The Mini TSFO (Training Set, Fire Observation) was the first artillery call-for-fire simulation designed for the personal computer. It was started in 1985 as an outgrowth of a Field Artillery Officer Advanced Course battlefield research project at the U.S. Army Field Artillery School (USAFAS) to develop a concept for incorporating PCs into artillery training, and was completed in 1986. It replaced summer artillery live fire training for cadets at West Point in 1986 and 1987. One of the USAFAS students involved in the battlefield research project, Captain (later Colonel) Bill Erwin, volunteered to continue to develop the concept into an actual application during his follow-on assignment to the USAFAS Directorate of Training and Doctrine. Versions: MINITSFO - Original version using a Digital Message Device (DMD), virtual map, and CGA graphics. VTSFO - Replaced the DMD with keyboard interface for use at West Point. NGFTSFO - Naval Gunfire version using EGA graphics, actual scenes from San Clemente Island training area, and incorporating effects of dispersion between rounds.
Evolution of a military video game As originally envisioned, the MiniTSFO would be a complete system that required only a computer to play. This meant that there had to be some way to see targets on-screen, some way to locate the target coordinates such as a map, and some way to call for fire. This resulted in a combination of three screens which the user could flip back-and-forth by using function keys. The first screen showed a simulated view through an AN/GVS-5 laser rangefinder. The map screen was a depiction of the fictional German town of Nitzburg and surrounding area. Lastly, the way to enter firing commands was a virtual AN/PSG-2 Digital Message Device (DMD). The virtual DMD required extensive programming in order to simulate the actual operation of a real DMD and consumed most of the program code space. The MiniTSFO was originally coded in BASICA, an interpreted version of BASIC available on IBM PCs. As the design of the program was pushing the limits of BASICA, Microsoft introduced the QuickBASIC compiler. This allowed the MiniTSFO to grow beyond the memory limits of BASICA and structured programming allowed additional complexity. In its initial design, the MiniTSFO drew all screens from program code. It wasn't long before the limitations of this approach became obvious and so the screens completed to date were captured and imported into PC Paintbrush to be edited. This allowed the additional of details that would have been too tedious to incorporate through code and also allowed the target screens to be easily edited to add additional types of targets. To allow the target screens to be easily changed to provide additional challenges, the target locations and descriptions were read in from an initialization file when the MiniTSFO was started.
MiniTSFO (classic edition)
The MiniTSFO used a virtual DMD to control fire missions. The user was presented with one of five random target screens. The user would then determine how to engage the target by either grid location, polar coordinates, or shifting from a known point by flipping back and forth between the target screen and the map. Once the target was located, the user would go to the virtual DMD and enter a fire mission just as a real FO would do with a real DMD. Messages back and forth between the user and the fire direction center (shot and splash) would precede the depiction of an artillery round bursting where the user had described the target location. The user would then use the virtual DMD to adjust the fire onto the target, fire for effect, and then give end-of-mission details. After the end of the fire mission, the user would be critiqued on several factors such as initial target location, description, how many rounds were needed to fire-for-effect, and overall mission completion. The best available graphic card for a PC at that time was the CGA which allowed for 320x200 resolution in only four colors. This meant that the graphics for the MiniTSFO, while state-of-the-art for the time, would be considered very crude by today's standards.
Trainer edition
This was the classic edition with the DMD removed and a keyboard interface used instead. NCOs training cadets at West Point decided that teaching them to use a DMD was too time-consuming, and wanted them to just call the fire mission information to the NCO in charge, who would then enter it into the MiniTSFO. This was the only difference from the classic edition.
Naval gunfire edition
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