From: am66@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Alexander Maldutis)
Subject: STUNT ISLAND - SIMPLY _AMAZING_!                 (Long Review)
Reply-To: am66@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Alexander Maldutis)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 22:56:01 GMT

Hi!  I got Stunt Island [SI] on Sunday.  My recommendation:

1) Delete Unreal and all of the superfast multipolygon Eurodemos from your
	HD - they are obsolete.

2) Delete Aces of the Pacific, JetFighterII, Secret Weapons from your HD. 
	MAYBE leave Falcon3, if you're not playing the game for the graphics.
	Be prepared to ignore F-15 SE III when you see it in the store.

3) BUY THIS GAME!

I am NOT exaggerating the above.  I guarantee you won't want to look at any
flight sim after you see this game.  First, a description of the game:

The game is essentially a VERY sophisticated VCR/Editing deck wrapped around
a pretty good flight sim and scene creator [For you ex-Amigans out there,
you get something similar to Imagine or SA4D, but in realtime.  Remember those
Lambo-Apache demos by Allen Hastings?  Now you do it].  

The plot posits an island created for the sole purpose of shooting stunts, 
somewhere off of California.  On the island you find an unbelieveable variety 
of locations, each rendered in EXTRAORDINARY detail.  There is the Golden Gate
bridge, but it is rendered as a bridge, with rounded H-beams on the towers, 
cabling junctions in the middle of the span, cars moving along, and so forth, 
not a pathetic collection of sticks that JFII calls a bridge [you will notice 
your tolerance for other simulators' scenery dropping precipitously].  You 
will also find an aircraft carrier, Stonehenge, LAX, three stadiums, Alcatraz,
an old castle, an aqueduct, an eight lane superhighway, a powerplant, a forest,
a jungle, train tracks, a canyon, a reservoir, a hydro plant, to name a few.
The centerpiece and masterpiece of the scenery, however, is the urban setting.
There is a major city on both sides of a river, with bridges, skyscrapers, 
parks, the UN, industrial areas, and so on.  There is a smaller city, as well
as a fairly large town.  Now the important thing to understand is that
YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN CITIES LIKE THESE.  These cities are not retreads of
"a couple of boxes on a gray patch of land with some black lines 
running through it" which you have been seeing since Flight Simulator 1.0.
Nor are they absurd bits of bitmap noise seen most recently in the F15 SE III
demo.  These are cities with defined blocks, multiple buildings on each
block, plus skyscrapers, roads, trees, parks, vehicles, and other urban
phenomena.  In other words, they are complete cities, with all of the surface
area filled in with structures.  I can only repeat that you have never seen
stuff like this before, except as renderings on high end machines.  There is
simply no comparison.

Most of the world's major aircraft are present, including WWI biplanes
and triplanes; WWII Corsairs, Mustangs, Junkers, as well as modern planes
such as the Boing 727,737,747s, E3C AWACS, the Space Shuttle, MiG-29
Fulcrum, F/A-18 Hornet, SR-71, F-15C Eagle, F-16 Falcon, Tu-95 Bear, 
F-4 Phantom, A-10 Thunderbolt, plus a bunch I can't remember.  You also
get balloons, paragliders, hang gliders, meteors, as well as your basic 
pterodactyl and duck.  All of these aircraft are GOURAUD SHADED in REALTIME.
Yes!  Each aircraft is shaded in approximately 1-2 pixels colorbands.
The net effect of this is not so much to make the lightsourcing perfect
[even JFII does that], but to impart roundness to aircraft with round
surfaces.  Even the propellers are round and curved aerodynamically.
YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN AIRCRAFT LIKE THESE.  I guarantee that you will laugh
at Aces of the Pacific's Corsair, Mustang and Lightning after using this
program, after which you will AOTP.  I doubt that Strike Commander will
have such graphics.

The framerate of this game is AMAZING!  I was not joking about trashing
Unreal - the ooh and aah framerate of it is fine, until you realize that
SI processes about 20 times more polygons and gives you the same results while
allowing you to control the action.  A caveat of this is, of course, that 
you need a fast machine [mine is a 486-50].  I can't talk about the framerate
on lower machines - the game does have a variety of controls to reduce the
amount of details, which will speed the game up.  However, if you paid for
a fast machine and are wondering where the heck all of your megaHertz went,
you will have your faith restored in your computer.  Again, I do not 
exaggerate - YOU HAVE NOT SEEN FRAMERATE LIKE THIS.  As I understand, this
game was coded in pure Assembly - and IT SHOWS.  You have your essential
MiG-29 flying right through a concrete canyon at Mach 1.4 with enough
skyscrapers and buildings for a real city flying by, and the view also 
happens to show mountains and bridges, and the computer DOES NOT CARE!
Compare this with the outrageous slowdown of Aces whenever you so much 
as fly over an airbase [I'm only attacking Aces because it was my most played
game to this point - now it's gone.  Falcon3 has faster graphics than 
Aces, but the objects have no detail, even when using the real objects.]

Enough about the graphics engine.  I'd like to talk about the gameplay 
[otheriwse MicroProse would have published this].  Let's face it, game
companies are giving you ever fancier VCR functions and more detailed 
objects not so much for realism [otherwise they could devote themselves
to giving you more intelligent gameplay], but because you like to relive
your finest moments [sort of like mirroring your ceiling or taping youself
having sex].  The designers figured that they might as well code a game 
where the whole focus was proving you with enough cameras and camera angles,
plus near-real-world-quality objects so you can go ahead and make that
ultimate tunnel flythrough.  Think for a minute - did you fly through the
train tunnel in Gunship 2000 for military reasons?  Of course not.  You did it
because it would look good on the tape after the mission.  So, SI essentially
throws out the military aspect and all of the cardboard scenery, and gives 
you real tunnels, barns, canyons, aqueducts, and other fun things to fly
through/around/above/below [plus a train coming right at you].

The game comes with 32 prebuilt stunts; you can practice them individually or
do them sequentially in a competition for Stunt Pilot of the Year [fewest
takes per stunt].  These stunts range from the expected [barnstorming] to 
the classic [landing your plane on a train] to the weird [crashing a meteor
into a hotel] to the silly [flying a duck on a bombing mission] to the 
downright psychotic [crashing your F4U Corsair into the Number 4 starboard
engine on a 747].  You can edit the 'takes' using eight video inputs, plus add
SB .voc files, credits, fades, etc.  

The most important element, as far as we Internetters are concerned, however,
is the stunt design option.  You get something like 800 objects to place,
eight cameras to set up, and a complete event-driven programming system
to make all of them move.  You could have stunts involving a guy jumping
off of one balloon onto another ballon a bit lower just as the first one
explodes, and staircasing all the way to the ground.  You could have 
a Space Shuttle hitting an SR-71, underneath the Golden Gate bridge.  The 
possibilities really are endless.  Of course, there could be competitions - 
someone designs a fiendishly difficult stunt, posts it to wuarchive, and the
first person to complete it puts the tape on there and wins.  This could be
a lot more interesting than the Links386P tournament.  

I have only one complaint with the game - semi-bizarre flight models.  The 
pitch control of some prop planes is sometimes unresponsive, and the only way
to get out of a climb is to roll.  On the other hand, this may be realistic.
The jets are fine.

The game can use Adlib, SBPro, Roland sound boards.  It requires 2 megs
of memory and a 386SX-16, and recommends [read: requires] 386-33DX and 
more memory.  Personally, I love the "Caching data in 13867K extended
memory" message - it uses either XMS or EMS; XMS is better because of 
SB DMA lines.  

My recommendation - BUY THIS GAME!  The programmers will make money, you 
will have plenty of enjoyment, and the Net will have some amazing stunts 
to perform.  This is the game of the year so far.  SC might only equal it.
YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN SUCH A GAME AS THIS.

___
PS - Ross - feel free to include in Gamebytes if you wish.

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