Good questions.
**How will this Sim be release?**
It will be released as an add-on to Strike Fighters. It will not be in any stores because we do not own the game engine although it would probably do well. It will be download but the initial set may require a CD since it will be very large. The game will be released in several phases. We don't want to do it like YAPv2. We want to get it out and over with but the size is a problem.
Roughly the phases are:
Phase One: Beginnings of the air war between Japan and West. This will include Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, Force Z, Malaysian Invasion and the Battle of Rangoon.
Phase Two: 1942. Doolittle's Raid through the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. This will include the Raid on Darwin, Battle of the Coral Sea, Battle of Midway, Flying the Hump, Strafing Chiang Mai and air battles in China.
Phase Three: New Guinea (Bong, McGuire and Caldwell), Battle of the Bismark Sea, Sayanara Yamamoto, Burma Bridge Busters, LeBlanc, Attack on Truk, Rabaul, Pappy Herbst, Mariannas Turkey Shoot, Leyte Gulf and the Battle of Imphal/Kohima.
Phase Four: Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Retaking the Philippines, Fire bombing of Tokyo, and the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria. The final mission is sort of a segue into the Cold War.
**Where can we buy it once its finished.**
It will be sold at Yankee Air Pirate as Rising Sun.
**How much will it cost.**
We have no idea what it will cost but we have to compete.
**How many planes and Ships will it include?**
It will include whatever aircraft and ships are necessary to tell the stories accurately.
Ships: Battleship Row plus the Utah, Kido Butai plus less-detailed support ships, Hiei, Mogami, a later US Battleship, Hornet, Yorktown, Wasp, Enterprise, Lexington, Saratoga, Essex-class, a British carrier, the smaller Japanese carriers. Maybe the Missouri. Maybe the Yamato.
Aircraft: A6M2/5, B5N2, D3A1, P40B, PBY, F4F-3/4, C47, G3M2, G4M1/2, Ki-30, Ki-21, Ki-27, Ki-43, Hurricane MkIIa, P40E, B25B/C/J, B17, SBD, TBD, TBF, P39, P38, C46, F1M2, Spitfire, F6F, B6N2, D4Y2, SB2C, P51B/D, B24, Ki61, B29, F4U, Seafire, Yak3, N1K2 and maybe another IJAAF A2G aircraft.
A lot of little things.
Represented will be stories of pilots from Japan, America, Great Britain, China, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, India and Thailand. Sorry...we don't have any Dutch stories. We won't do Hiroshima or Nagasaki...because they are boring missions for the player.
**Is it going to include the whole of the Pacific Theater Map including the CBI. Or is only going to use limited size Maps.**
The maps will be designed for the story. That means if you are fighting at Midway, you need Midway Island and a bunch of water. We decided that nobody wants to fly a D3A1 for four hours over open water just getting to and returning from dropping one bomb at Pearl Harbor. So we don't really need to be 200 game miles from Oahu...or Midway. Wake Island will be on the Oahu Map but not necessarily where Wake Island really is. When scale is needed for enjoyment and immersion, we will have scale but we will not bore 99% of the players with repetition or long ferries.
**Are we going to be able to imitate Battle between Ships.
Rising Sun is an air game. We will reproduce the mission as it was seen from the cockpit. What goes on beyond that we will reproduce if it adds to the story. Certainly, battleships will be pounding Iwo Jima but the Battle of the Java Sea won't be included because there was little of aviation in it. We can put a player inside the bridge of a ship and let them fire guns but we cannot compete with a real sea game so why bother?
**Whats the projected date for its release?**
The projected release date was last year. All the large pieces and problems are in hand and solved. We have all but a handful of the airplanes now. But the details are going to take time. Tail gunners need to shoot correctly. Stationary ships cannot just go sailing off across the land, Japanese pilots cannot have blond hair, waist gunners cannot face forward, ships hulls have to cast shadows, Deuces has to battle the terrain editor, 8 has to test everything without punching out the monitor, and everything must be rechecked against the literature to make certain we are telling the story right. We tell stories of men in machines and if those stories are interesting and fun, we don't know until we have completed making it and flown it ourselves.
...so two weeks.
Here are some of this week's headaches...
HMS Repulse
HMS Prince of Wales with no hull shadow.
Ki-21 with tail gun pointing the wrong way. And is this the 62nd Sentai paint scheme? Dan Ford says the pilots reported it as having brown blobs. And what was the 12th's paint scheme?
Landing on the Kaga whose guns were named with left on the right and right on the left driving Mike crazy setting up Midway.
New teeth for the Flying Tigers and a hundred decals because someone will certainly point out that aircraft P-1838 was not AVG #76 and would not have worn a First Pursuit logo.
This plane needs scratches and oil leaks. The pilot is wearing a Mae West for fighting over China...and looks like he is from a wax museum.
This battle has the wrong terrain and the wrong aircraft. Kunming was attacked by Ki-48's and we don't have a Ki-48.
...but it is a hell of a lot of fun to fly. Mike has installed gun sounds and engine sounds that make it a lot more realistic.
And Deuces has to continually make and remake the land and ocean and sky.
But we assure you that Kido Butai has assembled (in the exact attack formation they used that morning) and is steaming to the launch point. The aircrews have had their traditional samurai battle breakfast of red rice, chestnuts and tai. One day soon the white flag will come down and the Zeroes will roll off the deck of the Akagi and the game will begin.
Banzai.
