Digital Integration's Tornado - 71 tinkering ('mods') and counting

[frankie]

Digital Integration's Tornado is the only DOS flight simulator of the 1990s that is still actively being enhanced in 2018.
There have been 71 mods since August 2017.
Read about it here: http://dogsofwarvu.com/forum/index.php/ ... 046.0.html
Source code is 16-bit x86 Assembly Language (circa 1993/1994)
Compiler/Linker is MASM 6.11 (circa 1993)
Looking for coders and coder-wannabes to help improve Tornado for its 25th Anniversary (1993 to 2018), this year. Any takers?

[MrFlibble]

Hello, and welcome to the forums!

Are the mods based on binary hacking, reverse engineering, or is the original source code of the game available? I haven't heard of Tornado being open source, but then again, flight sims are kinda niche so this might have not reached a wider audience.

[frankie]

Hi Fibs

> Are the mods based on binary hacking, reverse engineering, or is the original source code of the game available?
>
The original source code is available, so the mods are actual source code modifications. Interplay, which owned Titus Interactive, which in turn had bought over Digital Integration (the creator of Tornado), did not have the source code. I obtained the source code from the ex-DI programmer who was involved in the project. Dug up from a CD-ROM in the programmer's room. Discovered during spring cleaning. I have checked with Interplay and Interplay is unsure who owns the rights to the game. Source code's legal rights are in limbo. So until that gets sorted out, the source code is available for modding and can be downloaded from https://github.com/tornadorebooted/torn ... -flightsim.

Regards
Frankie Kam

[frankie]

FYI, I have created a series of screenshot images named "N Mods of Tornado". They give you an overview of some of the 75 modifications done to
Tornado. You can see the full suite of images from the Dogs Of War Virtual Unit forums at http://dogsofwarvu.com/forum/index.php/ ... 064.0.html
I could be wrong, but as far as I know this is the only 1990s DOS flight simulator that is being modded in 2018.

[MrFlibble]

The original source code is available, so the mods are actual source code modifications. Interplay, which owned Titus Interactive, which in turn had bought over Digital Integration (the creator of Tornado), did not have the source code. I obtained the source code from the ex-DI programmer who was involved in the project. Dug up from a CD-ROM in the programmer's room. Discovered during spring cleaning. I have checked with Interplay and Interplay is unsure who owns the rights to the game. Source code's legal rights are in limbo. So until that gets sorted out, the source code is available for modding and can be downloaded from https://github.com/tornadorebooted/torn ... -flightsim.

This is very cool, and you did a great job obtaining the code! (Upon typing this I realised that this is an understatement I mean, it must be really awesome to find the source code of your favourite game, right? ^_^)

Have you considered a port to modern systems, or is this out of the question while the legal side of the matter is not clarified?

When I was a kid back in the early 90s I had a copy of F-19 and played a lot with it. I didn't fully understand how it all worked back then, there was no manual and I had to figure out controls and stuff by myself. But it was fun anyways, and I developed a nostalgic liking for the late 80s to early 90s flight sims, although I don't play regularly and probably am not a good player. I appreciate how the graphics became more realistic as new flight sims came out, but still love the retro look. However it appears that the very nature of simulation games precludes the use of retro graphics for aesthetic purposes, because a simulation theoretically should be as close to the real thing as possible.

In this respect, a modern source port of Tornado would be a neat thing IMO (e.g. keep the graphics but allow higher resolutions etc.). I verily hope that the legal uncertainty is resolved and the game gets a proper re-release through GOG.com and/or Steam.

Thanks for sharing all this information, and good luck with your projects!