we didn't try to keep co-op multiplayer in for FD you might find it of interest. This is actually the same link to the old JF-15 Wiki entry that I reference in the article when talking about CJ and the power lines. Someone had also decided that my write up on this was worth including as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jane%27s_F-15&oldid=412094883 As I said though, I understand why you feel disappointed which is also why I'm glad I could finally get it in for JF/A-18.

Drex,
Your story reminded me of something I didn't put in the article. While we were working on FD Mike had been talking with a teacher who was doing all sorts of cool military related stuff at his school. They arranged for some of us to go head to head against some of their students, guns only. Well first off I should mention that I hadn't done much h2h in F-15 III. I went up against this one kid and I was pretty sure I had hit him a bunch of times but the plane still seemed to be flying so I kept firing at him. Finally a chat message came across asking me to quit firing, he was dead already and had been for a while. I had expect the plane to blow up or something and for some reason it took a really long time to fall/fly into the ground. I felt pretty bad about that since I know I wouldn't have enjoyed the constant bullet hits if the roles had been reversed.

piper,
Nope, not at all. I forget which hospital they were part of. It was OK when we moved into our real office but while we were in the temp office our doors were right next to each other. Also there was only one path to get to our door and their door was first so if you had even just a couple of guys outside smoking we'd have to squeeze past. Another smoking related store deals with my office. I was fortunate in that they let me have one of the corner offices so I had windows looking two directions. Unfortunately the window that you can in the picture of me working on my desk looked out to one of the mailboxes for the complex. It wasn't the people picking up their mail that was the issue. It was that there was a good sized roof over the area and so people used it as a place to smoke, particularly when it rained. After a few days of looking up and seeing people only a few feet away from my window looking into my office I decided to leave those blinds closed.

Dada257,
I'm sure all the guys I've worked with would join me in saying, "You're welcome." and that we're glad we could be of service. :-)


Heh, regarding facial hair I must admit I'm rather follicley challenged. I couldn't grow a beard if my life depended on it and what would develop if I tried to grow a mustache probably wouldn't be worth the effort.

Once again, I'm glad you all enjoyed it.

Elf

Thankyou.
That was a great read indeed.

I had forgotten how many countless hours I had sunk into some of those sims and nice to hear the stories of where they all came from.

I'm glad you are featured an article in SimHQ, well deserved for your dedication to both the sims and the community!

Great to know the wiki entries I made can still be accessed by "old revisions", I was sad when they removed them. For some reason, after I read the quotes on this forum in the F15 thread, I knew they were worth saving and sharing. I keep a copy in a txt file in my computer also, just in case, because I consider them priceless after playing JF15 for a whole campaign while keeping the Gulf-War book in my nightstand... jewels for any JF15 fan.

Congratulations, you are a hero!

Glad I've had today off as I've just spent all morning reading this excellent article from Scott, and re-living what I still regard as the glory days of flight simming. Nothing, in my opinion, has come close since then.

I well remember the excitement I felt when waiting for the latest from MicroProse and Jane's and the frustration when these sims slipped. It puts it into fine perspective when Scott writes of 100+ hour weeks worked for months to get these sims onto our desks. I certainly didn't appreciate it at the time but thankyou for that dedication. It certainly showed.

And just to let you know I have Jane's F-15, Longbow 2, and F/A-18 on the shelf in front of me as I write this. Still unparalleled as works of education and entertainment as far as I'm concerned. F-15 is working fine on my system but I still have to find the time to get the others going. Still such excellent sources of interesting information. And as for those manuals ....

Which reminds me. At that time I was working for the MoD and was having to do what amounted to mandatory overtime on saturdays to bring a new computer system up to speed. As management couldn't be bothered to come in to supervise, (they weren't going to let deadlines get in the way of THEIR weekends), I used to take those beautiful flight sim manuals into work to read up while waiting for that sh1te system to update. A much more productive use of my time!

So thanks Scott, thanks Jane's etc, and thanks Mod for paying me overtime to learn something interesting!!

Best regards,

Mike

It took me a while, but I lapped up every word from this article. I still get that "nugget feeling" even today when I listen to the intro video of JF-15. I loved JF-18, but have a soft spot for the Mudhen.

Scott, thanks for taking the time and sharing the magic with the rest of us; you guys created the stuff that dreams are made of. It is probably safe to bring F-15 II out now!

Thanks Scott.

II/JG77Hawk_5,
You're welcome. It's nice to hear how fondly the games are remembered even after this many years.

DonLduk,
Thanks for having posted those quotes, it saved me some legwork. Sometime I'll have to find where I had stored some of the posts I had kept my own copy of, particularly the one about the flight characteristics of the F-15E. As for being a hero, while I appreciate the thought, I think that term is best reserved for those that put themselves at risk for the sake of others. Thanks again and I'm honored that you felt the posts were worth saving.

miketb,
I'm glad we were able to help you make it through your own crunches and particularly glad to hear you got OT pay for it.

Warmbrak,
Heh, somehow I doubt that's going to happen but perhaps someone will create a game that matches or surpasses what JF-15 II could have been.

Elf

One thing I will say is that while other sims have sometimes been better in one way or another (graphics, flight modeling, systems modeling, etc), none ever matched the total quality of sims like FD and JF-15. For every "Falcon 4 does this better" or "DCS A-10 does this better" you can point out, you can find 3 things JF-15 or FD did better. Sure by modern standards they seem backwards, but for the day they achieved more.



The Jedi Master

That was great read indeed! Very interesting to see what went on "behind the scenes" of creating these wonderful sims we have so many fond and nostalgic memories of.
Thanks for sharing Elf :-)

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-

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

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

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,

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.

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.

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

Thank you Elf, and the rest of the team!

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

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!

That's a really great article and a highly interesting read, thanks a lot!

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.

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?

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...

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

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 - really good stuff!

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

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

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

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

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

"Nope.... too much like work."

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

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

LawnDartLeo,
Yes, that definitely is one of the best ones and it always makes me smile when I hear something like that. Still, I think hearing all the people saying how many hours they've spent playing the games we've done and how much enjoyment it's brought them makes me smile even more.

Elf

Okay, I just had to re-install...



Notice the placement of the right wing .

Outstanding read, thanks Scott! And it's always nice putting faces with names (which reminds me, SimHQ must have removed my sticky "Putting a Face with a Name" thread as I no longer see it).

That article explained why some of the same names in MicroProse's Stealth sims are also in Jane's Baltimore sims (i.e. Andy, Max, Greg). It was really neat seeing the inside of MicroProse studio.

Developing a 3D game is ultra-complex, even a "simple" game written in BASIC taxes my brain, I can't imagine what it was like for you professional pioneers pushing the envelope in C and Assembly while building your engines from scratch.

An old site, here's a list of sims from 1983 on (with pics)...
http://www.geocities.jp/f19_avionics/sim-list-e.html

About Jane's A-10, unfortunately the GameSpot links no longer work...
http://www.gamespot.com/features/pcgraveyard_janes/p8_01.html

...but there was mention in that article that the developers were considering using VB for the mission planner, I would have liked to have seen this.

Thanks again Elf (I believe I bugged you once to write a book, this will have to do ) I'll be starting a new thread in the next few weeks with pics and possibly video in my own attempt to bring back some of the OLD-school MicroProse magic!

Later...

I forgot to mention, since setting up my retro Win98/2000 workstation (with 19" CRT monitor) I've been really digging Jane's F/A-18's dusk-to-dawn night-time environment, also the lightning storms. Simple graphics by today's standards but IMO a really nice use of colors and textures. I don't care so much for the daytime look (stock is a little too dark) but I fly at night anyway so it's all good. Even F-15 (under Glide) has that nice late afternoon storm cloud look, IMO. Like EF2000 (1995), I always appreciate an atmospheric look done properly back in the day when graphics resources were so limited. Jane's F/A-18 night-time carrier launches and traps look great to me (including the launch in Training).

Content is still there, but the text displays in white. swipe over it with the mouse.

Also reference here <plugging my own article>
http://www.simhq.com/_air13/air_463a.html

MarkG,
Yes, a lot of the guys at our Origin/EA Baltimore studio came from MicroProse. Regarding building the game you just take it a step at a time and keep going. If you look at the whole picture it can overwhelm you, though you do need to do that to figure out the parts so you can plan things. Looks like a good site though I've forgotten what little bit of Japanese I know and didn't learn any Kanji. I might actually try to work on that this year but we'll see. When you first mentioned the book I wondered if you knew about the article since it had already been submitted. People seem to be enjoying this so I might keep writing, though at the rate it took to get this much done and other stuff I want to accomplish it would probably be another wait. Also while I'll probably remember some more flight sim stories more will come from the non sim projects so that might not be as of much interest to this group. I did have a rather nice surprise this morning. I get the Daily News from CodeProject and in today's email one of the "Industry News" links was to this article. I was pretty sure you all would like it but I'm pleased they thought it was worth sharing as well. I'm glad you're having fun with JF/A-18 again. I think, on the coding side, John did a lot of the stuff you're talking about though Tom might have been a part of it as well. I'm not sure who was involved with that on the art side, I try to remember to ask Max. I remember Mike working on the time of day transitions for Fleet Defender which also had its share of positive comments about that at the time.

guod,
Thanks for posting that link. Initially I had written a bit more of a reply about the A-10 question and included the link but then thought it was probably better to just leave it short and sweet since I wasn't directly involved. I goofed though and forgot to leave the link while I was getting rid of everything else. At first I thought the GameSpot article was gone since the first link (the index) gets a 404 error but then I tried the other pages just in case and those worked after selecting all the text. After rereading it I still scratch my head over the one guy's comment about us not getting the explosions into JF-15 until the last two weeks. How would that have been allowed? Also the guys doing previews would have been all over it. I realized that if he could be that clueless about the things we were doing I couldn't be sure how accurate my very limited understanding of their situation was.

Elf

guod,

Ah, I see the article text now...thanks.


Scott, I know you didn't personally work on 'Stealth' although you were at MicroProse at the time, right? Allow me to quote from the F-117A Manual under DESIGNERS' NOTES:

==========
"The night world took on new significance because the real F-117 never flies combat sorties during the day. Joe and Kim came up with a striking night horizon. Then we added lights to the ground objects which switch on and off according to where you are (enemy or friendly territory), the level of tension, and what time of day it is. Next, we added a sky that lightens and darkens dynamically according to time of day. Finally, we added the FLIR camera view, partly because it was “cool” and partly out of necessity: in the deepest, darkest night, it is imperative to use FLIR so you can tell what you're looking at. These combine to give a very strong feeling of realism."
==========

I can honestly say that these design decisions are the sole reason I'm participating on this Simulation message board today. This game had such an impact on me in the early '90s...dimming the lights just enough to see the keyboard template and keys, putting on my headphones (EDIT: plugged into my SoundBlaster card) and getting lost in the night sky deep over enemy territory.

The Manual continues...

==========
"To go with these additions, we also needed a real-looking F-117 aircraft. Max spent several long weekends building the most complex object ever to appear in a home computer game, and Joe and Andy came up with a way to make all those surfaces and lines sort correctly."
==========

True pioneers!


Back to that link of flight sims (oddly enough the link is named "f19_avionics")...
http://www.geocities.jp/f19_avionics/sim-list-e.html

From 1984, THE COCKPIT(NEC PC-9801 version)...
http://www.tok2.com/home/avionics/cockpit/cockpit1.png
http://www.tok2.com/home/avionics/cockpit/index.html

I would have liked to have tried this one (in MS-DOS).

I was going to ask a question last night but was falling asleep.

So the F-117 took "several long weekends" to model and then a couple of coders had to make it display properly? I wonder time-wise if it's any better today with current super high-resolution models?

MarkG,
I forgot to mention that I'm looking forward to your new thread when it's ready.

I was in coin-op and in the same building when F-117A was getting worked on. The reason I make the distinction was that when I started I worked for... I think it was 3D Game Technologies, a division of MicroProse, then we were moved directly into MicroProse the next year and the year after that, when MicroProse went public, we were spun off as MP Game Technologies and kept private and the next year I was back at MicroProse proper.. So for the first three years I was making games I got had two W-2s when I did my taxes.


I was going to ask Max what he thought but he was out today due to the snow that threatened. Back then the models were simpler but so were the tools and sometimes it took a number of tries to get things to look right due to limitations of the drawing routines. I remember even the guys in the EAW forums who were creating new models talking about the problems they would encounter, though maybe they've gotten past that now. These days the tools are better but there's a lot more to do. As you mentioned, you have to not only create the model, with a lot more surfaces, but deal with all the textures. Also you might have to deal with a lot more moving parts, lights and things along those lines.


Elf

Jaybird, thanks for pointing me here.
---

Scott - THANK you for a great trip down memory lane. Many names and development milestones - coincided with my entry into flight sims.

I built a Heathkit 8088 in 1984, turned it on and said to my wife, "What are we going to do with this?

I found Gunship -

^^^ the first pic I took of my new computer.

Then it was on to F19-Stealth Fighter. And F-15 Strike Eagle! That started a whole new aspect with the one-on-one multiplayer. Yes, modem strings - could almost recite them back for a while.

The F-15 SE III brought Fly-Ins for the folks who enjoyed that part of combat flight sims. I hung out on the MPS BBS, where I met Jaybird and a bunch of other like-minded folks. We bullied around on the BBS and were cocky jocks to anyone who dared challenge our flying! :-) (it was 1995-ish heehee can't tell you the actual date- classified).

Had a MAJOR Fly-In in August 1995 with international participants -


^^^ The Lady In Red on the Corvette is "The Babe" from the F-15 mission after-action briefings, goes with this music that Jim gave us -
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwHk38uryutrVHlWR3VIZXlXS0E/edit?usp=sharing

We caused a lot of trouble on the MPS BBS, and had a lot of fun doing it.

For the big Fly-In in 1995, a bunch of folks came to together - some are still around, and visit SimHQ.


Many hours spent were spent having a BLAST in one-on-one H2H - and ladder competitions -


We put together parties around F-15 SE III where everyone was connected with null-modem cables - every other station was connected and it was a H2H festival.

This Fly-In in 1995 was advertised on the MPS BBS and we had folks come to Colorado from Canada, and East and West Coasts. What a blast we had all from your team's efforts to provide these combat flight sims.

I do so remember a BBS chat where we complained about the lack of further MP development and the answer came back, that -- Multiplayer participation was the "insignificant 5%". We took great exception to that on the BBS!



A few months after that August 1995 Fly-In, one of the guys reported back that the F-15 SE III was bugged because the multiplayer code for H2H favored the Caller (it was one-on-one dial-up). I had always been The Caller and really enjoyed shooting down the Extremist on every trist. So me and the Extremist reversed roles and sure enough, the Caller had the day. From there it was, in a Darth Vader voice, "When first we met I was but the Reciever, NOW I AM THE CALLER". 1on1 H2H MP in F-15 III was never the same :-)


There was an Easter Egg in F-15 III - Godzilla was in Tokyo as I recall. Geeez it took a long time to fly over there!


My bro-in-law raven used to fly under the oil derricks, regularly.

Thanks for triggering the wonderful memories.

Check out the pin on the hat. This is the ONE set of discs that I cannot toss.




Wrecking Crew
Colonel, Commander
Smooth Operators Squadron
"We fly so that others may die!"

MarkG,
I passed along your question to Max and this is what he said,



Wrecking Crew,
You're welcome, though you've posted quite a trip yourself. I remember going over to check out Godzilla at once. I could be wrong but I thought there was sort of cheat that would let you teleport or slew across the map. If so the strat guide you have might talk about it if there was. I think if you hit him with something he was mentioned as a "Friendly" though you couldn't kill him. Just and FYI, though you might know this already, I think the F-15 hat was done for the arcade game. If you check the ad for it in the article you'll see "MicroProse Games" in the lower right corner. I think for the PC products they just used MicroProse. I was trying to remember the other person who helped Quentin and Brian with the BBS but a quick net search didn't help. It did find a bunch of the old MicroProse Newsletters which were fun to browse through. Do you remember her name? If not I'll check with Quentin. Thanks for sharing your memories.

Elf

Never did I think I'd get real details about my all-time favorite game and from one of the actual developers no less! Thanks for doing this Scott and please tell Max thank you for me.

My expectations for my own game continues to evolve but I hope my retro Stealth Fighter remake will be worthy of the MicroProse label had they released it around '95 (when sims were transitioning from DOS to Windows). This is still my favorite era of gaming but unfortunately the Stealth series was never updated past '91.

I can only dream of F-19/F-117 with EF2000's 640x400 resolution, terrain texturing and color depth, not to mention 3Dfx! Those Stealth Fighter newspaper articles sure are entertaining, even if you aren't penalized for fratricide and defecting. Another area where DID excelled with TFX, adding a little color to those 320x200 cut-screens goes a long way.

Today we might get real photographs or hi-res in-game shots, but sims back in those days were really creative with the extra gamey content. Maybe because they were so low-res, almost cartoonish looking, the graphics artists had the time and flexibility to create whatever they wanted to serve the game/story. Whatever the reason I miss those little touches.

My dream would be to have Jane's F-15E working on modern systems - I just cannot solve the menu issues even after reading all the topics here about it Today we have more advanced simulators, but the immersion of flying the F-15E in desert storm was and still is top of the class. I will always remember the moments of relief after sucesful airfield strike where all of my wingmen hit pre-assigned targets dodging all AA and having my WSO alive shout at me from the back seat.

MarkG,

I'm glad to have been of service and passed along what you said to Max.

I don't believe the artists had much more extra time than they do now. The teams were smaller, the tools harder to work with and games were done in shorter time frames. I think it was probably more a matter of figuring out the best ways to work within the limitations they had. Also peoples expectations weren't as high. I wonder if a AAA title tried to do a newspaper today if they'd have to have realistic page turning physics with appropriate audio (and perhaps with Kinect support) and live news feeds for the fluff areas to keep the paper current over the years (along with revenue generating adds from the publisher). OK, I'm exaggerating and joking just a bit but you get the idea. ;-) On the flip side, especially with all the mobile/tablet games, I think people are getting back to being OK with more straight forward designs.

Another thing I wonder is how much we were filling in with our own mind, though once again this could be more expectations of the time. There might also be something in that they had to focus more on the game/story/whatever since the tech couldn't carry them as far but still it was usually "cutting edge" for the time so that might not be as valid an argument. Some games you can go back and play and they still hold together well enough but others don't. It's fun to try and figure out why and I remember a number of discussions along those lines. I'm thrilled that some of the stuff I've worked on years ago is still bring some people enjoyment.

I'm confident that you'll create a game that will be fun and I won't be surprised if it's worthy of being a mid '90s MicroProse title, if not better.

Elf

darkarrow,
I'm sorry you can't get JF-15E to work on your system. I wish I could help but I didn't have anything to do with the menus. Unfortunately it was the start of the Windows 95 and DirectX days and the "standard" was in a bit of flux. I hope someday you can get it to work for you or find a game that fills that void. Richard Garriott was doing some interviews for the start of his KickStarter campaign to help fund his next game and he mentioned how he was talking with one author and the author pointed out that while his books might get old you'll always be able to read them but with computer games there will be a day you won't be able to play the old ones for a variety of reasons. After this Richard went out and found a bunch of Apple IIs that he makes sure are kept in working order. Along this line the IGDA has a Preservation SIG, though I'm not sure how active it is. As I mentioned above it's great hearing that people are still enjoying the game but it's also a bit depressing knowing there are people that want to play stuff I've worked on but can't because of technological changes. Maybe someone will make a DosBox 95 edition.

I'm glad my "kids" behaved for you. :-)

Elf

Thanks, Scott.

I just want to make sure I have my time-line correct...

MicroProse's "Stealth" series was originally released as Project Stealth Fighter in 1987 for the Commodore, designed by Jim Synoski and Arnold Hendrick. Then in 1988, a greatly overhauled version was released as F-19 Stealth Fighter headed up by Sid Meier and Andy Hollis (first Stealth available for the PC?). Then in 1991 (a year after you joined MicroProse) it was released a final time as NightHawk F-117A Stealth Fighter 2.0 with a graphics overhaul (especially nighttime), additional theaters (some from other MicroProse titles) and the F-117 model replaced the F-19.

So who came up with the idea of differentiating between Pulse and Doppler radar and the different tactics for defeating them? Sid Meier would be my guess, I've always thought of Andy Hollis as the technical genius with Sid Meier having more input with game-play.

I'm guessing Baltimore Jane's sims probably have more connection with the Stealth series than MicroProse's own Falcon 4.0. Wasn't F4 the continuation of Spectrum Holobyte's Falcon series before the buyout? This is how I figured it as “Wild Bill” Stealy and “Chopstick” Louie were once competitors, as shown in this video...



Go to 4:51 for Falcon AT vs. F-15 Strike Eagle, although the entire video is fascinating.

So is it no coincidence that two of F-19's three major theaters (North Cape and Persian Gulf) were chosen for Jane's F-15 and F/A-18 for their familiarity? Not counting Libya, what's missing in Jane's is Central Europe, was this to be the A-10's theater (although a different team of developers)?

Yeah, I'm reaching here but I find flight sim history fascinating. And I can't help but think that while this might be considered blasphemy with hard-core simmers, JF/A-18 would have been the perfect environment for a new Stealth sim! Dusk to dawn is modeled perfectly IMO (especially the pitch-black nighttime star-filled sky) and you can hardly beat the North Cape theater, although I'd back up a few years to Cold War Soviet Russia.

This is what I like most about F-19/F-117, conflicts in the mid-'80s at night before NV goggles were used, only FLIR to see in the dark. So in the darkness you can have a nicely lit pit (relying on instrumentation vs. visible terrain), beautiful skylines w/different colored lights (whites, yellows, reds), and only a FLIR screen to navigate and to find your target. Now THAT to me is fun flying!

On a similar note, TAW sometimes give me the creeps... on a pitch-black moonless star-filled night flying over the Red Sea, miles of refinery lights glowing way off in the distance of the Saudi coastline, flickering fires scattered along the sea below (oil platforms burning off excess). That to me is Atmosphere!

JF/A-18 also does nighttime very well, adding lightning storms with lighted clouds and a pitching deck. I love how afterburners glow on such a dark modeled nighttime, simple touches that add so much to atmosphere. So a final Stealth 3.0 sim based on JF/A-18 would have been nice IMO, not to confuse hard-core realism with fantasy, just a fictional Stealth sim with sim-like elements (F/A-18 Carrier Ops). If there's one thing ingrained in me to this day from years of MicroProse F-117 is that a mission begins and ends with a motionless jet. Mid-air starts and/or endings leave me unfulfilled.


P.S. The original Falcon 4.0 also has an EXCELLANT night-time IMO, with surface lighting being various and numerous, very believable. Only drawback is using NV ruins it.

Thanks for the answer, I'll keep trying to get the Strike Eagle running. Your work (and work by the whole team) is still much appreciated. The article brought for me some nice memories and also a lot of enthusiasm to fire up those old gems :)DosBox 95 would be really cool for retro gaming (simming), hope that we will see it someday

Elf, wonderful article.

I still remember the opening sequence of JF-15 the very first time I booted it up. The late nights playing it I don't remember so well!

To this day, JF-15 remains my gold standard of a flight sim. It has no equal. Thank you for a great trip down memory lane.

Scott, sorry the long-windedness I posted above, I get carried away. I re-read your article and you had already answered some of my questions.

Also, I appreciate the details of your AI coding and I guarantee I'll be revisiting your comments and asking you questions in the future.

It's pure coincidence. Setting F-15 in the Persian Gulf was a no-brainer, as that was the combat debut of the F-15E. Also, a LOT of data / stories / etc. was available which allowed us to "do it right". Scott will remember the giant map (at least 10'x7', maybe bigger? Wish I had a picture of it) that I had of that area, and the hundreds of map pins locating targets, SAM sites, and other points of interest.

The North Capes for F/A-18 was my idea after we got the continental US location shot down by Jane's. I've been in that area of the world and knew it was spectacular, plus it was easy to imagine a Russian civil war storyline due to then-current events. After failing with the Defender of Freedom concept (thank god), Marketing got behind a Europe-centric location.

FWIW, had F-15 2.0 happened, it probably would have been set in the southwest Pacific (i.e. Taiwan) area.

-CJ

Great article! It is interesting to read the development background on some of the most iconic simulations ever created.
That was truly a golden age to be a gamer interested in combat sims.

Thanks for that info, CJ. I guess there's only so many theaters/scenarios to choose from, and those made the most sense at the time. Still, it had to be fun for Max and others to revisit those areas with much more realism and detail.

Ever since Disney's EPCOT and EF2000 I've been fascinated with the country of Norway, probably because it's so different than what I'm used to in the US Deep South (warm and flat). I'm feeling it again now with JF/A-18, the music really sets the mood in that sim (have two tunes [F18MENU2 and ENDCRED] on my iPod Shuffle "Flight Sim" play-list, unfortunately I can't seem to get to the more rocking tunes of JF-15).

We'll be visiting the North Cape in about 5 years (our next vacation, needing time to save) on one of the popular cruises from Bergen to Kirkenes, even plan to visit Murmansk if possible. I have the main part of Alesund (western coast) almost memorized from walking the streets in Google Earth, and I'll become really familiar with the northern areas over time.

The North Cape makes for the perfect Cold/post-Cold War flight sim theater, IMO. Good choice you made.

Just reread this article and it makes me a little nostalgic.

Those old sims may be ugly by today's standards, but they worked.

MarkG,
Since I'm slow at replying this will cover all the posts I hadn't gotten to yet. As CJ has mentioned the choices of locations were based on what made the most sense. Most of us hadn't worked on F-19 and even so, all things being equal, it probably would have made more sense to pick some place new. First it might have seemed more interesting than places you've already been and also people could have thought we were just being unoriginal going with the popular choices. That might have been what was going through the Marketing Department's minds when they suggested the US, but that's just a guess. Still, having a fun, viable and challenging campaign trumped other considerations. If you think about it, with those constraints the options are rather limited.

I'm not sure who came up with having the different radars being a factor. I'll try to remember to check with Andy. There were a lot of sharp people at MPS and a lot of them were really into this stuff so it could have been one of a number of people. I could even see someone pointing out that it could be a factor and someone else figuring out how to make it fun.

This is probably one of the things that I already covered but Falcon was done out in California by the Spectrum HoloByte guys. The "merger" was more them acquiring MicroProse. Spectrum was still a private company at the time so this made them public. They even spent the money to legally change the company's name to theirs but after a while they went through the process to change it back. I think it was discovered that MicroProse had better brand recognition but I don't remember if I heard anything "official" so there could be some bias in that. Still, the name was changed back and that's why Falcon 4.0 is under the MicroProse brand. I was always used to hearing about it as a Spectrum product and so always think of it that way.

No worries about the long posts, I'm doing my own. ;-) It just may take me a while to respond though since I don't want to rush my replies. I'm glad the AI stuff is of interest. Let me know if you have any questions. I may have said this in another thread we were chatting in but one of the most important things when dealing with AI is to spread out the workload. Don't have them all think at the same time. Optimization can be useful but unless you're doing something that you iterate through a lot, like pathfinding, radar or movement code, I've found it more efficient to figure out how to call the code less than how to have it run faster. For example with AI radars if there's no one around they don't really need to be called all that often. Once the plane gets close enough that it might get with detection range by the next "sweep" then you will want to ramp it up but even then, until they spot someone, I keep the rate lower. I call it the "getting a cup of coffee" affect. When they spot you though they'll wake up their neighbors, unless someone's taken out the communications relays between them.

Another example would be with pathfinding. If you have guys moving in a group there's no reason to have them all path to the end location. The "leader" figures out the full path and then the followers just use that as a basis, only worrying about the next segment, applying their offsets and figuring out this sub-path.

I really like the Norway Pavilion at EPCOT as well and it was successful in getting me more interested in visiting the country as well. The ride is fun and even though it's rather dated I still enjoy the movie afterwards, though now I don't jump too much when the axe comes down. I also used to really enjoy eating at Akershus but since they've made it a "Princess" character meal I haven't been in a while.

Elf

Glad people are still finding the article and enjoying it. Since we stayed up late writing it I think it's only fair that you all stayed up late playing it.

CJ,
Heh, I had forgotten about the map until you mentioned it.

Elf

"Ugly" is such a strong word. I don't have F-14 Fleet Defender and I wanted to use a DOS game for my example.

I've been flying over Norway in a couple of different sims, some many generations apart...




Obviously EF2000 can't compare to MSFS's almost photographic look, being limited to 640x400 res / 256 color / only a hand full of 128x128 textures. But the graphics artists made the most of what they had, maybe not so realistic looking terrain and sky but certainly mood setting.

I once attempted to show this in a video...
http://198.65.10.229/DID/Temp/Test_EF2K.wmv

Unfortunately I don't have the 3Dfx DOS version of EF2000 nor the card to play it, which I assume would take care of a lot of the pixilation.

Anyway, I might call these graphics "dated" by today's standards, but not necessarily ugly. Beef the resolution up one notch to 800x600 and add 3D acceleration and EF2000 would look even a lot better (matching TAW, which carried over the 256 color, 128x128 textures). Those artists back in the day didn't do so bad at all, IMO.

Scott, that's some great information, man I can't wait 'till I get to that part! I'm almost positive now my 3rd-party engine will do everything I need it to, which is really more of a C compiler with a BASIC syntax. Other than not being an OOP language, it has the 3D speed and capabilities, and there's no way I'm pushing the limits of DirectX7 anyway. And VB6 is still more than capable for making any in-house tools.

Oh yeah, the Viking axe will make you jump! I just love that ride and movie, never tried the restaurant though, and that's too bad.

The one thing disappointing about an '80s North Cape theater is no oil platforms. I love that part of the EPCOT ride, that model is scary big! But of course that would be found in the North Sea off the SW coast. So for an F-19 remake you put those in the Persian Gulf, but it won't have the atmosphere of the ride (cold crashing waves).

Even in the initial stages, developing your own game is such a rush! Even the simpler 2D game tutorials are so much fun and satisfying, and my wife is amazed how far I'm getting with the math (been meaning to educate myself for years, just lacked the discipline). This will be a wild ride.

Thanks for all the advice already, and I haven't even started picking your brain yet.


EDIT: Forgot to mention, I'll be going to Disney's "Norway" next month (been 8 years), heading to Orlando for a concert. I'll take pics.

Scott,
Excellent article!.....and a great follow up in this thread.

I'm looking forward to playing Fleet defender, which was obtained a few months ago. I need to make sure that the only floppy drive I have left is in full working order before risking the 4 game disks.
I'm trying to buy up all the 'big box' sims that I missed first time round, and Jane's F/A-18 is on its way. I haven't been able to source Jane's F-15 yet, but it's only a matter of time.

MarkG,
You have EF2000 V2.0 which contains the 3dfx version, and a build of DosBox which contains 3dfx emulation can be found here:
http://ykhwong.x-y.net/

Thanks, mikew. Took a quick stab at it and got a message like "Couldn't allocate 3000000 bytes" or something like that. Of course nothing works right the first time, gonna try again this evening with some tweaking. Also want to try JetFighter III (DOS/Glide), this one has a very neat Carrier walkthrough GUI.

I'm on the verge of buying a PC to run these games without emulation (i.e. Tornado gives me ~5 FPS in DOSBOX), although it seems this version of DOSBOX runs F-117A smoother for me than the regular version.

More testing to come...

Ah, you'll need to set memsize=48 in dosbox.conf

Found a copy of Janes's F-15 on Amazon, so will snap that up later.
I read somewhere (maybe in this thread) that F-15 may have problems running on modern hardware....but we'll worry about that later.

MarkG,
I'm glad the information is of interest and possible use. I think with the limits we were under and were the focus of the action was going to be it may not have been felt like oil rigs were worth it at the time. I'll see if Max remembers there being any discussion about them. We actually had them in the F-15 arcade game. If you flew under them without crashing, which wasn't too hard, you got bonus points. I remember one reviewer talking about how we even had all the pipes and stuff underneath the rigs. I don't think there were any pipes since those would have been a lot of polygons but who were we to correct him.

Yes, it is definitely cool seeing the pieces coming together and you'll keep learning new things along the way.

I'm sure you'll have a great time at Disney. I was initially supposed to be down there this month but it fell through. Currently planning on going towards the end of the year.

mikew,
Glad you liked the article. I picked up a USB 3 1/2" drive just in case since they seemed to be getting phased out. Still, the last computer I built has one as part of the multi-card reader that I installed. I should see if I can get a 5 1/4" one as well since I have a bunch of those disks too. I still have a couple of computers with those but I'm not 100% they still work. You probably know that if you can find a copy of Fleet Defender Gold it comes on a CD Rom and has the scenario disk as part of it. It was set up with Windows 3.1 but I think when it went to run the game it eventually would call the regular exe.

I've been surprised that a number of people have had some decent luck with JF-15, though darkarrow in this thread mentioned that he's blocked by problems with the menus. I think there were some fairly recent discussions about it in the Jane's F-15 & F/A-18 part of the forums. Have fun.

Elf

Brilliant use of color, also w/nighttime...

http://www.mobygames.com/game/fleet-defender/screenshots

North Cape, Cold War... I don't know how this one slipped under my radar, I must not have been paying attention.


mikew, "ERROR: grSstQueryHardware() failed." But at least it's progress, 2D UI and music work fine, just no 3D. I'll work with it this weekend. Also, I think I once tried F14FD from Underdogs but it ran like Tornado in DOSBOX (meaning that it didn't, ~5 FPS). I really need to think about getting a "new" PC, I'd kill to have my 486 back.

Scott, thanks for the info. Luckily enough, someone was selling only the CD and scenario manual through Amazon. That'll complement what I've already got nicely.

MarkG, setting 'glide=emu' in dosbox.conf should take you to the next level.

mikew, you got me to the next level, thanks. Taking a beating on FPS but it works! JetFighter III also works.

I wonder if a super performing PC solves all DOSBOX FPS issues?. I've tried the config tweaks with different games but I just don't have horsepower to make DOSBOX smooth.

Had to do some straightening around my apartment and found a couple more photos from the beginning of the Jane's/Origin studio when it was just starting. Here's the front door:



And here's the logo behind the reception desk at the front:


Elf

I also discovered that TrakDah had posted a video of the Jane's F-15 demo in action. I won't be surprised if I find a link to it in another thread, I just hadn't seen it yet. I appreciate the effort he went through, especially since we randomized things a bit to keep it interesting so he did 10 runs and picked the best one. It was cool seeing it again and it brought back some memories.



He's also right in the original version that you could land upside down, which we corrected in the first patch. I seem to remember we took some heat for this bug, which a quick Google Groups search confirmed. It was definitely cool that people pointed it out so we could fix it but it was a bit disappointing that some were trying to use a bug that would only show up if you weren't flying the plane in realistic manner to try and show how our game sucked. Not a good memory.

Again though, the video is and thanks again to TrakDah for providing it.

Elf

Scott: Great video - fantastic atmosphere showcasing how immersive JF-15E really was. Especially the AI and RIO were fantastic. In some areas I think that AI from JF-15 is still unsurpassed today. AI was fantastic in commencing attacks and communicating what it was doing, while today I have a hard time to get AI wingmen to do something sensible in DCS or BMSF4.

I'm glad you liked it. Thanks again to TrakDah for going through all the effort. I'm also glad you like the AI in the game. I tried to make them as useful/realistic as I could and hearing that I had some success in that regards is always a cool thing. It's something I really enjoy doing though currently I'm not getting a lot of chance to work on that sort of stuff.

Elf

Bit of a necro, but here's the SMUT (flying pig) as seen in Jane's F-15.



https://youtu.be/nLlCfruTdxs

I loved the Easter Eggs in F-15 SE3 (Godzilla), F-14 FD (dragons, UFOs, Flight 19) and will look for more in Jane's F15 (Elf mentioned drive-in movie theater, Noah's Ark and giant pail and shovel). Any hints where to look for them?