Stainless had already started work on Carmageddon Reincarnation before the Kickstarter campaign in 2012. They needed to have a proof of concept, or at the very least a few renderings, if not a partial engine built in order to get investors on board. The art, and models of the Tez Eagle were just the beginning. The studio wanted to make sure that the next game took advantage of all the processing powers of modern PCs. This included physics, lighting, textures, environments, and other visual flair. Some pre-alpha footage was ready for the campaign kick off. The studio would show off progress, without giving away any real secrets on the Kickstarter updates. Not that they were excluding the backers. They were actually allowed to take part in the beta process. Crowd sourcing some of the QA, and online multiplayer testing in the process was an added benefit of self-publishing.
Speaking of the visuals. The studio had a goal to give every character a complete rebuild from the ground up. Working closely with Doug Telford’s new character art, the studio modeled actual bodies for every driver in the game. The last time the company did this was in 1998. The graphics engine didn’t really support unique driver models in Carmageddon II. The drivers were a universal shape, wrapped in a different texture. The humans in Reincarnation had different builds, from the obese like Don Dumpster, the malformed Stig O’Sore, to the paraplegic Screwie Lewie. Even the robot Ed 101 got an actual metallic body. Each driver was wrapped in high resolution textures, and had basic animations. They really came through if you were playing the game from the driver’s point of view. You could see opponents turn their heads, move their shoulders, and steer in close combat. In a high speed wreck both the player, and their opponent could go sailing through the windshield. It was a violent, yet amazing accomplishment from a technological perspective.
All of the technology for Reincarnation was ground breaking. Stainless Games did shop around for off the shelf physics, or graphics software that they could use. It would help streamline production, and help with budget costs. Unfortunately there was nothing on the market that did what they wanted. So as they had in the past, they built it themselves. From 2012 through 2015 each revision of their physics engine became greater, and greater. The vehicle damage engine was quite amazing. It would be studied, if not used by other studios. The cars themselves were built from individual parts that could be deformed, or even broken off depending on the severity of a hit. It was similar to what the studio had achieved in Carmageddon II. Only this time each car had a thousand times the detail, and complexity. How advanced was this technology? A tire could actually be deflated. It would flex, and fold realistically, spinning on the hub. It could also slide off the rim completely. This would affect the performance of the car in real time. Nothing like that would have been possible 15 years prior.
As if writing the book on vehicle damage wasn’t enough, the studio also rewrote the book on in game suspension. If you were to take a good look at the vehicle suspension for the cast you would be amazed at how realistic they were. This included the tank models. Shock absorbers, and coil springs actually compressed, and extended. The drivetrain rotated, and axels turned in realistically too. To be fair the car physics in other games had been done realistically as well. Yet those cars rarely had exposed suspensions. In this game you would be able to shear off a fender, expose the frame, and see the shock absorbers still working. It was an obscene amount of detail, but one which helped the cars perform better than in any other vehicle combat game. The team seemed to be working from a checklist of things that they always wanted to put in their game. Full 3D driver models? Check! Realistic vehicle deformation? Check! Realistic physics? Check! Working suspension? Check! What else was there on the list that they needed to address? Ah yes, they had always wanted to get trailers working properly. You could almost get a sense of shame from the incomplete Tanka they included in the original release. The studio would avenge themselves.
Not only were trailers supported, but every car could pull almost any trailer that was parked on a side street. Some of these trailers were empty, some were loaded with pipes, and barriers. Some were campers that actually had interiors. These all mirrored the car physics. Their tires could go flat, their panels could be broken off, or deformed. The items they were carrying could call off. To hook one up all a player had to do was back into one. Then whenever they wanted they could detach the trailer with the press of a button. They helped absorb the blows from opponents ramming from behind. They also came in handy when they were swung at opponents, or pedestrians while going at high speed. If only the revised Tanka had been included in the game. Thankfully Toshiba Core created a mod for it so that players could download it, and add it to the lineup. As much progress as the studio made they still had a ways to go before completing the checklist. Some of the things they accomplished in this Reincarnation weren’t really stated outright. They were mentioned as a feature in new car. One of their goals was the inclusion of a functional jet car.
There are three jet-powered rides in Carmageddon Reincarnation, but only one of which completes a dream they had since 1998. Nobby, and the team knew their cars, and their car history. It was how they were able to create a massive library of rides within the first three titles they developed. One of their stated goals in Carmageddon II was a working jet car. The texture of a jet exhaust on the back of Vlad’s Annihilator from the original game didn’t count. The studio was inspired by the atomic age promises of General Motors. Stainless Games said in Carmageddon II you would be able to drive this car by pedestrians, and they would catch fire from the exhaust. They also said that the sonic shockwaves from the Street Machine driven by Wide Boy would blow up pedestrians. I was excited by the possibility. To me it was as interesting as Ed 101’s flying concept car. When I was able to purchase Jenny Taylia’s (oh grow up now!) Jetcar in game the afterburner was negligible. Yes the car really took off like a rocket, and handled as well as a car from the ‘50s would have, but the promises of combusting pedestrians wasn’t there. Whether I drove by the peds quickly, or slowly it didn’t matter. I literally had to back into one in order for anything to happen. Of course it was impossible for victims to just stand around waiting to get run over. Nobby had an absolutely mad idea for Reincarnation. He wanted a huge turbine wedged in between two separate cockpits. To complete the theme there would be two pilots.
In typical Stainless fashion it wasn’t enough that there were two separate fuselages, and pilots. The drivers, the Terrible Twins, were formerly conjoined. They had an operation that had separated them. Yet their flight suits had a zipper to allow them to reconnect. It was bizarre, and yet it fit in perfectly with all the other weird characters in the series. The Siamese Dream was actually based on the Silver Fox concept car by Officina Stampaggio Industriale (OSI). The company wanted to set speed records using their uniquely aerodynamic body. They even wanted to get it into the 24 hours at LeMans in the late ’60s. Nobby never forgot this odd car, and came up with the idea for the Terrible Twins as well. Their disproportioned bodies were mirrored in the actual model. Each fuselage was from a different jet, so that the car was slightly asymmetrical. The ride height was matched by different sized tires, and landing gear. It handled as well as you could imagine a jet car would. It screamed in a straight line, but turning was tricky. You had to learn how to work the throttle, and not give it too much power. The massive intake insured that any pedestrians nearby would be sucked up. They would be cut to pieces by the front splitter, or when they hit the fans. Any close to the exhaust caught fire. You could leave a trail of burning corpses in your wake as you plowed through the streets. I could imagine the satisfaction that the studio had when the Siamese Dream came to life. It was clearly a front-runner for the best new ride in the game. Now if only they could invent a car whose speakers were loud enough to explode nearby pedestrians… but I digress.
Stainless never forgot the demand that fans had for the armored police vehicles from the first game. Carmageddon II had standard police cruisers, and it really wasn’t the same. They didn’t fit in the science fiction future of the series. The newly minted police units for Reincarnation were some of the best updates in an already great library. Something that audiences noticed was that the new heavy hitter did not have six wheel like the original model, not only that but the name had been changed from Suppressor to Subpressor. This was a surprise because from the earliest Carmageddon Reincarnation art the six wheeled version was promised, and now the studio would be cheating fans. The reason for this change was due to the physics engine. According to modding community member Alex Darby “The engine's car physics simulation was initially developed in conjunction with the Pro Drive rally team for a realistic rally simulation. As such the simulation seemed to be designed solely around 4 wheeled vehicles and not having to support arbitrary numbers of wheels obviously made it a lot simpler and more efficient to develop. It was an oversight that it wasn't changed earlier in C:R's development, which Nobby obviously was very annoyed about when he found out as the Suppressor was always in the game's specs.” This news actually made a lot of sense because of how the cars responded in the game.
Each vehicle was all-wheel drive in Reincarnation. That is to say that all four wheels had the power to move the car. In the original game they were rear wheel drive. Cars could sometimes be stuck trying to climb a steep angle as the rear wheels spun. In Reincarnation if a car was cleanly cut in half, lengthwise or widthwise it would still be able to steer, and drive. Audiences appreciated this update, but they wanted the six-wheeled beast they had known. Once again the modding community came to the rescue. The fantastic render from Alex (TEZ) Tsekot was adapted for the game. The new build of the Suppressor was awe-inspiring. It took more than three years for all of this work to appear in game. During that time backers were trying out new builds in the beta test group. Despite early access, there was a problem rising in the Kickstarter community. Fans were beginning to show displeasure for Stainless Games. Their shouts became louder, and could not be ignored once Reincarnation went live. The studio was accused of defrauding many of the backers. We will talk about the fallout this caused in the next blog. If you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!
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