Amiga games with Dynamic Campaigns?

[Angus]

Another Flight-sim, a game I don't know well - Flight of the Intruder.

It seems like a strong candidate. From what I gather you have a number of Operations usually composed of several missions. You can play as an A6 pilot, an F4 pilot or the Commander (who can also pilot if you like). Missions are composed of up to 8 friendly aircraft and multiple enemies.

If you have more than 512K memory you can jump into any of your buddies' planes for maximum glory, but if you don't, the AI takes control of them.

As the Commander there seems to be quite a cool mission design function where you are co-ordinating the attacks for maximum effect, telling your planes where to go, when to get there and what to do at that point.

Anybody played the game in depth?

[Angus]

I pinched the text below from the Wiki description of Falcon 4.0 which describes the genre far better than I can do.

I'm still hopeful you guys can throw up some more, and better Amiga examples:



Unlike its static counterpart, a dynamic campaign has no set game path. Missions and the rest of the game world develop as the game progresses, affected in part by the player's behavior. Dynamic campaigns can present a more random and diverse game experience, but are more difficult for programmers to implement.

[Heywood]

So I guess games like Nuclear War wouldn't count?

[Angus]

Originally Posted by Heywood

So I guess games like Nuclear War wouldn't count?

I'm not very familiar with Nuclear War, I don't think I thought it was for me, based on the reviews at the time. Bit of a Spitting Images kind of vibe?

[Angus]

I've reviewed what has been said, and I'm still keen to tie down what the term Dynamic Campaign means to people, and what the Amiga back catalogue offers in that regard. Please question or argue with any of my assumptions, I'm very happy to be corrected.


I suppose, in a sense, any game where you can save your position offers a "campaign", right? So that would include an Adventure like Zork or Snowball, to action games like Paradroid or a racer like Lotus 2 - games where there's a way to record your position and restart at that point.


But more realistically, I think we are talking about a Military campaign, and a game where your actions, in part, shape the environment. So you can perhaps capture ground or resources, and those changes persist, like in Carrier Command or Midwinter. Additionally, the enemy responds dynamically to your actions with differing counter strategies. This might be called a Level 2 Dynamic Campaign (Dynamic Campaign Lite).


So what's a Level 1 Dynamic Campaign then? Here (at least in my eyes) the AI not only controls your enemy but extends it's influence to your side's progress as well. So you are another cog in the machine, another soldier in the army, rather than the supreme Commander/Super Hero of the story. I suppose your influence on the results must be significant to some degree, otherwise you would be irrelevant, but the player must feel that there are other people (allied to him) doing a similar job, within a sizeable conflict.


The other factor I think is autonomy. You have some freedom to undertake the missions, pursue the strategies or courses of action that you wish to follow - as indeed does the AI.


I maybe confused here, but I didn't think Microprose's games tended to qualify, as I recall they were generally fairly rigid in their mission structure, and not offering much autonomy to the player. Were M1 Tank Platoon and Gunship 2000 different though, or have I got this wrong?


I'm still struggling to come up with any Amiga games that qualify as Level 1. We've mentioned quite a few contenders, and it seems to me that That Flight-sims have taken more than their fair share of this game category.
Here are some examples, and none of these necessarily qualify as Level 1, in fact most don't:


Combat Air Patrol
Birds of Prey
F16 Combat Pilot
Falcon Mission disk 1 (had some persistence on damaged enemy installations)
Wing Commander
Flight of the Intruder
Reach For the Skies
Gravity???
Gunship 2000
M1 Tank Platoon
Lords of the Rising Sun


There's actually a lot of games I just don't know well enough to say.
Strike Fleet? Ashes of Empire?


Any Strategy game fans out there, games like Brigade Commander or Fire Brigade, would they qualify. Mike Singletons's Starlord? Rules of Engagement1 & 2?


As I say, I welcome any corrections, additional information, comments.

[Anubis]

Originally Posted by demether

Wing commander maybe ? I did the game only one time, so I canno't confirm.

For me Wing Commander is linear in meaning that you can predict where you will end up in win/loss situation .







Dynamic would be - you have no idea what's next.

[Angus]

In my "ongoing research" I came across an article from the One magazine, a Work in Progress on Flight of the Intruder that had some interesting info on the game's artificial intelligence:


"The most major programming hurdle was the artificial intelligence. After three months' solid work, they made what they thought were final changes and sat back to watch the fruits of their labour. It wasn't a success. There are five different modules of artificial intelligence, each based on different mission objectives, and the final gameplay depends on how all these modules interact. Whilst they were working well individually there were occasional conflicts when they came together - inevitably the number of possible combinations is immense. Ironing out the problems took almost as long again."


The full article is here:

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari...der_24236.html

That's one of the reason why I love The One - they had some really good background on the games they went on to review.

I'm also thinking that Reach For the Skies and Flight of the Intruder are more closely related than I had previously thought. They were both being developed by Rowan at the same time and they both allow you to play as a pilot or as an Air Controller, with presumably some shared AI routines. Certainly there are some marked similarities in the graphics and general approach of the games.