While I was surfing the Underdogs abandonware website I found a game from 1985 that looks like a very serious wilderness survival sim. I haven't tried it out but according to Underdogs the parser is pretty amazing. It lets you make various articles of clothing, put them on for cold weather, take them off for exertion, and dry them out when you've got a fire and drying rack. It lets you build huts, rafts, and hunt for food. Underdogs claims that a team of doctors worked out very realistic algorithms for the effects of exposure, food or lack thereof, exertion, etc. on the body. The manual has contour maps in it, a table with food spoilage times and water contents, and a section on first aid. It looks like the most detailed wilderness survival game I've ever seen.

I'm going to go try it out. It looks like a must-try for anyone who is into simulationist gaming.

Since the game is from 1985 you probably need to run it using DOS emulation software such as DOS Box.

Back in the early days of home computing that was when you had more detailed simulationist software. There used to be, among other types of games, very detailed military aircraft sims with huge manuals you'd have to study so that you could operate all the real-world electronic systems during the game. It's kind of sad that they just don't make such detailed simulations anymore for the most part. For me, it just shows how commercialism dumbs things down. Back when computers were used for recreation only by some of the smartest and most motivated people you had games for very smart and motivated people. Now you have a lot of games coming out for idiot AOL users who wouldn't be able to handle a text parser because they'd be incapable of typing with correct grammar and spelling.

Link: http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=1340

There is a Finnish computer RPG/adventure game from the 90s that is also quite hardcore about surviving in nature -- in this case, iron age Finland. It's the sort of game where you better hurry in catching those squirrels and other small game so you can afford, or make some thick clothing for yourself before the winter hits -- although of course you have to be pretty good at it to actually survive into the winter with all the disease, poisonous animals, spoiled food, not to mention angry bears with their cubs.

For the life of me I can't remember the name of the game though. I though it was "The Real World" or "The Dark Land" or something along those lines, but... no wait, here it is, Unreal World.

If you want a modern ridiculously simulationist flight game, try Falcon 4.0 with the full range of realistic add-ons and patches. It gets to the point where you need 30 pages of manual just to get off the ground, nevermind the difficulty of landing safely.

I have just been playing the game I mentioned above using DosBox (a DOS emulator) and I have been riveted and thrilled by it even though it's got 1985 graphics. It's a terrific and detailed sim!

One detail comes to my mind, though, since we just recently had our discussion about FMJ cartridges rather than soft lead unjacketed ones.

Apparently, the only gun implemented in the aforementioned game is:

I expect "soft-nosed" here refers to soft points, which generally do have a jacket of a kind (hence JSP, jacketed soft point). Soft lead is exposed at the nose of the bullet, similarly to a semi-jacket hollow point (SJHP) but without the cavity, meaning expansion is less reliable and much less dramatic, leading to deeper penetration.

I would expect 125gr JSPs in a .357 Magnum would be useful against critters up to around cougar size. The heavy expansion and tendency to fragment makes JHPs less useful than JSPs against larger critters -- if such a bullet strikes a heavy bone you basically get a glaser-effect, and if you're being mauled by a bear you don't have 3 days to wait for it to die.

For defense against large, dangerous animals, or indeed for hunting them, handguns are often loaded with non-expanding flat nose/flat point bullets, either with a relatively thick jacket and softer lead core, or cast entirely out of a harder lead alloy and without a jacket. Well made bullets of this kind out of something like a .44 Magnum (e.g. these) can blow through the sternum of a brown bear and make a very significant wound through its whole thoracic cavity and into its hip.

Of course if you're in elephant country even that might not do. When going against bones that massive, you'll want bullets made out of something really tough. Like, say, tungsten.

Ronin, go try and fly Falcon 4.0, IL-2 Sturmovik, or LOMAC without reading the manual first. you won't get far.

ultra-real flightsims are still quite popular. the only thing lacking is a decent rotorcraft sim. commanche 4 was garbage.

Thanks for explaning to me about JSP cartridges, AE. I just learned something new about firearms. Yay me. And the game does indeed have mountain lions so next time I'll have to see if I can take the revolver and shoot them. There are also bears so I should experiment and see what happens if you try and shoot them. I don't know how the game handles things like that but I believe that every time you try and kill a dangerous critter there's a certain probability modified by your overall health that something bad will happen to you. The reason I think this is that in my last game I tried to kill some rattlesnakes by throwing rocks at them and I succeeded in one attempt but failed in another. Since the game lets you SUCK venom out of a wound and there's also a SNAKEBITE KIT I am guessing that every time you try and kill a rattlesnake there's also a chance you will get bit. Certainly, it's possible to die in the game, so maybe if you try and shoot a bear there's a certain chance it will die, a certain chance it will get away, and a certain chance it will rip you into little pieces.

I guess I have one more question related to shooting big animals, though. I know that with a person it's generally a very safe bet that they will go down if you shoot them in the brain and if you're loading any sort of combat cartridge you'll be able to penetrate the skull even at the forehead in the vast majority of cases when you shoot someone there. On the other hand, if you were forced to fire on a bear, would it be a good idea to try and shoot the bear in the brain, or is the bear's skull so big and thick that it could actually defeat many handgun cartridges?



Fix-it, thanks for telling me. I actually feel really happy that there are still some good sims left since I didn't know that before.

I shouldn't think the front part of a black bear's skull is so much thicker than a human's that it would actually stop any 9x19mms or anything bigger, and a solid/non-deforming .357 Magnum ought to be able to get through any grizzly skull at a straight angle.

Deflection might be a serious problem, however. When the bear's coming at you, the front part of the skull is likely to be at a high angle of attack to your barrel. You don't need a very thick bone to deflect a .357 that's coming at a 70 degree angle.

If you've got a .454 Casull firing heavy solids, that's going to crush a bear skull just fine. But whether aiming for the brain when defending yourself against dangerous animals is a good idea, I haven't a clue.

As far as killing a charging grizzly, the best place to shoot is their hump where their shoulder blades meet high on their back, as the center of it has their spinal cord. You hit that, they fall over and die. Problem with shooting them in the head is A) deflection, B) penetration, and C) Very small moving target. You also usually don't want to shoot for the heart as while it will generally kill them, it will usually take long enough for the bear to be able to kill you several times dead. I don't know how much of this applies to black and brown bears, but I grew up in Alaska where grizzlies were common enough. Best of all, of course, is to get a tag and shoot the bear before it sees you, from several hundred yards away. Then you get tasty bear stew. And a nifty rug. If the bear isn't charging, just putting a few rounds into the ground will sometimes be enough to startle it into walking away. Unfortunately, with wild animals, nothing is ever sure.

The game not only lets you shoot and eat bears but it also lets you make emergency clothing from the bear skins if you've got a knife and sewing kit.

that' actually what I've been using, and despite the lack of a decent rotorcraft -style controls (I'm not made of money), I do enjoy flitting around in an md-500. I find it realistic, but then i've never actually flown a helicopter, so I'm no judge either.

that being said. flying NOE 30 feet following a highway is fun, rotors or fixed wing.

the problem being that xplane terrain is based off aerial photographs, so all you see is a massive blur with some basic 3-d cars moving on a road.

In my most recent game of Wilderness Survlval Adventure my character was mauled by a bear and ended up perishing in the wild.

Bear mauling is a very rare event but it happens, well, rarely. Once out of all the games I've been constantly playing.

Cool, eh?