1999
The idea was conceived when I saw a music clip on TV; I don't remember whose it was. It featured two small, toylike, but heavily-armoured and even heavier-armed aircraft; propeller-driven and really crudely made, all nuts and bolts. They chased each other around in a very high-speed manner, through clouds into open sky and back.
This vision stuck in my brain and surfaced again in the next TheoII lecture. I started to draw little battle aircraft and majestic Fortresses In The Sky into my script. When Kai saw them, I explained it all to him and we decided to make a major action game out of this -
Blaze!®
It would have featured an elaborate graphics engine, a sophisticated AI engine, a state-of-the-art netplay engine, a bombastic soundtrack engine, and many many more engines.Graphics would be modular - an object could have actors attached which would act independently and automatically.
The game AI that would drive the other planes would be able to steer them in concert, let them communicate directly or via blackboard, learn from the user and act autonomously.
The network part received a lot of attention. Gameplay could be distributed over several game hosts that would divide up the game space on their own and online. Objects crossing computation boundaries would be handed over according to a complex scheme that would ensure that no inconsistencies could arise between players' views. When one host went offline unexpectedly, the others would recognize this and reconsider their alloted game space instantly.
The physics was to be modelled closely after reality, with all the necessary static and dynamic aspects implemented.
All too soon, however, this project fell prey to personal incongruities completely unrelated to the business part, and this was the end of one of the most ambitious flight and combat simulators ever.
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