What is the Tornado project?

[Frankie]

WHAT
The Tornado project is about enhancing a 1993 Flight Simulator whom many consider as the one of the best DOS flight simulators ever developed.

WHY
Why? That is a good question. In this day and age of ArmA3, IL2-Sturmovik, Cliffs Of Dover, DCS, X-Plane 10/11 and FSX, why would anyone want to enhance a 25 year old game, and a DOS one at that? One word. Nostagia. Two words. Source code. Three words. Fame and fortune. Four words. No DCS Tornado yet.

But seriously, this project exists because there is now a window of opportunity to enhance the original game so that it may be released on Steam or GOG. Interplay is willing to enter into a work for hire agreement with a team of people to have Tornado upgraded to run on current PCs. interplay will pay a percentage of any ongoing revenue generated by the updated product. Interplay would like to keep the game alive and introduce it to a new generation of players.

HOW
After 25 years, the assembly source code of the game has been made available, albeit to a small group of individuals and programmers. This small band of brothers is willing to spend time and effort to enhance the original game.

WHEN
The aim is to release an enhanced version of Tornado (PC version) on either Steam or GOG, in time for the 25th Anniversary of the game. As the game was originally released in 1993, that would make the target release date somewhere in 2018.

WHO
Currently the project consists of these individuals:

(1) DI's ex-programmer of Tornado. He is only able to act in the role and capacity as Advisor. He is busy with his day job and therefore will not be able to devote coding effort or time to the project. He is willing to assist the coder(s) in understanding the original source code. As a bonus, the source code is well-commented and has descriptions liberally scattered throughout the code itself.

(2) Frankie Kam. He is passionate about flight simulator games, in particular Tornado, which he believes is an excellent strategy war-game wrapped up inside a flight simulator. He is also the webmaster of the Tornado tribute site - http://www.moodurian.com/tornado

(3) Zurger6. Mainframe assembler in the late 70's and later took an interest in x86 assembler and C. Since 1993 has been a full time DBA, data architect, and enterprise architect specializing in information. Offers solid testing, requirements writing, if not review, and special interest in the data aspects of the project.

(4) Shark7893. A 32-bit assembly language programmer. Wrote 16 bit asm code in the previous century.

The team is on the lookup for more members. If you can program in either assembly language and/or C++, and have a love for old flying games, please contact boonsengkam alias gmail dot com. If you do not possess programming skills, but are willing to contribute to the project in any way, we want to know you too!


Tornado project discussion: Here