One of the complexities of a game like Aces High is knowing what plane to use. Spitfire, Me109, Mustang, Corsair, Zero, or Yak? There is all kinds of data floating around the ‘Net to help, but it was never brought together into one place.
I recently happened across a neat PHP/XML-driven Flash charting package which looked like it could display all this information in a concise manner. So I whipped up a site to allow players to compare up to 4 prop-driven fighters in Aces High.
Some of the information is pretty interesting – some planes don’t compare as well as you’d expect, and some are quite a bit better than people assume. Part of this coding exercise was to come up with a standard way to describe the plane-set, and provide a semi-modular way to add new data sets. This allows more information to be easily added to the system as it becomes available.
A new release of probably the best MMOG for WW2 aviation enthusiats. The B17 has been re-done and there have been some pretty significant changes made to the flight model code.
Download from the HiTech Creations website.
Some folks on the Aces High BBS were goofing around with some despair.com style “motivators” for the game. Given what goes on in it, there is a lot to get sarcastic about. So I did a few as well. Funny thing is that they apply to just about any MMOG flight sim … some things never change. I’ve put the 16 best of these designs here.
If you’re looking at this stuff and it makes no sense to you, well, they’re all kind of “inside jokes” for an online game community that’s been around since 1987. The original game – Air Warrior – and all that followed has developed it’s own lingo and code of conduct. Some of which is represented in these posters.
DiKta GonZo
Rules for Success and Survival in Online Flight Sims
I wrote these rules up back in the mid-1990′s. Inspired by the “Dicta Bolke” from the World War I fighter ace, these are meant to be very simple rules which still capture the complexity and subtlety of virtual air combat. Suprisingly, even though the technology of these games has come a long way in ten years, the rules still apply. I am reposting these rules on my blog, but for the first time with a paragraph of explanation attached to each.
