Reply With QuoteI'd be there day 1 for a new magic carpet or syndicate.
I've been thinking a lot about Magic Carpet lately and how it presented such an amazing experience. In the early cauldron of dedicated 3d accelerated cards Magic Carpet adapted to use this phenomenal new tech. 2009-2010 seems like it would be a grand time to reintroduce Magic Carpet to a whole new generation of gamers... in fact there is a whole stable of of Bullfrog games would be brilliant as cross-platform titles updated for current gen.
Could you imagine, Magic Carpet 3, Populous 3, Dungeon Keeper 3, and Syndicate 3? Is there any reason these titles wouldn't sell well (outside of the economic depression we're in?)
One thing that still amazes me is the terrain deformation Magic Carpet employed. It's been 15 years... FIFTEEN YEARS and still terrain deformation is almost never utilized, yet when it is, it's hailed as an amazing feat of programming technology. Why is it such a wonderful game mechanic stagnated/stalled from that time?
If EA needs some fresh ideas to make money, I suggest they look at the IP's they own and make the 3rd iteration of those 4 games.
I'd be there day 1 for a new magic carpet or syndicate.
Populous: The Beginning doesn't count as a third iteration?
Creating canyons in Magic Carpet and then flying through them was awesome.
No idea why the tech isn't used more, but I'd say it's probably because most games aren't built on requiring the terrain to be deformable, so it's not worth the processing power to do it.
Forgive me, but I believe Magic Carpet predates them by a number of years on the gaming scene.Originally Posted by jpinard
Because polygons beat voxels.
Yeah, Magic Carpet is older than 3D cards.
It was a great game. Though when I think of good use of deformable terrain, the first game that comes to my mind isn't Magic Carpet, but Sacrifice.
I'm not sure if I'd be interested in a modern update of Magic Carpet or not. It's been a long time since I played it, and I have no idea if it would stand up now or not.
Magic Carpet uses a voxel engine? Sure doesn't look it.
I don't know about that, but almost every voxel game that I recall had deformable terrain, where as in a polygon game it was a marketing point.
The fact was that 3D cards handled polygons and thus polygons became the future. They didn't allow for easy terrain destruction at acceptable frame rates and thus it isn't something you see very often. Or almost ever.
Did the Bullfrog engine use voxels? I thought it was a clever use of reshaping polygons.
Also, I'm missing High Octane in that list.
Magic Carpet's terrain rendering was almost certainly based on heightmaps, which make terrain deformation of the simple raise/lower type seen in Magic Carpet a trivial operation.
The Magic Carpet games were great. I do think they would stand up now, both in single and multiplayer. By today's standards they'd be viewed as shooter/RTS hybrids with the emphasis on the shooting part. There was enough depth with building out your castles, attacking enemy castles (and players, AI or otherwise) and using the various spells to make a modern revamp appealing, IMO.
Magic Carpet 2 had an extremely hard-to-find 3dfx patch that I only ever read about, so I'm guessing the games were at least somewhat poly-based.
I'd be very interested in a remake.
Populous: The Beginning is one of those games that I felt as a sequel deviated too much from the feel of its predecessors and while some might find it a good game in its own right, it no longer felt like Populous to me. A true sequel would be appealing but the originals were fairly basic RTSes. I almost can't see a new version not being bogged down by the all-too-familiar RTS tropes we see now and I've little desire to see the Populous formula shoehorned into the usual base-building/resource-gathering/peon-managing RTS formula.
Sinking the terrain under the other side's leader to drown him and following up with a few well-placed thunderbolts, though, that stuff was great.
Looking at youtube videos it looks like voxels to me. Also wow at how little draw distance there was!
Everything looks like voxels on YouTube. :P
I don't know about that, I believe Delta Force 2 had 3D graphics support and it was voxel based. It was the last gasp by voxels to stay relevant.
It's polygons.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/ma...ShotId,313339/
Note the peaks.
The terrain doesn't look half-bad scrunched up into a 640x480 window, actually.
Dungeon Keeper 3 please. I miss those games so much.
I was thinking of that. I had it, and it looked amazing for the time.
Wow, I TOTALLY forgot about that. Felt like a different game for some reason.
Yeah. Though I always wished that the DK games were more like Civ--randomly generated scenarios instead of the canned missions that they actually had. I'd play a game like that pretty much forever.
Makes me want to play it right now.
I loved summoning hordes of skeletons.
Weird, I totally missed this thread when it started, but out of nowhere yesterday I started thinking about Magic Carpet, and wanted to play it.
So I booted it up using DosBox, and ended up staying up way too late last night.
The game plays incredibly well if I keep the cycles low and play on the low-res setting. The problem is, if I crank it up to high-res, I need to set the cycles much higher for a smooth experience, which makes it so that the game speeds up drastically when there's no geometry on screen.
I'm living with it for now, and just trying to play so that a bit of the ground is always in sight, (generally a good strategy anyway,) but does anyone know of a good way to fix this issue?
In any case, I await with bated breath for the infamous level 49 wyvern swarm. I could never beat that level without cheating when I was younger. In comparison, the last level, with its volcano traps all over the place, was a piece of cake.
I'd prefer Magic Candle.
Syndicate 3 with terrain and city destruction. Oooh yes.
I'd prefer Magic Candle.Neither is Magic Carpet :pSyndicate 3 with ...
Wonderful game. Actually played this one back in the day with one of those mid-90's 3D headsets.
Damn, how wonderful that game was. I still remember the fireball streams between me and the other wizard. And seeing a wyvern fly out of the fog, oh fuck. DAMN, it would be great to get a sequel.
Dream game: the Sacrifice guys and the Magic Carpet guys get in bed with Microsoft for the launch of the next-generation XBox. 3D Natal magic carpet riding, reshaping entire mountains, with sky-filling magic explosions and armadas of bizarre creatures. FUCK YES. It will happen -- it's just a question of when.
Actually, you might be able to make a mean indie version of Magic Carpet these days.....
There was a sequel. I recall PC Gamer UK (or maybe PC Review) panning it, giving it something like 53, 59%. I think they complained it was pretty much the same game with just a few new elements. As I recall, they also smacked down Doom 2 for this as well.
I really enjoyed this game and that Dragonlance game. played those two a lot.
I heart this thread.
Been saying this for YEARS, the whole Bullfrog catalog is a goldmine for brilliant gameplay ideas. EA, GET ON THE BALL.
But Syndicate 2 already had this; Yeah, ok, you coukdn't destroy the ground. But that didn't matter as much when you were razing every building in the area.
Magic Carpet 2: The Netherworlds. I have it. It was apparently rushed out the door, and it's only about half as long as the first game. It kind of seems like it was supposed to be another expansion like Hidden Worlds, but got turned into a full-fledged sequel at the last minute. It also tries to add a bit more plot to the game, including a final boss, but it doesn't really work out, and the boss is a pushover.
Still, it's fun, and I enjoyed it. It has enough new elements like night worlds, subterranean worlds, and spell levels that it works as a sequel.
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