After a few hours of testing, even someone as energetic as Ruka is beginning to feel the fatigue. She took off the equipment and took a break. After the break, she jumps right back into the action.
▷ Brooklands Torpedo-AGV MOD
by @Sureascanbe
“Soooo, we have two more crafts left to go. Lemme see…one of them is the Zacspeed Phoenix, the other one is the Brooklands Torpedo.” Boris, who has been overseeing the chaotic experience, can’t help himself and yawns.
The sky in New York City has fallen into darkness, and most of the staff in the Camshaft Games office has already left.
“Well, we better hurry up now, because it’s quite late here already. Well, which one do you want to go in next?”
“Hmm, I want some contrast with the modern looking Orca, so I’ll choose…whatever this thing is called.”
Unlike the other machineries in the garage, the “thing” she is pointing at is a vehicle that resembles nothing real life offers. Is it a plane? Is it a rocket? Is it a levitating locomotive? Whatever that type of vehicle is called, the dictionary hasn’t included it yet.
“Apparently it’s based off a 1920’s GP car. Then some engineering team just happened to be crazy enough to shove a gravity-warping engine into this thing.” Christina is taking off her equipment as well. “We haven’t tested this thing yet, but we suspect it will be a straight line missile. Oh right, this thing is a single seater, so you’re on your own again this time.”
“You haven’t tested these before huh, so I’m the guinea pig?
“Took you long enough to realize that.” Boris interrupts.
Having seen a good amount of insane machineries at this point, Ruka is still quite impressed at the raw mechanical goodness on the Brooklands. In front of the sheet metal bodywork rests the centerpiece of the craft: a huge warp engine covered with pipes and turbochargers. In contrast with Delphinda Orca’s sleek futuristic bodywork, the Torpedo is not shy when it comes to showcasing it’s muscle. Even though no one in the room has seen it in action yet, everyone is well aware that the hovercraft in front of them is most certainly a deathtrap. According to its creator, even driving the craft off a trailer can be a challenge, and Boris suddenly regrets letting Ruka loose once again.
As Ruka steps into the cockpit, she is greeted by gauges and mechanical linkages instead of sophisticated touchscreens. The simple windscreen and the mechanical control stick placed between her legs resembles a WW1 piston engine fighter, and hints absolutely nothing about the almost alien-like gravity damper placed just in front of it. Unfortunately, the levers and gauges did not intimidate Ruka enough to stop her from doing the “flicking switch till it works method”.
“Lemme see what this switch does, “siphon pump”?, I’ll switch that on, and what does this do? I’ll switch that on as well~”
“Hey, do you know what you’re doing? The manual for just starting up that thing is 5 pages long you know.” Borllik is getting uncomfortable flashbacks to the carnage inside the Suisei tank.
“Well it worked for the last 8 cars, so I don’t see why it’ll-”
As Ruka flicks one of the switches, the ring on the gravity damper starts to emit a bright red color. As if she has stepped on the tail of a dragon, the machine, of which was completely silent a moment ago, begins to vibrate violently. The cluster of gauges are alive, and Ruka can feel the heat wave from the engine.
“Ah shit, here we go again.”
Ruka pushes one of the levers, and as the airflow out of the bottom-facing exhaust intensifies, the Brooklands torpedo begins to levitate.
“Hey hey Borlock, what’s that look on your face? Scared again?”
Boris did not reply. His eyes are glued on the monitor displaying various sensor readouts from the PS-V suit. He does not want to know how the game engine would react to a gravity damper failure or Ruka’s character plunging upside down into the ground at full speed.
“Oh well, I’ll take her around for a spin I guess.” Ruka flicks the switch to turn on the horizontal thruster.
“HEY, THE OTHER STICK IS AT FUL-”
Ruka does not notice that her horizontal throttle is at full position. Before she could react, the Brooklands charges forward, firmly pressing Ruka in her seats. She pulls back on the stick, and the craft pulls a massive cobra maneuver. Ruka briefly blacked out from the G-forces (blackouts are implemented by blacking out the display output, the suit can’t simulate G-forces), and when she opens her eyes, all she can see is the blue sky. She pushes down the stick, and she almost gets slingshot out of the craft from the G-forces, of which is acting the other way now. At last she finds herself flying horizontal, but now the craft is inverted. The ground passes right over her head at 500km/h, and her hair is picking up dirt from the ground.
“Good thing that you’re wearing a seatbelt right now.” Boris is sweating just as much as Ruka, his hands are placed right on top of the system killswitch.
Eventually Ruka crash-landed the craft into the ground unscathed, somehow. The Madison Brooklands on the other hand, is not doing so well. With high pressure steam is leaking from some of its pipes, and multiple gauges are in the red area, it requires thorough refurbish.
The craft got the Automation update experience™, and I did my best to try to fix it
Exterior Design (Coolness, Creativity)
During the early stages of the ATTAC 2077 project, the design team studied many real life industrial designs for inspirations. There’s a saying that a functional design would naturally be pleasing to the eyes. At least that is our first reaction when we saw the Brooklands Torpedo-AGV for the first time. The entire machine is, well, exposed mechanical porn, and just looking at it tells most of the story. Starting with an 1920’s GP car body, then you strap a massive gravitational warp engine to it, strap another massive engine like device to it because one is clearly not enough, cap it all off with some detailed touches, and you end up with this thing. It is the materialization of the ethos of function above all, yet we have no clue how to make it look better than it already is. We did not expect something like this at all, yet it fits the premise of this game perfectly.
Engineering/Game Mechanics
Not only does the Brooklands resemble a 1920’s GP car visually, it also preserves the philosophy - if it can be called that - of shoving the most powerful power plant that one can obtain into the lightest possible body. Clearly, it is designed for nothing other than just outright speed, and we love it for that. It claims a 500km/h top speed before having to cool down, which seems very pessimistic considering what’s under the hood. As mentioned by the author, even on its own, the craft is a bit of a handful to handle, even with the assists. The one thing all flying vehicles suffer from in the competition is the altitude limit, but the Torpedo especially suffers from it. Even with the flight management system, we’d hope for a bit more creative engineering on keeping the wild machine under the altitude.
“We still have one left right? But I don’t see it anywhere…” Ruka looks around, and all the machineries around her are the ones she already tested.
▷ Zacspeed Phoenix
by @chiefzach2018
“Well...the next one is so cutting edge, it requires a special facility to launch. In your HUD, you should see an option of changing the garage. Change it to the underground silo.” Ruka reaches her hand onto the HUD and selects the option, and the garage around her disappears.
After intense psychotherapy sessions, Borllik finally agrees to test drive the last “racecar” with Ruka.
After a brief loading screen, Ruka finds herself in what appears to be a top secret underground bunker. As numerous transportation vehicles goes around her, she follows them visually, and her eyes are lead to the centerpiece of the facility. On a platform covered by spotlights, rests the red Zacspeed fighter.
The spectacle before them is truly a sight to behold. The engineers and technicians on site (yes, they’re modelled in-game) had already begun the startup process for the Zacspeed Phoenix, which involved hooking it up to numerous exothermic pumps, cables, and various other indescribable machinery. Tendrils of wire and pipe sprawled out of the holes in the bodywork as if it is being reclaimed to the sea by some kraken unseen. It is a winged harbinger of destruction, beckoning for anyone who dared crawl into its cockpit to tame it in the dying art of the aerial dogfight.
It’s clear, however, that it’s seen better days. There’s obvious scarring on the bodywork and paint from laser cannon fire. The rims around the thrusters are burnt, their protective coating nearly disintegrated. And finally, the wings themselves are missing the entire rear half of their anti-heat ceramic shielding, exposing numerous cooling pipes and high-power electric servos and hydraulic piping. But if anything, its war torn appearance just makes it look cooler.
“Hey, this looks familiar!” Ruka exclaimed, pointing to the giant freaking cannon on top of the fuselage.
“Yeah, you see it too?” Borllik scratched his head in confusion. “I’m getting a massive deja vu moment looking at this. I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere before… a long time ago on Ourtube or something.” His memory - or lack thereof - is getting the better of him now.
The inside of the cockpit is just as faithfully modeled as the exterior, with the wrinkled leather bolsters of the seats just starting to crumble if manhandled. Ruka turned around and sniffed the headrest of her seat, wanting to test out the headset’s olfactory replication system. “Eugh! Holy pipegod, did this Petty guy use any shampoo or anything? I swear I must’ve inhaled his dandruff or something. Wait. Is that a piece of his hair in there?”
“Damn, this model is top notch,” Borllik remarked with a slowly spreading smile on his face. He chuckled like an idiot as he waved his hands over the control panel, almost feeling the bare anodized metal finishing under his fingers. Some of the glass for the gauges were cracked, some were fogged. The tritium-lit numerals and script were dim and barely visible. With the flick of a switch and connecting a fuse, electronic readouts on the cockpit glass and heads-up displays flickered to life without second notice. Seconds later, the rest of the spacecraft’s electronics quickly whined to life. “I’ve wanted to sit inside - and fly - a fighter aircraft my entire life. This… maybe this will do.”
“Can I fly? Can I fly?” Ruka pleaded enthusiastically, tugging on Borllik’s seat.
“Hah! No,” Borllik scoffed. “I’ve already sat with you inside the tank and I’ve seen what you can do with the mech. We’re both flying this one at the same time and I don’t want to know how this suit can ‘re-create’ the forces of diving straight into the ground at mach 7. So I’ll be flying this time.”
The startup process is complete; Borllik hopes that the animation team can shorten or abridge the entire process since only about ten seconds of it will be seen before the race starts. All of the wires and pipes are removed and the bodywork replaced as the Phoenix is lifted up via a crane and placed into a long, sealed-off metal corridor, on top of a rail system of sorts. At the end of the tunnel is the ground, only this time it’s 50 000 feet away.
Suddenly, Borllik doesn’t feel very content with this method of takeoff.
“What’s wrong?” Ruka teases with a smug grin, poking Borllik’s shoulder from behind. “Getting cold feet? Or should I say, is it not just this space fighter but also your balls that haven’t dropped yet?”
“Yes… I mean what? No!” Borllik spat. He fidgets around in his seat a little bit, which feels tighter than usual. The polyester six-point harness suddenly feels like it’s been secured too snugly to the point the straps are digging into his skin. “I’ve prepared for this moment my whole life. I’m not going to let anything stop me, not even myself.” Flames erupt from the thrusters’ nozzles as the startup process is finalized and continue to grow in intensity. The blaze evolves into a geyser of plasma that stretches all the way to the heat shielding behind the Phoenix.
A terrible groaning noise starts to grow in intensity, probably from the electromagnetic restraint system growing increasingly fatigued as the three engines reach full thrust. “Well?” Ruka shouted impatiently over the straining thrusters. “All good up there?”
“Damn that’s looking kinda high up, isn’t it?”
“Fine. If you won’t, then I will!” Ruka snapped. She lifted her left leg up and brought her heel swiftly down onto the emergency release button. The locks were pyrotechnically jettisoned, and the Phoenix is flung downwards with incredible divine might. Within seconds, it reached terminal velocity, clouds turning into incomprehensible streaks of white and gray as they shot past. Noticing the ground approaching at roughly a few thousand miles per hour, the autopilot system automatically manipulated the control surfaces and angled the thruster nozzles upwards, and the ground rapidly shifted away from under the craft as the horizon is pulled down into view. Given the speed and tightness of this sudden maneuver, Borllik felt like his blood and soul is being sucked out through his nether regions, and his head went limp as it snapped to the side from the sheer amount of g-forces.
Borllik couldn’t let out much more than sporadic gasps. The very art of moving his mouth proved to be extremely taxing, as his cheeks felt like they were slipping off his face. On the other hand, Ruka is taking everything like a champ, and is seemingly unfazed even through the 10 g turn. The Phoenix executed one final jerk in upwards pitch moments before it could careen into the ground, and shot itself clear through the skyline of a highly-populated metropolitan area. Skyscrapers blended into streaks of gray, black, and blue on either side of the craft as it wove in between them effortlessly.
With heaving gasps, Borllik snapped back into consciousness and quickly glanced at his surroundings in panic. Ruka’s intoxicating laughter filled the cabin and only added to his confusion. “What the HELL was that for!” he shouted, looking to either side to try and steal a glance behind him. “Okay, what else do you have access to back there huh? The joystick? The freaking ejection seat release?”
“Yo, EYES ON THE ROA- I MEAN SKY!” Ruka screamed, kicking the back of Borllik’s chair. Its occupant refocused his attention back to what lay before him, which included a cliff that seemed to appear out of nowhere. With a sudden burst of competence, the game dev instantly assumed control of the craft and jerked it to the right while simultaneously actuating the rudder pedals, and the Phoenix pulled away from the rocky walls effortlessly.
“Holy pipegod, these controls have like no assists at all,” Borllik shouted through gritted teeth as he expertly maneuvered the craft through the cityscape. “Shouldn’t they have fly-by-wire now? Why is it all still manual?”
“I dunno,” Rawr shrugged, shifting in her seat under the intense lateral acceleration. “That bimbo is so obsessed about balancing, so maybe she had something to do with it.”
Despite the moderate amount of resistance offered by the controls, Borllik still found that at lower speeds, the Phoenix’s handling is akin to a cat chasing a laser point. Easing up on the throttle, the warbird effortlessly danced through skyscrapers without breaking a sweat, trails of condensation streaking from its wingtips. The RoKIT engines were perfectly calibrated and responded instantly to even the most discrete of Borllik’s inputs, making it feel almost weightless in atmospheric conditions.
“I should’ve become a fighter pilot instead,” Borllik remarked as he pulled the Phoenix back up into a rapid climb, ascending back to cruising altitude at no time. “This thing makes flying easy. Almost like… it’s a video game.”
“You don’t say,” Ruka scoffed. But Borllik wouldn’t be getting too comfortable for long, for he was alerted by a harsh, shrill beeping tone from somewhere within the control stack before him. Looking at the radar screen, he saw five intermittent blips on the screen rapidly approaching the center dot representing the Phoenix itself. He glanced up, and five singularities that had suddenly appeared on the horizon turned into black and gray streaks that shot by at supersonic speeds. The Phoenix was buffeted and thrown about by violent turbulence and a gigantic wave of pressure tailing behind the unknown objects, tossing Borllik and Ruka about in their seats momentarily as they both shrieked in unison.
“Uhh… well, that’s certainly strange!” Borllik choked out a stifled laugh as he started looking around the cockpit in fear, trying to ascertain the situation and find out what the hell had just done a mach 2 flyby past them and nearly collided with them in the process. He tried to make sense of the complicated readouts flying by his eyes on the numerous heads-up displays but failed. “I certainly don’t recall hostile aircraft being part of the testing routine. Maybe it’s Christina getting revenge on me for the time I hid Skittles in her M&M jar…”
“You WHAT?” Ruka kicked the back of Borllik’s seat in shock.
The harsh rapid beeping returned once again, but something was different. Twice as rapid and much louder, almost painful to listen to. Like standing right under a fire alarm. If the five new blips on the radar weren’t enough of a hint, perhaps the voice warning system was enough to strike enough fear into Borllik and Ruka. “GUIDED MUNITION IMPACT IMMINENT. EVASIVE ACTION WILL COMMENCE IF NO INPUT IS DETECTED.”
With Ruka screaming bloody murder in the background, Borllik flipped the Phoenix belly-side up thanks to its nimble handling characteristics, and yanked the joystick towards him, sending the spacecraft down in a steep dive towards the immaculately-rendered city skyline that was quickly approaching. The five missiles behind them had traced their path effortlessly and were still hot on the Phoenix’s tail like a buzzing, bloodthirsty swarm of giant hornets. As the tips of the tallest skyscrapers shot by Borllik’s peripheral vision, he pulled the joystick towards him but at an angle and gradually leaned his left foot onto its respective rudder pedal, leveling out the spacecraft while navigating it in excellently between two towers, with little room to spare. One of the missiles continued going and plummeted straight into a cornerside bakery, and two more slashed through the left and right towers and exploded in a billowing, self-enveloping balloon of fire and heat. But two still remained.
In the distance, Borllik saw the contrails of the five enemy aircraft above, which had just entered a steep dive not unlike the Phoenix’s prior maneuver. “Hey, look alive!” Ruka shouted, slapping the back of Borllik’s helmet. “Contact, 12 o’clock up high! Five bogeys!” The trademark distant howl of afterburners echoed through the valley of steel and glass, and hell followed within.
Footwork like an Irish tap dancer, the hand of god, and the eyes of the mind. It’s just like my granddad’s stories about MiG alley, Borllik muttered to himself under sharp, labored breaths. It was no longer a battle of clandestine warbirds and hypersonic high-grade precision-guided munitions; this was a conflict of man and machine in the dance of the dogfight, where one wrong step or one misplaced beat spelled death. Such was the unforgiving ruthlessness of the open skies.
The Phoenix cleaved through the gusty air like a finely-sharpened fillet knife against a rare cut of steak. Instead of slowing down, Borllik slowly nudged the throttle forwards as the spacefighter bobbed and weaved itself through the densely-packed city skyline. The enemy aircraft opened fire, and a monsoon of exotic-energy projectiles flew past the Phoenix. Bright orange and red streaks of light would instantly blossom from wherever the projectiles struck, visibly bending light around them as they flew. None made their mark.
It was like being flung by the hand of god. The Phoenix’s Thunderforce powerplant provided Herculean amounts of thrust on demand, to the point it nearly felt like someone bringing a sledgehammer to Borllik’s back at full force. As they happened upon a long main street flanked by financial buildings on either side, an enemy aircraft appeared on the opposite end. Borllik squeezed one of the triggers on the joystick and broke away as he did so, and two lances of brilliant light sprung from the tips of the DS3 cannons. The enemy aircraft was barely even in Borllik’s crosshairs for more than a split second, but his shots made their mark and reduced the opponent to a scorched husk of melted titanium and aluminum as it plummeted into the street, billowing jets of flames that reached stories high.
“I think- I think I’m getting sick,” Ruka shouted, but her words trailed off as she involuntarily started to heave. It sure as hell didn’t feel like a simulation for how well the g-forces were being transmitted to their bodies, but thousands of hours in Macrohard Flight Simulator had trained Borllik for this very moment.
Four of the aircraft still remained, but had split up and were surrounding the Phoenix in multiple quadrants. Two of them re-assumed formation and converged on Borllik’s and Ruka’s position from seven and five o’clock directions, dropping down from some sight unseen and showering them in a hail of cannonfire. They had chosen an interesting area to stage their attack, however; there was no forseeable escape route for the Phoenix, and it was heading straight towards a fancy high-rise complex.
“Not just yet….” Borllik said through gritted teeth, his thumb hovering just over a bright yellow button mounted on the joystick.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING! HEY!” But Ruka’s panicked screams were not enough to sway Borllik from his planned course of action. He continued to fly straight towards their doom, and the hostile aircraft were rapidly closing the distance between themselves and the Phoenix.
“NOW!”
The heads-up displays splayed across the cockpit and the electronic readouts that flooded the cabin in neon lights all flickered in unison before disappearing entirely. Suddenly, a sound not unlike that of being directly, continuously struck by lightning or a great arc of thousands of volts of electricity from a power line blessed their ears, and a great, blinding beam of light filled the cabin. When all was said and done, a gaping hole had been bored right through the convention center, and the opening on either end was still glowing bright red from the Big Fucking Laser’s impact as molten steel and glass dripped. It was of the perfect size as the Phoenix flew straight through without making contact. The enemy aircraft close in pursuit were perhaps too close and could not react in time to avoid the convention center barreling towards them.
One contact remained, but this time around it had the jump on the Phoenix since its propulsion systems were suffering from the immense power drain of the BFL. As it dove on the defenseless spacecraft, it let off a volley of concentrated cannonfire and broke away, quickly climbing back into the upper reaches of the stratosphere. One projectile struck the Phoenix’s left auxiliary thruster unit and exploded in a blinding flash of sparks that showered the cockpit glass. Ruka let out a brief yelp as copious amounts of smoke trailed from the tip of the left wing. And if it couldn’t get any worse, those two remaining missiles that had been fired at the very beginning of the confrontation were still hot on the Phoenix’s tail, and were quickly making up their lost ground.
“Are you a woman of religion, Ruka?” Borllik asked, breaking the tension that had been accumulating in the cockpit. It was suffocating, it wrung at Ruka’s heart and held her breathless. Maybe they had a chance after all. Or maybe Borllik was going to say one final prayer, knowing their imminent “death.”
“Wh… what kinda dumb question is that?!” Ruka scoffed. “Do you even tune in to my streams sometimes?”
“In the book of RENESIS, they say god himself was so dissatisfied, so disillusioned with the hedonism and the wicked spirit of man that they were beyond redemption. And so, when humanity had fallen beyond the brink of saving, when they had crossed the event horizon of irredeemability, he reached a final ultimatum. He vowed to blot out everything he had breathed life into from the face of the Earth.”
Without warning, he suddenly brought the joystick back towards him, and the Phoenix’s nose lurched upwards until they were flying directly vertically straight. Ruka saw the enemy aircraft, which had been circling overhead, break loose and dive straight for the Phoenix. Throwing the throttle lever into its furthest forward position, the RoKIT 424P and remaining 222S thrust engines kicked into overdrive and flung them upwards, heading straight for their target. Loud sirens flooded the cabin, warning of a failed cooling system and overheating oil and fuel temperatures.
“Why the hell are you being so goddamn chuuni right now? Have you gone goddamn crazy??”
“And so, he rained white phosphorus for 40 days and 40 nights until the filth had been ridden from the land they walked on.”
The two DS3 cannons fired once again as cannonfire from the hostile aircraft rained down from above, but as they hit their mark, there was no spectacular explosion to be seen. Instead, the aircraft directly in front of the Phoenix entered a free fall, as its control surfaces, propulsion systems, and weaponry had all been disabled. Borllik quickly flipped open a bright yellow switch guard and jammed his thumb into the red button it was covering. Suddenly, great burning streaks of pyrotechnic flares shot out from either side of the Phoenix and spread far and wide like the wings of an angel. As they flew past the falling enemy aircraft, it was showered in the burning magnesium, teflon, and viton flares left in their wake. The last remaining missiles broke their course from the Phoenix, and seconds later Borllik and Ruka saw nothing but a massive fireball erupt behind them. Trails of fire and burning residue flew outwards, the remnants and debris of the final aircraft that had terrorized their existence.
“I may have only cracked the bible open two times in my whole life,” Ruka said with a raised eyebrow, “but I’m sure as hell he didn’t say that!!”
Shut the fuck up I’ll lazer you with alien fucking eyes and explosion fucking head, shut the fuck up try to balance this thing in the game
Exterior Design (Coolness, Creativity)
The Zacspeed Phoenix is a truly outrageous craft. There’re many ways to make a design look good, and one of those ways is making the design believable. Where should we start, the exposed cooling fins on the wings, the piping that routes into the RoKIT 424P engine, or the tiny structural bits on the cannons? The big fucking laser just slapped on top breaks the flow of the craft but at the same time is extremely fitting, like a giant middle finger to convention. Just by looking at the Phoenix, even something as ridiculous as a quoted 4000Gs of acceleration doesn’t seem nonsense anymore, and that is something many of its competitors could not manage. History says that the performers are also the good looking ones, whether it’s a 80’s ground effect F1 car or a SR-71 spyplane, and the Phoenix belongs in that club.
Engineering/Game Mechanics
Most of the vehicles being presented can be categorized into two groups, the ones made to go as fast as possible and the slower ones heavily armed with weapons. The Phoenix can do both. If you want to know how the Phoenix competes with the other opponents, just imagine that there’s this race with small ultralight planes, and then there’s this guy that brought a F-22. Since it is basically a state of the art fighter jet repurposed for racing, even within the realm of unrestricted racing, the Phoenix is like bringing an orbital cannon to a gunfight. Even if it has to operate under the tight altitude restriction, the powerful engines are more than enough to push it to speeds no other crafts on the grid can match. And the weapons, well, let’s just say that they’re originally designed to counter a much bigger threat than a few individual crafts. Needless to say, our gameplay balancing department would have a bit of a headache dealing with this thing. Aside from being ungodly overpowered, the ex-fighter identity of the Phoenix also brings up the problem of staying under the altitude restrictions. It has some thoughtful engineering to counter that issue, such as an automated system capable of bleeding off thrust once the height limit is breached. However given its absurd speed, it’s doubtful that even that can prevent the craft from breaching the limit on rough terrains. In actual gameplay, it would be extremely difficult to manage, and we’d hope that the engineering can trade off some speed in return for better maneuverability. Even with the significantly reduced stats from the balancing, we expect the Phoenix to be among the strongest entrants on the grid.
Actually disregard that lol
