ECTS

Combat Simulations is dedicated entirely to military simulations and related hardware.

It's a sad fact of the industry today that publishers/developers will spend a great deal of money to produce mediocre but highly polished games.

Walking past stall after stall of such titles has a numbing effect on the brain. To the point where if a title stands out then it surely has that "wow" factor. You might find one or two titles like this at such an event as this. One such title is MechCommander from Microprose developed by FASA interactive.

MechCommander

MechCommander is an isometric 3D real time strategy game, point and click tactical combat with between battle resource management. This is not simply Command and Conquer with battlemechs.

The game scenario involves you as the "MechCommander" in command of a group of "MechWarriors" attempting to re-gain control of the planet Port Arthur from the technically superior Jaguar Clan. This is done over a linear series of 30 missions which tells the story of your conquest.

Battles take place with the player controlling up to 12 mechs to achieve specific mission goals. Terrain is typical of Port Arthur, rolling grassland with roads, rivers, bridges, trees and buildings.

The control interface is intuitive with plenty of keyboard shortcuts and your fellow MechWarriors keeping you up to date with their situation via digitized speech.

On the surface it does sound like C+C except you don't harvest or build anything. If any similarities can be drawn with game play then the management is almost exactly like that of a little known shareware game on the Amiga many years ago called "BattleForce". I mention this to MechCommanders game designer to which he smiles and nods gleefully. This is perhaps where the strength of the "game" lies. MC is not just eye candy (which it has in buckets).

There are 18 different mech chassis each is fully articulated and lovingly detailed. Combat visuals are best described as "kenetic", with so many explosions and debris it would tax the processor of a modest Pentium.

What about replayability? Well the hardware you build up in the game tends to be parts from "salvaged" or damaged mechs retrieved from the battlefield. Your equipment will be different each time you play. Add to this the multi-player feature where after each battle, your unit can salvage your opponents remains. Internet play will allow for up to 6 players, 3 on 3 co-op or competitive play.

The games mission scripts are user editable and there are plans to make new missions available via the internet.

What about the computer AI? The game designer explains, "we had to dumb down the AI, we found that if you told all of your mechs to storm the objective, if you went away then came back they would have won...We spent a lot of time tweaking the game play."

As a side note, MechCommander wins my vote for best game of ECTS.

Go to Mech Commander

Screaming Demons - Activision/Parsoft

Click the image for a larger shot..

Parsoft made a name for themselves with a little number called A10 Attack then A10 Cuba. What they managed to create with A10 was perhaps the greatest physics model for any home simulation. Screaming Demons has nine aircraft, therefore Parsoft went and created nine physics models, one for each aircraft. In addition, with the earlier A10 simulation there were only 6 things you could damage, now up to 250 items can receive damage. Even down to an individual polygon I'm told. To demonstrate the physics model the Activision representative chose a P38 and wheeled it around the taxi way with much turning and wheel braking thus sending the poor aircraft up on one wheel strut, down on the other, compressing the nose wheel strut until one of them broke. Crump.

Much like Falcon 4, you have to take good care of your squadrons morale, various parameters include such things as fatigue, combat skills and sanity. "Wait hold on", I ask, "Did you say sanity?" Yes, if your compatriots are "close to the edge" they can flip during combat, turn them into kamikaze screwballs or lilly-livered cowards that run away at the first sign of danger. This sounds interesting but could get a bit frustrating.

There are actually going to be ten aircraft that ship with the game but one of them is going to be a dummy so you can learn how to create your "own" aircraft. But this feature is somewhat advanced and not for everyone. For a start, to edit the 3D model you'll need 3D Studio 4 or MAX. Also damage "scripts" need to be edited so you can give functionality to the various parts of your 3D model. No aircraft or script editor will be included.

One editor they are including is the mission editor, the same one they used to build the game no less.

The visuals of the 3DFX version running had some form of shadow dithering on the 3D objects which degraded slightly from the impressive visuals. Frame rate performance was smooth with only some noticeable slowdown near a complex ground object, in this case a castle nestled on the coastline. The view system is the snap type I couldn't say if there is a padlock type as at this point I managed to find a bug...oops not supposed to say that.

Drawing a comparison with the landscape rendering of the still unfinished European Air War, the ground features of SD are more interesting but EAW somehow looks better. I put this down to the more natural distancing of EAW. I suspect it's down to personal taste.

DID F22 Air Dominance Fighter

Click for a larger image...

Anyone familiar with EF2000 will be able to grab some sky with this one right away. The front end has been re-designed and looks just splendid. But inside the cockpit (or outside it if you spend most of your time playing with external views) reveals that F22 ADF is certainly the most impressive combat flight simulator purely from a programmers perspective. DID stockpiled users requests and crammed in as many as they could.

The SVGA MFDs are there. Not only that, they are anti-aliased, even in the virtual cockpit you can just about the text. It's harder to make out at some angles but you can. Light reflecting off the MFD glass is something I've never seen before.

The ACMI is there too. In fact you can switch to it at anytime during flight. What's more, you can still fly the plane, there is a shrunken cockpit view in a small window to the left of the ACMI window. All recordings can be saved after flight for later playback. Weapons, target locks are all recorded and can be viewed from free floating, chase, object tracking viewpoints.

640x480 and 800x600 video modes are supported, it's possible to switch between normal and 3DFX (glide) on the fly, though switching to 3DFX reduces your viewing angle. Lower parts of the cockpit you could see before disappeared below the screen. I suspect this is because the cockpit image is larger on the 3DFX or I don't know when I'm in 800x600 normal going to 640x480 3DFX. I suspect the latter.

AWACS view was not available for me to see, for some reason the ESC key (which I'm told was supposed to bring it up) didn't start working til later in the show. But if it did I'm assured that I could redirect local aircraft to anywhere I felt like on a whim.

There's much more ground combat in this one. Bringing the aircraft screaming down through the whispy transparent cloud layer, vapor trails streaming off the wings an enemy road convoy was heading up a valley. On approaching to the convoy, the left hand display shows numerous tracking radars, mobile AAA and SAMS which open fire. This is a worthy successor to EF2000.

The effects that will have most people skipping a heartbeat or two are the new smoke, clouds and contrail effects. Clouds probably more so as until now we've never seen a natural transition through them. In EF2000 they were a polygon mesh you could fly through. Now, they are...well semi-transparent clouds. You fly over and through them watching the ground below, it sure looks natural to me.

I asked DID about the new features.
ME : "What was the hardest thing to implement?" I asked.

DID: "Erm, the Wargen system I'd say".

ME : "Why's that?"

DID: "Because it's so big now, compared to the wargen in EF2000"

ME : "Is that why it's being released as a separate product?"

DID: "Not just that, we needed to get F22 out but the new Wargen is so complicated we knew we'd have to spend much more time on it so it was decided to split it."

ME : "So what about F22 Air Dominance? Are you saying it won't have Wargen?"

DID: "No, it has a campaign system, but it doesn't generate the war for you."

(I'm thinking that either he's completely mad or there's much more to this wargen thing than he's letting on)

DID: "Let me put it this way, if you didn't know about the other product you wouldn't miss it. But with the Commander add-on you'll experience a whole other side of the war you couldn't before."

(I'm relieved it was the latter)
ME : "I understand you're [DID] are working on a tank simulator for the military, can you tell me anything about that?"

DID: "Well it's just a challenger sim for training, much like our laser guiding training thing."

ME : "Are we going to see any of this technology appear in future games?"

DID: "Erm, don't think so, it's a separate thing but you never know. I don't know of any plans but who knows?"

ME : "Thank you very much"

Honorary mentions

Plane Crazy - Europress

Plane Crazy is a game which is about as close to simulating realistic flight as is tiddlywinks. It's an arcade game. But not only is this game fast and colourful it's fun and network playable. It's about flying improbable looking stunt planes around various courses made up of canyons, bridges, tunnels, hoops and loads of other imaginative obstacles. And all at speeds that make the hairs on the back of your neck curl. Fans of Gee-Bee air racing might want a look at this but don't take it seriously as any form of simulator. plane Crazy is a great showpiece for 3DFX and PowerVR hardware.

Quickshot "MasterPilot"

Masquerading as an aircraft multi-funtion display it is in fact a keypad with slide-in sheets informing you of each buttons function.

The device is surprisingly large, the width just bigger than a 5 1/4" drive bay. Sadly not user programmable, programming is done via a slot-in cartridge system with specific games (30 or so) coded into it. With the cartridge inserted you press a button, select the code for the game you want displayed on a 3 digit LED numerical display and you're there. Very fast, and it comes with a setting allowing you to launch Windows 95 utilities. So perhaps you could justify the cost (50 uk pounds)

This is not a new device, it's been around for several months, but a new cartridge is available providing support for additional games/sims. After all, who needed one of these for DOOM?

It plugs in line with the keyboard and enables you to chain several units together. So you can use them in conjunction with your existing programmable joysticks. They do look quite smart.

Looking at the rear of the unit where the data card fits, it looks easy to drill out and fit a small video monitor, erm well maybe not. Quickshot Web Site

Richard Albert Hawley, Leeds, England

Flight Sim News, Longbow, Hornet 3.0

http://www.euronet.demon.co.uk

Go to ECTS Report 3

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