Games created with Domark/Simis Flight Sim Toolkit (FST)

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MrFlibble
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Games created with Domark/Simis Flight Sim Toolkit (FST)

Post by MrFlibble »

First, a bit of backstory. Quite a while ago I came across a shareware WWII themed flight sim called Great Air Battles on a CD at cd.textfiles.com. The title screen and the docs mentioned that it was created with the Flight Sim Toolkit (FST). I Googled that but got no interesting results. What I did not realise is that back in the early to mid-90s, there was a thriving flight sim community that actively built various simulations based on FST. Just like with The Bard's Tale Construction Set, users could not only distribute complete games made with FST, but also sell them as shareware if they so wanted.

Fast forward to 2020 when I came across a game called Wings of Thunder at MobyGames. It was also created with FST, and using Hallfiry's magazine coverdisk catalogue I was able to find a copy, and from here, I decided to seriously dig the topic using the Wayback Machine -- as any other traces of the games have almost completely vanished. And just about the same time a different user posted a topic at VOGONS asking about FST games. Talk about serendipity!

The big site about FST was this one: http://www.mcnett.org/fst/

Unfortunately, Wayback Machine has only piecemeal preservation of the site's contents (which also mirrored several FTPs), exacerbated by the 1,024 KiB limit for files stored from 2000-2001 or so. There are numerous partially preserved, broken ZIP files.

So here are the games that have been found so far.

a. Complete games by Ron Walker/Ground Zero Simulations (all free, all Wayback Machine links work):
  • Skyhawk Attack
  • Tornado Squadron
  • Harrier Strike
  • Jaguar GR1: Strike Force Delta Zulu
  • Eurofigher 2010
b. Shareware games by Raymond Purvis/Viper Software (mostly original ZIP archives from various sources):
  • Aces of World War One: acesww1.zip
  • Battle of Britain: bob.zip (this is a repack, not the original ZIP)
  • Battle of the Midway - not found, file name MIDWAY.ZIP
  • Berlin 1955: berlin10.zip
  • Cyborg Invasion - not found, file name CYBORG.ZIP
  • Eurofighter 2005: ef2005.zip
  • F-16 Operation Black Diamond: bdiamon1.zip
  • F-86 MiG Mayhem Pacific Ocean - not found, file name MAHEM.ZIP
  • Falklands Air War 1982 - not found, file name unknown
  • Korean Air War - not found, file name KOREA.ZIP
  • Private Pilot: ppilt145.zip
  • Reno Racing 2000 - not found, file name RENO.ZIP
  • Vietnam Flight Simulator: vietnam.zip
c. Simulations by Luca Oleastri (D.U.O.): d. Simulations by Jose Sanchez: e. Simulations by Daniel Berlin: f. Simulations by Kevin Kwan/Minerva Interactive: g. Great Air Battles by Charles B. Law:
  • shareware v2.1 (1994/12/16): GAB_V21.ZIP [archive incomplete, missing files may be supplied from v2.5]
  • shareware/demo v2.5 (?) (1995/02/04): GAB_V25.ZIP
  • demo v1.3 (1995/03/54): attached here
  • demo v1.5a (1995/06/03): gab-d15a.arj [damaged ARJ archive]
  • demo v3.0 (199?/??/??): gab-v30.arj (655 KiB) [not found; mentioned here]
h. Simulations by various authors: i. Simulations for RISC OS: There are possibly several more small projects indexed by the Wayback Machine from mcnett.org website (annoyingly, several broken ZIPs with original size of over 1,024 KiB, such as listed here, are within the 1.2-1.5 MiB size limit, meaning that about 75-90pc of content is intact, but they're still unplayable due to the missing WORLD.FST and other data files). A few more have been identified via Hallfiry's catalogue, these ended up on magazine coverdisks as "reader submissions".

A few more sims are available from Mic Healey's archives.

A certain Adrian Brown maintained pages that listed several dozens FST projects. Here's an archived version of his catalogue in mostly intact condition:
http://www.adrianebrown.co.uk/flightsimtoolkit/frc/simulations.html

The download links there all point to Kuju's FTP, which apparently hosted user-created FST games.
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Games created with Domark/Simis Flight Sim Toolkit (FST)

Post by MrFlibble »

In the meantime, I found what appears like a better preserved mirror of Adrian E. Brown's FST catalogue:
http://www.adrianebrown.co.uk/flightsimtoolkit/frc/simulations/civilian/index.html
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Games created with Domark/Simis Flight Sim Toolkit (FST)

Post by MrFlibble »

I completely reworked the list in the first post and added a few more sims that have been found.
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Games created with Domark/Simis Flight Sim Toolkit (FST)

Post by MrFlibble »

User cyclone3d from VOGONS forums found and shared a complete ZIP of Daniel Berlin's GRiPEN simulator v0.96 (previously found in broken state), as well as an earlier version of Jose Sanchez' Spanish Civil War. I updated the download links in the first post.

I also thought it's be a good idea to sum up the archived pages that had no or almost no complete sims to download but still add to the entire picture:
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Games created with Domark/Simis Flight Sim Toolkit (FST)

Post by MrFlibble »

Here's what looks like an official FST preview from October 1993 with full-sized screenshots: fstkpics.zip
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Games created with Domark/Simis Flight Sim Toolkit (FST)

Post by Thoke »

Last night I was talking with my nephew as he was pouring over a book I have on ww2's greatest airplanes with pullout scale drawings of the various aircraft. I told him that back in the late 90's / early 2000's when I was in my teens, I built models from that book through software called Flight Sim Toolkit. I did a quick search to show him some pics and found this thread.

I was on a email loop with all the FST guys. They took FST to levels that I don't think the designers of the software anticipated. All of us were waiting for the new version. Which never materialized.

Jen's Boerner with Confusion designs took advantage of more powerful computers to create translucent clouds and more complex objects (e.g. many if us were building 200-300 polygon aircraft but his were 900-1100).

I didn't get far with the program but I did create a 900 polygon F6F hellcat, flight model, imported USGS terrain data for the island of Guam where I lived for two years, and setup some mock battles.

I built a website with a midi sound track from the old Battle of Britain movie. lol

Unfortunately I don't have any of my old files. Mostly I wish I had that hellcat.

All in all it was a lot of fun. I'll post again later when I can get on my computer.
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Games created with Domark/Simis Flight Sim Toolkit (FST)

Post by MrFlibble »

Hello, and welcome to the forums! Nice to hear from an FST veteran :)

I wonder if a snapshot of your site may be still found via the Wayback Machine?
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Post by Thoke »

Couldn't find it. I did find the FST list archived. Crazy to read that stuff after 24 years. I was the goofy "Tim"...
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Games created with Domark/Simis Flight Sim Toolkit (FST)

Post by MrFlibble »

Recently I found another FST game called Baron Bossetti's Way of Flying. Even though it appears to be a parody of sorts, it's quite nice-looking and the map appears detailed enough.
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Games created with Domark/Simis Flight Sim Toolkit (FST)

Post by MrFlibble »

Yesterday I looked through the search results for FLY.EXE at DiscMaster, and found three FST-powered simulations on a CD called Warplanes: Modern Fighting Aircraft. These appear to be part of a single multimedia programme on the CD, and thus contain no instructions, mission objectives or author information. The main programme is for Win3.x, so I have not the idea what they are about, except that the planes in question are SU-27, A-10 and C-130, judging by the folder names.

The back of the CD case says: "Simulations created by Simis using the Flight Sim Toolkit which is available from Domark Software Ltd". If true, this makes these levels "official" Simis missions specifically created for this project. I guess this is not very surprising, considering the company's background.

I also found this odd little thing called FSTCOVER.EXE, which appears like it could be an official demo? Again, no text or explanation apart from an obviously third-party FILE_ID.DIZ.
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Games created with Domark/Simis Flight Sim Toolkit (FST)

Post by Rwolf »

Cool find; I have a number of these encyclopedic titles, and this (Warplanes: Modern Fighting Aircraft) is in my collection; I never ran it, didn't know there was something flyable inside. It seems to run on Windows/Mac/PowerMac according to the manual.

The flight missions are run by spawning a DOS session from the encyclopedia; this does not work from XP, but the encyclopedia itself works fine.
The mission descriptions and keyboard control instructions are printed in the manual, which may not be part of the ISO on archive.org?
I tested running the mission programs in DOSBox directly from the CD, and this worked ok.

The game has three flyable planes with one mission each: an A-10 tankbusting mission in Iraq during the Gulf War, an Israeli C-130 resupply mission during the 1st Lebanon War, and a Cold War Soviet Su-27 testpilot on a training mission with MiG-21 drones as targets.


(I also checked the other lot I have, but they only had video clips&images with text info like a normal encyclopedia)
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