<html><head><title>Baptism of Fire</title></head>
<body background="../../images/tile">
<center><h3>Baptism of Fire</h3></center>
<p>
  You play the part of a starship commander, whose mission is to recapture a 
'doomsday weapon', and the officer responsible for its development, from an 
enemy battle squadron, which launched a surprise attack when the weapon was 
undergoing testing in a distant sector of space, supposedly unknown to the 
enemy. 
<p>
<b>Main viewer:</b>
<p>
  You have a choice: Either an FST-style 'cockpit' view, or an external one 
showing your ship from a chosen angle (with texture mapping etc. this will 
probably need a StrongARM to be playable when there are large numbers of 
ships on the screen).
<p>
  You also have a control panel which has an interactive 'radar' scren (more 
about that later), along with shields status, speed etc. indicators and buttons to 
activate various commands in battle (engage tractor beam, fire weapons, board 
ship, set auto destruct sequence, abandon ship, get status reports from damage 
control, engineering etc.) as well as some blank space where 'special' commands 
will appear when you have the option of using them (eg. set course/actions of 
another ship, which you have captured).
<p>
<b>Controls:</b>
<p>
  I can't believe that the spacecraft of the future would be controlled in the 
haphazard way most 3D space simulations seem to be, so I'm not using this for 
Baptism of Fire. In battle, targets can be selected by clicking on them in the 
'radar'/sensor display - battles will be pretty static, as we are talking about 
battleships, not fighters. You can also click on a 'feature' of the spacescape (eg. 
sun, nebula, perhaps some planets) to get information about it, or to lay in a 
course for it.
<p>
<center><img src="../../Images/Starship"></center>
<p>
<b>Plot:</b>
<p>
  I have no intention of allowing this to become a 'shoot-'em-up'. To complete 
the game, you will need to think quite hard. The game can, therefore, be paused. 
Baptism of Fire can only be won by having a certain amount of tactical skill, 
not, as most games seem to demand, quick reflexes.
<p>
  I don't believe in unrealistic senarios, so this isn't a 'one against the Universe' 
type game. The enemy are superior numerically, but it is quite possible to outwit 
them through deception. For example, at one point in the game, part of the 
enemy squadron, having inflicted severe damage on your vessel, return to their 
squadron's rendezvous, leaving one ship, of the same class as your own, to finish 
you off. Soon afterwards, you get a report from your chief engineer that damage 
is not as severe as it might have been. You then are able (at least in theory - I 
can't account for personal ineptness) to defeat the enemy ship, board it, and set 
course for the enemy's rendezvous, where you, again with luck, can make the 
enemy think that your ship has been captured, and so is friendly, instead of the 
other way round. As your vessel is now fatally crippled, you set it on auto 
destruct, and instruct the other ship to tractor it into the midst of the enemy 
fleet just after you bord the enemy's flagship, supposedly to make your report as
captain of the ship you captured, but actually to rescue the officers captured 
with the doomsday weapon, using the explosion as a diversion. The blast 
damages enough of the enemy vessels for you to make your escape, sabotaging 
the flagship before you leave, by means of a bomb, and bringing the weapon 
along with you by way of a tractor beam. The game then continues, as by no 
means all the enemy vessels are so damaged that they cannot pursue you...
<p>
  However, unlike most games that have a plot, it isn't a fancy text adventure 
with a few graphical add-ons. It will be one of the most graphically impressive 
games for the Acorn when it is finished, incorporating texture mapping, a huge 
intro sequence in Replay format, large amounts of sampled speech and video 
clips for the most important scenes. I will soon be getting some resources from 
Uniqueway which will allow me to implement multitasking Replays, which will be 
used, among other things, for the in-game music. For the rest, the standard of the 
'starships', made out of huge numbers of texture mapped polygons, will not, I 
think, cause any complaints. 
<p>
  The game is designed so that extra missions can be added on (though as totally 
separate senarios - ie. you don't have to have completed the first to attempt the 
second) easily. The second senario, Castles in the Sand, is under construction, 
and I intend to release it with the original game. The senario will be something 
like this...
<p>
  On the way back to base after the successful completion of your first mission, 
your ship intercepts a communication, from which you deduce that the fleet 
blockading the enemy in port has mutinied, and left their station. You have to 
convice the enemy fleet that there is still a powerful blockading force out there. 
If you fail, the enemy will leave their base, and instantly attack the Alliance, for 
which you are fighting, leading to the destruction of everything you hold dear....
<p>
  I am also at work on a massive final mission for Baptism of Fire. Set many
years after the first two, Flotsam of a Dream places you in the role of an
Admiral in command of a small squadron, at the time of an enemy invasion and
the collapsing of the Alliance. You are civilisation's last, best hope.
<p>
  Also under consideration is a system, rather like <a href="../PD/Thunder">
Flight Sim Toolkit</a>, which would allow users of the package to create
their own missions, which could then be included in later versions of the
package. If this is encorporated, I would hope that this would become the
natural successor to <a href="../PD/Thunder">FST</a>, encorporating as it
does all the more modern graphical standards and requirements. It may well be
that Baptism of Fire is what is required to take Acorn 3D simulations into
the 20th century. 
</body>
</html>