Original Carrier Command

[gadgetmind]

I never understood why no multiplayer option was built into it.

To be honest, it never even occurred to us!

The technically awesome thing about Carrier Command was the floppy disc loading routine. I have never seen such a complex game load faster than Carrier Command!

I wrote both the ST and the Amiga disk routines, and we even went on to licence them to a few people. The ST used a fairly standard layout, but I did skew the sectors to let us load a whole track in just over one revolution. The Amiga didn't use sectors: we put all the odd bits (with clock bits interleaved) in the first half of the track, and then the even+clock in the rest. We did this because we could then use the blitter to both split and combine the data and to insert/remove the clock bits.

Of course, I then had to visit the disk duplicator to work out how to write the parsing code for their fancy disk making machine!

So you are one of the original developers?

Yes, way back in my youth. I signed the Carrier Command contract the day before my 24th birthday and I'm now over twice as old!

Hey, I wonder if there will be another remake when I'm 72!

[Celery]

Yes, way back in my youth. I signed the Carrier Command contract the day before my 24th birthday and I'm now over twice as old!

Fancy that, I signed my soul to BI a day after I turned 24.

[dingbat91]

Hmmm I'll be finishing my Games programming degree in uni when I'm 24...co-incidence?

[Dajunka]

I remember buying 2 copy's, the second a week after the first, just so I could have time acceleration between islands. Updates and patches, were a thing of the future, you either used a work around for a bug or you bought another copy.

[BFCrusader]

To be honest, it never even occurred to us!

Would you say it would have been possible to implement back in the day?

[gadgetmind]

Would you say it would have been possible to implement back in the day?

Way back then, networking PCs was difficult, and modems were rare, slow and expensive.

Just as we were finishing the ST version, we did see Midi Maze, but I'm not sure we considered adding anything like that to Carrier Command.

[Malligant]

I'm wondering, Gadgetmind, was it possible to cut off the enemy carrier's supply lines to the point that it got stuck in the middle of the ocean or on a "dry island" with no fuel and no munitions? Or was it a glitch of some sort?

I'm asking since it was part of my strategy, to cut him off while protecting my own islands, but I also had this lingering suspicion that you had programmed the enemy carrier to not run out of stuff.

I remember playing this back in the day, (still do occasionally!) never having my carrier meet the enemy carrier was one of my favourite tactics.
I used to use a manta with a comms pod as a cruise missile to start with, you could usually determine what island the enemy carrier was basing its current operations from, and by cutting it off from its main base island, stop production of fuel and really slow it down. I found at first that four assassin missiles, closely followed by a manta crashing into it destroyed the island command centres.
However later in the game they seemed to get tougher So I staged air raids.. with one manta armed with a comms pod, and another fully kitted out with assassins, that usually did the trick! was fun island hopping with them, refuelling then going on to strike the enemy base while my carrier was safely behind a string of friendly islands.

Once I do remember being stranded in my island claiming run by having one of my connecting islands taken out, however with a comms manta set to auto pilot slowly, and a couple of walruses armed with virus bombs, harbingers and ACCBs, both auto piloting fast, is was possible, with occasional interference from myself to send the walrus out long range too (the mantas on slowest were a smidgen faster than walrus at their fastest in the water.)