05-25-2005, 12:06 AM
Red Baron 3D, Massive Multi-Player (MMP)
Type: WWI combat flight sim.
Server-client setup. A good server could hold as many as 30-40 players without going thermonuclear (but ping and lag can get a bit kinky). Historical theater maps of the Western Front are nice enough, but there's also a fictional island map with the Central Powers in control of the northern half and the Allies in the south.
Memories: the occassions that the really big battles would evolve. Thirty players in the server means 30 aircraft in the skies. Battle usually split up into different sections all along the front, but there were times when most of the forces present converged at No-Man's Land in one major effort. Tracer lines from multiple machines would converge on one target to form cones of glittering light, which in turn were intersected by other tracer lines as the attackers were attacked. Machines above you would weave and bob together, then smear each other across the sky in collisions, or a machine would come spiralling past your view in a flat spin, its tail control surfaces stripped away.
Specific fights: there was the time I was flying a Spad 13 over Verdun when me and this Fokker D7 ended up playing a little demolition derby. The thing about opening a dogfight with a head-on pass is that someone actually has to turn the hell out of the way in order to have it qualify as a "pass". *Crunch*. We hit, but my machine was still flyable. Looking around, I saw that the German was still in the air as well. We turned around to re-engage. Another head-on "pass". Another oversight. *Crunch*. Bye-bye, Spad wheels. And the Fokker? had a dent in his upper wing, but that didn't stop him. We turned around and continued to fight, as broken and ungainly as our machines had become after two collisions. How did the fight end? Both ran out of ammo, both went "RTB". Either it was a special incident of honorable combat that sticks in my mind, or it's a reminder of just how spectacularly sucky I can be at fighting in the air.
There was another time that I was flying a Spad 13 over the Flanders front. Battle raged far below in the mud, and I was flying all alone at 10,000 above the melee. Alone no longer when I sighted a dot at my height eastward of my position. A Pfalz D12. Spud-killers. Only German aircraft that could overtake a Spad 13 in a dive, thus making the energy fight a bit difficult. No matter. I suck at boom-n-zoom. So, it became a dogfight. In a Spad. Otherwise regarded by nearly everyone in the game as a turbo-charged brick with wings. Didn't matter. My head-on pass cracked into the P12's engine, weakening his power output. From there, our high-altiude circling fight began working its way down through the dusk sky, with me slowly getting the upper hand in position. Got a few bursts in on him, and the fight should have resolved in my favor. Then I heard the whir of new motors approaching. Then the chatter of gunfire. This had to be it: Germans pouncing in to save a wounded comrade...
...but they didn't sound like German guns... Two Camels and a Nieuport. Getting in my way, "saving" my helpless Spudly life from the big bad German, despite the fact that I was on the Pfalz's tail, not the other way around! One of the interlopers got the kill instead.
On the island map, the highest peak sat behind German lines near their forward airfield. The Allies had a tendency to carry the fight over to the Germans, and from the positioning of the respective airfields the battle was met over than small mountain. The fights took on a new element was planes circled the summit, trying to avoid the mountain as well as the enemy's bullets. One way or another, someone would end up crashing into the peak. When I re-drew the island map to a 17th century piratical motif (naming locations with a sea dogs theme) I marked out that peak on the map, named "Skeleton's Roost" (it wasn't me who named it that, though).
Type: WWI combat flight sim.
Server-client setup. A good server could hold as many as 30-40 players without going thermonuclear (but ping and lag can get a bit kinky). Historical theater maps of the Western Front are nice enough, but there's also a fictional island map with the Central Powers in control of the northern half and the Allies in the south.
Memories: the occassions that the really big battles would evolve. Thirty players in the server means 30 aircraft in the skies. Battle usually split up into different sections all along the front, but there were times when most of the forces present converged at No-Man's Land in one major effort. Tracer lines from multiple machines would converge on one target to form cones of glittering light, which in turn were intersected by other tracer lines as the attackers were attacked. Machines above you would weave and bob together, then smear each other across the sky in collisions, or a machine would come spiralling past your view in a flat spin, its tail control surfaces stripped away.
Specific fights: there was the time I was flying a Spad 13 over Verdun when me and this Fokker D7 ended up playing a little demolition derby. The thing about opening a dogfight with a head-on pass is that someone actually has to turn the hell out of the way in order to have it qualify as a "pass". *Crunch*. We hit, but my machine was still flyable. Looking around, I saw that the German was still in the air as well. We turned around to re-engage. Another head-on "pass". Another oversight. *Crunch*. Bye-bye, Spad wheels. And the Fokker? had a dent in his upper wing, but that didn't stop him. We turned around and continued to fight, as broken and ungainly as our machines had become after two collisions. How did the fight end? Both ran out of ammo, both went "RTB". Either it was a special incident of honorable combat that sticks in my mind, or it's a reminder of just how spectacularly sucky I can be at fighting in the air.
There was another time that I was flying a Spad 13 over the Flanders front. Battle raged far below in the mud, and I was flying all alone at 10,000 above the melee. Alone no longer when I sighted a dot at my height eastward of my position. A Pfalz D12. Spud-killers. Only German aircraft that could overtake a Spad 13 in a dive, thus making the energy fight a bit difficult. No matter. I suck at boom-n-zoom. So, it became a dogfight. In a Spad. Otherwise regarded by nearly everyone in the game as a turbo-charged brick with wings. Didn't matter. My head-on pass cracked into the P12's engine, weakening his power output. From there, our high-altiude circling fight began working its way down through the dusk sky, with me slowly getting the upper hand in position. Got a few bursts in on him, and the fight should have resolved in my favor. Then I heard the whir of new motors approaching. Then the chatter of gunfire. This had to be it: Germans pouncing in to save a wounded comrade...
...but they didn't sound like German guns... Two Camels and a Nieuport. Getting in my way, "saving" my helpless Spudly life from the big bad German, despite the fact that I was on the Pfalz's tail, not the other way around! One of the interlopers got the kill instead.
On the island map, the highest peak sat behind German lines near their forward airfield. The Allies had a tendency to carry the fight over to the Germans, and from the positioning of the respective airfields the battle was met over than small mountain. The fights took on a new element was planes circled the summit, trying to avoid the mountain as well as the enemy's bullets. One way or another, someone would end up crashing into the peak. When I re-drew the island map to a 17th century piratical motif (naming locations with a sea dogs theme) I marked out that peak on the map, named "Skeleton's Roost" (it wasn't me who named it that, though).
Political Correctness is the idea that you can foster tolerance in a diverse world through the intolerance of anything that strays from a clinical standard.