Carmageddon seeks Kickstarter cash comeback | Hacker News Reader

Carmageddon seeks Kickstarter cash comeback

bbc.co.uk

75 pointsxd30 comments

I really hope this pans out well - I was one of the authors of the software renderer they used - and, if I recall correctly, there was some serendipity in the game's origins:

We had a PC version going well (DOS, Windows, ... FM Towns!), but needed a good PPC mac port and some demos. We met Patrick & Neil through game industry networking, they contracted for this and got coding.

We had specced some ghastly 'design by committee' ideas for demos, details of which are fortunately lost in the mists of time. Thankfully, they kinda ignored the daft ideas and started playing with cars, physics & deformation, and the game was born.

The comments about Patrick's stock car racing are not far off - On one of my support trips to the Isle of Wight, I arrived to find a pile of police cars and Patrick's station wagon (proper US one - timber an all) with a broken wind shield. They had been filming footage for rotoscoping the peds by the simple expedient of Patrick driving at his mechanic (John?) who then rolled over the roof of the car - safety equipment was several layers of jumpers. ISTR the windshield broke when the car was not going fast enough to carry the victim over the roof.

Local offices had complained (I'm sure Patrick jumping out from behind cars with a pretend bazooka whilst being filmed did not help either :-)

I do love these insights into the old days. If this works then maybe other old skool developers might fancy a pension top-up. Hopefully Ian Bird or Julian Gollop are listening!

Tell us more. This is awesome.

I loved your game as a teen. :)

Kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stainlessgames/carmagedd...

$15 for a copy of the game has to be worth it.

Keep in mind it's a potential copy of the game. Nothing is guaranteed, even if the goal is reached.

True, but maybe they could release the original game onto steam as a consolation; I'd be happy with that. Wait a minute , why didn't they do that in the first place, surely that would have raised a fair amount of money in itself.

As the article says, they don't own the old games. Squeenix does. If the games were released on steam, it would have just raised money for their old publisher.

I imagine porting it to keep it working with modern systems would be non-trivial. I know I can barely get most games from that era to run on my laptop.

That's where Good Old Games (aka GoG) comes to the rescue...

They sell vintage games, updated to run on modern systems. AFAIK, they adapt the games themselves (DOSBox for DOS titles, patches and custom settings for Windows titles.) The prices on the home page span between $3 and $30.

The problem in this case is that the authors don't own the game, Square Enix does.

http://www.gog.com/

http://www.dosbox.com

Thanks, I'll check it out if I ever stumble across any of that much-fabled "free time".

They obviously need millions of dollars to build a good version of the game (perhaps millions just to build part of the game given the cost of B titles these days). If you could sell 100,000 copies of the original at $5, I'd be shocked. It's extraordinarily dated at this point.

Short of raising $3 to $5 million plus, I'm guessing Kickstarter will be used to get the product to a point where a larger publisher can fund them across the finish line.

Another Carmageddon connection: Patrick Buckland, the Stainless Games founder, also wrote Mac shooter Crystal Quest which was the reason I don't remember most of 1988.

Indeed - 'that sound effect' emerging from a cubicle warren always made me smile.

The original Grand Theft Auto. If this game comes back, it has a lot to live up too. The original was a staple of my childhood, the graphics were cutting edge when this game came out, if they remake it, it better be more than just a modern adoption of the original, people expect way more from games these days. Could this work?

No. No, it couldn't work. Clearly while we bask in the glory of Carmageddon's pixelated decapitations, we'll all be too misty eyed to consider anything other than some pleasant childhood memory that occurred =/-5 years of playing Carmageddon.

That said, if Carmageddon and World of Tanks had babies, I'd want to be at the birth.

Is it just me, or is there nowhere on that page actually linking to the kickstarter project?

I've also noticed this. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stainlessgames/carmagedd...

From what I've heard, Carmageddon was a fantastic game, however... I had the N64 version, it was one of the buggiest game I have ever played.

It was always fun watching the AI navigate tricky sections of straight road.

Hopefully it's better than TDR 2000 and comes with real blood right out of the gate as opposed to the green zombie toning down treatment. Loved this game, fond memories of playing over the LAN at college.

I happily spent my $30 on that Double Fine project. Then Leisure Suit Larry came up, then numerous other remakes, now this...

Frankly, many a developer has produced crap games for a great franchise. I don't like spending money on crap games. Now maybe all of these will turn out great! But maybe not.

I am pretty sure Double Fine will be able to crank out great stuff like they always do. Al Lowe is a big name, too, even though his last big success is already ancient history.

But this one... Just as venture capitalists won't fund people they don't trust, I won't kickstart something with dubious value. I rather give to charity than support people who might waste it.

If it turns out great, I'll happily buy it though. If you can't convince me of that though, I rather give the same money to a cool open source project. Seriously, I do this regularly.

If you played to Carmageddon you would not be in doubt, I think

If you played the sequels, you would be in doubt.

My friends and I in high school loved the game, and we frequently played it at LAN parties on our PPC macs. Unfortunately if it crashed, it would crash on ALL the computers and bring them all down, requiring system restarts. (Ah, the joys of MacOS before OSX)

Now this might be a Kickstarter I could get behind! I used to love this game.

I absolutely loved this game. I remember playing the crap out of the time-limited demo version over and over again as a kid because I couldn't afford the full version.

Does it say what Operating Systems it will run on anywhere? Maybe it's just Windows?

> We plan to produce a Mac OSX version shortly after the PC release, with Xbox 360 and PS3 following as soon as possible afterwards. (And on to even more platforms, as funds and time allow...)

They'll be using Steam for PC/Mac, if the rumors of Steam/Linux come true that'll probably make it more likely for them to port.

Ahhh, the only driving games I really enjoyed in my "youth" was Carmageddon and Car Wars.

If they add kids among the pedestrians and a non-Windows version, I'll invest. :-)

From the Kickstarter FAQ:

> We plan to produce a Mac OSX version shortly after the PC release, with Xbox 360 and PS3 following as soon as possible afterwards. (And on to even more platforms, as funds and time allow...)

No word on children, but they probably wouldn't be far-fetched considering the original one had both old ladies with walkers and women with strollers.

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