When Carma Fun Size comes to android, maybe play on PC too - BlueStack App Player?

Hearnia_2k · Post by **Hearnia_2k** » Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:15 pm

Hey guys,

So, Carmageddon 1 is a bit dated. The new Fun Size app on the iPad seems much more polished! The GOG.com version of Carma 1 seems to perform quite poorly on my machine, worse than I acheived by setting up the game myself in DOSbox. Overall, I was very disappointed with the GOG.com effort - it took a very long time for them to come up with just a few DOSbox settings files for the original game, as far as I could tell.

That aside though, my main point it, when the Android version comes out, does anyone know if it will be possible to play it no a PC, using the BlueStack App Player? http://bluestacks.com/

I've not tried it, but it looks like an interesting program, and could mean getting all of the benefits of the android version on a PC?

Thanks!

Psygineer · Post by **Psygineer** » Wed Oct 17, 2012 4:30 pm

The problem with the Android store (assuming Google Play) is that you have to have an Android device before you can even use it. If you are like me, who doesn't have an Android yet, you won't be able to get it through Google Play to use in Bluestacks. But if you do have an Android device linked to Google Play, then I don't see why you couldn't run it through Bluestacks assuming you can get the .apk from Google Play.

Toshiba-3 · Post by **Toshiba-3** » Wed Oct 17, 2012 8:31 pm

"Much more polished": they had to port the original assets on their new engine. Porting the old code was not possible. So yes there are new features, most being mobile-specific. But other than that, there aren't much improvement graphic-wise: cars have better textures, and there's ambiant lighting+shading.

GOG had not an easy job at all with this release. Carmageddon is a very bitchy program to run on modern comps. And they did way more than just setup some dosbox files. I know, I helped. They also took some time to investigate every possible solution.

Don't forget that the point of GOG.com is to offer ready2play old games exactly as they were back then. So not only don't they go for hd remakes and stuff, but they also prefer to ditch solutions that would alter the original gameplay, visuals, and experience.

If it performs poorly on your comp, browse the C1/KS forums for solutions. Make sure you use the hardware shortcuts or you can also try the Exp. Win. Patch. etc.

Blabla apart, that software you linked to looks very interesting. Will definitely check that out. No one however can answer your question now.

When you say "benefits of the android version", what do you have in mind? The video recording and ingame lighting?

IMO the game looks great on mobile devices, but I still prefer (by far) the VGA C1 :)

Oh and the PC version is the only one with multiplayer.

Hearnia_2k · Post by **Hearnia_2k** » Wed Oct 17, 2012 9:03 pm

Well, I think the lighting is certainly something that makes it all look much nicer - but despite having an i7 quad core MacBook Pro, with 16gb of RAM, while running Windows 7 64bit I find that the GOG.com versiopn of the game runs slower than some of the other solutions found around the Internet.

So far as I could see the default configuration files provided from GOG.com only ran with the low resolution.

I certainly would not want Stainless to invest loads of time or money redeveloping tons of features or content for C1 - that's not what I'm saying. However, it would have been nice if it could do widescreen, and higher resolutions. Additionally they have the age-old problem that you can't reconfigure the camera angle keys, thus you can't use arrow keys for control. Back in the day this was less of an issue, we were all using desktop machines back then really, but these days the majority of people have laptops, and may not find teh numberpad available, or practical.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but, I'm fairly certain that C1 has a Windows version - I expected to see GOG.com's version to be a native Windows game, and I certainly know if I had paid for it I would have been disappointed, as I already have a copy of C1 on CD sat on my shelf at home, and setting up Dosbox to run it was no issue.

I would be really interested to have some indication what other work was done on the game to make it work, other than the config file - but I suspect you can't say too much with NDAs and things, but, if you can, I'd genuinely be interested.

Oh, in terms of new features on the iOS release, except the graphics I have not noticed anything useful, yet. The action replay stuff adds no value to me whatsoever, I doubt I will ever use it. The new menu is nice, mainly because it's a little faster, compared to the transitions on the original, but, whatever. Some of the new textures seem to look nicer though. I think the map is a little silly, as you can't control the car any longer, yet the game does not pause while viewing it.

Toshiba-3 · Post by **Toshiba-3** » Wed Oct 17, 2012 10:20 pm

There are hardware shortcuts in your start menu.
An Windows Exp. patch is available here.

Hardware mode is dosbox+nGlide. So it should run at the max res of your monitor (usualy 1920*1080). It is also a resource hog. Can't assure you that performance within a VM is topnotch. However it's possible to play hires glide C1 with dosbox directly for MacOSX.

But seriously, as I said, don't hesitate to browse the other C1 subforums to find some tips/help about the GOG release.

The windows executable was not included by default because it's crashing on certain configurations (a ddraw.dll problem). It's indeed pretty sad that they did not think of putting the HW shortcut on the desktop instead of the SW. But it's also rather sad how people don't even go and search for other installed options :(

It's also sad that the Windows version wasn't viable after all as most efforts and hopes were put in there. One of the ideas was to let the windows C1 run at higher resolutions. Like this.

You know, if it had been possible for Stainless to update their baby to nowadays standards (widescreen, hires, compatibility, etc), well they would have done it. As you can see, things took a different way. Same applies to the mobile version. It isn't the old game ported to iOS, but actually a new engine with the old assets.

Hearnia_2k · Post by **Hearnia_2k** » Thu Oct 18, 2012 12:08 am

So, a few things, I was not running in a VM. I tried it in a VM, and running natively in Windows 7 on the MBP, as I have a boot Camp instal. When running BC the only thing being emulated is the BIOS, so the OS can boot.

I tried looking at the start menu options, for sure. And it would have been a lot more obvious to bother doing that if the desktop shortcut actually said it was the software mode. However, if I recall correctly when I played about with it the hardware shortcut still ran in the low resolution, and it was not until I changed the config files to have -hires that this changed.

I also played about with with the settings tool thing, but saw little explanation as to what was actually going on, and the only way to compare results was to change it, and start and try it. Now, I don't have the game with me right now, but from what I recall the few combinations I did try made little to no difference.

The screenshot you sent looks *very* interesting though, and I'll be sure to see if I can get something like that running. IT'll be interesting to see how it performas, and like I say, the machine is pretty powerful, at least as far as laptops go, so might cope with it.

Thanks for the tips.

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