Close to 10 years ago, one of the most popular modifications on FilePlanet was released. Developed by Frank Delise, Brian Holinka and Tim Brophy, the Battlefield 1942 mod was titled Desert Combat and was set in Iraq during the first Gulf War. Containing alternate maps, weaponry and vehicles based off the premise of a modern-day (for 2002 that is) war, Desert Combat offered a much faster pace and a fresh theme, DC went on to several awards such as FilePlanet’s Best New Mod for 2002 and GameSpy’s 2003 PC Mod of the Year.
Requires both Desert Combat Part 1 and Desert Combat Part 2 to function.
In 2004, the developers finished work on the modification and moved on to new projects. While activity has dropped, you can still find close to 100 people still playing. We understand there are plenty of new and exciting games to play but in honor of one of the mods that helped make FilePlanet, we humbly ask to take a trip down memory lane and play Desert Combat once again (or for your first time). Please feel free to recount your past or current DC experiences in our comments.
Ah the good old days. It’s funny but to me there hasn’t been any other battlefield that has beaten the quality of what BF 1942 offered as a fully working game.
10 years ago there was land, air and sea combat on fully moddable 64+ player servers.
Since, there has been no such reiteration.
Well said.
I have had it since it came out i still play often’ this is the one that never got away! great game for the gamer.
This is the only game I loaded on my new computer after the old on had a meltdown!!
BF1942 has it all and the mods that were made for it rule!
This is one of the best games of all time, its a pitty the graphics are very dated!
History lesson:
The creators of this Desert Combat mod were Trauma Studios. They were snapped up by Dice to help with the development of Battlefield 2 and many of the assets from Desert Combat were used and developed upon to make BF2. Just prior to the release of BF2, Dice fired them all and stiffed them to the tune of $200,000. Trauma picked themselves off and renamed themselves KAOS Studios and went on to develop Frontlines: Fuel of War and Homefront but never saw anything like the success of the Battlefield series they helped to create.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Combat
It’s great to see this mod here again and I feel it’s true to say that the Battlefield series we now see in it’s modern form would certainly never have been the same if not for these guys. I salute them.
Thanks for that Zen, I agree.
Well said Zen.
Without a doubt, the best game/mod over the past 10 years. Others have come close but not quite captured the same feel of this game. I miss this game immensely.
As a multiplayer first person shooter, DC Final – Graphics aside, surpases any other game released since. The gameplay variations within a single shooter game are astounding, from your basic hand held weapons, to placeable mortars (which required you to guage the angle yourself), The devestating SCUD launcher, again requiring great practice and skill to be effective with,
Tomahawk missles, which are flyable, through remote monitors, launched from destroyers, destroyers which are sailable, which can be repaired and damaged, which have functional, operable gun turrets. Which have decks that can be explored on foot, and fought hand to hand on.
Stinger missles, a man portable anti air weapon, that is actually effectives against helos, so just because someone happens to get into a helocopter does automatically mean they get to dominate a battle, You can do something about it.
Helocopters also use some actual resemblence of flight mechanics, taking skill and practice to even just survive the hostile battlefield, let alone reach the skill level required to become effective at destroying enemies.
The combination of small arms, transport vehicles, heavy armor, fixed and rotary wing craft, battleships, destroyers, and carriers gave you the means to viably counter everything created. Desterct Comabat is an actual battlefield, not just paintballing in army clothes. In Desert Combat every battle with a weapon or vehicle could tell a story worth telling, a story of skill, disaster, misfortune or just down right bad luck. So dispite offering this huge dynamic of battle through the all the different weapons and vehicles, it still maintained the fun factor, weapons are impressive and have real influence over a battle, such as ships or tanks as you would expect of a simulation game such as ARMA or Red Orchestrer, however they maintained the most important factor; fun and accessabilty. You are unrestrained by things such as cumbersome animations, 10minute travel times, requiring 3 people on teamspeak just to operate something. Desert combat is both arcade like and realistic, something other games developer I feel either cant comprehend or simply dont even try.
Bring back alot of good memories, just shows that today it’s all about making money by releasing mediocre games asap, just to fill their bank accounts.
i still play 1942 but i have problems with win7, and forgotten hope, battlegroup42 etc will not work, evenbalance does not support it anymore, but search tankpanzer pb update, clever guy has sorted that, i have a spare pc with xp specifically for 1942 and mods, will have to try this1 again, i keep backups of installation files so im good to go
I loved DC! By far the best mod ever made. I enjoyed Eve of Destruction as well.
Desert Combat was fun in its day. But it wasn’t THAT good. It’s a shame it overshadowed better mods like Forgotten Hope and Eve of Destruction. Unfortunately Eve of Destruction was largely killed off by Battlefield: Vietnam.
Siz many of those concepts were introduced in other mods, and there were flaws as well. The helicopter controls sucked compared to EoD. There was no incremental throttle.