The Antisocial Gamer

  Panzer Elite's Particle Editor under Windows 11 Why I Opened the Particle Editor I’ve been playing Panzer Elite on and off for over quarter of a century. Some parts of the game still hold up well, especially the way it handles vision, ranges, and the general feel of the battlefield. But visually, some of the smoke effects always felt a bit thin or too clean. I wasn’t planning a deep dive. I just wanted to see if the smoke could be made a bit more convincing. Opening the Tool Panzer Elite includes a Particle Editor that has been circulated alongside other modding utilities for years. It’s clearly original PE-era, and the interface reflects that: multiple boxes per parameter vague labels effects that sometimes don’t preview without adjustment no obvious guidance inside the tool itself Running the Particle Editor on Windows 11 Getting the editor to launch on a modern system takes a bit of a dance. On Windows 11, it only ran reliably after enabling a few specific ...

Episode 1: We Wanted Realism The moment simulation felt real and why we didn’t see the end coming. Falcon 3’s HUD, 640 KB of memory somehow convincing you that you were really there. The Spark The first computer game I ever saw was on my mate’s BBC Micro. It was Spitfire , wire-frame lines and imagination and I was hooked straight away. The only problem was, I didn’t have a BBC Micro of my own. From that moment on I was chasing that feeling: that one day a screen could really make you believe you were flying. I was a flight simulation guy back then. It’s kind of sad that I’m not anymore but we will get to that, these days I’m more of a tank guy but then, it was flight everything. They were the cutting edge: graphics, gameplay, sound, the lot. I don’t think there was a sim I didn’t own. The Golden Age Falcon 3 with the MiG-29 add-on, TFX , Hind , Strike Fighter , Su-27 Flanker , I loved them all. Tornado was another big one; Digital Integration knew what they were doin...