Knights Over Europe Shows Off Dawn Of Flight Combat

Thanks to SimHQ.com for their interview with the Knights Over Europe development team, quizzing them about the PC-based World War I flight combat title, helping enliven an underappreciated genre in time for a 2004 release. The title plans a complex and accurate 'Historic Mode', so that "...the focus of campaign play is on you and your career, so your goal will be score kills, win medals, get promotions and transfers to hot squadrons, and gain international fame and glory." Intriguing features such as "the ability to 'hot seat' into crew positions during a flight" are promised for both single and multiplayer gameplay, and the interview also shrewdly points out that "...the outcome of the war is secondary. The most famous ace of WWI was Manfred Von Richthofen, and people don't care that his side lost the war."

Re:Sad news ... John Ritter dead at 54

[Goldberg's Pants]

Now this is the standard Slashdot troll... *insert name* was found dead today. I dismissed it last night thinking it couldn't possibly be true.

Check the news today and get the double whammy of Ritter and Cash...

Re:Sad news ... John Ritter dead at 54

[orthogonal]

Now this is the standard Slashdot troll... *insert name* was found dead today. I dismissed it last night thinking it couldn't possibly be true.

Yeah, I wanted to see what the Slashdot reaction would be to a true "Sad news ..." announcement.

Re:Sad news ... John Ritter dead at 54

[Goldberg's Pants]

Cynicism it would seem.

I am proud to be the victim of your social experiment:)

and people don't care that his side lost the war

[n.wegner]

Some people do ;) [wopmay.com]

DirectX9

[advocate_one]

Well that blows any hope for a Linux port then doesn't it... :(

Games... it's the only reason for me to keep win98SE on one of my boxes. Everything else has got a decent equivalent now... just those damn pesky DirectX based games.

Re:DirectX9

[Goldberg's Pants]

You're gonna have to upgrade pretty soon though, since they'll be phasing out Win98 just like they did with Win95. That SUCKED since, as a gamer, I had to "upgrade" (if any Microsoft OS can be considered an upgrade) just to play games, when 95 was just fine for everything else I wanted.

damn.

[adlai]

Enjoyable interview...I think his funniest comment was how the developers used real physics for the flight model. What are other people using, fake physics?

Too bad the game won't come out until Q4 of 2004 -- I fear it might be obsolete by then.

Re:damn.

[DjReagan]

A lot of flight combat games do use quite simplified physics - simplified enough that it no longer is considered "real"

Re:damn.

[spooky_nerd]

Most games that take place in outer space don't use anything close to a real physics model.

finally...

[quinkin]

Finally someone thinks to simulate fun in a flight simulator...

There has been a distinct lack of retro combat flight sims which, IMHO, are a lot more fun to play.

There is nothing more tedious than never seing anything more than blips on a radar, green boxes on a HUD, and the odd flyspeck...

Q.

Re:finally...

[der_joachim]

There has been a distinct lack of retro combat flight sims which, IMHO, are a lot more fun to play.

Although I rarely play simulators, just a hint. Have you ever played a game by Jane's? Last year, Jane's released a very realistic WW2 flight sim. It's calles Jane's Attack Squadron. Of course, I do not know whether it is retro enough for you, but it looks decent. One of the nice parts is that when you fly a bomber in a LAN game, every player can man one of the positions (eg pilot, tailgunner etc).

der Joa

Excited

[yamla]

I'm really excited about this. Two of my favourite games were Knights of the Sky [mobygames.com] and Red Baron [mobygames.com]. I actually preferred Knights of the Sky though this is perhaps because of my computer at the time.

I loved the way you could go from the planes at the early parts of WWI that could hardly get into the air, to the monsters in later years that could do all kinds of acrobatics. I enjoyed the personal touches, the one-on-one challenges you would get issued when you became good. They were great games and I'm hopin

Re:Excited

[sdcharle]

Yeah, I also liked how with Red Baron you could fly the old EIII's and then compare them to the much more sophisticated DVIII's. It was also cool how the fragile wings on the early Nieuports ripped right off if you overdid a turn (giving some nice warning creaks first).

I'm looking forward to this one as well, the screenshots are amazing, but we will have to wait until Q4 of 2004 to see it according to the article (of course this probably means hopefully it comes out in 2005).

Beat me to it

[Auburn_Jack]

I spent many, many nights of my youth playing Red Baron.

One of my friends at the time was all about Falcon 3.0, but I always preferred Red Baron and Aces of the Pacific. Taking out the fancy modern cockpit made the dogfighting seem much more exciting.

Re:Beat me to it

[yamla]

Aces of the Pacific, I loved that game. My friends and I used to challenge each other to land on the carriers blindfolded. One guy would control the joystick and not look at the screen. The other would be able to look at the screen and give directions. It got really sticky as you got closer to the carrier. Even at our best, we could not even make one out of every two landing attempts.

We also used to attempt a carrier landing (starting on the training mission for landings) in the fewest number of secon