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Aces High: Flying With Someone Besides Microsoft
By Kurt Van Wagenen (12 November 2003)
ave you been around
long enough to remember Kesmai's 'Air Warrior'? I certainly can't
recount the history of that online game in a short article, but if
memory serves, it first came on the scene around 1988 or so. I
remember playing an early version against about eight other players
in about 1992. It was available on the old GEnie network, which was
as I recall just a smaller AOL or CompuServe back in the pre-www
world. By the standards of the day, the graphics weren't bad. But
what was important was that this was my first venture into the world
of online gaming, and I was hooked! Hooked in a time when you paid
by the hour. It got expensive fast.By the way, for those of you wondering, no, that's not an old SubLogic Flight Simulator screen shot, that's Air Warrior in about 1988.
Over the course of years, and a few different and enhanced versions,
Air Warrior became the grand-daddy of all online flight simulators.
And while it always had a fanatical following, it was never an
especially reliable program. No one will deny that it was ground
breaking, addictive and fun. But it was also loaded with bugs, and
by the mid-ninety's was falling way behind on graphics.
With the release of Air Warrior 3, which fully supported the newer 3D video cards in about 1995-96, the graphics had finally come of age. Many players were making third party photorealistic panels. The game became pretty to look at, but under the hood it was becoming bloated and inefficient. It never ran well on my system. And the beautiful graphics were just not enough to make up for the 8 fps performance I was getting.
In about November of 1997 I hung up my helmet in Air Warrior for the final time. I simply couldn't stay interested when I couldn't get high enough frame rates to survive. Kesmai promised new versions, but none appeared. I was fed up and went on to other things.
Fast forward to July 2003
Somewhere high in the outer reaches of the cable channels I happen
across the last few seconds of an article about a massive multiplayer
air combat game. In game films look very nice with a bare aluminum
B-17G flying over patchy stratus and unloading his delivery. I'm
definitely interested, but I didn't catch the name of the game. About
two weeks later a friend of mine sees the same article on T.V. and
calls me from his cell phone. "Kurt, you need to go to
www.flyaceshigh.com"I wasn't in a hurry to get back into this particular kind of game. I never forgot why I left Air Warrior. But with a two week free trial and you don't even have to provide a credit card up front, who could say no?
The game - HiTech Creations 'Aces High'
How they packed this much game into a 34 megabyte download is beyond me. Clearly this company codes the 'old school' method, clean and mean. Installed on a friend's out of date laptop it was still able to push 60 fps right out of the box without any adjustments. And while the graphics aren't as sweet as FS2004, they really don't need to be, you won't have time to go sight-seeing anyhow.
Where the graphics are pretty nice, is the aircraft. The panels are
all full 3D virtual cockpits, and this works nicely for this type of
game. With my
CH F-16 Combat Stick fully programmed for this game, I
need to touch the keyboard about three times per flight: 'E' to start the
engines, 'G' for my landing gear (no point in mapping these on the
stick, if I'm putting the gear down and I don't have time to reach
for the keyboard, I'm dead already) and 'E' again to shut the engine
off at the end of my flight.
Many of you are familiar with the online fighter games provided on Microsoft's 'Gaming Zone'. Most of those are just continuous 'frag' games where all you do is go up, die, lather, rinse, repeat. It's fun for a while, but since it lacks any purpose, you probably lose interest in a few days or a month. What set Air Warrior, and now Ace's High apart is that there is an actual war to fight. It's not just a flight simulator with guns.
Players (and there are routinely 400 or more in the arena) can and do
crew PT boats, battleship guns, tanks, artillery, cargo aircraft,
bombers, anti-aircraft installations, etc. The program handles
logistics via truck and rail, so damage to your country's
infrastructure can impact your ability to get fuel and ammunition,
and your raids against enemy infrastructure will slow down their
progress as well.
Cities contain factories producing various things to keep the war moving, fuel depots with lines of large fuel tanks store the fuel for all these vehicles. Radar installations provide early warning, and when destroyed will allow you or the enemy to traverse territory undetected.
Bases and cities can be captured and their output then bolsters the
war effort of your country, or if they are lost, the resources they
produce go into enemy hands.
And just to make things interesting, the game has a brief night time every few hours making fighter operations challenging and giving those bombers a chance to slip in.
Very little of the strategic layer of the game is controlled by the game. It is in the hands of the players, so the war progresses naturally and according to the actions of the players in real time. If your flight fails to kill those bombers, you might lose your base. And you can be sure you will hear about it from your countrymen via the integrated voice support in the game.
That's right, adding to the realism is real radio chatter with the
people you are playing with. "Stitch, you've got a Spitfire on your
six, break left... NOW!"... "Bombers are inbound high from the
southeast!"
It makes for a very intense, and dynamic environment. So if you think you're good, and if you are tired of fighting with computer opponents, or just going up in pointless fights on the 'Zone' you would do yourself well to have a look at Aces High. You can find them at www.flyaceshigh.com
And you can find me at
Kurt@planetstupid.com
I'll answer anything I can for you, but I don't work for HiTech, so I
can only tell you what I know, or give my opinions.
Kurt Van Wagenen
Kurt@planetstupid.com
