"Junkyard" Mode - Complete Customization of Cars?

[Caddy Fat Cat]

Perhaps this belongs in the thread entitled "The Cars," as the topic springs from ideas there. If so, I apologize, but felt this idea might bear consideration of its own.

I've been seeing some people talking about a "junkyard build" scenario, where you start the game using some junked out car and upgrade from there. I've been thinking about this more and more, and it appeals to me. Perhaps this could be part of the upgrade process. In between missions you have the option to visit the workshop and spend your money to buy upgrades to existing cars (motor, armor, all the classic upgrades), but perhaps you can also go to the junkyard to find special upgrades, or even build a car from scratch.

Perhaps each time you waste an opponent car, certain elements of that car can be found in your junkyard? Say you just wasted Electric Blue, and the next time you visit your junkyard you can find the fenders from Electric Blue, or perhaps the chassis, or even the Pedestrian Electro Bastard Ray module. Maybe there's a certain percentage rate of any given component from the car dropping each time you waste it? At the end of each map there could be a list of what components were added to your junkyard, a parts summary.

Could these parts be added to "classic" cars in the game, like, could I add the Bastard Ray module to the Eagle or Project X? Or could I only add them to a franken-car, in order to keep things balanced? Perhaps the cars have a certain number of upgrade slots in them? Slapping the fenders from Towmeister on my dune buggy to add extra armor might only take one or two upgrade slots, but adding the Bastard Ray might take ten.

Perhaps this is how you acquire the enemy vehicles, wasting them repeatedly until all the components needed to build the car are finally in your junkyard? Would make it feel like more of an accomplishment to get the vehicles than just wasting them once and winning the map.

I could see fans spending hundreds of hours cobbling together insane automotive monstrosities like this, testing out their custom vehicles long after they have beaten the base game content. I imagine the videos and screenshots of some of these insane creations would be popular in the game community.

Just some thoughts I had. I'd love to hear opinions from others on this idea.

[TurboDonkey007]

sounds like a 'career' type mode might work for something like that.

There is a good idea in there somewhere, not sure if it is for carmageddon though....

[John_Lennon]

Sounds like a pretty cool concept. Like the other guy said, it might not be for Carma, but it does sound cool though.

Maybe they can have a couple different game modes? That would be groovy, to say the least.

[BattleMetalChris]

Yeah, I really like this idea, kind of like 'Spore with cars'. It would need *loads* of different parts to work well though but I love the idea of being able to create something that slowly evolves into an entirely unique vehicle as you play it through the full game.

[hoodoo456]

I think this would work great. You could buy the wreckage of your opponent, and you make your own custom death machine, or just use all the parts from the car you bought to make the car you bought, if you want one specific car.

[Dodo Bizar]

I am in favor of this, especially a list of 'stolen' components after each race sounds interesting.

[Beastman]

If parts will be random, there will be alot of savescumming - to get some cool part.

Also, it may be fun to see your parts stolen after lose. So, there should be some kind of "no restart" system for this mode.

[Kubby]

If parts will be random, there will be alot of savescumming - to get some cool part.

Solution to this problem is simple - disallow saving (there would be only latest autosave.

[BattleMetalChris]

Unless you can use in multiplayer the cars you create from the singleplayer game, savescummers are only cheating themselves - fuck 'em.

[Caddy Fat Cat]

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree that stock cars would be the only ones usable in multiplayer, unless they built in an "open" category where the sky's the limit. Have "stock" and "open" as match options when connecting to find a game, so people who want the nice, balanced cars from Stainless can choose stock, and people who want insane cars that might be grossly overpowered can flock to the open matches.

There are definitely players out there that would enjoy both, and I really like the idea of adding the possibility for months or years of replayability through letting players hunt down those rare parts and build whatever sort of crazy broken cars they can dream up. Stainless could even make money from the game after the fact through selling "part packs," for a few bucks you get a new set of cars and/or parts available every few months as downloadable additional content.

Those who don't want to mess with building cars from pieces could be perfectly happy in the "stock" matches, with additional cars showing up every few months as additional content to keep things fresh without ever visiting the junkyard.