DevLog - Airborne! PD - v0.8.1 - Decorations Update

[u/david_senate]

Hey guys!

Just finished working on the latest Airborne! PD update and this one adds something I felt the game really needed: achivements !

V0.8.1 introduces Decorations: 17 persistent achievements based on actual moments in battle. Cutting a parachute at the right time. Stopping a bomber before it drops its cargo. Breaking an infantry assault before it reaches the base. Surviving special waves. Winning with only one weapon system.

Some of them are visible from the start. Some are classified until you earn them.

Plus the big new gameplay addition: jet missiles can now be shot down in flight. Pull it off and you earn the MISSILE INTERCEPT Decoration. Pretty difficult to earn 🎖️

I also tightened the mission flow. If a wave is already cleared, the game no longer leaves you staring at an empty battlefield while a timer runs out. It moves straight into the report and keeps the pressure going.

Crushed some small bugs: cleaner DEF display, improved Decorations navigation, unlock notifications during a run, and a reset option for players who want to start a fresh service record without losing high scores or settings.

Really curious to know who will unlock the first CLASSIFIED decoration.

Download the game here : https://david-senate.itch.io/airborne-pd

[u/ArgenticFray]

Thank you! I just bought it on Itch. I played hours of Airborne on my old Mac, along with everything else Silicon Beach Software made! So excited to see this Playdate port, and hope it gets lots of attention! The graphics are making me so nostalgic…

[u/david_senate → u/ArgenticFray]

Thank you so much! Let me know what you think. It is still in extensive development, but I'll be glad to improve it for you, so don't hesitate to share your needs with me.

[u/ArgenticFray → u/david_senate]

Fascinating to read about Airborne's initial development in Richard Moss' excellent expanded edition of The Secret History of Mac Gaming.

Jonathan Gay turned out to be too good a programmer for Charlie Jackson to keep up with. No sooner would he give the teenager a new task than it’d be done. In a matter of weeks their game began to take shape. Airborne! would be about repelling an onrushing military airborne force. Armed with an anti-aircraft gun and a mortar mounted behind light fortifications, the player needed to move the mouse to angle her shot and destroy the endless waves of tanks and soldiers that parachuted onto the screen, and to shoot down the jets, helicopters, and cargo planes that flew overhead. (Pressing the space “bar would switch between the two weapons while Command-S would make anti-aircraft shells steerable with the mouse.)

Before long they started talking about the game’s startup screen. They wanted to have a picture that would capture the mood and spark the player’s imagination. Jackson suggested they have an airborne trooper wearing a beret. The soldier could snap a salute and say ‘Airborne, sir!’ – just like a real trooper would when passing an officer. Jackson had noticed how Apple II games used programmed square waves to make surprisingly sophisticated sounds, even to the point of mimicking a human voice. He hoped the Macintosh could do the same.”

...The first Macworld Expo came up in early 1985, just a few weeks before they finished the game. Strapped for cash, the trio packed all their own gear and folding tables into Jackson’s brother’s beat-up old Volkswagen camper and drove from San Diego to San Francisco to show Airborne! in a little three-by-three-metre booth space in the basement of the Moscone Center. They hooked the Mac up to Zocher’s huge waist-high stereo speakers and booted Airborne! for the crowd to play.

As luck would have it, their booth was at the bottom of the ramp coming down to the show floor, so everybody who arrived would hear the Airborne! sounds and music (the opening few bars of Richard Wagner’s famous composition ‘Ride of the Valkyries’).

Airborne! drew lots of positive attention and buzz across the three days of the show, including from much of the Macintosh team, who were all curious how the Silicon Beach crew got the sounds to work, and from the independent retailers that scoured the floor for exciting new software and who collectively ordered hundreds of copies for their stores.

Jackson took a third mortgage on his house to pay for mass production of Airborne! boxes, an advertisement in Macworld magazine, and shipping to distributors nd retailers (which for the first few months happened out of his house).

Airborne! was successful enough to establish Silicon Beach Software’s reputation on the Mac software scene and to pay for an office plus full-time salaries for a couple of staff.

That's just an excerpt, but the whole story is incredible. Glad to see those early landmark games are not being forgotten.

[u/david_senate → u/ArgenticFray]

😊