Stainless Games about 3 hours ago
Dammit guys – you post too fast for me to keep up!
@ Everyone discussing the Great DRM Debate: Guys, think about it.
We’re not a giant company, we’re an indie dev studio. We have to focus our development schedule on one thing - delivering a great game to you. It’s more important to us that we channel our main efforts into the creative aspects of the game, than spend the budget trying to cover every platform, OS and delivery option from the off.
The reason we’re going with PC and Steam initially is that it’s the most cost-effective way to deliver and update the game; plus it has the Leaderboards, Friends Lists, and Multiplayer support all built in. PLUS we can take advantage of our existing experience with the system to allow us to hit the ground running on all these aspects of the development.
If we had to develop and administer our own version of all those features, we’d have to divert a lot of manpower away from making a great gameplay experience. Would you rather Patrick worked on mental new Power-Ups, or Networking code? As we’ve said all along – if the Campaign is uber-successful, then we WANT to support as many platforms, OS and delivery options as we can (and we will be able to do a lot – due to our tech). But as a small company, we cannot commit to all these requests (at this stage of the Campaign) without knowing it would seriously dilute effort away from making the best new Carmageddon possible. However, we’ve committed to allowing you to play SP and LAN, offline.
When the game is out and we’re all happy with it (you and us!), then the work can begin to address the desire for it to be delivered in various ways across a variety of OS and platforms.
@ Psyrgery: Regarding the “visual upgrades” – yes,
physical upgrade parts will detach and/or deform like the regular car parts. Doors, bonnets/boots (hood/trunk!) can be lost. And the wheels will be able to be torn off too. All the stuff you’d expect in your contemporary violent car game – PLUS the silliness of “
Car Splitting”!
@ Jeff Hanlon: Every additional copy gets the Custom in-game Eagle.
Pinball Mode and Solid Granite Car… How could we NOT bring them back?!
@ James Hogarth: There will be actual upgrades for your car (Armour, Power, Offensive) as well as purely cosmetic ones.
@ Dmitry Banzin:
We will have a range of camera views, including customisable. It’s possible that we won’t implement an in-car view by default – but you could set one up if you wish. The in-car view tends to cause problems as soon as, say, the car’s bonnet (hood) crumples!
We already have an option to turn off the HUD.
Ability to disable the intro vids is a good idea. I like it in other games, so I’m sure we will.
We would like to do a Russian translation, as such a large percentage of our fan base is from this part of the world. Perhaps a community based approach to this would be good as you suggest.
Easter Eggs etc. Yes!
Blood splashes on cars, trails of blood etc… Well, of course. It wouldn’t be Carmageddon otherwise!
Radio channels for music is beyond the current scope for music, and would be an area that may be effected by a big Kickstarter success.
Rigs of Rods – there’s some impressive videos out there, but we looked at it and found the game buggy and sadly quite unsatisfying to play with.
Thanks for the game type suggestions Dimitry, and as to the rest of the questions… Don’t really have any current vehicle combat games that I like, the last one with vehicles in that I loved was Saints Row 3 (although the driving physics sucked!), I didn’t really enjoy Death Race, and my inspiration comes from movies, dreams (night and day), doodling, and discussions with my mad colleagues!
@ Stephen The Rushbrook: The game’s going to feature a super comprehensive Replay system. Actual replay saving and editing might not be a priority (at first), as everyone has Fraps these days.
@ Tamarinde: I’m so flattered, I can hardly respond.
I admit, we are reluctant to release gameplay video, because in releasing WIP footage of an unfinished level with placeholder ped models, it’ll get judged in isolation no matter how many caveats we add of, “it’s a debug build with placeholder assets, there’s no optimisation, this doesn’t work yet, that doesn’t work yet!” And so ends up being counter-productive. We’re very early in the process of generating the art assets to make the game world look enticing, because of the tiny team that’s been working on the game until now. BUT – I intend to see if we can do something, to give everyone a taster.
@ Michel Myers: Thanks for the Youtube vid advice. I’m remembering to do this now! (And I’ll go back and add it to the description of the first two videos.)
@ Darkscale: Re. the Reddit AMA. Oo… That was bad. Now you’re making me nervous.
@ nk:
We won’t be considering Origin – see my reasoning in the DRM/delivery reply above.
@ Ryan Hamm: The CarDmageddon game is a “Trumps” style game. Each card has a car and driver featured on it, with the specs. Players call out the spec from their card, and if it beats their opponent’s they win their opponent’s card. I’ll post some more images of the game, when I’m back in the office.
@ Aypok: At the moment we were planning on the boxes being the same. We may need to adjust this to a “deluxe box” though, for the $350 tier backers. It would be more fair to do so!
@ Oleksii Miroshko:
The “early” Beta access will mean you get in at an early enough stage to provide really meaningful feedback that could lead to changes in gameplay, and suggestions on content etc. that will be listened to!
@ Pascal, Jamie Provonost:
More in the $25 - $50 dollar tiers… Yes indeed, something new is coming to this area of the Reward tiers, very soon!
@ Mark de Jong: The little miniature cars will be… Miniature.
Okay, I’m going to have my tea now. I’ll be in the office later with Sim and Trifle (Dave) for the Reddit THING. Thanks for your continued support, CarmaFans!