Some of you will remember samovar6 who was active here several years ago and who contributed many mods and fixes for Gunship! I hadn't heard from him personally in over 5 years, and presumed that he had passed away. Until yesterday!
Completely out of the blue and with no explanation of his disappearance, I got a postcard from him through my letterbox yesterday morning when the postman came. There was no date, but he sent New Year's wishes leading me to believe he sent it fairly recently. The message was short and personal, in the same style as when we used to write to each other via snail mail years ago.
It was all a bit of a shock, to say the least.
Anyway I thought I'd share this with you guys as some of you may have been wondering what happened to him as well, and of course recently his name has come up since I updated his page on my GS! site.
This is very good news and thanks for sharing it. I hope he is well! I have just briefly looked through sections of your site and I saw all his downloads well preserved. I wonder about other kind fellows of the Gunship! modding clan and I hope they are all well too.
From the perspective of time and some more knowledge and experience acquired through the years one can finally fully appreciate and better understand this true commitment and loyalty of fellows like samovar6 and many others to this fine helo combat simulation Gunship! truly was and actually still is.
So all the best to samovar6 and other Gunship! guys.
Thanks Polak. I intend to write back to him at some point when I feel like I've got enough to warrant sending a hand-written letter all the way to Canada! He didn't provide an e-mail address or any way of getting in touch with him digitally so I'll refrain from sending an e-mail to his previous e-mail address as he never replied to the last one or two I sent a few years back. HawkI and myself had previously assumed that both Psyklik and Will of GS! fame had passed away too, but this letter from samovar6 really make you wonder.
This is great it would be quite nice if those true Gunship! enthusiasts could reunite again.
Thanks to you Hawkl I had a pleasure to read and study Psyklik's work on Gunship! mechanics and gameplay. It is a truly fascinating material and no Gunship! user should be without it!
If Psyklik is reading this (I hope) I ask his permission to publish the pdf document I have done combining all his articles on the Blueyonder site. IMHO it is well worth preserving and spreading among all newcomers here and on Steam and GOG.
It is a fascinating insight on how really complex and realistic this already 2-decade old combat simulation really especially is in the area of AI ground units combating each other. It was rather cruel, due to financial reasons, to cut short all that ingenious work that went into the development of M1TP2 and then Gunship! because only after deeper study it is revealing itself as a true gem. Gunship! on the surface is a rather unpolished helicopter simulator, but the true magnificence is in AI on the deck and it was clearly a stepping stone to potentially great combined simulation involving tanks and helicopters.
Polak - HawkI and myself have been working behind the scenes to restore Psyklik's site with the intention of me hosting it. I have taken the site which was saved from the Internet Archive by HawkI, reverse-engineered it to work on any webhost (even just on your computer if you use my source files), I've also fixed all broken links and restored lost content. We're just ironing a few things out and hopefully we can launch it soon. As Psyklik just disappeared, we decided to take ownership, but after samovar6 sent a sign that he was still alive it's kind of made us wonder if Psyklik is still about and what he'd make of us taking over.
Also note that Psyklik's full archive is currently available at my GS! site, which includes his last ever version of the Times Of Sand mod plus all other mods and documentation that you've recently come into the possession of.
My interest in Psyklik's work on Gunship! ground units action is purely "academic" so to speak.
I remember it vaguely in the times when it was probably in the initial stage of his research and noted for surprising depth and unexpected complexity. In fact, after I have received those archive materials from Hawkl and I now that I had the time to properly study them my jaw dropped literally how unexpected it all was. Remembering the guys like Fng2k, Psyklik, WB, Samovar, and many others very focused and involved with this game it was telling me that there is got to be more than I could see on the surface. Of course, RL chores and obligations as well as other "shiny" things took away my focus and diverted me from Gunship! at the time when the research and investigations of the game were at the peak. A missed opportunity, but at least now when I have more time I can experience it too. So indeed better later than never!
It really makes me feel rather sorry what all the developers of MPS working on M1TP and then Gunship! might have felt after their effort was cut short due to the demise of MPS and finances. I am part of BMS, which is now continuing cmore than 20 yrs of post-development of another abandoned MPS old sim. I think I can say with some authority how much depth and content there usually is lost when ambitious and perhaps even ingenious game is put to death.
Here is the link to the video I made from the very first and very crude custom mission I made after very initial exposure to Psyklik's stuff. If you can get through rather poor quality and my lack of experience in video making you can clearly see that AI in Gunship is extra realistic and even unusually sophisticated. Time permitting we will continue this conversation. Thanks anyway.
My interest in Psyklik's work on Gunship! ground units action is purely "academic" so to speak.
I remember it vaguely in the times when it was probably in the initial stage of his research and noted for surprising depth and unexpected complexity. In fact, after I have received those archive materials from Hawkl and I now that I had the time to properly study them my jaw dropped literally how unexpected it all was. Remembering the guys like Fng2k, Psyklik, WB, Samovar, and many others very focused and involved with this game it was telling me that there is got to be more than I could see on the surface. Of course, RL chores and obligations as well as other "shiny" things took away my focus and diverted me from Gunship! at the time when the research and investigations of the game were at the peak. A missed opportunity, but at least now when I have more time I can experience it too. So indeed better later than never!
It really makes me feel rather sorry what all the developers of MPS working on M1TP and then Gunship! might have felt after their effort was cut short due to the demise of MPS and finances. I am part of BMS, which is now continuing cmore than 20 yrs of post-development of another abandoned MPS old sim. I think I can say with some authority how much depth and content there usually is lost when ambitious and perhaps even ingenious game is put to death.
Here is the link to the video I made from the very first and very crude custom mission I made after very initial exposure to Psyklik's stuff. If you can get through rather poor quality and my lack of experience in video making you can clearly see that AI in Gunship is extra realistic and even unusually sophisticated. Time permitting we will continue this conversation. Thanks anyway.
I was looking through some old correspondence with Pysklik where he mentioned that MicroProse had used the core of M1TP2 as a base for Gunship! Basically, Gunship! is M1TP2 with Helo AI bolted on to it.
Great Movie! It's good to see some of the theory actually put into practice. Many thanks for sharing.
