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ggambetta 3 hours ago [-]
I'm very happy to see this! Not so much because of TDIII (which I played, although not nearly as much as Stunts), but because there seems to be some momentum building around recreating old games using AI agents, and I love that! I had explored some related ideas [0] but throwing Claude at the problem seems super promising. The recent Crimsonland thing [1] was great!
Stunts was the greatest! You could make your own tracks, save replays and (IIRC) even resume gameplay from any point in the replay. My very favorite game of all time.
noufalibrahim 2 hours ago [-]
This is an interesting area. I've felt that with AI, it would be nice to have a project that I work on "by hand" so that my general skills don't atrophy and I've been writing an implementation of the Kyra engine used by old DOS games like Eye of the Beholder. It's mostly well documented and there are full fledged implementations (like with ScummVM) so this is just exercise for me.
I wrote a decoder for the CPS file format they use for sprites and it worked file for all images except one. It rendered half the image properly and then scrambled the rest. I could see that the sprite information was there but there was some offset problem. I had claude dig into it in detail along and gave it the ScummVM source for reference. I also gave it Ghidra so that it could debug the actual EOB.EXE file but nothing we tried got it to render properly. Even SSI's own code which got from a modding wiki failed to render this image. My final conclusion was that it was a half done asset that somehow found its way into the asset archive and is never used in the game but that's a flaky conclusion given that its name is referenced in the EXE.
I've been having a lot of fun upscaling the sprites used for the cutscenes and remixing the music using AI. It's a game I played a lot as a kid so being able to tinker with it at a low level is a nice distraction.
It's purely a "fun" side project without deadlines or anything so I get to do what I want with it without any hassles about "being productive".
eru 1 hours ago [-]
I played a lot of Stunts in the 1990s. I only learned in the 2010s that you could actually edit the terrain, too.
Impressive dedication, reverse engineering 35 years old game files is no small task.
sedatk 5 hours ago [-]
I used to play the demo of Test Drive III. It only had one map I believe. But I loved that it was a sandbox, so you could drive anywhere. I specifically remember following along the railroad. It was way ahead of its time back then.
I wonder / doubt it or something like it would shock anyone as much as it seemed to back then.
47282847 2 hours ago [-]
Time for a modernized port true to the original! I also liked the TrackMania series but I wish there was something reduced to the amazing essence of Stunts.
warpspin 3 hours ago [-]
I'd ask for Rock n' Roll Racing!
verve_rat 4 hours ago [-]
Oh wow, that's a game I haven't thought about in forever. Thanks for reminding me.
mrighele 4 hours ago [-]
I remember a map where just at the start, you could turn around, jump over an open bridge and finish it in less than a minute.
On the other hand most maps have loops and I would regularly get lost, unable to finish it...
My old PC wasn't good enough to play the game. You could almost see each frame render. However, the PC speaker music was really nice and I used to run the game just to listen to that.
tclancy 12 minutes ago [-]
Now do TD (the original)! I remember thinking it was something from the future when it came out on C64. Similar feeling of seeing something from two years from now with Mach 3 in the arcade.
xattt 1 hours ago [-]
Oh man, the controls on mobile remind me of a bad dream where you don’t quite have full control of your flying.
nntlol 4 hours ago [-]
I always love any reverse engineered projects
tdalaa 4 hours ago [-]
Ah, that's so lovely! Will definitely try this!
sgm1018 2 hours ago [-]
I used to play this, thats awesome.
snthpy 4 hours ago [-]
I used to play an Amiga 500 version of this. I think it was Test Drive 2 though.
bzzzt 3 hours ago [-]
Test Drive 2 (and 1) used a pseudo-3D renderer with scaled sprites (see https://www.mobygames.com/game/2107/the-duel-test-drive-ii/s...)
TD3 used a 'real' 3D engine, but as a result it needed a beefy machine for the day. Driving felt a lot slower too, I never found it as much fun as TD2.
iberator 33 minutes ago [-]
Not even one map as jpg or png to see on the webpage!!!
Whats the point of this project?
You expect us to load npm just to see some maps?!
[0] https://www.gabrielgambetta.com/remakes.html
[1] https://banteg.xyz/posts/crimsonland/
I wrote a decoder for the CPS file format they use for sprites and it worked file for all images except one. It rendered half the image properly and then scrambled the rest. I could see that the sprite information was there but there was some offset problem. I had claude dig into it in detail along and gave it the ScummVM source for reference. I also gave it Ghidra so that it could debug the actual EOB.EXE file but nothing we tried got it to render properly. Even SSI's own code which got from a modding wiki failed to render this image. My final conclusion was that it was a half done asset that somehow found its way into the asset archive and is never used in the game but that's a flaky conclusion given that its name is referenced in the EXE.
I've been having a lot of fun upscaling the sprites used for the cutscenes and remixing the music using AI. It's a game I played a lot as a kid so being able to tinker with it at a low level is a nice distraction.
It's purely a "fun" side project without deadlines or anything so I get to do what I want with it without any hassles about "being productive".
On the other hand most maps have loops and I would regularly get lost, unable to finish it...
Whats the point of this project? You expect us to load npm just to see some maps?!
They've linked to https://s-macke.github.io/Test-Drive-3-Maps/
It freezes up my phone. Why do you need to complicate the stuff so much?
Direct jpg or png could be rendered even by pentium 100 with 32mb of ram...