About
Triplane Turmoil is a horizontally-scrolling dogfighting game for MS-DOS by Finnish developer Dodekaedron Software, itself based on the 1984 MS-DOS game Sopwith; its source code, documentation, and assets were released under the GPLv3 in 2009. Triplane Classic is a side-scrolling dogfighting game with solo missions and local multiplayer for up to four players, ported from the original Triplane Turmoil DOS game and built to match its scoring exactly so high scores stay comparable. This particular fork (hosted on GitHub) layers in gameplay tweaks by its maintainer, credited in the README as a "new version" distinct from a strict port.
How it differs from the original
The README lists specific changes from the original in this fork: bullets travel further with some added randomness and gravity, bombs have a short post-release fuse before they can hit planes, damaged planes lose engine power, bullet damage is now constant rather than random, and new options add extra resolutions and joystick support (including 4-joystick and 5-12 player AI-filled multiplayer). The README itself flags these as changes the project may need to make configurable to stay compatible with the original, or otherwise rename the project to avoid confusion.
Getting started
A manual page included with the game explains how to play, and separate build documentation covers compiling it from source.
History
The original Triplane Turmoil was created by Markku Rankala, Teemu J. Takanen, and Henrikki Merikallio for Dodekaedron Software and released as MS-DOS shareware; a portable SDL version was later built from that source by other contributors, and this GitHub-hosted "new version" was created by its current maintainer with further gameplay enhancements.
Media
Additional notes
- Trademark
- "Triplane Turmoil" is a trademark of Dodekaedron Software; "Triplane Classic" itself is not trademarked, though the project encourages renaming heavily modified forks to avoid confusion.