Hey y’all, remember that Q&A with Thomas Carbone & Maurice Molyneaux I did a while back? Well, shortly thereafter, Maurice was nice enough to send me a couple more images for me to share from Rules of Engagement’s inception. Sadly they got lost in the shuffle of sickness and busyness, but thankfully Maurice was kind enough to remind me that he sent them a short while ago, so I figured I’d put ’em up for everyone’s please. Please, after the cut, enjoy more images from Maurice and Omnitrend as well as his explanation as to what they are, and thanks!
Maurice explains what these are:
First up is FallonNAS, which are some quick drawings I made when ROE’s technical advisor, Mark Bradshaw, took me on a tour of the Strike school at NAS Fallon in Nevada (where Top Gun is now). As we looked at all the computers and rack mounted equipment I was struck by some of the details on the edges of the slotted cards and some membrane key markings. Also there is a tiny sketch of an airplane with a “history trail” that shows the plane’s path back a certain amount of time in seconds (you could adjust this). That was something I wanted for Rules but it was too much calculation and detail to make clear on a low res display. We did end up using vectors to indicate the ship facings, tho.
Second is CCSI2 Planning which is a single 12×9 sheet on which I did a lot of my early working out of the ROE2 interface, including the configuration menu (note the zipper to shut up ANDI), the central control bar, the names of the quadpanels, ideas for how a quadpanel would go full screen, etc.
Great stuff! I wonder what features never made it into the game.
Hey Virtuality, welcome to the comments, and thanks! Would you like me to ask your question to the devs? ;)
Wow, yeah, it would be interesting to hear what they have to say.
Damn, am also stuck now. How do you travel to a waypoint (when in-mission)? Also if your communication systems got knocked out, and you need all ships at a specific waypoint to end the mission, what do you do?