Topic: Hell Fighter is a fast action combination internet multiplayer game for Windows

[Software Santa]

Hell Fighter is a fast action combination internet multiplayer game for Windows

http://www.dracova.com/hellfighter/

Welcome to the Hell Fighter Web Site!

Hell Fighter is a fast action combination of space craft simulation, arcade scroller, and tactical gameplay... all brought onto a single battlefield.

As an internet multiplayer game, you control one of the ships in combat on a network server. Fighters, capital ships, bases, merchants, freighters, and other units appear in the game... they may be controlled by players or AI. They may be on your side... or they may be the enemy.

Hell Fighter is freeware. I write this game because I wanted a game like this to exist, and there is just nothing else like it out there.

HELL FIGHTER NEWS
9/30/04

    I am officially closing the Hell Fighter game project. I started writing this game when I was about 15 years old... that was 16 years ago. For the last few years, development has been sporadic at best. I have much less free time and motivation to do it than I used to have back then. And, frankly, after working on it for more than a decade, it starts to get just a little old. I want to move on to new projects. I've had new ideas for new games for a long time which I have never pursued because I would feel guilty for working on them rather than Hell Fighter. So I've gotten stuck. And I just have to admit that it's time to move on. I can't just write the same game for my entire life.

    I'm not taking down the web site. I'm not removing the game that has been developed. I'm not relinquishing my copyrights. I'm just officially closing development of new versions of this particular game. I may do other things with the universe I have created. And I could even start another space combat game in this universe sometime in the future. Who knows.

    All I can say for sure is that you have not seen the last from me.

7/6/03

    Yesterday, I released to alpha testers the first multiplayer capable version of Hell Fighter 2. From the feedback I've heard so far, it's even working pretty good. Having been designed for internet multiplayer from the beginning this time, it should be able to handle it much more smoothly.

    I've changed the name to 'Hell Fighter 2'. Apparently the previous name was causing some confusion. Some folks thought it was going to be a 1st person cockpit-view type game like a lot of other games out there these days. It's not. After all these years, Hell Fighter's game format is still rather unique. Hell Fighter 2 retains a similar top view 2D game format to the original Hell Fighter, but it uses real time 3D rendering rather than bitmaps. And there's some tilt to the camera angle so that it's not pointing directly downward. Think Einhander or Silpheed (but with free movement rather than being pulled along a fixed path), and you'll be much closer to the mark.

    Why? It's certainly not because the game engine couldn't be 3D... in fact, the HF2 engine actually is 3D, but constrained to a 2D plane. It is the way it is for game play purposes.

    The achilles heel of first person flight sims is the extremely limitted situational awareness of the player. It's as if you're in the cockpit with a cardboard tube strapped to your face. You... can't... SEE! So the game mechanics must necessarily limit the amount of action and the aggressiveness of enemy units. Otherwise the player will be totally overwhelmed (and quickly destroyed) by all the things happening outside their cardboard tube view. It's very common in these games to be shot down without having any idea you were even being shot at.

    In Hell Fighter, the 2D game format allows you to see what's going on all around you. And boy is there a lot going on around you! Don't blink! It's important that you see all of it. When you dodge missiles, it has to be purposeful, well placed, and well timed. Randomly turning won't cut it. Sorry.

http://www.dracova.com/hellfighter/