Boot Disc 18/boot-disc-1998-02.iso/Falcon4.0/Falcon4.txt

Text File | 1997-12-17 | 14KB | 165 lines

                                     Welcome to the fourth edition of the Falcon 4.0 designer's
                                     notes. In previous editions, we've talked about the design
                                     philosophy for the game and given some hints about how
                                     certain parts are going to work. This time I get to talk about
                                     my piece of the action: the graphics engine.

                                     I'm a private pilot and fly out of Oakland airport whenever I
                                     get the chance. It is always an exhilarating experience to
                                     "slip the surly bonds" and soar over the countryside in my
                                     own plane. My biggest goal for the graphics in this game is
                                     to achieve that same sense of wonder. I've fooled myself a
                                     few times lately with the prototypes, so I think we're on the
                                     right track.

                                              GRAPHICS
                                     I suppose the first question anyone has to ask is "How's it
                                     going to look?" The answer, of course, is great. Falcon 4.0
                                     has a lot to live up to, and we all know it. What we've got in
                                     store for you is nothing short of spectacular. We've posted
                                     some screen shots, and they're nice. The thing to remember,
                                     though, is that the real game's terrain will be flowing
                                     smoothly by as you fly one of the most realistic flight models
                                     available anywhere, and the scenes won't be JPEG
                                     compressed into oblivion.

                                     When I started on this project, Flight Unlimited was just
                                     hitting the shelves. We were all impressed by its
                                     ground-breaking realism, but knew we had to do better. We
                                     needed to build a world 2,500 times larger with much greater
                                     visual variety and still retain the same level of realism and fit
                                     on one CD-ROM. A year and a half later, we've
                                     accomplished that and much more.

                                     All of Falcon 4.0 will run in "high color" mode (that is,
                                     65,000 simultaneous colors). In addition, both the setup
                                     screens and the flight simulation have been optimized for
                                     high-resolution display modes (800x600 and 640x480
                                     respectively). This will allow us to provide unprecedented
                                     image quality and, just as importantly, variety. In the past,
                                     games have been limited to 256 colors for entire scenes.
                                     The result is often "cartoonish" looking environments. With
                                     thousands of colors to work with, our artists have been free
                                     to accomplish wonders.

                                               TERRAIN
                                     We started out with satellite photographs and elevation data
                                     covering all of Korea. This gave us good-looking terrain, but
                                     we wanted more. The satellite images just weren't crisp
                                     enough. We went out and found hundreds of aerial
                                     photographs from all over the country. These we cut up,
                                     processed and rearranged to supplement the satellite data
                                     throughout the map. The result is a startlingly realistic
                                     pilot's-eye view of the world with excellent detail no matter
                                     where you fly on the map. Those of you who've flown
                                     NovaLogic's F-22 Lightning II game may worry that Falcon
                                     4.0, with only one theater, won't have enough variety in our
                                     scenery. Not to fear. Unlike F-22, Falcon 4.0 will have a
                                     full-sized realistic map so that you can fly from one end of
                                     Korea to the other and see all the variety of terrain you
                                     would expect as you pass over rivers, lakes, cities, forests,
                                     farmland and mountains. The scenery is good enough that
                                     it's fun to simply fly around and look.

                                     We've put a great deal of effort into ensuring that you do get
                                     to see the terrain; and lots of it. Few things are more
                                     frustrating to me than flight simulations that seem to think
                                     the entire world is shrouded in dense fog all the time. We've
                                     certainly got haze and fog in Falcon 4.0, but on good days,
                                     you should be able to see major terrain features 50km or
                                     more into the distance. Of course, nobody can see a airplane
                                     or a tank that far away, but you can certainly see the ground!
                                     We simply won't tolerate mountains "popping" up in front of
                                     you at the last minute. We've developed a "level of detail"
                                     system which reduces terrain detail in the distance smoothly
                                     so that important terrain features are preserved, while subtle
                                     details fade out to maintain performance. Oh, and by the way,
                                     targets don't "pop" up either. If you can get a strong enough
                                     radar return, you can see targets out to the 80-mile limit of
                                     the F-16's radar scope. Since we've got a real campaign, we
                                     know what every vehicle in the game is doing all the time. If
                                     you decide to take an alternate route to your target or ignore
                                     your target entirely, that's fine. There will still be an
                                     interesting world with a war on out there.

                                     As was mentioned previously, Falcon 4.0 has been designed
                                     from the beginning to be a multiplayer game with a real-time
                                     campaign running all the time. One consequence of this is
                                     that war goes on 24 hours a day (in game time, of course).
                                     We've put a lot of effort into making sure that the
                                     night-fighting experience is just as intense as the daylight
                                     missions. A lot of little things go into making this happen.
                                     When the sun goes down, it stains the western sky crimson.
                                     The city lights begin to come on, and as night sets in, the
                                     stars emerge. If you're lucky, it isn't a moonless night, and
                                     you'll get some additional lighting in the target area when the
                                     moon rises. You'll have to keep an eye out for AAA and
                                     SAMs, but at night that job is a little easier thanks to the
                                     muzzle flash and rocket exhaust.

                                               3-D OBJECTS
                                     I've talked a lot about the terrain now, but what about the
                                     3-D objects in the world? We've gone all out in this
                                     department as well. We've got several hundred air, sea and
                                     land objects from the U.S., South Korean, North Korean,
                                     Russian and Chinese inventories in the game. Each object
                                     has had its own textures individually drawn to capture
                                     specific details. The objects are dynamically lit by the sun
                                     and are Gouraud-shaded for a smooth appearance. We've
                                     built in hundreds of special behaviors like retractable landing
                                     gear, traversing and elevating turrets, rotating antennae and
                                     moving control surfaces to give each object a life of its own.
                                     We want to give you that deep-down feeling in your guts
                                     when you look out the window and see all the AAA guns
                                     tracking you.

                                              HARDWAREREQUIREMENTS
                                     I'm afraid I have some good news and some bad news about
                                     system requirements. The bad news is your old 486 just
                                     won't cut it. By the time you get Windows 95 and all its
                                     drivers running, there just isn't enough performance left for
                                     a serious simulation. We've looked long and hard at the huge
                                     range of computer performance in the marketplace and
                                     decided that to meet people's expectations for Falcon 4.0 we
                                     had to take advantage of the state of the art. The good news
                                     is that we do take advantage of the state of the art. We've
                                     made every effort to build a scaleable engine, but to get
                                     things looking the way I want them too, you'll probably need
                                     a 90MHz Pentium with a strong 3-D hardware accelerator or
                                     a 166MHz Pentium with a good conventional video card. Part
                                     of this requirement comes from the graphics, but we've also
                                     got the most complete campaign and simulation engines in
                                     the business, and they both take time to run as well. We
                                     think you'll find it's worth it!

                                              3-D VIDEO CARDS
                                     Both the terrain and objects for Falcon 4.0 are all new.
                                     We've designed cutting-edge performance into the engine
                                     from the start. Both software-only and hardware-accelerated
                                     graphics are supported by the game. The one surprise might
                                     be that, although we're running under Windows 95, we aren't
                                     using Direct3D. We simply couldn't get the performance and
                                     quality we need out of the current version. Instead we've
                                     built on previous work by Intel and come up with our own
                                     graphics engine which produces excellent image quality and
                                     performance. We're planning to ship with support for 3-D
                                     cards including those with chips built by 3Dfx, Rendition,
                                     Cirrus Logic, ATI and S3. As more hardware is coming out
                                     all the time and discussions are ongoing, this list is likely to
                                     evolve and grow. We watch the online news groups, so let us
                                     know which boards you're interested in seeing support for.

                                     This project has been a long time in coming, but it's all the
                                     little details that make Falcon 4.0 much more than just
                                     another F-16 game. So until you see our handiwork on the
                                     shelves, know that we'll be slaving away here to get the
                                     finishing touches on the flight experience we've all been
                                     waiting for.

                                     Scott Randolph
                                     Senior Graphics Engineer
                                     Falcon 4.0 Team
                                     Spectrum HoloByte/MicroProse