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Admin
Wow, Microprose.
I remember when they were good - but slowly, their products just got more and more buggy until basically it's a wonder how the thing can run without a crash somewhere.
Admin
Actually this is an excellent example of the "Molotov Effect". When I was working at an fairly large MMOG company I was on a project that was in trouble. The executives were coming to evaluate our progress.
The game didn't have any combat in it, and the technology wasn't in good shape. But we spent 2 weeks before the review implementing Molotov cocktails. You could throw a Moltov at another player and catch them afire.
Well the executives spent the whole time throwing Molotovs at each other, watching each other run around with flames trailing around for 5 to 10 seconds.
Needless to say the project was saved. Since then I have made sure that every game I worked on had Molotov cocktails (or flying monkeys) early on.
Admin
Admin
Tim managed to sidestep the WTF like a matador in a bullring. I salute Tim and all the authors of project-saving gadgetry!
Admin
Probably not in "European Air War". I am almost 100% the Japanese planes didn't have the fuel capacity to fly from Tokyo to Europe.
Admin
This proverb applies to dating and job interviews as well.
Seriously though, some readers have taken umbrage to that dictum, but there is a lot of truth in the real world. The best engineered car in the world will not sell if it did not also convey the image of being well done, well assembled and feel 'right'. A crappy interior or poor paint will not sell.
Even in this case, Tim did the right thing by opening the eyes of the management to what the product COULD be rather than having their judgement improperly clouded by the previous mistakes. This is important in any project.
Admin
Thanks, I got so many laughts out of that story!
If only to see it in action.
Admin
The game 'Stunts' also had a similar bug in physics modeling, namely, the cars had horrible physics when moving backwards.
So if you crashed into something at high enough speed, and bounced off, ending up moving backwards not on the ground, you'd, well, float.
If you were starting on the ground, it usually didn't happen, unless you managed to edge a few inches upwards during the crash, and it didn't happen if your front was higher than your back, but screw up a jump landing and hit the ramp face and off you go, driving backwards through midair for a good fifty feet or so. Weirdest damn thing I ever saw.
Usually it only lasted a few seconds, because the car was also rotating the nose downward or upward, and once it got past a certain point gravity would suddenly notice what was going on and you'd fall like normal. If that didn't happen, you could float a good two hundred feet, falling at maybe a foot every ten seconds.
And it had a construction mode where you could build 'sets' (The premise of the game was that you were a movie stunt person.) however you wanted, even programming in movement and stuff, so you could trivially replicate it. It was just some random garbage bug, it was actually a real physics modeling bug.
That wasn't the only bug, the 'flying up into the air' that you talk about actually happened a few times, too, oddly enough always facing backwards. (Aka, downward.) I never did quite figure that one out.
You could also 'legitimately' launch yourself into orbit in a car by giving yourself a ramp and an absurd amount of speed. (Like I said, you could build 'sets', and define how fast things were moving at the start of the scene and whatnot.)
Also in certain cars, if you managed to drive off one of the upside down spots, you'd fall 'upward' for a while until you started flipping end over end, which I thought was a bug, but I realized was actually correct, as those cars had 'anti-lift', although I'm not entirely sure they have quite that much.
Admin
Battlefield 1942 had a similar bug. If you ran a tank onto an anti-aircraft gun, the tank would start to float and bounce on end. It was pretty funny.
Admin
To be precise, the Nazis had nothing to do with WWI, seeing as Hitler created the Nazi party several years after the end of the war...
Admin
I like F19 and F117. But, Central Europe was my favourite zone but it had a real **** annoying bug where occasionally you'd be flying through clear air near the mountains, and then you would suddenly crash and die (it must be calculating wrong where the mountain is).
Admin
I thought that was a feature !! It was great fun !
Admin
Gotta love a website where nearly everybody seems to have played Carmaggeddon and Stunts... These games were awesome. And I recall having spent a few dozens hours creating tracks for Stunts, often using some of the bugs or glitches of the game (I don't recall which ones right now, though)
Talking about creating maps for bugged games, I had also made a level for Duke Nukem 3D, using the wonderful Build editor, trying to show as much bugs of the not-so-3D engine as possible... Underwater places being treated as completely different areas where you were teleported, I did one room contained a pool, and a big aquarium close to it. Whenever you jumped into the pool, you landed into the aquarium. If you went up and half-emerged from the water, looking at the ceiling you could actually see your legs hanging, from the top of the water in the aquarium near you. (don't know if I'm really clear here as english is not my primary language... hope you get what I mean though). There were quite a few other ones but I think I'd be getting pretty boring detailing them all ^^
Ahhh fun times...
Admin
Fuck man, some people really just don't seem to understand things.
NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO FIT IN A BOX!!
How do people like this get through life without killing themselves?
Admin
Yeah man i was right into stunts back in the day :)
And yeah it has possibly the worst physics engine ever. Also the most blatantly obvious bug ever. If you went over a drawbridge jump in one of 3 cars (Indy car, NSX, and one other) you're car would turbo-boost itself above its maximum speed.
I simple can't understand how this made it into production. :D Good ol days rofl
Admin
Oh and also in Stunts, if you left the title screen for a while it would cut to a replay which has the overlay
"Professional driver on a closed circuit"
Not only was the 'professional' driver slow, they spun out on a corner :) It was as the lead demo was done by their receptionist or something
Admin
The ending is cool, the project was a success, some ppl will even congrats themselves..
but still, no-one here think it is strange a game take 4 years of production ?
I mean there's one/two generation gap in the machines you are targeting...
To me, 4 years clearly means it's a complex and too ambitious project.
What about iterative development, providing a bug-free working version each milestone ?
What about a newbies implementing their own features at will? What about planing? What about new bugs introduced? Who will provide support for those features ?
From a developer point of view, I think its a failure...
Admin
I had that game and it rocked, it still had two weird bugs though. The game would keep track of how many bombers you shot down, so if you shot down enough eventually you would only see enemy fighter planes doing bombing missions (P-38's trying to bomb Berlin!). On these missions many times the fighter planes would turn around and you would never be able to catch up to them. :(
The other bug was that if you were in a fighter doing a bombing mission with your squad you had to stay with them otherwise they would all decide to ram into the ground near the target.
Admin
Isn't the whole game about planing?
Admin
Silent Service was great! I surprised myself many a night by looking at my watch and it was after midnight - on a work night.
Admin
planes, not planing :D
Admin
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I loved messing around in Stunts.
One of the things I did to amuse myself was to build 'suicide' tracks. The game, as others have noted, had some issues. One of them was the interaction of jumps and hills and the track validation routine. Jumps are at 45°, and so are hillsides. And the track validation routine requires no gaps in road or bridge sections, but allows small gaps in the middle of a jump.
There was (at least) one terrain set with a small lake in the middle of a hill. It was 3 squares across, 1 45° down, 1 water, 1 45° up. The game rules would allow jumps 1 square apart. But if you built a 'jump' over that lake, putting the jump and landing ramps on the hillside squares, you'd end up with a level road with a square missing.
The AI cars always stuck to the road, so they'd go screaming across the 'jump' and fall into gap, land in the water and be destroyed. They I could simply go off-road around the 'jump' and win the race by default.
Admin
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I think the german version had zombies, with green "blood", to pass censorship (Laws about violence in video games are quite harsh there, I've heard).
If I recall correctly, the korean version even had balloons instead of pedestrians -edit: can't find any references so I'm not so sure after all-, which kinda spoils the fun IMHO....
Admin
I was the programmer on Stunts ( aka 4-D Sports Driving in Europe ), it was my very first 3d program ever. Heck I just learned matrix math and didn't even know you could mulitply matrices together. The code used one matrix to rotate the world objects and then a second one to project the points onto the screen. The car code was worse, it used 3 to position the car and then one to project. If the source code was still around it would be a real WTF!
Cheers, Kevin
Admin
Pedestrians initially, green-blooded zombies for the censored UK release, Dalek-like robots in Germany. I'm not absolutely sure about what happened in the rest of the world, but it's strange to think that it caused such an outcry - you'd get away with it easily now.
Admin
Nevertheless: a great game and source of many a fun day with friends. One would build a track that the others would then race. That was fun!
Admin
Four years was not the original schedule. Four years is what you get when a project passes through the hands of three different teams, all of which decide that they need to do a clean sweep and rewrite the game.
What site do you think you're reading? This is not the story of a game that started out strong, it's the story of a horrible failure that was resurrected by one very intelligent and industrious programmer. If you want details on how the project got to this point, it will read much like the other stories of failure one normally finds on the dailyWTF.
(captcha = doom. Nice)
Admin
A truly inspiring story... and well within topic, if you ask me! Tim knew exactly what he was doing -- fixing the existing bugs would have taken him unpredictable time if the code was such a mess; creating something new and jaw-dropping put him back in the driving seat and gave the execs exactly what they wanted to see. They are in the entertainment business after all, and they know their customers will only pay good money to be entertained. That's the true meaning of "WTF" to me -- something that is outrageous, brazen, eye-opening, that doesn't necessarily have to be ignorant or negative. The real WTF is trying to mask that spirit behind the wishy-washy name "worse than failure" ;-)
Admin
I googled this game and found out it's really cheap!
[image]Admin
A cool bug for FPS games
Theres a bug on some BSP games that If you shot, the gun explode on "0 0 0". There are maps where "0 0 0" is inside the map. Example: DM6 stairs near the red armor. So If some poor bastard is running on that staris he is hit from "nowhere".
Another fun one whas to enter solids in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. But I guest the hull/collision system there was poor.
Gliches in games can result in e-Sports: people will master these bugs, and only leet games will use it: bunnijumping, rocketjumping, etc.. Is a game inside a game.
Admin
In Super Mario 64 DS, if you launch yourself out of a cannon and hit a fence, the physics engine would go bat fuck insane and you'd end up falling off the edge of the map until the game sees your Z coordinate go too far down and thinks you fell off a cliff.
CAPTCHA: craaazy (like the physics engine gets when you launch from a cannon?)
Admin
Jesus, we've got kids in this country who can pass a Maths A-Level without even being able to count their own fingers. I thought that was bad. But...
How in the world do you "just learn matrix math" without grasping the concept of matrix multiplication?
What is this -- static const matrices with a private operator * ()?
I feel faintly nauseous.
Kill your supposed teacher now, and kudos for actually finding out how to work with matrices on your own.
Admin
Ok, while Brandon is mostly correct, but a little bit of real history is needed.
I’m am one of the original developers and worked at Microprose in Hunt Valley for 7 years. I started during the “Wild Bill” days and stayed until this project, call me a quitter for leaving in the middle of a project, but there was no way for me to finish it with my sanity intact. I actually though leaving would get it canceled, but never underestimate the stupidity of upper management, or in the case of Microprose at the time CYA. It should be noted that this game was originally only supposed to be a 9 month project! The original concept was to take Pacific Air War, move the engine to the European theater, update to the British and German planes of that era and add a dynamic campaign system. The concepts were there, the AI was there. We started on that task and made a lot of progress, then along comes management, “You know no one runs games in DOS anymore, you need to use a DOS Extender, so you can run in 32bit Protected mode on a 386. So there go 3 months. The terrain system in Pacific Air War was flat land, and this was going to be the same terrain system used in EAW, however management said, “You k now the terrain is flat, we want 3d hills, the terrain in Europe has rolling hills, we want rolling hills.” So I said, you can’t see the “Rolling hills at 20,000ft!”, how long will it take? So I look at the code and tell them that this is a major overall of Land-Objects, Flight AI and other game systems. I tell them it will take 3 to 4 months to get it coded and we will be working on textures for the rest of the project. Management says “OK”. So now its 12 months into a 9 month project and we have made very little progress game wise but we do have a running in 32bit Protected mode with 3d terrain that you can’t see at 20,000ft. Management comes to me and says no one buys DOS 4/G games, this should be running in Windows 95, how long will that take? Ok, my sanity is starting to go, I say we need at least 3 to 4 months to update the graphics and sound and throw out the lower-level multiplayer code and start using the windows API. We are now 16 months into a 9 month project and apart from the fact that we are now “running” in windows, almost no progress has been made on the actual game. The campaign system, game behaviors and AI have basically been untouched, everything else has been rewritten.
We have all new management at Microprose now, no big surprise there, and they are wondering why this project is taking so long to get out the door. It was at this point, that I made my decision to leave, enough. There was no way this game would ever ship due to “Feature Creep”, bad management, new management; no one was listing to me. I left, then the rest of the developers on the team left, and Microprose in an attempt to salvage a project brought in some “new programmers” to finish the project, and so it did 9 months later.
Admin
Hey, good to hear from you. I'm sorry if you feel like I misrepresented the project, but most of what you're talking about happened before I ever got there. It's really cool to hear how the project got to the point that it did. The only version I ever heard was from those who were still around, telling nasty stories about those who left.
And I don't think anybody blames you guys for leaving. I remember after the first programmer left, there was a presumed successor who immediately started hating life as the weight of the world fell on him, and after he left, the same thing happened to the next, and so on, until it was just me, the first Junior Programmer Microprose had ever hired. I remember the producer actually came by my office and asked, "So, you think you'd like to be Lead Programmer?"
Honestly, the only reason I stuck around was because it was my first job, and I had to get a shipped title on my resume' before I could safely start looking for another job.
Admin
I think I'm going to print this out and hang it on the wall at work...
Admin
I have to say, this is one of the most inspiring WTF posts I've read. Guy signs on to doomed project, guy adds random feature, saves project. Plus, its one of the few posts (maybe the only one?) that name the software thats causes the WTF.
Kudos.
Admin
Or stand on something in Half-Life 2 and use the gravity gun to drag it towards you...
Fly fly.
Not that standing on anything is easy in HL2, as moving forwards also tries to push the thing you're standing on forwards. Instead of backwards, like how walking really works.
Admin
Admin
Actually, initial velocity is distance over time, not specifically meters/seconds. In this case, it was meters/frames, with a test after the first frame, this becomes meters/1 or a distance problem.
Admin
No, I think unklegwar's jab at the name change is another case of a dumbass criticizing something that's none of his f***ing business.
If Alex chooses to call the site "TheStupidestPlaceInTheWholeIntarwebToVisitEveryDay.com", it's Alex's choice. If you don't like what he chooses, STAY THE F*** AWAY! Very plain, very simple, and should be clear enough for even a total moron to understand, don't you think?
Admin
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I finally realize why I use FF. I used to be operatic, and I still think it's a better browser - it renders faster, has mouse gestures and lots of other cool stuff, but I've drifted into using FF as my main browser just because it feels somehow nicer. I guess I really am that shallow.
Admin
Believing in him that he could save this whole thing is what inspiring. A great story from which we can learn it doesnt matter how bruised or burned you are but you can still win the Battle if you believe in yourself.
Admin
I totally remember that game!
Admin
Stuff like Aero Glass and a name with "ultimate" in it suddenly makes sense now!
Admin
Hi. I'm Wudpecker. Wonderful hearing from the original coders.
European Air War WAS not only a great game--- It IS a great game--with a dedicated following today and exe coders still hard at work trying to improve it.
It already has THOUSANDS of new aircraft skins and types, skies, terrain,you name it. And almost two dozen "games" beyond the original, taking it around the world and to Mars even! They don't stop at WWII, but go on to the jet age. A World War I biplane-type game scenario is in the works.
SimHQ Forums lists it as one of their most popular forums. http://www.simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=85&PHPSESSID=
It's not ony cheap to buy from Atari (now the present owners) but all the add-ons are FREE! And it still runs best on old machines, and even Win98. Is it any wonder I love it?
Brand's original story was part of the SimHQ game update review a year or so ago---and you can bet I'm going to use their stories to entertain the present forum where I post. :D You can read that review at http://www.simhq.com/_air4/air_155a.html
Admin
Hi EAW Microprose Developer.
You should be proud of the work you did do on European Air Wars. It was and still is the benchmark other flight Sims are measured by, and considering, here we are still talking about it nearly 9 years from it's release must say something.
Like my friend Wudpecker said, EAW is still being developed by a small team of EAW enthusiast. We have only recently been able to significantly change the exe coding, which is opening up a whole new world of possibilities for the game.
Tackling problems with the old exe and expanding areas of the code to allow for more models, sounds, land tiles, higher res graphics, and fixing the 7217 error, which is killing the game at present, are all underway.
Members of the finishing team have been of a great help to us since Atari agreed to let us openly pose questions to them. I don't think we have ever found any contacts with the original team, although your pictures live on in every PIC.CDF.
Always have to ask this, but if you fancy helping us out, could you pop over to SimHQ EAW forum, or drop me a line at: wingspl at yahoo dot com.
Over and Out!