Star Wraith
This article refers to the game. For the series, see Star Wraith (computer game series)
| Developer(s) | Star Wraith 3D Games |
|---|---|
| Publisher(s) | Star Wraith 3D Games |
| Series | Star Wraith  |
| Engine | DarkBASIC |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
| Release | July 2000 |
| Genre(s) | Space-sim |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Star Wraith (1999–2000) was the first game made by Star Wraith 3D Games with the title Star Wraith as well as the first game of the Star Wraith series. It superseded Raven and Star Wolf, the third and fourth official games made by SW3DG respectively.[1] While its predecessors were written in QuickBasic, Star Wraith was written entirely in DarkBASIC.
Graphics
Star Wraith was the first SW3DG game to feature the 3D radar display present in all current games. It also had fully animated explosions and 3D textured models. Like Star Wolf, there wasn't a cockpit, allowing for better graphics elsewhere.
Gameplay
Star Wraith featured a fully random campaign. It generated random missions with random numbers of ships. The player was allowed to change the number of ships in his/her fleet, and the number of ships in the fleet changed the difficulty of the missions generated (smaller fleets meant easier missions).
In addition to the random campaign, the player is allowed to play a mode called "instant action", which has three modes:
- Create mission: Allows player to set basic parameters to generate a level.
- Freeflight: Allows player to fly around in empty space with no enemies.
- Gauntlet: Test of how many randomly generated flights the player can survive.
There are also a number of types of missions for each flight:
- Strike: Basic fight between two fleets
- Joint Strike: Fight between two allied fleets and one enemy fleet
- Bomb: Just like strike, except the player drives a different ship called the F-144C-B, which is slower and equipped with two nuclear missiles. The player can destroy the enemy capital ship using these missiles; however, since Star Wraith lacks a score system, doing so has no effect on the game.
- Defend: Player has to intercept a number of missiles before they reach the capital ship.
Campaign
The Star Wraith campaign was normally randomly generated by default. However, by editing game text files, it was possible to create a linear campaign. Star Wraith was limited, however, and creation of one's own campaign was virtually pointless.
Story
Star Wraith has a basic story which was very underdeveloped and mostly only explained why the combat was going on. There is a war going on between the Alliance and the United Federation Allegiance (UFA) during the course of the game. However, details of the war are not revealed in large amounts.
Star Wraith and Star Wraith II do not easily seem to flow into the stories of Star Wraith III and Star Wraith IV. This seems to suggest that Star Wraith and Star Wraith II are no longer canon. The most important factor is that time scales don't seem to match between games.