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[MrFlibble]

I wonder if anyone here ever came across DOS flight sims made with the Flight Sim Toolkit (FST) - a create-your-own-game set developed by Simis Limited and published by Domark Software?

I first learned about it some ten years ago when I found a shareware WWII themed flight sim called Great Air Battles on a CD at cd.textfiles.com. Back then I could not find much more info on other sims but took note of it. It turns out that back in the early to mid-90s, there was a thriving flight sim community that actively built various simulations based on FST. Just like with The Bard's Tale Construction Set, users could not only distribute complete games made with FST, but also sell them as shareware if they so wanted.

More recently, I chanced upon a different FST title, Wings of Thunder, at MobyGames. Using Hallfiry's magazine coverdisk catalogue I was soon able to find a copy, and from here, I decided to seriously dig the topic using the Wayback Machine -- as any other traces of the games have almost completely vanished. And just about the same time a different user posted a topic at VOGONS asking about FST games. That conversation was soon joined by an FST scene veteran going by the username ragefury32.

The big site about FST was this one: http://www.mcnett.org/fst/

Unfortunately, Wayback Machine has only piecemeal preservation of the site's contents (which also mirrored several FTPs), exacerbated by the 1,024 KiB limit for files stored from 2000-2001 or so. There are numerous partially preserved, broken ZIP files.

The interesting part is that Simis apparently provided long-term support for the product with several updates and improvement both to the binary executable and to the tools. What's more, at some point they released the source code, and a community-made updated Windows version was in the works, currently available here.

Separately, Bryan McNett who ran the largest FST site I mentioned above created an open source clone of FLY.EXE called OpenFly:
http://ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au/~gjo/

However, it looks that this project had not got a lot of traction.

So here are the games that have been found so far. They all work in DOSBox with no apparent issues.

a. Complete games by Ron Walker/Ground Zero Simulations (all free, all Wayback Machine links work):

• Skyhawk Attack
• Tornado Squadron
• Harrier Strike
• Jaguar GR1: Strike Force Delta Zulu
• Eurofigher 2010

b. Shareware games by Raymond Purvis/Viper Software (mostly original ZIP archives from various sources):

• Aces of World War One: acesww1.zip
• Battle of Britain: bob.zip (this is a repack, not the original ZIP)
• Battle of the Midway - not found, file name MIDWAY.ZIP
• Berlin 1955: berlin10.zip
• Cyborg Invasion - not found, file name CYBORG.ZIP
• Eurofighter 2005: ef2005.zip
• F-16 Operation Black Diamond: bdiamon1.zip
• F-86 MiG Mayhem Pacific Ocean - not found, file name MAHEM.ZIP
• Falklands Air War 1982 - not found, file name unknown
• Korean Air War - not found, file name KOREA.ZIP
• Private Pilot: ppilt145.zip
• Reno Racing 2000 - not found, file name RENO.ZIP
• Vietnam Flight Simulator: vietnam.zip

c. Simulations by Luca Oleastri (D.U.O.):

• SHADO: UFO Attack Sky Base BETA 1 (earlier version)
• Wings over Italy shareware 1.1
• Starfleet Museum
• Spaceship Troopers Demo

d. Simulations by Jose Sanchez:

• Spanish Civil War 2.31 (earlier version found thanks to cyclone3d)
• Wings over Los Andes

e. Simulations by Daniel Berlin:

• Barrels in Congo Demo: congo.zip
• JAS 39 GRIPEN 0.95: gripen.zip
• JAS 39 GRIPEN 0.96: gripen.zip (complete archive found thanks to cyclone3d)
• JAS 39 GRIPEN 0.96 upgrade to 0.96a: Upgr096a.zip

f. Simulations by Kevin Kwan/Minerva Interactive:

• Operation Coruscant Sweep Demo
• Blade Runner Technology Demo Version 1 (another version found here)

g. Great Air Battles by Charles B. Law:

• shareware v2.1 (1994/12/16): GAB_V21.ZIP [archive incomplete, missing files may be supplied from v2.5]
• shareware/demo v2.5 (?) (1995/02/04): GAB_V25.ZIP
• demo v1.3 (1995/03/54): attached here
• demo v1.5a (1995/06/03): gab-d15a.arj [damaged ARJ archive]
• demo v3.0 (199?/??/??): gab-v30.arj (655 KiB) [not found; mentioned here]

h. Simulations by various authors:

• Veritech: Variable Fighter Simulator (public domain): VERITECH.ZIP
• Joerg's Fligh Sim 1.0
• Wings of Thunder: wot.zip (not the original download)
• Flight Simulation 99 by Martin Mager - this was on a magazine coverdisk in Hallfiry's collection
• Hammerheads v2.0: hammerhe.zip (repacked file)
• Project Kursk by Charles Dunne
• F-117A Stealth Fighter: Night Flight to Baghdad by Forest Pearson (GUI part missing, but the sim itself is playable)
• ICARE, le simulateur de vol by Daniel Plassart
• ISF- Battle of France and Battle over Germany by Florian Dietrich (Battle of France main link broken)
• Cruz and Gryoplane 2000 by Ferg Monaghan (links not working now)

i. Simulations for RISC OS:

• Mosquito Fire and 1940 by Cj
• War Jet by David Woods: warjet.arc

There are possibly several more small projects indexed by the Wayback Machine from mcnett.org website (annoyingly, several broken ZIPs with original size of over 1,024 KiB, such as listed here, are within the 1.2-1.5 MiB size limit, meaning that about 75-90pc of content is intact, but they're still unplayable due to the missing WORLD.FST and other data files). A few more have been identified via Hallfiry's catalogue, these ended up on magazine coverdisks as "reader submissions".

A few more sims are available from Mic Healey's archives.

A certain Adrian Brown maintained pages that listed several dozens FST projects. Here's an archived version of his catalogue in mostly intact condition:
http://www.adrianebrown.co.uk/flightsimtoolkit/frc/simulations.html

The download links there all point to Kuju's FTP (Kuju was the successor of Simis), which apparently hosted user-created FST games.

FST was also available for non-PC platforms, including RISC OS. So far I only found this page with two sims.

If anyone has any further info on the subject, or any ideas how to repair the broken archives (e.g. the ARJ with Great Air Battles demo), please don't hesitate to share!