Let's Play Sopwith, part 3: Let's Play Sopwith II Versus Computer

Hello gang. Me again. I went in to work this morning only to find out I'm on an afternoon shift, so I have a few hours to kill. Let's wrap this up!



Here's my first round against the computer. It lasts a bit longer than my attempts in the earlier version. Note the improved enemy plane behaviour. It even knows how to recover from a stall! I can't do that! Despairing of ever getting into a position to hit it with my guns, I attempt to bomb it, and come pretty close to success. Then I try again and blow myself up. I'm reminded of this Kate Beaton comic.



Dogfighting is the real Sopwith. I gotta imagine this would be amazing versus another human. I manage to take out two planes and the fuel tank, at a loss of one cow and one of my own machines.



This round doesn't go so well. I do manage to shoot the enemy cow, which to be honest is nothing to brag about.



This is just sad. Birds on the runway!



And a low-speed crash on take-off finishes me off. It seems like you get more debris when there are enemy planes involved? Anyway, let's try again:



Not an awful start: two of theirs and a building for one of mine.



Another mid-air collision.



I take another shot at bombing an enemy plane, flinging a bomb high into the air and circling beneath it. Eventually my loops get loose and I crash just in time to see my bomb come back down and my enemy escape. Darn.



I think this is my favourite of the lot: I manage to shoot down a couple enemies, then I blow myself up over their airstrip. Not a great move, but falling debris takes out the next couple enemy planes.



And I finish with a head on collision and my craft thrown backwards into my own tank.

So yeah, that's Sopwith. It's a really fun game, and I recommend giving it a shot. The creator, David L. Clark, has a version available for download on his website.

Bonus:



I was playing around just for fun after recording this update, and suddenly I was facing off against two planes. I don't think that's how it normally works, and I'm not sure how I triggered it this time (I haven't really done my research). Unfortunately I wasn't recording at the time, so you don't get to see how I managed to get them to crash into each other without getting killed myself, but here's a later take with a three-plane pile-up.

Further Bonus:



I decided to try again, and it looks like the game spawns up to three enemy planes when you fly into their areas: one on the left, one on the right, and one at the airstrip in the middle. Unfortunately I wasn't able to bait the one from the left into a four-way battle, but I got the other two in for a crash together (not sure what's going on with the exploding plane in between). If you watch the mini-map in the last few frames of the gif you can see the purple dot representing the enemy plane still in the air falling towards the ground. Unfortunately I cut off recording before it crashed.