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Author Topic: The website that Frankie built  (Read 14123 times)

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Offline Frankie

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The website that Frankie built
« on: October 24, 2015, 01:34:43 AM »
Welcome to the Keeper of Digital Integration's Tornado (1993).
www.moodurian.com/tornado
In the 1990s until even the mid-2000s, this flight sim had everything a mud-moving game had to offer except for the dated graphics: dynamic campaign, assortment of ordinances, tons of controls and keyboard keys, low-level and ground-hugging action, multiple missions, and best of all - a VGA mission designer to die for. Flight simmers spent hours designing and crafting a multi-plane strike on enemy targets, then spent 30 minutes of flight time. It was all worth it.

Only one site in the world is still active and holds the hallowed Tornado torch high. Mine. Enjoy the visuals!

Frankie 'Tornadoman' Kam
Malaysia
« Last Edit: October 24, 2015, 04:52:47 AM by Frankie »
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Offline Beef

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Re: The website that Frankie built
« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2015, 01:56:54 AM »
Hey Frankie, I am not able to open the web page from the link you posted but can when I Google it. I think it is because you're missing the trailing "/" after tornado.

This Tornado Link worked for me!

Thanks for sharing!

Regards,
Beef
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Offline Frankie

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Re: The website that Frankie built
« Reply #2 on: October 24, 2015, 04:53:27 AM »
Thanks Beef. Corrected.
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Offline Lusik

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Re: The website that Frankie built
« Reply #3 on: October 24, 2015, 01:23:20 PM »
I spent hundreds of hours in that sim. :) I had Amiga 600 at that time with 2 MB of RAM.  I had an average of 7 -8 FPS. It was so immersive that I played it nonetheless. It was the time of pyramid shaped hills and this beauty had the most realistic graphics I had ever seen at that time.


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Offline Frankie

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Re: The website that Frankie built
« Reply #4 on: October 24, 2015, 06:09:37 PM »
How interesting! I wonder what would have happened if Digital Integration had included the Mission Planner in Amiga version.

If you can, please leave comment on the site's guestbook.



Gamers like you are hard to come by.
;-)
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Offline Asid

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Re: The website that Frankie built
« Reply #5 on: November 11, 2015, 08:20:06 PM »
Nice Frankie :)
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Offline Frankie

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Re: The website that Frankie built
« Reply #6 on: March 08, 2016, 07:02:11 AM »
Hi All

Just an update. I built this humble website of mine to share the joy of playing one of the best (gameplay-wise) ground-pounding DOS Flight Sims - Tornado.


Secretly I also wish that someone would be able to modify the not-for-public source code, thereby enhancing the graphics and gameplay.  Interplay owns the rights to the venerable DOS Flight Sim classic, Tornado (PC). I recently asked of Interplay about the source code. The CEO replied to me today with this message.


It's very nice of Interplay to support the revival, and possible enhancement of this 1993 flight simulator. It does beg the question of who will "upgrade" the old code and game? Do you know of anyone who lives just for Assembler code? We're talking about code that was created when 386 PCs were the norm and most people couldn't even afford a 486-DX computer. Anyone else interested to see the mother of all ground-pounding flight sims given a new lease of life on GOG and Steam? I can only dare to dream that the original programmers (some of whom I am in contact with) will find the time to make small tweaks and enhancements to this 23-year old game.


Cheers
Frankie "TornadoMan" Kam
http://www.moodurian.com/tornado
« Last Edit: March 08, 2016, 07:18:26 AM by Frankie »
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Offline Attila

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Re: The website that Frankie built
« Reply #7 on: March 08, 2016, 11:39:29 AM »
Super Cool  8)
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Offline Asid

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Re: The website that Frankie built
« Reply #8 on: March 08, 2016, 03:24:02 PM »
Frankie. Great work my friend. Nice to see that you continue to carry the torch for this 20+ year old game :)
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Offline Frankie

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Re: The website that Frankie built
« Reply #9 on: March 27, 2016, 03:05:29 PM »
Last week David Keith Marshall, Chief Boffin of Digital Integration, passed away after a long battle with cancer. I was informed of his death by his son, Stephen.

A pilot and an aviation engineer himself, Dave was the programmer for many of Digital Integtration's early flight simulators written for the Sinclair Spectrum. Under his leadership, DI became a world pioneer in computer flight simulators in the 1990s, famous for DOS games like Tornado, Apache, Hind, F-16 and Superhornet. The pinnacle of DI's fame and success was when Tornado's complex mission planner was more sophisticated than anything that the RAF had at that time (1993).

I wrote a tribute webpage that you can access from http://www.moodurian.com/tornado. It includes an interactive photomosaic of a photo of Dave that is made up of 10,000 screenshots of Tornado. The direct link to the tribute  is: http://www.moodurian.com/tornado/dave

Rest in peace, Dave.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2016, 03:11:59 PM by Frankie »
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Offline Asid

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Re: The website that Frankie built
« Reply #10 on: March 27, 2016, 04:33:21 PM »
Last week David Keith Marshall, Chief Boffin of Digital Integration, passed away after a long battle with cancer. I was informed of his death by his son, Stephen.
Sad news indeed. I remember those games. They were great.

Fitting tribute.

Regards
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Offline Frankie

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Re: The website that Frankie built
« Reply #11 on: June 03, 2016, 01:22:54 PM »
I spruced up the main page of the website. I wanted the visitor to be greeted with random full-screen Youtube Tornado-related video (see below). I hand-picked 37 Tornado videos on Youtube. So I consider this part of the Internet has having the best compilation of Tornado-related videos, for your viewing pleasure.


This is followed by screenshots of the game. I thought how nice it would be if the same screenshot had (1) different effects and (2) a brief caption to liven up the screenshot. I am happy to say that with a free Cloudinary.com account, I have achieved this. Here are some actual screens from the website that Frankie built.


-and-


-and-


The graphics were the rave of the 1990s, but now pale in comparison to today's BIG toys. Personally though, I am a big fan of the flat-shaded polygon graphics of Tornado. The graphics hold a certain charm for me. Something like a poor cousin of Flanker 1.0, yet still very attractive. The main thing for me is the graphics work very well to convery the sense of speed flight at low-levels.

In case anyone is wondering, in all there are 178 (European theater) + 108 (Operation Desert Storm - ODS) screenshots, giving a total of 278 possible images! There are also over 18 random effects which include blurs, dust, negative, contrast, tilt shift, fill light, green, sharpen, colour improvement, oil painting, sepia, vignette, grayscale, dithering, Cinematic, Super Wide, Ultra Panavision and 2.35 Anamorphic. Each frame can either display, as a fully-scalable background, a screenshot from the original game's European theater, or a screenshot from the game's ODS addon.

As for the captions, I wrote 278 different captions - one for each image. That took me about 2.5 hours of thinking and typing the text. The captions are not hard-coded into the graphics. The text that I supply to each image is changed by Cloudinary into a text overlay which fits on top of the background screenshot. I had to write some Javascript to handle this part. But the main role was played by Cloudinary in making available a whole suite of URL/web browser commands to invoke different effects.

And the best part? If I ever decide to do another tribute website, on another flight simulator game, I could use the same code and just change the content.
;-)
« Last Edit: June 03, 2016, 02:05:34 PM by Frankie »
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Offline Asid

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Re: The website that Frankie built
« Reply #12 on: June 03, 2016, 02:42:40 PM »
Great work Frankie. It shows that you are passionate about Tornado.

Well done :)
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Offline Frankie

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Re: The website that Frankie built
« Reply #13 on: June 05, 2016, 03:21:55 PM »
Speedwagon has sent me 32 more Tornado screenshots. MANY THANKS, MATE! I've added them to the website. Here's what a sample of two such random screenshots look like:
That's an Air Control Tower (ATC) and a Texaco Petrol Station (almost)

-AND-

inside looking out from a HAS and a modern day city centre

Tornado had the most detailed land objects of any flight simulator of its time (1993). That seems like just yesterday. How the years have flown!


« Last Edit: June 05, 2016, 11:53:49 PM by Frankie »
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Offline Asid

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Re: The website that Frankie built
« Reply #14 on: June 05, 2016, 03:33:01 PM »
Nice :)
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