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Falcon 4.0 - The Game Which Refuses to Die
jonerik writes "Today's Boston Globe has this article on the worldwide cult following behind Falcon 4.0, a 1998 flight simulator program which was discontinued by its manufacturer (Hasbro Interactive) the following year. Shortly after it was dropped, someone leaked the game's source code and before you could say 'open source' Falcon 4.0 buffs around the world began fixing bugs in the game and adding new features. Enter Claude Cavanaugh, who approached the current owners of Falcon 4.0 (Atari, which is currently owned by a French company formerly known as Infogrames) with the idea of incorporating the hackers' improvements into Falcon 5.0. Although Falcon 5.0 won't be appearing anytime soon due to financing issues, happily Xicat Interactive will be releasing Falcon 4.0 Gold: Operation Infinite Resolve in April, which will include all of the upgrades originally intended for 5.0."
Its nice to see a behemoth friendly to open sourcing commercially dead games, even if this one happened inadvertently and in the worst way.
Now if they'll only consider doing it for some of their other properties (hint hint, "Total Annihilation").
Of course, I didn't have the time to go out and equip myself with all the flight sim paraphernalia (rudder pedals, joysticks and so on), so I haven't really had a chance to explore the game in detail, but it looks really fun. I was more used to EF2000 (a EuroFighter 2000 sim from the UK, which was great fun) which had less steep entry requirements, but if I ever find the time to explore simming in detail, Falcon 4 + SP4 would be the way to go - judging from all the comments by real fighter pilots, it's the ultimate flight sim.
"The slave who knows his master's will and does not get ready...will be be beaten with many blows."Luke 12:47-48
Now, if they'd release the changes with the source code as well, THAT would be a story in itself.
Duke Falcon Forever?
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Someone leaks the source code for a product that that the original company can no longer support. OS geeks find and fix the bugs and produce new features, now some other company will be making money by packaging the fixed/patched/upgraded game. And this is good how?
The SuperPak team was doing amazing stuff until they got slapped by a cease-and-desist from the new publisher after they bought the rights.
I think I have more faith in the SuperPak team than in the new developer, who thus far has given the community nothing but thus far unfulfilled promises...
That being said, I hope the upcoming games are yet another improvement on the best and most realistic jet combat flight sim out there...
Long live Falcon.
Fire. Spend 30 seconds uncapping powder horn, loading powder, loading musket ball. Remove ramrod, push ball down, lift musket, fire dead on shot at enemy. Musket ball loses accuracy at 40 yards and veers off into the unkown.
Repeat above process maybe 20 times or so, until you run out of powder or musket balls. Spend rest of match attempting to bayonett enemy. Get bayonnetted. Wound is minor but becomes infected. Have limb amputated.
Respawn in next map, get mowed down by cannon because you can't break rank.
Now I can't say I wouldn't play an RTS (or preferrably, a turn-based strategy game) set in the Civil War or Revolutionary War (I know there have been several good ones, but nothing lately that implements nicer 3D graphics and the accompanying terrain systems they afford), but any FPS set pre-WW I will either bite because the designers try to retain some semblance of realism, or be so ludicrously unrealistic that the setting would be pointless. Plus, do we really want to encourage a mad rush for the horses at the beginning of the match ("D00D... that horse was mine!")?
What about "The Spanish Inquisition"? No one ever expects it!
But really, that would be one hell of a game. "Say you love God, primate...say it, say it!!"
OR something like the Salem Witch Trials...that might be too easy tho. "What proof do you have, sirrah?" "My neighbor looked at me funny!" "Then he shall be tested!!"
Anyways....i'm done.
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
Until recently, war just wasn't that fun.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Well, it could be good - near as I can tell, it with the exception of breaking rank, the rest of it (firing once every 30 seconds and sitting out when you die) describes CounterStrike (another game that compromised on realism just enough to be both convincing and reasonably fun). Hell, half of the CS players love it when it decays into a knife fight anyways. And you can block with a musket, so it might be a little better than "stab, stab, stab" in a bayonette fight. And lets not forget the officers and cavalry with their horses and revolvers and sabres.
Besides, naval combat of the era could be fun too - with cannons and boarding actions and landing and suchlike. Good bloody fun.
Battlefield: 1812 might actually make for a good game. Personally, I wouldn't like it, as I don't like CS, but others do. Depending on what era you set it, you get different options on gameplay - earlier means more focus on horses, swordplay and cannons (cool) - later means more focus on rifle muskets, revolvers, and early machine guns (also cool). And there are no shortages of wars to choose from - Napoleonic, Revolutionary, 1812, French Revolution, etc. A whole era of underrepresented warfare - we basically ignore everything from between the invention of the musket and the invention of the assault rifle.
BTW, WWI is also sorely underrepresented. I'd like a WWI game as you could do the early war where there was more than just 2 factions and finally have something more then axis vs allies.
...did you check the CD?
My version came with the book that was only about 1/3 there, rest were stored on the CD in PDF format I think.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
It is the most intricate, complex, massive, and realistic simulation ever released to the gaming public. There is no second place - whatever second place is is a galaxy away. The fact that this game was achieved in 1998 is still mind-boggling. Here we are in 2004, and no simulation has even attempted to do what Falcon does, let alone tried and fell inevitably short.
Unlike Daikatana and (probably) Duke Nukem Forever, Falcon 4.0's endless years in development created a true achievement. The game was flawed - oh, there were bugs, and things to fix, which is where all this open source development is happening - but it's also a major testament to home computing power. It is what gaming should stand up and point to as, "this is what we are capable of". It's awful close to bringing military-use simulations into the home. Almost scarily so, as the game essentially teaches you how to pilot a true blue F-16.
I have a 1.33GHz Athlon, an nVidia GeForceFX 5600, and the bare essentials (crappy joystick) to run Falcon 4.0 (which I bought the week it was first released). I can tell you that my computer STILL struggles with the graphics engine if I crank everything all the way up. This game was completely ground-breaking in terms of realism when it first came out, and it is still an amazingly detailed game. It has a pretty steep learning curve (expect to do about 40 hours of flight training just to fly the plane properly in easy combat situations), but it has a truly robust combat 'theatre' mode where your missions directly affects (or indirectly affects, depending on the situation) the overall campaign to neutralize the enemy forces. The 'net connection code still remains a rather pathetic process of finding players online, but I haven't played with that in a couple years so the hackers may have made a lot of improvements over the years.
The AI is pretty advanced too. Former and then-current F-16 fighter pilots test flew the crap out of the game engine before it was released as well as acted as a big part of the development process, so you know this sim is realistic.
I should reload this game and play with it on WinXP (if I can) again. If you want to see your fancy video card put out some amazing in-game 3D graphics, load up Falcon 4.0.
If only they could release a ground war FPS game on par with Falcon 4.0, I'd be in gaming heaven.
The closed development was partly motivated by the fact that very few people had the knowledge to work on accurate flight simulation (which is probably true) but in the end it was more a case of not wanting to spread the code further which I always thought was just a tad hypocritical.