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### Patrol Falcon [PC]

#### http://staniol.extra.hu/

#### Reviewed By M. Bevan

Ahh, the humble Harrier jump-jet. Catapulted into the public's consciousness in the early eighties due to its aptitude for shooting down unfortunate Argentineans during the Falklands conflict, it went on to star in a number of home computer games during the decade of Thatcherism and Spandau Ballet. Durrell's Harrier Attack, a lovingly accurate depiction (by Speccy standards) of a bombing run on downtown Goose Green, was enjoyable enough take on Konami's Scramble. However the Commodore 64 had Steve Lee's Falcon Patrol, whose influences were significantly more divine, namely Eugene Jarvis's Defender.

Falcon Patrol is certainly one of the best of an early batch of UK-produced C64 titles. The game's basic premise, a desperate fight to defend a small desert town against the increasingly numerous attacks from squadrons of enemy Mirage fighters, scored few marks for originality but was an enjoyable one. The star of the show was definitely your nimble Harrier, with its famous VTOL abilities lovingly recreated on the humble 64 in their entirety. Your jump-jet was simple to control but highly maneuverable, with a great control 'feel' and some relatively true-to-life in-game physics which struck a perfect balance between realism and playability.

Staniol's remake captures the essence of Steve Lee's original very nicely indeed, while subtly blending in a number of excellent updated elements. The first things you'll notice as you lift off from your landing-pad and reach cruise altitude above the sand dunes are the rather nifty new multi-layered parallax scrolling and cloud effects. There's not much time for admiring the scenery though as blips on your early-warning radar-scanner will soon converge on your position and, heralded by the blistering screech of jet exhaust, enemy planes will thunder into view with guns and bombs blazing.

You have two strategies to deal with these aerial interlopers, either waiting for them to whizz past and giving chase to deliver a hail of missiles up their tail-pipes (the sensible option) or attempting to tackle them head-on (the fool-hardy option, which does however award you extra points for your lunacy). Most players will opt for the former strategy, and chasing down a pack of uncannily hard-to-tag Mirage fighters is a lot of fun. Another great feature of the remake is the use of particle effects, and missile and exhaust trails, leading to some spectacular and often amusing Red Arrows-style moments and narrow misses with enemy planes, intentional or otherwise. Get enough missiles into an enemy jet's behind and it'll tumble flaming from the sky to explode in a fireball of debris on the desert below. These flashy updated special-effects add to the enjoyment of the remake considerably.

To up the ante for the remake, Staniol has added a few welcome new features to spice things up a bit. Friendly factories, radar stations and oil wells are now dotted over the landscape, as well as the multiple re-arming/re-fuelling take-off pads seen in the original, and all must be protected for your welfare in the game. The enemy planes will try to take these strategic sites out with a well-placed bomb, and losing too many will affect your rate of re-fuelling or re-arming (oil wells and factories respectively) or the functioning of your radar-scanner (radar stations, natch). Most important however are your landing pads, lose them all and you won't be able to re-fuel and you'll soon be buried nose-first under the Sahara. Luckily these facilities re-spawn at the beginning of each new level.

The desert landscape you find yourself patrolling has been expanded and feels about twice the size of the original game's (before wrapping round Defender-style). This gives you a bit more space to play with, the downside being that it can take a while to catch up with enemy planes, which are only moderately slower than your Harrier and might cause some frustration for those that simply want to wade quickly into the action and shoot things. However on later levels, when the game's AI starts to become a little more savvy and the number of bogies in your area increases you'll be very grateful for the extra airspace.

For the time being the game doesn't support gamepads or joysticks, being keyboard-control only and using the cursor keys for movement and the space bar to fire. Staniol is however considering the possibility of joystick support at some point. Overall though this is a stirling first-time effort from a coder who recognises and understands the mechanics of the first Falcon Patrol, and has set about actually trying to improve them while retaining the key elements that made the original such a good game. Patrol Falcon delivers the thrills, spills and excitement of jet combat in 2D airspace more successfully than any other game your correspondent has played in a long time.

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Graphics: | 85%
Sound: | 72%
Game Concept: | 69%
Gameplay: | 87%
Lasting Appeal: | 82%

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Q1. As way of introduction, please could you give a brief paragraph or two about yourself?

I started programming a long time ago on a C16 in basic, then moved to C64, learned assembly, did some small games (never released), and a lot of intros/demos. Then came the working years, mainly SQL in Oracle, Interbase and MySQL. After a promotion, I realised that I was administrating and managing and no longer doing any coding - and I missed it. I restarted coding in Borland Delphi, creating applications for databases, and rediscovered the fun to be had in software development. Now I am using Blitzmax, because it's simple, fast, and object oriented.

If you need more background, I am 33 years old Hungarian (married), working currently in Rome, I have spent the last year at Kulala Lumpur and I do not know where will I be next year. One more fact which is important (at least for me), is that I’ve been playing bass guitar for more than 14 years.

Q2. Why did you chose to remake Falcon Patrol?

A few reasons. It was one of the first C64 games I played, although as I remember, the competition at that time wasn't too great. The atmosphere was amazing. As this is my first serious work after many years, I wanted a fairly simple concept. I thought a side scrolling shooter would not be too complex thing to put together, although it turns out I wasn't completely correct about this!

Q3. There's a nice rendition of the original Falcon Patrol title tune, as well as an all-new original composition featuring lots of Desert Strike-style voice samples. Can you tell us about their creation?

Yep. The original theme was definitely something I wanted to re-create for the remake, so, being a musician myself, I tried to recompose it using my guitar and by ear but failed! So I decided to use a SID to MIDI converter, and it worked fine, so I got the notes and the rhythm written finally with this method. For the other music piece I used a drum loop with a background music track. The pilot chatter in the background is real material collected from the net.

Q4. One notable thing about the remake is the presence of some rather nice particle effects in the explosions, and smoke trails. Did you spend a long time creating these?

They weren't too hard to create using BlitzMax, but I did spend lot of time to fine-tuning them, implementing colour, transparency, size, fading, you name it. In hindsight I might have overdone them a bit!

Q5. Why did you decide to make certain changes from the original game such as adding the Radar Stations, Factories etc?

As the original Falcon Patrol has a desert setting the desert background was the first thing I worked on when I started, and it took some time. Most of the background elements are random (trees, dunes, etc), but apart from the landing pads, I was in need something fixed to make the player familiar with area. Not to mention that the enemy should have something to destroy, because why should you take care about this happening if it doesn't have a negative effect on you? It was a clean logical move forward.

Q6. How exactly does the enemy plane AI improve as the player progresses through the game?

Secrets. That is what you need, my secrets! Well, it's so simple that I feel ashamed to explain it. Basically, I created the best AI that I could, in terms of following your aircraft, bombing, shooting at you, avoiding your rockets. The frequency with which the game calls this routine as you play makes all the difference. I remember it not even working on the first day. As you progress, this AI gets called more frequently. At the highest levels, the AI is constantly working for the enemy planes. There are other things to make the game more difficult, like the fact there are simply more enemies later.

Q7. Will joystick support be added in any future versions?

In my mind I already have a plan for a second release (online multi-play, a sort of Falcon Patrol 3). I have started to create a control interface module for myself, which can be used in all my future releases. As soon as I am ready, I'll put it in Patrol Falcon as well.

Q8. As your first remake Patrol Falcon is an excellent effort. Are you pleased with how it turned out?

Basically, yes as when I started I had no expectations. I developed on a HP6000 laptop and sent it friends to be test on other computers. There may still be a few small bugs, and there are a lot of things I would do differently next time, but I think at the end, it's still a good game to play. I didn't plan on it being released publicly, it was started as an exercise made for myself. So I enjoy playing it. Looks like others do too!

Q9. Any ideas yet for your next remake?

Sure. I am already working on a remake of Pit Stop II!

Q10. Thank you for participating in this interview. Is there anything else you'd like to add before signing off?

Sure. It would be great if you could mention that my wife was responsible for the quality of the graphics in Patrol Falcon. I had to redraw and re-colour almost everything at least five times until she said they were OK(!)