Our popular Speed Demon car racing game with carnage is undergoing a massive overhaul!

Due for release in 1999,  Speed Demon II: Road Rageis still a race to the death across the United States, with lots of new features:

• A new 3D engine, featuring all-new true 3D polygonal cars, obstacles, guns, and projectiles!
  
  
• 16-bit color
  
  
• 3D hardware support for RAVE, 3Dfx Glide, and OpenGL
  
  
• Time of day changes! Watch the sun set, the moon rise, and turn on your headlights as you drive in the night
  
  
• New 3D features, such as smooth shading, lighting, environment mapping, and alpha blending
  
  
• An all new physics system, with polygonal-precision collision detection. Our new physics model takes into account air friction, tire stiction, wheelbases, tracks, engine torque, gear ratios, and just about everything else needed for a car that has an accurate "feel" to it
  
  
• We now also accurately model torques and angular momentum, for accurate yet exciting collisions!
  
  
• Vastly improved roadways feature nice, smooth, yet challenging curves
  
  
• New weapons, including a new gun and some more original ones
  
  
• Tons of tweaks to make Speed Demon the perfect game we intended it to be
  
  
• All new artificial intelligence for computer opponents
  
  
• Brand new user interface
  
  
• InputSprocket support

   

•  Your choice of pure racing across the country on Interstate 90, racing with weapons or demolition derby action, all either against computer opponents or against your friends on an AppleTalk or TCP/IP network, or across the Internet!

  
   

• Original stereo musical score for each state

  
   

• Landmarks, buildings, construction, and terrain specific for each state you drive through

  
   

• Watch planes fly overhead, trains pass over bridges, and wildlife obstructing your path!

Try downloading the original Speed Demon whose blend of 2D and 3D technologies will run on any Power Macintosh, with plenty of action.

68K owners may want to check out our game Fracas that only requires a 68030 processor or better.

 A single-level shareware release is planned, with registered users gaining access to five additional states. While a Windows95 version of Speed Demon II is in the works, we're releasing the Mac version first.
 
 

Work on our physics engine continues, and man is this gonna rock. I'm modeling forces on each tire individually, along with six contact points on each car's body. There are absolutely no "fake physics" or fudge factors in this game. This morning I took a curve at high speed in a controlled skid, and the entire effect just happened as a result of having such an accurate physics model. That sure was satisfying.

I've been doing a lot of research into automotive engineering, and I've rolled in real functions for tire slip angle vs. lateral force, traction budgets, engine torque curves, air resistance, and rolling friction. Our rolling friction model is better than that found in some professional engineering simulators. We've been incorporating the latest research in vehicle dynamics from doctoral dissertations and masters' theses on the web into how our cars behave. The end result just makes me all giddy, especially since most of these complex functions can be pre-computed into tables, so we get super-realistic physics with virtually no framerate hit.

Now that we have a very accurate model of when and how your tires skid, I plan to do our skid marks effects next. Our polygon-perfect collision detection will also enable us to do deformable models for use in real-time damage, and that's slated after skid marks. After that, it's all tweaking and implementing level design. I hope to incorporate Apple's new OpenPlay technology to enable Mac to PC network play as well; currently Macs can only network play against other Macs.

Please direct inquiries about Speed Demon II to Frank Kane