First post, by clueless1
- Rank
- l33t
I've been doing a lot of reading on Strike Commander, Pacific Strike and Wings of Glory. There's very little info out there on Pacific Strike. It got nailed by the game magazines for it's terrible performance. But I believe I know why the performance was so notoriously poor.
-Strike Commander had some serious delays (due out in 1991, actually released in 1993) in part due to making the engine playable on systems of the time. When released in 1993, it needed a 486 to run well, which was a tall order, as the 386 was the most common gaming platform that year.
-Pacific Strike used the same RealSpace engine, but modified and with much more framerate-hurting detail, such as ships and slower-flying planes that were onscreen for longer periods of time. In Strike Commander, jets flew by so fast that combat was mostly with radar and missiles and you didn't see enemy planes onscreen hardly at all. That meant fewer cpu cycles and better framerate. In Pacific Strike, it was common to have formations of multiple planes onscreen, and you needed guns to shoot down enemies, which had to be close enough to shoot down visually=more cpu cycles to draw.
-Wings of Glory also used a modified RealSpace engine, but WW1 planes flew even slower, and filled up even more of the onscreen display. The framerate was so bad that near the end of development they decided to convert the code from 16-bit to 32-bit protected mode. It took them 6 months to make the code conversion, and they were already behind schedule before that decision. In the end, the conversion to 32-bit made the framerate much better in WoG. This story is detailed in the back of the WoG Playtester's Guide in interviews with producer Warren Spector and the programmers and playtesters. Great read.
This implies that both Strike Commander and Pacific Strike were coded in 16-bit real mode (otherwise WoG - released after PS - would've used existing 32-bit engine code from the start). Since SC needed a 486 in 1993, and Pacific Strike by its nature would consume more cpu cycles due to having more aircraft and ships to draw onscreen, that PS's performance on a 16-bit engine would be really bad. It no doubt really should've been converted to 32-bit too. They did release performance patches for PS which helped, but it was too little, too late. It was such a failure they never bothered with a CD-ROM release - it's only available on 9 floppies, plus an optional speech pack which took up 4 more floppies.
Interestingly, of the three games, PS is the only one to have a frame counter built into the game. On my P200MMX it's locked at 30fps at all times. On my DX2/66 VLB system (the fastest system most people would have had when the game was released), I average about 15-20fps with cloud and water detail off, and about 10fps with both turned on. It probably took a Pentium 90 to run the game at 30fps locked with all details turned on, which would explain the backlash the game took. CGW put it #17 on their November 1996 issue of "Worst Games of All Time". Which I find sad, as I thought the game was pretty good! Right up there with SC, WoG, and the Wing Commanders in terms of cinematics, storyline and entertainment value. Being released on a 16-bit engine no doubt killed any chance the game had of being successful. 🙁
The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
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