Evolution of A Military Video Game
As originally envisioned, the MiniTSFO would be a complete system that required only a computer to play. This meant that there had to be some way to see targets on-screen, some way to locate the target coordinates such as a map, and some way to call for fire. This resulted in a combination of three screens which the user could flip back-and-forth by using function keys. The first screen showed a simutated view through an AN/GVS-5 laser rangefinder. The map screen was a depiction of the fictional German town of Nitzburg and surrounding area. Lastly, the way to enter firing commands was a virtual AN/PSG-2 Digital Message Device (DMD).
The virtual DMD required extensive programming in order to simulate the actual operation of a real DMD and consumed most of the program code space.
The MiniTSFO was originally coded in BASICA, an interpreted version of BASIC available on IBM PCs. As the design of the program was pushing the limits of BASICA, Microsoft introduced the QuickBASIC compiler. This allowed the MiniTSFO to grow beyond the memory limits of BASICA and structured programming allowed additional complexity.
In its initial design, the MiniTSFO drew all screens from program code. It wasn't long before the limitations of this approach became obvious and so the screens completed to date were captured and imported into PC Paintbrush to be edited. This allowed the additional of details that would have been too tedious to incorporate through code and also allowed the target screens to be easily edited to add additional types of targets.
To allow the target screens to be easily changed to provide additional challenges, the target locations and descriptions were read in from an initialization fire when the MiniTSFO was started.
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