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