9 ms·

Which game was this?

sokoloff 7y ago
NASCAR Racing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASCAR_Racing_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASCAR_Racing_(video_game) Even as the tech lead on the product, I have to agree with the critical commentary in the PSX section of that page. Our company's stock in trade was realism and it hurt us with the mainstream gamers on the PC side, but was even more severely limiting on the console audience. (We also didn't crush it on the execution side on the PSX port.)
- ploek 7y ago
  Oh wow! For reasons unbeknownst to me, my father had that game for the PC. It was one of two games in our household at the time (The other being "Mario Is Missing!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Is_Missing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Is_Missing!). I played that quite a bit, but I think I spent most time painting the car, because I wasn't any good at the actual racing.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Yeah, you have described the essence of the problem. The game was quite realistic, enough that rookie Cup drivers would use the product to get familiar with tracks they'd not yet raced on, but that level of realism made it not so fun for the casual gamer. (It turns out that racing cars at the top professional level is actually hard and not something you pick up in 15 minutes.) We would go to NASCAR events, weigh and measure car components, talk to the crews/drivers, and most of us even got the first level of competition license (typically 3 full days of classroom and on-track instruction and then 3-6 more days of individual mostly track time) so we understood what driving a racing car near, at, and slightly over the limit was like. The PSX product introduced a feature that later made it back to some of our PC titles, called "Arcade Mode". It was still racing (in that skill mattered), but arcade mode gave the cars far better braking, allowed them to slide and pivot more but spin out less (by changing tire slip curves), and gave drag reduction to cars that were losing the race. We also introduced the smoky burnout/donut ability which immediately made it into the PC title (but had a bug that caused a smoky burnout to be the fastest way to launch the car from a standing start, which critics [rightly] hated). At the end of the day, fairly few people are interested in very realistic racing. (Many of the ex-Papyrus team are over at iRacing now and they're on the ultra-realistic side of things.) If you want to sell a mass-market game, ultra-realism doesn't sell as well as fun and engaging gameplay. The end state of this drive for realism was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Prix_Legends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Prix_Legends which I worked on some of the early code for, but left before it shipped. Even in the early stages, with the best computer and graphics card of the day, a full set of physical controls (including force feedback steering), it was difficult to drive the car around for a single lap at 9/10ths pace, let alone race them in traffic.
    - mirsadm 7y ago
      Thanks for taking the time to write that! It's super interesting. Have you stuck with games dev since then?
      - sokoloff 7y ago
        No. If I wanted to stay in games, I’d have 100% stayed with that crew at Papyrus then Sierra and then gone to iRacing with them. Excellent colleagues all around: super talented, super interesting to work and eat/BS with. I wanted a family and financial security and the game industry wasn’t going to take me where I wanted to go (and I worked on generally successful titles for a successful company; most game devs have it even worse). The Sierra Online acquisition was great; loved meeting and talking about games with Ken and Roberta, but then the subsequent spate of acquisitions just killed a lot of the joy and essence of what made the day-to-day work fun, so that also made it easier to leave.
    - burnte 7y ago
      Back then you could still sell PCs as a small shop and make money. I had a guy buy an entire PC custom built just for that game. I remember him and this game very clearly because I was cycling, dislocated my kneecap, and had to go to the ER, so his delivery was delayed. I found him in my driveway when I got home from the ER. he looked at my leg in a brace and said, "Oh, I'm so glad you're actually hurt!" He though I was scamming him and waited for me to see if I was really injured.
      - J5892 7y ago
        Ha. The guy's train of thought was clearly, "If this guy's legs aren't broken, they're going to be."
    - siver_john 7y ago
      I remembered attempting to play this game on my Dad's playstation as a kid and always crashing. Glad I can now blame it on the fact the game was "too" realistic and not my poor skills as a young child. (But let's be honest it was definitely the fact I was a young kid who had no clue what I was doing). This was a fun memory to walk down though so thanks for that!
  - nwallin 7y ago
    It was bundled with the matrox millennium, which was the best video card available. Unbenounced to 14 year old me, the matrox millennium had a flat shaded polygon 3d acceleration capability, which made NASCAR run pretty well if you turned textures off. (which is why it was bundled with the card) I kept textures on because I didn't know any better, and the game ran fairly poorly. Ultimately I never played it very much because the framerate was frustratingly low. Damn shame. It was years later that I found that out. Of course I was terrible at it anyway, so it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. Anyway, that's probably why your dad had the game.
- Lutzb 7y ago
  I have to use this opportunity: Thank you for all the great IndyCar and Nascar titles released over the early years of the PC platform. The Papyrus racing title hold a very special in my heart/childhood.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Thanks! There's definitely a cult following and a lot to be proud of, but I have to say that Dave, Randy, Adam, John, Matt, Charles, Anne-Marie, and the rest of the team deserve 99+% of the credit. I played but a bit part (and really enjoyed every moment of it).
  - LoSboccacc 7y ago
    one of my most memorable quotes from childhood is not the halo theme but "I'm Paul Page, from papyrus, this is Indy car racing two"
- ilikecakeandpie 7y ago
  FWIW my dad, who is a lifetime NASCAR fan, loved the realism
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Cool. I'm not involved with the iRacing team at all, but they have a NASCAR offering and your dad may consider checking that out.
- 6374532 7y ago
  This was one of my favorite games to play as a kid. I played it for many hours. The physics, engine sounds, in-car view were really impressive. It is still my favorite racing games to this day. It left a greater impression on me than any other racing game I played since. One question I had is, why weren't cars able to flip upside down in the game? This wasn't a large negative, as the the way the cars crashed and showed damage was quite good. I laughed so much as a kid playing this game, it was pure excitement for me.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    The coordinate system for the race management/graphics engine in that game was a 2D system (and in fact was (lat, long) on the track, rather than (X,Y)). We'd convert the (lat, long) into (X, Y, Z) coordinates, take into account the banking and track surface under each tire [painted lines were slightly more slippery than asphalt], do all the physics computations, then cast the (X, Y, Z) back to (lat, long) to send it over to the race/graphics world. Why? Longitudinal measurements are natural for "who's in the lead?" type of questions and all of our track editing tools also worked in lat/long coordinate space.
    - unwind 7y ago
      Just to clarify, do you mean polar coordinates [1]? That would absolutely make sense for a game centered (heh) around racing around a closed track, clever! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_coordinate_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_coordinate_system
      - sokoloff 7y ago
        Not exactly. Polar is r-theta. The system we used was an x-y system, but one where the coordinate system alignment changed for each track segment. So, think of a world where a straight line in y ["longitude"] was projected into a constant path relative to the centerline of the track's racing surface. (While most NASCAR tracks are ovals and could be represented in polar coordinates fairly naturally, they do have some road courses and the physics and game engine originated in the IndyCar game, which has even more road courses.)
- jakearmitage 7y ago
  Dude, you have to blog about stories like these. It's amazing. Don't underestimate how interesting and fascinating your experience is!
  - EvanAnderson 7y ago
    Based on the grandparent poster's comment below re: the coordinate system and physics engine I have to second this comment. I never played this game and have little interest from a gaming perspective, but I'd love to hear about it from a development perspective.
- beardedwizard 7y ago
  Dude this game was therapy for me as a kid. Thanks.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  Oh you worked at Papyrus ! Man I spent so many hours playing the PC version (Matrox Millenia era) and the physics engine got me hooked (and the car body editor). Saving replays just to see how multi car crashes would look like (sometimes even self cancelling multi agent collisions) A time traveling thanks
  - ndesaulniers 7y ago
    Ditto, I remember driving around the course backwards and wrecking all opponents. I probably spent many hours as a seven year old just doing that. So much fun!
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      Same same, although my favorite was trying to bump opponents on there rear wheels, just enough so they'd make long drifts and chaotic spins.
- zelon88 7y ago
  I remember playing this on DOS with my dad. It was one of the games that got me into computer gaming, so thank you for that. For me, personally this one was up right up there with Wolfenstein 3D and the Wing Commander series. One of my favorite parts of the game was decorating the cars with paint and decals. Papyrus also had Indy Car Racing which I also enjoyed.

NASCAR Racing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASCAR_Racing_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASCAR_Racing_(video_game) Even as the tech lead on the product, I have to agree with the critical commentary in the PSX section of that page. Our company's stock in trade was realism and it hurt us with the mainstream gamers on the PC side, but was even more severely limiting on the console audience. (We also didn't crush it on the execution side on the PSX port.)

ploek 7y ago
Oh wow! For reasons unbeknownst to me, my father had that game for the PC. It was one of two games in our household at the time (The other being "Mario Is Missing!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Is_Missing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Is_Missing!). I played that quite a bit, but I think I spent most time painting the car, because I wasn't any good at the actual racing.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Yeah, you have described the essence of the problem. The game was quite realistic, enough that rookie Cup drivers would use the product to get familiar with tracks they'd not yet raced on, but that level of realism made it not so fun for the casual gamer. (It turns out that racing cars at the top professional level is actually hard and not something you pick up in 15 minutes.) We would go to NASCAR events, weigh and measure car components, talk to the crews/drivers, and most of us even got the first level of competition license (typically 3 full days of classroom and on-track instruction and then 3-6 more days of individual mostly track time) so we understood what driving a racing car near, at, and slightly over the limit was like. The PSX product introduced a feature that later made it back to some of our PC titles, called "Arcade Mode". It was still racing (in that skill mattered), but arcade mode gave the cars far better braking, allowed them to slide and pivot more but spin out less (by changing tire slip curves), and gave drag reduction to cars that were losing the race. We also introduced the smoky burnout/donut ability which immediately made it into the PC title (but had a bug that caused a smoky burnout to be the fastest way to launch the car from a standing start, which critics [rightly] hated). At the end of the day, fairly few people are interested in very realistic racing. (Many of the ex-Papyrus team are over at iRacing now and they're on the ultra-realistic side of things.) If you want to sell a mass-market game, ultra-realism doesn't sell as well as fun and engaging gameplay. The end state of this drive for realism was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Prix_Legends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Prix_Legends which I worked on some of the early code for, but left before it shipped. Even in the early stages, with the best computer and graphics card of the day, a full set of physical controls (including force feedback steering), it was difficult to drive the car around for a single lap at 9/10ths pace, let alone race them in traffic.
  - mirsadm 7y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to write that! It's super interesting. Have you stuck with games dev since then?
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      No. If I wanted to stay in games, I’d have 100% stayed with that crew at Papyrus then Sierra and then gone to iRacing with them. Excellent colleagues all around: super talented, super interesting to work and eat/BS with. I wanted a family and financial security and the game industry wasn’t going to take me where I wanted to go (and I worked on generally successful titles for a successful company; most game devs have it even worse). The Sierra Online acquisition was great; loved meeting and talking about games with Ken and Roberta, but then the subsequent spate of acquisitions just killed a lot of the joy and essence of what made the day-to-day work fun, so that also made it easier to leave.
  - burnte 7y ago
    Back then you could still sell PCs as a small shop and make money. I had a guy buy an entire PC custom built just for that game. I remember him and this game very clearly because I was cycling, dislocated my kneecap, and had to go to the ER, so his delivery was delayed. I found him in my driveway when I got home from the ER. he looked at my leg in a brace and said, "Oh, I'm so glad you're actually hurt!" He though I was scamming him and waited for me to see if I was really injured.
    - J5892 7y ago
      Ha. The guy's train of thought was clearly, "If this guy's legs aren't broken, they're going to be."
  - siver_john 7y ago
    I remembered attempting to play this game on my Dad's playstation as a kid and always crashing. Glad I can now blame it on the fact the game was "too" realistic and not my poor skills as a young child. (But let's be honest it was definitely the fact I was a young kid who had no clue what I was doing). This was a fun memory to walk down though so thanks for that!
- nwallin 7y ago
  It was bundled with the matrox millennium, which was the best video card available. Unbenounced to 14 year old me, the matrox millennium had a flat shaded polygon 3d acceleration capability, which made NASCAR run pretty well if you turned textures off. (which is why it was bundled with the card) I kept textures on because I didn't know any better, and the game ran fairly poorly. Ultimately I never played it very much because the framerate was frustratingly low. Damn shame. It was years later that I found that out. Of course I was terrible at it anyway, so it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. Anyway, that's probably why your dad had the game.
Lutzb 7y ago
I have to use this opportunity: Thank you for all the great IndyCar and Nascar titles released over the early years of the PC platform. The Papyrus racing title hold a very special in my heart/childhood.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Thanks! There's definitely a cult following and a lot to be proud of, but I have to say that Dave, Randy, Adam, John, Matt, Charles, Anne-Marie, and the rest of the team deserve 99+% of the credit. I played but a bit part (and really enjoyed every moment of it).
- LoSboccacc 7y ago
  one of my most memorable quotes from childhood is not the halo theme but "I'm Paul Page, from papyrus, this is Indy car racing two"
ilikecakeandpie 7y ago
FWIW my dad, who is a lifetime NASCAR fan, loved the realism
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Cool. I'm not involved with the iRacing team at all, but they have a NASCAR offering and your dad may consider checking that out.
6374532 7y ago
This was one of my favorite games to play as a kid. I played it for many hours. The physics, engine sounds, in-car view were really impressive. It is still my favorite racing games to this day. It left a greater impression on me than any other racing game I played since. One question I had is, why weren't cars able to flip upside down in the game? This wasn't a large negative, as the the way the cars crashed and showed damage was quite good. I laughed so much as a kid playing this game, it was pure excitement for me.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  The coordinate system for the race management/graphics engine in that game was a 2D system (and in fact was (lat, long) on the track, rather than (X,Y)). We'd convert the (lat, long) into (X, Y, Z) coordinates, take into account the banking and track surface under each tire [painted lines were slightly more slippery than asphalt], do all the physics computations, then cast the (X, Y, Z) back to (lat, long) to send it over to the race/graphics world. Why? Longitudinal measurements are natural for "who's in the lead?" type of questions and all of our track editing tools also worked in lat/long coordinate space.
  - unwind 7y ago
    Just to clarify, do you mean polar coordinates [1]? That would absolutely make sense for a game centered (heh) around racing around a closed track, clever! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_coordinate_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_coordinate_system
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      Not exactly. Polar is r-theta. The system we used was an x-y system, but one where the coordinate system alignment changed for each track segment. So, think of a world where a straight line in y ["longitude"] was projected into a constant path relative to the centerline of the track's racing surface. (While most NASCAR tracks are ovals and could be represented in polar coordinates fairly naturally, they do have some road courses and the physics and game engine originated in the IndyCar game, which has even more road courses.)
jakearmitage 7y ago
Dude, you have to blog about stories like these. It's amazing. Don't underestimate how interesting and fascinating your experience is!
- EvanAnderson 7y ago
  Based on the grandparent poster's comment below re: the coordinate system and physics engine I have to second this comment. I never played this game and have little interest from a gaming perspective, but I'd love to hear about it from a development perspective.
beardedwizard 7y ago
Dude this game was therapy for me as a kid. Thanks.
agumonkey 7y ago
Oh you worked at Papyrus ! Man I spent so many hours playing the PC version (Matrox Millenia era) and the physics engine got me hooked (and the car body editor). Saving replays just to see how multi car crashes would look like (sometimes even self cancelling multi agent collisions) A time traveling thanks
- ndesaulniers 7y ago
  Ditto, I remember driving around the course backwards and wrecking all opponents. I probably spent many hours as a seven year old just doing that. So much fun!
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    Same same, although my favorite was trying to bump opponents on there rear wheels, just enough so they'd make long drifts and chaotic spins.
zelon88 7y ago
I remember playing this on DOS with my dad. It was one of the games that got me into computer gaming, so thank you for that. For me, personally this one was up right up there with Wolfenstein 3D and the Wing Commander series. One of my favorite parts of the game was decorating the cars with paint and decals. Papyrus also had Indy Car Racing which I also enjoyed.