I remember.

[ajfarrell 10]

Hi again Ian, I'm currently looking at making a plastic model of the carrier and support craft, could you mail me drawings you used with approximate dimensions for the 3d models in the game? a diorama would be cool to get a real idea of what the carrier looked like :-D

[sic-disaster 311]

Is this game cancelled?

[sav112g 10]

Recently released standalone expansion pack to the leading PC military simulator Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead and DLC Arma 2: British Armed Forces will be followed by new titles in the near future:

Pound of Ground: crazy action game from a 3rd person view with tons of zombies.

Carrier Command: Gaea Mission, action game with strategic elements, based on the ground breaking classic.

Bohemia Interactive is also working on continuous support and new development of its award winning line up of military simulation games.

this was posted in there news a few days ago.

[Intezar 10]

We want Carrier Command! Will there be a beta test of some sort maybe? :) It is too quiet. I don't care if it is just a screenshot, I just want to hear more from the game.

[scrapser 11]

To keep yourself occupied while waiting for the remake, you can get a copy of Cloanto's AmigaForever (Amiga Emulator), download the original Carrier Command ADF (Amiga Disk File) game file, and play to your heart's content. It will cost you less then most games cost today and you will have an Amiga computer to play all the old games that made it so popular back in the 80's/90's.

[Placebo 29]

Is this game cancelled?

Absolutely not, still heavily being worked on which is pretty much why there just hasn't been time to take a breath, glance up from the smoking computers and release some new news/media! I know it sucks for you guys who're patiently waiting for info but I'm sure the wait will be worth it ;)

[sic-disaster 311]

Good to hear. My mate said he had seen a confirmation of cancellation for this game somewhere, but i hadnt seen it here so i was wondering what was up as he was very convinced he was right.

Cant wait for more footage and news :)

[maddogx 13]

Good to hear. My mate said he had seen a confirmation of cancellation for this game somewhere, but i hadnt seen it here so i was wondering what was up as he was very convinced he was right.

Cant wait for more footage and news :)

A colleague of mine keeps trying to convince me that BIS is bankrupt and will be gone soon. Funny how they were recently able to buy a couple of other game studios... :D

Lesson learned: don't listen to self important doofuses who don't know what they're talking about. ;)

I just hope some more CC info will be released shortly, so we can see how the project is coming along. It already looked pretty awesome six months ago. :)

[Francois424 10]

Hello Gadjetmind/Ian,

I decided to (finally) make an account on this site, seeing that thread about you being one of the creators/coders of the Original Carrier Command of the Eithies.

I was no more than 13-15 years old when I first played your game, and in all honesty, it is amongst my top 3 of all times, all gaming platforms included. It has never *ever* been surpassed by *any* games I have played in the last 20 years.

I wanted to join my voice with the other to thank you very fondly for it. And what made it such a jewel for me was the total amount of freedom you had. Heck, you could shoot your own carrier, send mantas crashing into walruses, destroy your own islands and put another ACCB on it if you wanted to. You could have your vehicle run out of fuel on purpose, send them without weapons... man you could do EVERYTHING. And it was very challenging.

The enemy carrier had unfair advantages, and it was fine that way. Where you say it was a bug that it jumped on island, I find a very original thing... I mean a hovercraft carrier going as fast as the manta, that has walrus capabilities ? Man the Omega is advanced (not bugged, advanced ;) ). But we (players) have the juggernaut advantage... Our carrier is a steeled-Battleship, with lasers ! The Omega lacks them, muahaha. So much fun I had with that fact alone.

Another thing that was nice, and is completely lost in modern games : Slow-pace. Think about it: Set course to the next island and engage. ( I go make coffee, clean the house a bit... *DING* come back to the AtariST, play 5min to drop an ACCB, get back to cleaning). I mean really, I like games like that. Sure sometimes you want to warp thru, and yes it should be available, but that was fun nonetheless. Games now a days are too quick, too much action, not enough real-time-strategy that allows to spread the action.

Now there's that remake going. If it has the freedom, that would be cool. If it lacks it (read: railroad scenario thingie) then it'll be sourly missed.

So to wrap this up: Thank you very much for this incredible JEWEL of a game, of which I have yet to see a valid successor 20 years later.

I wish you well Ian,

-- Francois424

Edited January 26, 2011 by Francois424

[gadgetmind 10]

Hi again Ian, I'm currently looking at making a plastic model of the carrier and support craft, could you mail me drawings you used with approximate dimensions for the 3d models in the game? a diorama would be cool to get a real idea of what the carrier looked like :-D

Sorry, missed this. We don't have any drawings and the shapes are bytecode driven rather than being simple coordinates.

Ian

---------- Post added at 04:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:50 PM ----------

So to wrap this up: Thank you very much for this incredible JEWEL of a game, of which I have yet to see a valid successor 20 years later.

Coo, thanks, I'm blushing somewhat!

All this discussion of Carrier finally pushed me to having another pass at getting the source back. The 68k versions were quite easy - ddrescue to slowly pull every last sector off the floppies, fastback (three versions, mostly from dodgy Russian crack sides!) running in a VM, and there it was.

But the PC version ... I ended up buying a Catweasel card (which reads Amiga/protected disks on a PC) and using this to pull the heavily corrupted raw data off the floppies. I then wrote loads of Python to rootle through the data and tease out any good sectors (ignoring headers many of which were wrong/damaged) and saved it off the image files. After dozens of passes on each 5.25" disk, and automated merges of good bits from each, I finally got every last sector.

I have now rebuilt PC Carrier Command from source (using wine on Linux) and have run the .exe in dosbox.

The PC version is far more rounded than the 68k versions but the sound is nasty. Oh, but wait! What's this? Could it be the Sound Blaster 16 docs open on my desktop ...

Ian

[celery 8]

Hey Ian, would you find it in your heart to make the small improvements that were in your original vision of CC and are doable with little trouble, and release a modern PC compatible version?

[dontknowhow 33]

Coo, thanks, I'm blushing somewhat!

There's no reason for that. That game can be deservedly considered a legend

[gadgetmind 10]

Hey Ian, would you find it in your heart to make the small improvements that were in your original vision of CC and are doable with little trouble, and release a modern PC compatible version?

At the most, I think I'll be up to fixing the sound.

I'd love to release the source so that others can do more, but there are a few roadblocks. Nothing insurmountable, and I'm sure it will happen some time in the next couple of years, but not right yet.

Ian

[scrapser 11]

I play Carrier Command via Amiga Forever. Aside from some challenges getting the controllers to "feel" like the an Amiga style 8-way joystick, it seems pretty good. Am I missing anything with this approach?

Thinking back, I do remember always having difficulty flying the Mantas with the mouse so I never invested that much into it and stuck with the joystick. I had a similar problem trying to control the hovership in Virus (another great game for the Amiga).

[gadgetmind 10]

All you're missing are the much improved enemy strategy/tactics of the PC/Mac versions, and of course the time warp button.

Ian

[scrapser 11]

I wasn't aware there were enhancements or even a PC/Mac version. Interesting. Can you describe the improvements briefly? I always had my hands full with the game as it is and never really found a "formula" for winning. If I lost it was usually due to some strategic mistake.

Just for yuks, I stumbled across CC back in 1988 in a little computer store in a small town in NH. Back then you had to search high and low for Amiga games and pick them up wherever you could find them. When I first played CC I was stunned by the immersion. I never tired of it.

[gadgetmind 10]

Here is what the WHATS.NEW file says -

--------------------------------------------------

Attention Gary Scheinwald

Here is a quick list of what has gone into PC carrier that wasn't in the ST

or Amiga versions

. Warp mode (on Carrier map screen) to bend time to let you get to places

with vastly reduced boredom levels

. Draggable radars in the Planes and Tanks (these get 'knocked' out of the

way by the pop-up missile window

. The tank missile now rolls as it flies

. You can get a view from all four planes/tanks by clicking into the

plane/tank info screen window

. Greatly improved enemy strategy

. Far better head-on battles with enemy carrier

. Enemy carrier will sometimes attack you!

These are some of the features of the PC version that it would be nice to

mention

. Video modes

. VGA

. EGA

. CGA

. Tandy 16-colour

. Hercules

. Input devices

. Keyboard

. Joystick (Amstrad or IBM analog)

. Microsoft Mouse

. You can use TSR's when the game is paused (with ctrl-s)

. Fits on to a single unprotected disk which is only accessed when you change video modes

. Zero-crossing sampled sound

--------------------------------------------------

Ian

[AlFitz 0]

Did you have anything to do with Battle Command?

[gadgetmind 10]

Did you have anything to do with Battle Command?

I was on the periphery of that one. I did a lot of refactoring of the graphics code (made graphics drivers and shapes loadable, tried to separate engine from game a bit more, etc.) and did some work on other systems, but the game design was being lead by someone else, and much of the work on it was by guys we'd employed.

Battle Command isn't a bad game, and there are quite a lot of nice elements, it's just not Carrier Command!

Ian

---------- Post added at 10:55 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:31 AM ----------

I've just checked some dates.

Carrier command

ST release April 1988

Amiga release July 1988

PC release July 1989

Mac release Feb 1990

Battle Command

ST/AG released Nov 1990 through to Feb 1991

PC release slightly earlier?

Abrams

Genesis release Feb 1991

Abrams on the Genesis is something I did pretty much single-handed. This involved me hand-building a Snasm interface that plugged into the 68000 socket, emulated the cartridge, and provided a simple SCSI interface. I even have one lying around so might take a picture of it to scare you all! I then ported Abrams by myself, including all the drivers, 3D object converters, sprites and sound.

It looks like Steve Caslin and Stephen Hey were working on Battle Command, and I know a few other guys were involved, probably Andy Onions on the Z80.

1989 we started Cross Products, a company providing dev tools to games developers, and I got dragged more and more into this. Working on Abrams for Sega got me in close with those guys, and in 1994 Sega bought Cross Products.

Battle Command had a scrappy finish, and money was once more very thin on the ground, and some of the versions were finished in-house at Ocean with at least Stephen Hey working for them directly.

Those weren't really happy days for anyone, and we messed Ocean around a bit on Battle Command, and our Mirrorsoft project (Duster, pretty much all mine) had to be abandoned as it had gone totally off the rails and I was burnt out.

Ian

[AlFitz 0]

Thanks for the reply Ian.

I did try and perserve with Battle Command but I think I hit a really hard mission near the end of the game and gave up. As you said, it didn't really have the elements that made Carrier Command such a classic game (CC was the reason I got an ST after seeing it reviewed in a magazine).

It's probably already been mentioned in this thread but have you played Hostile Waters, its one of my all time favourites as well. It never got the recognition it deserved and I think shortly afterwards the company that made it (Rage) shut down, shame. I think theres some multiplayer code out there somewhere but no-one outside of the developers has ever seen it.

Edited January 30, 2011 by AlFitz

[gadgetmind 10]

I must admit that I'd forgotten a lot (nearly everything!) about Battle Command. I had to play every mission several times to do the Roland sound (I have no memory of who did the Adlib sound!) but haven't played it since then - I just don't really regard it as being my work They do say that success has many fathers whereas failure is an orphan, or something like that. :-)

If only there was a way to know how a game was going to turn out, but like books, movies and children, you just have to do your best and see how things turn out.

I guess I ought to track down Hostile Waters - it's nice to think we inspired others. Or maybe I won't bother; it's far too easy to run your head in retrospective mode rather than looking to the future. I'd love to get back into games development, but nowadays even iPhone/Android games seem to be activities for fairly large teams.

Ian

[skipped1 11]

I just imagined original carrier command for android! But how to control it with most phones w/o keyboard :(

[gadgetmind 10]

Carrier Command was heavy on the mouse and didn't make very much use of the keyboard.

Ian

[skipped1 11]

So it is really possible to make orginal CC for android with touchscreen working as "notebook touchpad"? :)

Now im more interested in that then in CC:GM :D

[gadgetmind 10]

Sorry, missed this. We don't have any drawings and the shapes are bytecode driven rather than being simple coordinates.

Hmmm, I have just documented the shape data structure/language, and it would be possible to parse this with some simple python. I'm happy to post (or PM) the details if anyone fancies a bash.

Alternatively, I could have a go with the dosbox debugger and try to dump the points array straight from memory.

Ian

---------- Post added at 02:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:47 PM ----------

So it is really possible to make orginal CC for android with touchscreen working as "notebook touchpad"? :)

Possible, yes, easy, no. I'd have to think long and hard about the best way to do it. Probably by ripping out lots of the existing input/cursor code, ditto all the audio and interrupt stuff, and then running the existing code in an 8086 emulator with input fed down and the 16 colour VGA buffer being copied and scaled up to the real display.

Of course, there is always this.

http://androiddosbox.appspot.com/

Ian