ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: TEST DRIVE 3

[GordonFreeman]

Aww. Google Notifier punked me again. I don't mind since I kinda knew it this time.

 

Keep up the good work

 

(Was going to do the vader thing again, but A: It's not funny the second time if it ever was, and B: I honestly didn't expect FM considering what Ross said).

 

Just wondering: Is there a way to subscribe only to FM updates on the RSS feed?

[Rimšiakas]

Need someone having programming knowledge, to extract map data from the game? Challenge accepted! (after I will get nice night sleep)

You are a good man. Good luck with that! Will be waiting for the results, I also share the Ross' obsession of game maps.

[pwiecz]

I wonder if the fact, that you haven't mentioned an airport in TD3 with planes and X-Wings landing and taking off, means that you haven't played that much in the game, or you intended not to spoil the pleasure of discovering it by other players.

Anyway, thanks for the great review of one of the games I've spend most time playing in.

[Ross Scott]

Promising us things should be a trend for every episode.

I'm pretty good at delivering on promises when deadlines aren't involved.

 

Need someone having programming knowledge, to extract map data from the game? Challenge accepted! (after I will get nice night sleep)

Awesome, though there's no rush on this, I'll be happy if it ever happens.

 

I wonder if the fact, that you haven't mentioned an airport in TD3 with planes and X-Wings landing and taking off, means that you haven't played that much in the game, or you intended not to spoil the pleasure of discovering it by other players.

PRESS F6 TO RETURN TO THE ROAD

[Aldibar]

booga booga

[Collective Foal]

I did watch the whole video in fullscreen. I noticed some nausea at first, but called myself a baby and kept going. When you actually addressed that matter, I realized my eyes were drying out a lot because I wasn't blinking and that I was legitimately getting a headache from it. Then I went to the bathroom and found my pupils weren't dilating when exposed to different light levels. This lasted for about a half hour. So yeah, overall, this was a very interesting experience for me. Just thought you might appreciate some feedback, Ross.

[trankzen]

Hey Ross,

 

Nice new series there, I'm really enjoying these.

 

That said, I have some nitpicking to do regarding your abandonware rant (I love your rants btw). I like abandonware as much as the next 30 something nerdy guy who grow up trading bootleg game floppies after school, and I do think it's only fair game to get less than legal copies of games that are not being sold anymore. But as for IP, as moribund as Atari is, they were (up until recently) releasing new Test Drive games, the last one of which is Test Drive Unlimited 2 (2011). There have been rumors about a TDU3 but Atari has bitten the dust yet again since, then they unsuccesfully tried to sell the IP.

 

I realize you probably know that, and while technically they are not selling TD3 in any way, the IP is stil pretty much alive. Well, at least, not dead yet.

 

Still, I support you getting those forgotten nuggets (or snappinng turtles) and bring them before us by any means necessary. No harm done to anyone, and more importantly you keep that part of game history alive.

 

Keep it up.

[RocketDude]

Wow, I was surprised that the review wasn't as negative as your description made it sound. That said, I wouldn't have been surprised, since TD3 looked janky as hell.

 

I also don't mind the length, and I think the other stuff you mentioned leaving out is testament to how much you can get out of the game, so that's that.

[JudasPhysicist]

There was a monster truck game that I played when I was little.

 

I would just venture off course and try to drive into the 2D skybox, but the game would teleport you back 200 meters or so every time you passed a certain line and you'd drive infinitely to those mountains

[L0r3n20]

Hey Ross nice video, as usual.

I would recommend you to review "Road Warrior - Quarantine II". It's a quite old game very few are aware of. I played it a LOT of time ago and I never saw a review. It was really funny and gory...

Sadly it's abandonware now..

[Ross Scott]

But as for IP, as moribund as Atari is, they were (up until recently) releasing new Test Drive games, the last one of which is Test Drive Unlimited 2 (2011). There have been rumors about a TDU3 but Atari has bitten the dust yet again since, then they unsuccesfully tried to sell the IP.

 

I realize you probably know that, and while technically they are not selling TD3 in any way, the IP is stil pretty much alive. Well, at least, not dead yet.

I think you're comparing apples to oranges. Whether the IP is alive or not doesn't have much bearing on whether the game is staying alive or not. On the contrary, dead IPs are much easier to transition to abandonware, whereas if an old game is sharing the same name as a new one in the franchise, the company can sometimes try to shut it down because they perceive it as a threat to their own product because of search results (or lawyers might anyway). So say Atari released TDU3, some suit might decide the name "test drive 3" will confuse people from their new product and seek to shut down references to it since they don't profit on that. While I'm mostly just going to extend it to games on the show, this "profit trumps all" mentality I personally feel like causes an amazing amount of harm in the world, and that games are just one small sliver it manifests itself.

[MACHINE]

To anyone curious about the flashed map image in the video at 9 minutes and 33 seconds in:

 

You made this map, Ross? It looks very lovely... Is this from the level you're mostly playing in within the review?

[MACHINE]

Also, here's another custom thumbnail I made for the video (for fun):

 

(scaled down)

 

If you come across this, Ross, feel free to message me because I'd love to make thumbnails for your GAME DUNGEON series on YouTube.

 

Here's the first custom thumbnail

[Ross Scott]

You made this map, Ross? It looks very lovely... Is this from the level you're mostly playing in within the review?

It's from one page of the manual that I was able to find. This is only a map of the first course, not the full game by any means.

 

Also I appreciate the gesture, but I think I may stick with making the thumbnails for now, the way I've been doing it I think looks okay and hasn't been especially difficult.

[ripa]

Check this out Ross and anyone else interested in game cartography! I'll upload renders of other tracks and overhead maps too later.

[HLPrincess]

^^ Brilliant! Ross will be amazed! (Unless he's seen this already )

[Vapymid]

It occurred to me that this game uses the same engine as "LHX" helicopter shooter, playing which was one of my favourite pass-times some 20 years ago

VC3OUrgf1Lg

 

I think it can still be found as abandonware and run with Dosbox... Maybe one day Ross would review it and compare the two? One can only hope!

 

Regards

 

P.S. And it has the best PC-speaker musical intro I've ever heard!

[ripa]

As promised, here's the rest of the race courses. Renders and maps done in Blender. Order is: course 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and finally main menu. As you probably notice, the maps repeat infinitely, which is why you can endlessly drive straight on that highway on course 3.

 

 

 

edit: Switched to thumbnails.

Edited December 12, 2013 by Guest (see edit history)

[scott155]

As promised, here's the rest of the race courses. Renders and maps done in Blender. Order is: course 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and finally main menu. As you probably notice, the maps repeat infinitely, which is why you can endlessly drive straight on that highway on course 3.

 

 

Spoiler tags ,for f**k's sake dude, spoiler tags. Giant pictures make the page go all wonky. That being said, that's some mighty fine work and very cool to see, so kudos!

[Ross Scott]

As promised, here's the rest of the race courses. Renders and maps done in Blender. Order is: course 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and finally main menu. As you probably notice, the maps repeat infinitely, which is why you can endlessly drive straight on that highway on course 3.

Wow, this is amazing, I never thought I'd see those mapped out. I definitely suspected that they looped endlessly as tiles. I am very surprised that the main menu had a full map as well, it looks like an entire additional level that essentially got wasted. Thanks a bunch for doing this, I have some questions however:

 

1. The maps seem to only contain the terrain data, was it possible to extract the information for 3D objects and sprite placements or is that much more difficult?

 

2. Since I made the video, someone was kind enough to send me a copy of the Cape Cod expansion for the game. If I sent that to you, would it be difficult to map out that data as well?

 

3. The translation to blender + the lighting settings make the colors much less vibrant than the original game. Is it possible to get them closer to the original settings or is that too much of a pain? For faces that are dithered, it seems like the solution would be to just average the two colors they're using. The reason I ask is the contrast between the roads and some of the terrain is a little low. I'm thinking once this is polished a little more, it would be good to submit this to vgmaps.com either in your name, or under my account, giving you credit of course.

 

4. While I'm afraid I don't know blender, would you be interested in releasing the model files for this? I'm thinking it might even be possible someone might be interested in porting this to another engine as a map for it, like Source or UDK or something.

 

All in all, thanks a bunch, it seems like I'll have to make a follow-up video to this later on.