Stunt Car Racer by Geoff Crammond: a tale of clever suspension modelling and PC port disappointment
Ойындар
Stunt Car Racer is an Amiga and Atari ST classic, an unusual diversion of Geoff Crammond simulating a thing which does not exist in real life, and also the source of some disappointment for 9 year old me when I got the PC version home and discovered the importance of checking which format the screenshots on the box come from.
But how does it handle all those jumps, twists and turns on a game that is eminently playable on everything down to the humble ZX Spectrum, even if it doesn't look quite as pretty as you'd hope on some of those platforms? I delve a little into the secrets of Stunt Car Racer's physics, its history, and why it's a suspension-bobbling anomaly in Crammond's stable of normally circuit-bound racers.
Many thanks to Frank Gasking of Games That Weren't (www.gamesthatwerent.com/) for the screenshots of Stunt Car Racer Pro. Also available in book form (www.bitmapbooks.com/products/...) - in addition to a wealth of research, exclusive interviews and games even I hadn't heard of it has the usual excellent quality you'd expect from Bitmap Books and is an ideal use for a spare £30.
As ever, this video would not be possible without the hardware photography of Evan Amos (or RMCRetro in the case of the BBC Micro) and stock footage from Pexels, or at least I would have to own more vintage hardware and do a lot more silly things in front of a camera.
A list of chassis-twisting landings:
0:00 I fail at planning
1:13 Polygons on the Amiga
1:53 The Division Bell
2:40 Low speed adventures of Evel Knievel
4:03 Enforced roof-having memory puzzle
4:50 Magazines with multiple Amigas
6:23 Brownaround
8:17 The odd one out?
9:36 Before Sir Geoff of Racingland
10:27 Yes, I was writing code in that shot
11:08 What else is "roving simulation" going to make you think of?
12:18 The bit about the physics
14:19 A game about springs
15:12 Any port in a storm
16:15 Ah yes, the CPC... er, PC
17:07 Timberwolf learns a lesson about screenshots
17:58 More musing about release dates
18:25 The curse of 1980s PC gaming
19:15 Positives of the PC port
19:53 What next?
21:10 Unity projects and a million mobile games
21:40 Spiritual sequels and crashing an MX-5
Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 23 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.
Bonus fact: notice how in some ports the speedometer reads to 240, while in other ports it reads to 300 or more? When you're promoted to the Super Division, the car can exceed 250km/h on the faster tracks. Ports with the 240km/h speedometer handle this by wrapping the display around and starting again from the left hand edge, whereas other ports are able to use the extra margin available to display those enhanced Super Division speeds.
#stuntcarracer #retrogaming
Пікірлер: 19
I think this has to be my all time favourite game ever. There was something so addictive about it. The Atari ST version always felt a bit faster to me than the Amiga version. The 8 bit versions are so great fun.
This was excellent. Thanks
Just wanted to say this channel is awesome and I love how it covers both historical details about the games and the creators behind them, but also technical aspects about the games’ functioning like physics and object behavior and differences between ports. Also, you rock those wolf ears!
This brings back memories from my Atari STE playing that game and also F1 GP2 on PC. If I remember correctly I saw one track of that game in Grand Prix Legends.
This game is probably my first gaming love. I saw some newer games before that. Most vividly Wolfenstein 3d christmas special, which my uncle gleefully showed me when I was 4 or 5. But a bit after that, I actually got his old Amiga with all of the software he owned for it. When I came upon Stunt Car Racer, it instantly had its hooks in me. Racing games in general fascinated me and even to my completely inexperienced brain, SCR was an absolutely wild concept, executed in a brilliant way. Maybe I should add to the list of unreleased SCR inspired Unity projects!
Oooh! Tim Ansell! He's a very clever man! That's lovely that... and PC gamers got SCREWED! Fascinating stuff.
@TimberwolfK
Жыл бұрын
I mellowed quite a bit on it playing all of the other versions - what we got was a very nice port of the C64 version, with possibly the best frame rate out of all the variants if you run it on a fast 386 or better. It's hard to see from the screen but while it doesn't look or sound so great, it's the best version in terms of control and responsiveness in my opinion. (Apparently the ST version can be very nice if run on a Mega STE at 16MHz or Falcon)
@woldemunster9244
Жыл бұрын
Gamers were oppressed from the start. :DDD Is Nvidia Ansell super-screenshot named after this Ansell?
@TimberwolfK
Жыл бұрын
I think (although I haven't checked!) it's named after Ansel Adams, a famous landscape photographer of the mid 20th century.
@JimLeonard
Жыл бұрын
@@woldemunster9244 No, it's named after Ansel Adams.
@WhatHoSnorkers
Жыл бұрын
@@TimberwolfK I believe Ansel Adams wrote a sequel to F-Zero for the N64 but it was never released.
Looks like the BBC micro has the best frame rate of all of them. I think it is a port of the c64 version, but has to work a lot harder to fill the screen without attribute mode for fast fills of sky and ground!
Brilliant episode about one of my fave games
Great video!
There's now an Apple II version of the game... I wonder if it means it's been decompiled at some point, or did they just tweak c64 code?
Wonderful coverage of games that performed the seemingly impossible on low-spec systems. Stunt Track Racer (Yes, I'm in the USA) was a favorite for years on my 8086 clone. One suggestion for future videos; you may want to turn the scanline emulation down a bit. I was amazed to see Crammond had implemented anti-aliased line drawing -- until I also saw it on the ZX Spectrum port and realized that was impossible given the Spectrum's color palette. So your scanline emulation settings are not insignificantly changing the picture content.
@TimberwolfK
Жыл бұрын
That's a good point; because I'm (naturally) so familiar with the games I forget other people may want to see a slightly less stylised version of how they look. It's an easy change in the shader so should be able to get things a bit more accurate in future.
This was a nice overview! Interestingly, the opponents are built the opposite way with two rear wheels and one in the front, at least as far as the simulation is concerned. Have you tried my 50 FPS enhancement of the C64 version of SCR? Video demonstration here (and link in the description): kzread.info/dash/bejne/qpV3xcNtqqbPncY.html
@TimberwolfK
Жыл бұрын
That's interesting, I didn't delve into the opponent source code but I guess it makes sense when the main time you see an opponent is from behind. I did see that there was a SuperCPU version! Nice to hear from the author :) Didn't end up with a nice place to put it in the script. Looks cool, a bit like running the PC version on a fast CPU but even smoother.