F/A-18 Interceptor - Hints KNOWN BUGS ---------- * It is possible to 'skip' your jet over land or water as long as you keep the nose fairly level and pull up right after touching the surface. If you do not pull up, the plane will bog down as if in some sort of dense mud puddle and eventually come to a halt (although your THRUST will not change). There seems to be no recourse other than to either bail-out or restart the mission. * The Flight Log contains a bug in its ability to record and keep track of your Call-Sign. Merely a nuisance, and it does not hinder gameplay/simulation at all. * Although this is not a bug in the true sense of the word (it was obviously programmed as such), there is an artificial ceiling of 40,960 feet. When this height is achieved your plane will simply hang there, waiting on you to move away from the barrier. * The same is true for the North/South/East/West boundaries in the terrain. * Any Flight Simulator which does not support an analog joystick is destined to be labeled such things as 'GAME, PURE AND SIMPLE', 'UNPROFESSIONAL', 'SERIOUSLY LACKING', etc. This is the case with Interceptor, and as such it should go into the record books as being a BUG of the highest magnitude. * It is possible to land, refuel, and rearm your jet by landing on the enemies carrier/sub during the Shadow Sub mission. * It is impossible to land on, taxi over, or crash into any of the bridges in the Bay Area. Nor can you kill the downed pilot in the Search And Rescue scenario, or destroy a parachuting rescue pod. All of these seem to be invisible as far as your plane and weapons are concerned. * When asked to 'Press SHIFT-ESCAPE' to return to main menu, you must actually press any key before that particular key-combination. It doesn't accept SHIFT-ESCAPE on the first take. * As far as can be determined, all missions are indeed capable of being completed as per instructions except for the Shadow Sub mission, which must be completed in a way that is contrary to the orders given to you. WEIRDNESS --------- * While on the carrier, you can inch your way to the edge of the deck and hang about 7/8ths of your plane over the water without falling in. Also, at SFO when Air Force One is sitting there you can inch your way -onto- its tail section almost up to its midsection before 'falling through' and destroying AF-1. * There seem to be certain instances (though I cannot reliably repeat this at will) when you can bail-out of an aircraft and as you are parachuting down choose the Control Tower view at which time you find a replacement aircraft sitting on the runway waiting on you. This aircraft can indeed be flown, although you will not be able to acquire a cockpit view and must fly by what you can see from your parachute view and tower view. * In the DEMO mode, the only interaction you can achieve is firing missiles when the demo arms them. No other keypresses are operational. I had hoped to find a way to exhaust the missiles before the MIG was within range and see if it would shoot down the F18, but as yet I don't see how this can be accomplished. UNDOCUMENTED 'FEATURES' ----------------------- * Although the documentation states that you can use the '=' key to increase throttle by one step and the '-' key to decrease throttle by one step, it doesn't tell you that if you hold these keys down the throttle will continue to increase/decrease in one step increments. * While on the ground (or carrier, or sub) and stopped, you can actually go in reverse by holding down the '-' key for a moment. * You can 'bump' into buildings and other stationary objects without crashing if you do so only at low speeds. Once thrust is increased to a certain point while up against an object, you will crash. * The program seems to run fine on a 68010/68020 equipped Amiga. * All of the VIEW MODE keys (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,and decimal point) work just as well when parachuting. * The ZOOM KEYS (left and right brackets) work just as well while in MAP VIEW or in the TOWER VIEW. * While in TOWER VIEW, your viewpoint will change dependent on the plane or parachute position. It automatically pans around in reference to the plane/parachute, much like a camera follows its subject. * The RANGE MARKER in the AIMING RETICLE located on the Heads-Up Display (HUD) works thusly: It starts at the 11:00 position, which indicates that the enemy is 10 or more miles away. As the targeted enemy approaches your plane, the range marker will rotate counter-clockwise around the reticle. At the 12:00 position, the enemy is extremely close to you. * A very nice feature of the radar, which many haven't caught onto yet, is that when other planes are below your altitude they will be one (1) screen pixel wide. When they are above your altitude, they become two (2) pixels wide. NIFTY ENHANCEMENTS ------------------ * There is a file called LACE.EXE floating around in the public domain which runs well along with Interceptor and improves its appearance by filling in every other screen line, much like interlace but keeping the same screen dimensions. If you usually boot Interceptor from its own disk, do the following: 1) Copy LACE.EXE to the root of the Interceptor disk 2) Copy the RUN command from your WorkBench C directory to the Interceptor C directory 3) Use a text editor or word processor and alter the STARTUP-SEQUENCE located in the S directory of the Interceptor disk to include the line - RUN LACE.EXE - directly after it says BINDDRIVERS 4) Save the altered STARTUP-SEQUENCE back to its S directory. * Interceptor can be run from your standard WorkBench screen in a number of ways (see the next tip for running it from a hard-drive). The first way is the simplest. Remove your WorkBench disk from DF0: and place it into another drive. Place Interceptor into DF0:, open up the disk, click on the files icon, away you go. Apparently, the program has a nagging need to find what it wants on DF0: and does not use standard AmigaDOS volume names as reference. The second method is more permanent in nature, and should not be accomplished unless you know what the heck I am talking about or what the heck you are doing. Using a COPY of your Interceptor disk, run a disk editor (or text editor that can deal with binary files and has search/replace options) on the main Interceptor file. Search for all occurances of DF0: and replace them with DF1: or DF2:, depending on where you will run the program from in the future. * For hard-drive booting of Interceptor, again do not attempt this if you know not of what I am talking about here... The first method is to do basically that which is outlined above, but replace all occurances of DF0: with DH0: (or whatever your drive is designated as). This would mean, however, that your Interceptor files would need to be on your hard-drives root directory. Hardly what most would want to do. The alternative is to copy Interceptor to any subdirectory you wish (lets say, GAMES), use the disk editor to change all occurances of DF0: with any logical device designation that you choose (for instance INT:), and then ASSIGN that logical device to the subdirectory of your hard-drive (or use XICON to make the assignation for you automatically every time you click the Interceptor icon). FUN-STUFF, HINTS, TIPS ---------------------- * Use the 'TRAINING - PRACTICE MANEUVERS' scenario in order to hone your cannon-firing abilities. Although you cannot actually fire weapons in this mode, it does a lot of good to follow your flight instructor around and try to keep him in your aiming reticle. Click the button to make him evade you, and try to stay within gun range from him. * Want to try and set a land speed record? Use the 'NO ENEMY CONFRONTATION' scenario and choose to take-off from SFO or Moffett Field. Taxi your plane onto any of the longer Bay Area highways (like 101 for instance) and kick in the afterburners. If you don't pick up the planes nose you can really put a Ferrarri to shame! Try to keep your plane on the highway as long as possible. Also try driving this way while using an outside-rear view or an outside-overhead view. * The Electronic Arts building (actually it is the northernmost of the two twin buildings) is located just west of the San Mateo bridge in a gray 'plaza' (much of which is really parking lot). Not shown is the gorgeous fountain located between the two buildings. By the way, for those wondering... the large black building in downtown San Francisco is the Bank Of America building (right next to the TransAmerica pyramid). The island right off the coast of the city which has two towers and a low building in between them is Alcatraz. The island which is in the center of the Bay Bridge (joining Oakland and San Francisco) is Yerba Buena (and the Coast Guard's Treasure Island). The mountain located on the Marin County side of the Golden Gate Bridge is called Mount Tamalpais. (Complete sightseeing tours on request) * It is possible to acquire a good close-up look at one of the MIG's in a number of ways. I do it the Air Force One scenario. Follow AF-1 to SFO and land alongside it without engaging any of the MIG's which follow you in. Taxi around the runway and keep a close eye on the enemy planes. Usually if they shoot at you while you are on the ground, their missiles will explode next to you harmlessly (an interesting sight by the way). Wait until you see one or both of the MIG's come so low that they get bogged down in the water next to the runway or on land nearby. Taxi on over to them (or as close as possible if they are in the water and use your ZOOM keys) and give em a thorough inspection. * For an interesting visual effect, take off from the aircraft carrier and head west (direction really makes no difference). Go out about 10 miles and come to about 170 feet. Turn around and head directly at the carriers tower, and arm your AMRAAM missiles. Hit the SHIFT-ENTER key combination in order to get a Control Tower view. As you see yourself approaching the tower *from* the tower, let loose a few missiles. If you think you are going to hit the tower, pull up or to the side and watch your plane as it passes by the tower. Your tower view will follow your flight path rather nicely. (You may also ZOOM in/out.) * Another interesting visual effect... take off from SFO and head straight for San Francisco at about 15 feet. Acquire an OUTSIDE BELOW-PLANE view using the decimal key and watch as you pass (and/or crash into) the downtown buildings. Try and circle the city using only this view. * Something which has been occupying a lot of my Interceptor flight-time is precision parachuting drills. I head for a target (like the Transamerica pyramid), take an OUTSIDE-ABOVE view with the ZOOM all the way out, and try to bail-out at the precise moment so as to land atop the buildings pinnacle (no easy task). Even if you miss, you can treat yourself to some spectacular close-ups of the target using your view keys as you parachute down. Other 'chuting targets of interest: The E.A. building, any of the bridges, the carriers tower, the Bank Of America building, Alcatraz Island, and the downed pilot! * Want to take a close look at the rescue pod? Go to about 40,000 feet and eject it. Turn around and make some close fly-bys. Or go to a clear land mass and let it loose while at low-altitude, then turn around and land near it. =====================================================================