Drydock Dreams Games, the developers behind Task Force Admiral, have in recent days, posted a lengthy update talking about where the project is in terms of status and laying out some of their goals for the future. This Command Simulation sim is more aimed at coordinating and launching big fleet battles featuring aircraft as the primary weapon but now its picking up some new goals that may incorporate something of a flight sim experience into it as well. They are also launching a kickstarter project (with some interesting goals) and a demo. Let’s have a look!

Task Force Admiral makes progress

Though the group have been fairly quiet when it comes to developer updates in recent months, the developers of Task Force Admiral report that they’ve been steadily working away in the background doing a lot to bring their project towards fruition.

Everything from graphics and sound to the user interface and the core mechanics of the sim have been worked on. TFA was looking particularly impressive when I last tested it, however, the gameplay loop was still heavily in development at the time so there wasn’t much to do at that point. It sounds like the way that you interact with the game is coming along.

There’s a half dozen videos incorporated into their update including this one with some great aerial battles on display.

Kickstarter

We’ve seen a few different styles of kickstarter project recently. VIRPIL did one to test the waters on a new yoke system which gathered up so many supporters so quickly that I think that it all but cemented their plans to make one. Task Force Admiral is doing one too and they’ve been specific about the purpose of the kickstarter.

First thing first, let’s be clear, it is not about funding. We do have other avenues of financing ourselves, so it is not really the focus on this campaign. There are many ways to raise funds in this day and age, and a Kickstarter campaign is just one way among many others. We could very well launch Task Force Admiral in early access, or make people pay for a beta. But this is not what this is about. It’s more about what we can do, using the tools of today, so as to recreate the full experience of what we had back in the 1990s, at the time of the prime of the original MicroProse: big boxes.

Task Force Admiral status update

With funding for the game itself seemingly guaranteed, it looks like this is more to assess the interest in owning a box set of the game with a so called “big box” from a few decades ago. I own a bunch of those from that era, many adorned with the MicroProse logo, so this hits right in the nostalgia part of my brain. If it does so in enough people then the effort of producing a boxed version will be worthwhile.

Task Force Admiral is now a flight sim?

Here’s something that really got my attention. I knew from the early days when I started reporting on this sim that they had some interesting features built in to make sure that their aircraft would fly correctly – it already has flight models, damage models, and systems modeling and now it looks like TFA may be picking up an honest to goodness flight sim experience.

…here’s the result of a small experiment we made this week as we needed to explore the basics of one of the stretch goals we’re planning for, that is controllable fighters in the tradition of Microprose’s own 1942: The Pacific Air War hybrid gameplay (and not unlike the thrill that the Battlestations series could, at a more arcady level, provide you with). Take it as a study of feasibility so as to make sure that it has some sort of potential to it.

Task Force Admiral “Target in Sight” video on YouTube

The current experience is just a test with only 2-days worth of time into it so far but it already has a chase view, a fixed forward view, padlock cameras, and a flight model with mouse control. Apparently joystick control is not far behind.

Check out the experimental setup in this video. If the feature comes to fruition it could see us planning out and starting out a battle and then jumping into aircraft to take direct action. As a flight simmer, that’s what we’re all about!

A demo is on the way

A playable demo is on the way and reportedly it will be coming out at the same time as the Kickstarter campaign so that people can get a taste of what’s coming up with a slice of the game experience. Various prototype game modes are also planned to appear.

Read the full report here and look out for the upcoming Kickstarter, demo and more news.