Task Force Admiral – Early Access Demo

It’s happened! The initial demo of Task Force Admiral (TFA) has been released in Beta. Developer Drydock Dream Games was kind enough to provide some of the early supporters and content creators with an early-access version of this game. So we finally have a small slice of the game to play around with. It should be noted that this demo is technically not playable. That is, the scenario plays out, but the player can only control the camera. The developers are planning on releasing a fully playable demo sometime this winter.

For those who don’t know, TFA Volume 1 is an upcoming naval warfare simulation/war game that puts the player in command of an American carrier task force in the Pacific in 1942. With a focus on historical realism, the game aims to recreate the carrier task force operations of that period, with the player taking the role of a flag officer and making operational decisions that could affect the course of the gameplay. Since I’m an amateur naval historian focused on the Pacific War, well, this game is clearly right up my alley and one that I’ve been highly anticipating for some time now.

Video

Here’s a video I made of the gameplay:

I’ll briefly summarize my overall initial impressions. Most of what I cover below is mentioned in the video during my commentary.

Critical Observations

Positives

• The time compression mechanic works well. It depends on how many units are on the screen and what’s going on, but even with a lot happening, a solid 10x compression is achievable. Even higher levels of time compression (up to 40x in the demo) can be achieved when little is happening on screen.
• Ships, aircraft, and bullets are all running on a physics engine. There’s a ballistics engine for the shells and bullets, a flight model for the aircraft, and the ships are actually floating on the water. (i.e. they’re not gliding on rails like so many other naval games.)
• In general, I’m very impressed with what the developers have accomplished thus far with the A.I. regarding both ships and aircraft. The IJN ships break formation and maneuver wildly when under attack, plus their cruising formation is far more spread out compared to the U.S. carrier force. In contrast, the American ships stick closer together for the purpose of mutually supporting each other with AA fire.
  • The aircraft dogfight in a fairly realistic manner. Now, I’m no expert on WWII aerial combat, but what I see is pretty impressive in terms of the A.I. dogfighting routines. The escorting fighters noticeably attempt to dogfight with the enemy fighters and get them off the tails of the strike aircraft. In contrast, the strike aircraft maintain formation and support each other with their rear gunners.
  • Since the game is heavily focused on carrier aircraft and their tactics, a lot of work has been put into making the aircraft behave in a historically realistic manner. For example, torpedo bombers attempt to make anvil attacks (i.e. attack from two different directions, ideally from both the port and starboard bow of the target), and dive bombers attempt to make their attack runs along the long axis of the target ship. The key word is “ideal” so not every attack went off perfectly. And the game shows that the attack aircraft didn’t always make ideal attacks.
• Every AA gun (including the machine guns) is modeled and managed separately. They’re grouped into batteries, but the mounts are independent of one another, so they can independently pick and engage targets if needed.
• The aircraft and ships have customizable skins. Although, what I showed in the video are just the default skins. 
• The size of the map is impressive. All of the islands on the strategic map are modeled with terrain, but no buildings. For example, there’s Guadalcanal and part of the Solomon Island chain to the NE.

Negatives

I want to be clear that this game is still a ways away from being a genuine playable build. The basics are there, but there’s still work to be done. Every game (even board games) has bugs and glitches, and I certainly don’t expect a flawless product. However, I hope that the developers will take this as constructive critique in the hopes that they can create a better product for us to enjoy.

• The aircraft occasionally seem to pull off overly aggressive maneuvers (such as drastically over-correcting or pulling hard-G turns.) In some ways, this could be understandable if the pilot is a novice since the game takes place in 1942, just after the U.S. entered the war. (I believe the developers are aware of the limitations of the current A.I.)
• The recording software I use (Bandicam) doesn’t seem to support the game in its “gameplay recording mode.” I ended up having to use “screen recording mode,” which is fine, but cumbersome and doesn’t produce as good a quality video. (I know the developers have only really tested recording the game on OBS.)
• There are still some low polygon counts on areas of the ships and low texture details in places. Parts of the ships lack detail and look bland. 
• (UI upgrade) It would be nice if you could click on units in the tactical map and the camera would focus on them. The tactical viewer has been directly compared to the sensors manager in the Homeworld series of games. It just shows the immediate tactical battlespace, but it gives the player more details on the units than the strategic viewer. (The models displayed in the tactical map are modeled on the old Fletcher Pratt wargame ship models, I believe. It’s a nice throwback to the old wargames of yesteryear!)

Other Things to Mention

• A Kickstarter campaign is expected to begin in the winter of 2023. The developers want to emphasize that this Kickstarter is NOT needed to finish the game. They already have the funding for that. The purpose of the Kickstarter campaign is to create a physical version of the game reminiscent of 1990s boxed PC games.
• Possible additional Kickstarter goals could include:
  • Direct control of aircraft/ships in-game (to some degree)
  • 3D crew (static or animated)
  • Animated victory screens
  • Extra game modes

Final Thoughts…So Far

Perhaps the most impressive thing is that this entire game is programmed by one guy! The core development team at Drydock Dream Games is the following:

• Amiral Crapaud (Producer)
• Jean-Baptiste (Programmer)
• Julien (Illustrator)
• Rizki (3D artist)

Yes, this is literally a tiny team of basically four people. There are additional part-time collaborators and historical advisors who assist the team with game development. What these men have accomplished so far is very impressive. Overall, I’m very impressed and optimistic about the progress this game is making so far. That said, this is still a work in progress and things are subject to change.