Terminal Velocity (computer game)

Terminal Velocity
Studio	Terminal Reality Inc.
Publisher	3D realms
Senior Developer	Mark Randel
Erstveröffent- lichung	1995
platform	PC ( DOS ), Macintosh
genre	Action - flight simulation
Subject	Science fiction
Game mode	Single and multiplayer
control	Keyboard , joystick / gamepad or mouse
system advantages preconditions	486DX , 4 MiB RAM
medium	CD-ROM or 3.5 ″ floppy disks
language	English
Age rating	USK

Terminal Velocity (abbreviated TV, English for " terminal velocity " is) an action - flight simulator for DOS in 1995. The computer game was less than simulation - but as straightforward arcade game with a very low barrier to entry designed. The game was the first title developed by Terminal Reality Inc. and also the first to be published by 3D Realms . Terminal Velocity was also the first shareware game to feature on the cover of a magazine prior to its release.

Development and publication

Mainly responsible for the development of Terminal Velocity was Mark Randel, a former employee of Microsoft and until 1994 chief programmer of the Microsoft flight simulator 5.0 . The game was the first founded in the same year by Randel and Brett Combs in North Texas -based Terminal Reality Inc. (TRI). Randel used the know-how he gained in the further development of Microsoft's flight simulator to build up his company.

Music and sound effects were created by Kyle Richards. The graphics, 3D animations and film scenes come from Mark Randel and various other authors.

The game was published on May 1, 1995 by 3D Realms , a recently founded division of Apogee Software. 3D Realms' Tom Hall is named as co-producer of Terminal Velocity. A version that ran on the Apple Macintosh , published by MacSoft , followed a year later.

As was common with most Apogee and then also 3D Realms games, Terminal Velocity was also released in a shareware version. For this purpose, the game was divided into three episodes, the first of which was distributed as shareware via mailboxes (BBS), shareware CDs and CD supplements from computer game magazines . In addition to the full version of the game on CD-ROM , a simplified version was also available on floppy disks , in which, among other things, all video sequences were omitted and significantly lower-resolution textures were used.

Game content

The Boeing X-43A developed for NASA (here in an artist's representation) is very similar to the space glider in the game.

The player steers a slim, tapered and armed space glider through the atmosphere and through tunnel systems on and within various planetoids , moons and asteroids . He can move the glider freely in all three dimensions, as is usual in a flight simulator. In contrast to more realistic flight simulations, however, gravity is ignored and the controls are so simplified that the four arrow keys are used as much as possible . Automatic systems help, among other things, to align the glider horizontally again after turning. With further buttons the forward movement can be slowed down and accelerated, but not stopped like with an airplane. In addition, a limited stands afterburner and keys to roles available.

The player can choose between several camera perspectives and control the glider either from the first person or a third person perspective .

The spectrum of the represented planetary surfaces ranges from flat oceans with occasional islands to hilly ice and desert planets to deeply furrowed canyons and even volcanic planets. Over many landscapes there is a flat cloud cover that can be flown through. However, leaving the planets is not possible during the game.

In the landscapes there are regular tunnel entrances that lead into mostly hexagonal, curved but basically unbranched, linear tunnels as well as simple interior spaces within the planets. Control and gameplay change when you enter a tunnel from a flight simulator to a shoot 'em up . It is no longer possible to turn the glider. Another new task compared to the surface is to avoid the obstacles, some of which are moving, within the tunnel as safely as possible.

Numerous air and ground targets can be destroyed both on the planetary surfaces and in the tunnels , such as' Mechs , helicopters, space gliders but also buildings. Various projectile weapons are available to the player, from plasma and ion cannons to various rockets, to defend themselves against opponents who are constantly attacking even without provocation .

The game is divided into three episodes with nine different planets and a total of 26 levels . Another level takes place on a secret planet. In each level, the player has the task of working through prepared waypoints, for example checkpoints or the destruction of certain ground targets, whereby he can deviate from this path at any time, but not shorten it. The last waypoint in each level brings the glider back to its mother ship and to the next level.

At the end of three levels belonging to a planet there is a boss , called Basic Objective Structure (BOS) in the game . These are mostly particularly large ground targets, for example a computer tower protected by energy shields in the last level . At the end of the game, the player's name is entered in a top 5 highscore table , in which, however, unlike the genre, no points are counted, only kills .

Framework story

The combat-oriented game focuses primarily on its technical fascination and entertaining action and therefore largely dispenses with a background story . It merely states that during a time of peace and disarmament in 2704, the earth was brought to its knees by several hostile alien races . The player slips into the - nameless and faceless - role of the only remaining pilot of the Ares squadron, the task of the experimental fighter pilot known as TV-202 is to fight back the aggressors and " save the galaxy ".

Before the approach to each of the ten planets, a short briefing is shown and the planet and important air and ground targets are shown and briefly described. The genre- typical undifferentiated enemy image is usually justified with the necessary destruction of military facilities of hostile aliens. Most of these are weapons factories and power plants .

There is no identification figure or characters who are positive towards the player in the game. Only the destruction of organic, “green” targets - for example trees - is counted separately and rated as a negative kill in the highscore table.

technology

Terminal Velocity uses height fields with an image resolution of 256 × 256 points (64 KiB)

The landscapes are realized as height fields with 256 × 256 individually textured squares each . The grid is repeated infinitely at the edges, creating the impression of a closed planetary surface. The enemies are different to previous 3D games do not Sprites that, but 3D objects, among others, the shadow on the ground project .

Either the DOS VGA graphics mode with 320 × 200 pixels and 256 colors or a graphics mode with 640 × 240 pixels ( Super-VGA with halved number of lines) is used for the display . Support for the S3 ViRGE graphics card was subsequently submitted as a patch . Terminal Velocity is one of the few games that support the programming interface called S3D .

The game uses texture mapping with a simple perspective correction (right) that shows display errors in extreme edge areas (middle).

The player's view is conspicuous by a fish - eye effect , which appears exaggerated for 3D computer graphics of this type , which makes distant objects appear smaller than usual. This gives the game its own character, but also helps to hide the technically limited visibility ( draw distance ). In addition, fog ( distance fog ) is used to reduce the computational load, which is exclusively on the main processor when unaccelerated software rendering is used.

The game graphics are supplemented by precalculated 3D video sequences that are only included in the CD version. You can see a flight through a wormhole as well as scenes that show the departure and arrival of the space glider from and to its mother ship in the opening and closing credits, as well as the arrival and departure to and from the ten planetary surfaces in short cutscenes.

Terminal Velocity contains a multiplayer mode in which up to eight players can compete against each other via null modem cable , modem , IPX / SPX , NetBIOS / Lantastic or via the DWANGO network.

The minimum requirement for the PC hardware used is a 486DX processor and at least 4  MiB RAM . For the best possible graphics quality, a Pentium with 16 MiB RAM is recommended. Today the game can easily be started in a DOS emulator such as DOSBox .

reception

The action game was mostly positively received by the press. The Coming Soon Magazine of October 1995 said it was "encouraging an innovative [ Egoperspektiven -] to find game that not only a clone of Doom is" (90%). PC Gamer recommends Terminal Velocity in the same month as "highly playable, fast, and addicting with almost no learning curve" even though it has "not much depth" (86%). The German PC Player of June 1995 criticized the “linear game play”, but praised that “even the nine-level shareware version [is] more fun than some of the full-price 3D crutches of the dear competition” (66%). GameSpot of May 1996 states that you will "never play the game for twenty hours straight, but will never be disappointed if you are looking for a few minutes of high-speed excitement" (6.9 / 10 points).

The music, which is good quality for its time, but occasionally monotonous, and the fact that the game is too easy even at the highest level of difficulty is also criticized .

Terminal Velocity was named the best action game of 1995 by the US magazine PC Entertainment (formerly Electronic Entertainment ). “No other action game [would] capture the feeling of flying so well,” say the editors, “apart from Descent, perhaps”.

References to other titles

Terminal Velocity is often compared to Descent , which was released two months earlier, but where the game is played only indoors. Both action games allow an armed space glider to move almost unrestrictedly in all three spatial dimensions , whereby gravity is ignored. Magic Carpet also has very similar game mechanics . Other similar action games from the same year are Hi-Octane , Slipstream 5000 and Wipeout , in which freedom of movement is severely limited by racetracks .

credentials

Terminal Velocity is also sometimes compared to Star Wars . In fact, the third mission in the game takes place on and in a Star Destroyer modeled on the Death Star from Star Wars . According to the mission description, the Star Destroyer is stationed at Wolf 359 , a place known from the Star Trek universe.

A Dopefish reference - an Easter egg in many Apogee titles - is jokingly indicated in the help text, but does not appear in the game itself.

successor

Microsoft has been producing the SideWinder 3D Pro joystick since 1995 , with which the company (six years before the Xbox ) wanted to gain a foothold in the growing computer game market. To make the joystick more attractive, various games were licensed and published in adapted versions, including Terminal Velocity. Microsoft had Terminal Reality Inc. migrate and modify the game for Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 and released it in 1995 - just three months after Terminal Velocity - as Fury³ . The number does not stand for a third part, but for the control in the three dimensions, for which the joystick, which can be swiveled in three axes, should be ideal. At times Fury³ was sold as a bundle together with the joystick.

Fury³ is a little modified implementation of the original Terminal Velocity for Windows. The differences are limited to the appearance. A more elaborate background story is told and accompanied by more elaborately produced video sequences. The levels have been redesigned, textures and enemy models are more detailed. However, the gameplay and general character of the game remained the same.

Another successor followed in 1996 with Hellbender , which was also developed by Terminal Reality Inc. and distributed by Microsoft. In contrast to its two predecessors, where similarities to Descent can still be explained by coincidence , Hellbender shows clear parallels to its competitor. The tunnels, which were exclusively straight in the predecessors, have been replaced by branched corridor systems, in which the glider can remain still in the air, as in Descent . Doors can be opened with gunfire and the female voice of an on-board computer ( Gillian Anderson ) helps navigate. Much larger building complexes and other structures can also be found on the surface of the planets.

Photex engine

The newly created for Terminal Velocity Photex - Engine (for "photographic texture ") has been continuously developed and in many other games of Terminal Reality Inc. used, among other things, in the Truck Madness Monster series and most recently in 2001 in the Fly! -Series.

Sources and individual references

1. ↑ History of 3D Realms ( Memento of the original from December 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
2. ↑ Terminal Velocity in the "official" Apogee FAQ by Samuel Stoddard (RinkWorks).
3. ↑ Computer Player magazine from April 1995 .
4. ↑ ^{a b} Official Terminal Velocity website ( memento of the original from March 16, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at 3D Realms .  
5. ↑ ^{a b} Terminal Velocity at MobyGames (English)
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Terminal Velocity Review at GameFAQs .
7. ↑ News about Terminal Velocity ( Memento of the original dated February 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at 3D Realms.  
8. ↑ Fury³ at MobyGames (English)