What if Capstone was revived and rebooted into a modern video company

7 hours ago, Noiser said:

Wrong. This reputation only exists now, in the age of the internet and youtube channels. At the time, the games were on the average side, just overshadowed by more capable titles

Yes and no. A brief glance of period reviews for their games shows most reviews hovering around the 50 - 60% or 3/5 stars, with a few in the 70s. Arguably this qualifies as average and on paper it certainly does. However, such reviews would never inspire me personally to try a game and certainly didn't at the time. I tried the Corridor 7 demo at the time of release and thought it was atrocious. The graphics were garish and poorly executed, and the gameplay a solid "meh" at best. Some review aggregate scores seem to be more forgiving of that game and others. So I will concede that it would be more accurate to call their overall reputation and games "mixed".

7 hours ago, Noiser said:

There's no objectivity in game design.

Again, yes and no. If I designed a Doom map that was one single room with no weapons and ammo, and when you opened the one door a solitary Cyberdemon was waiting directly on the other side to promptly reduce you to a red smear on the wall behind you, that would objectively be a badly map. Not to mention any number of game releases over the last decade or more that were released in poor states with atrocious and obvious bugs, and features unfinished and poorly implemented. Some people can see past certain issues in certain games to find some fun. The line between subjectivity and objectivity when it comes to judging art can indeed be a blurry one. But I think sometimes you can point to certain aspects of certain things and call it objectively bad with a reasonable degree of confidence.

Well, let's ask some European folks a similar question.

"What if Tiertex and US Gold were revived and rebooted into a modern video company?"

uses shittons of ai. makes mobile games.

45 minutes ago, Terrcraft said:

uses shittons of ai. makes mobile games.

Honestly I think that's kind of the opposite of Capstone - they lacked in terms of budget, not effort or talent. Well, they lacked a bit in talent as well, but I'm sure they could have produced an 8/10 game if you gave them a couple billion dollars and a few decades. They certainly weren't lazy though, and they obviously had an appreciation for video games in general. But the reason that the company has some amount of charm and sympathy is because they at least tried to make the kinds of games that they liked playing. They could have easily made cheap shovelware games for less time and money, and they probably would have made a bigger profit that way, but they didn't.

In the spirit of the topic, I'm holding out hope that Bass Slapper will pick up his Corridor 666 project at some point. It looked really neat.

9 hours ago, Noiser said:

Subjective claim. There's no value here. 

... Uh, no.

Do I need to explain in detail how every capstone product is shit? Because I can.

But also, I can use a lazy dismissal like this for any viewpoint.

9 hours ago, Noiser said:

You can take any news at the time of release and you will see they were treated much different than now (not as the best game in the world, but as a mild\decent\ok-ish thing). Btw, I played them at the time as well and I think they were cool games - so anecdoctal info doesn't mean shit.

Have you read the literally middling reviews and seen just how useless they are? Even the negative reviews talk about nothing valuable, they mostly describe Witchaven as "another Doom clone" and rate the game based on stupid shit like gore, they don't touch on actual important subjects like level design and gameplay (which a lot of 90's reviews suffer from, being too focused on graphics and strange shit like gore).

Even with that said, Corridor 7 came out to mid 50%'s, Witchaven has a score inflated by literally 1 80% review, Tekwar was fucking panned yet was carried by a review that gave it 3/5 for "looking nice and having puzzles", Witchaven 2 was solid mid at 50, Operation Body Count also scored mid.

So, your point being that they're not shit and instead painfully unremarkable? Yeah ok dude great they're salvaged.

I emplore you to go and read more 90's reviews and see for yourself how utterly terrible they were, especially magazines, you'll find that they focus on the weirdest shit.

9 hours ago, Noiser said:

Then you refuse to accept reality. It's not hard to verify how people started to talk about Capstone after Civvie's video, the same way how LJN was the punchbag from AVGN, etc. The way how we see their games now is completely different from someone who played it in the nineties. Different sensibilities, different expectations.

Irony.

Just because it's under a bigger lens and is seen as shit now on a wider scale doesn't make it less shit when it came out, if we once again refer to reviews at the time we'll see it picked apart and given mid reviews (even with the strange reviewing criteria, like gore levels and if it has puzzles), that isn't exactly glowing coverage.

If you didn't have much options in the 90's, that didn't make it not shit, that just made it so you couldn't tell it was shit, you just ate it and liked it, the problems with it didn't just appear 20 odd years later.

9 hours ago, Noiser said:

Capstone was a low-budged company, of course it would not survive. It could not compete with more developed games like Doom or Duke Nukem 3D. The same happened to many other companies at the time. 

Yes, many small companies didn't make it, tbey weren't as big as 3DR or id, doesn't automatically make their shit not shit, doesn't unfuck those sales numbers for poorly selling garbage.

You can like Capstone, you can even think their stuff is good and preach to high heavens of it's quality 3/5 releases.

What you can't do is rewrite the narrative that they're only shit because the convenient scapegoat of Civvie11 turned up. No mate the majority who knew already thought they were shit.

Given the posting in this thread is rapidly reaching a level of quality that's significantly lower than Capstone's own games, I'd kindly advise to avoid taking things so personally. It's all a bit of fun (or perhaps not, given it's Capstone!) and there's no legitimate reasons for the discussion to get this heated.

Or, in layman's terms: you are disappointing Grungo, surely that's not what you seek!

I think I understand both parties here.

I think what plantiff Mr. Noiser is trying to say is that Capstone=Bad has become somewhat of a small phenomenon because of Youtube and such, and therefore they've become The Room of video game developers, with bystanders assuming them to be the worst developers on the planet due to the slander and defamation of witnesses like Mr. Civie. In truth, it is generally agreed upon that their products are rather mediocre or below average, far away from the abysmal quality that is insinuated in various Youtube videos.

What defendant Mr. mrthejoshmon is getting at is that gamers in the 90's already knew that Capstone was not a well-received studio based on their overall output in general, as well as reviews from gaming publications. Therefore, they have always had a low reputation, at least among the people who have played their games, and those who were in touch with PC gaming.

As for me, I find that the answer is somewhere in the middle - a vague truth lurking somewhere in plain sight, just waiting to be revealed. And, today, we're going to find the truth:

*opens envelope*

I could do it. Just give me one million dollars.

7 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

In the spirit of the topic, I'm holding out hope that Bass Slapper will pick up his Corridor 666 project at some point. It looked really neat.

It does!

I do admire the Doom engine's flexibility when it comes to these types of project. I already mentioned the Alien Breed 3D remake, and while I have my issues with remaking a questionable game like Operation Body Count, I do appreciate that it was made relatively easy to do so.

13 minutes ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

 

  Hide contents

@mrthejoshmon...

  Hide contents

You ARE THE FATHER!!!

 

 

 

Nah y'all right I shouldn't care as much.

I apologise.

Make a remake of Corridor 7 or Operation Body Count

1 hour ago, mrthejoshmon said:

What you can't do is rewrite the narrative that they're only shit because the convenient scapegoat of Civvie11 turned up. 

Funnily enough, historical revisionism is exactly the issue here. It's not the first time either, e.g "ET was responsible for the video game crash", etc.

18 minutes ago, Noiser said:

Funnily enough, historical revisionism is exactly the issue here. It's not the first time either, e.g "ET was responsible for the video game crash", etc.

Coincidentally, E.T. is a good example of a video game that is actually not as bad as people make it to be and could definitely use a remake that irons out the original's bugs and shortcomings. For a game released on the Atari 2600, it is surprisingly faithful to the source material and you can tell that the developer tried to make something more than a generic game with the E.T. logo slapped onto it.

8 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

In the spirit of the topic, I'm holding out hope that Bass Slapper will pick up his Corridor 666 project at some point. It looked really neat.

Oh crap I can't believe I forgot about this! Yes this is exactly what I meant. Thanks for the reminder.

It looks like there is also a project based on Fate:

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=66664

So really that just leaves TekWar and Witchaven. It looks like there are bits and pieces that have been taken, but I'm not finding any TC attempts.

Maybe what we should be doing is calling attention to these projects and helping them or continuing them.

I messed around a little bit with importing WH assets back in the day but I didn't learn enough to get a proper workflow going.

Grungo has brought happiness to my life.

But no, I think if capstone got revived they'd make appliances or sedans or something.

1 hour ago, Aaron Blain said:

Oh crap I can't believe I forgot about this! Yes this is exactly what I meant. Thanks for the reminder.

 

It looks like there is also a project based on Fate:

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=66664

 

So really that just leaves TekWar and Witchaven. It looks like there are bits and pieces that have been taken, but I'm not finding any TC attempts.

I doubt anyone will revisit Tekwar especially if the original IP holder of Tekwar is litigious.

To be honest, Operation: Body Count is a generic enough game that replacing the so-called "Middle Eastern" terrorists is not something that anyone would bat an eye at, especially with the original game's rather poor reputation.

For what it's worth, I have clear memories of people on Doom Connector back in like 2003 calling the company "Crapstone Games" and ripping into Bill Shatner's TekWar.. I'm sure the mockery was exaggerated for a laugh, but the narrative that their games aren't good has been around and accepted since before YT existed.
 

I never played the games and don't really have a horse in this race, I've looked through some of their assets and thought they could be used well in a Doom mod - but anecdotally, the common opinion was always decidedly poor (and often coupled with some mocking remarks..)

I'm sure the core concepts of these games could be remade into something fun, but even outside this discussion, I almost always prefer "new" to "remake", be it games, films, shows, etc..

They'd have a ton of instant fans if they continued that one gambling franchise for sure.

I can't say much, But don't own any c(r)apstone games. And @Grungo, You are fine the way you are. 

On 1/5/2024 at 4:18 AM, Grungo said:

Me want capstone revival

Maybe Grungo should join magic cult, then Grungo will get what he want, including revival of favorite (un)dead company.

People only remember capstone either because they grew up binging shareware or watch Civvie 11, so I don't think there's a lot of basis for a Apogee or 3DRealms style comeback.

1 hour ago, OniriA said:

 

Maybe Grungo should join magic cult, then Grungo will get what he want, including revival of favorite (un)dead company.

 

Grungo don't fuck with voodoo

Ummm...nice furniture?

since this thread is still going, I'm not sure if it was mentioned but somebody already remade operation bodycount and it's actually really good!  So no need to speculate:  

The company doesn't need to have anything to do with it.  The thread would make more sense if you said what if you do a remake or spiritual successor to x game, but reviving a company that sucked doesn't make much sense.  It was the people in the company and/or management that made it the company it was and they couldn't make a good game.  Even if they had some shred of an idea that was pretty derivative, they couldn't execute on any of them, so what's the point?

11 hours ago, sandwedge said:

somebody already remade operation bodycount and it's actually really good! 

I looked it up and unfortunately, it seems like the author has chosen to double down on the one aspect I took issue with the original, right down to including a thawb-wearing suicide bomber that uses Serious Sam's Beheaded Kamikaze sounds. Like, come on, now... :S

14 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

I looked it up and unfortunately, it seems like the author has chosen to double down on the one aspect I took issue with the original, right down to including a thawb-wearing suicide bomber that uses Serious Sam's Beheaded Kamikaze sounds. Like, come on, now... :S

Yeah, there are Reasons that Impie is banned from most Doom boards.

Oh, I did not know that. What a shame.

Well, at least, when it comes to remaking bad games, he had the right idea and, as I said in a previous comment that appears to have been deleted, it is cool that the Doom Engine and especially GZDoom makes it relatively easy for people to remake forgotten/forgettable titles.

On 1/6/2024 at 10:24 PM, sandwedge said:

Even if they had some shred of an idea that was pretty derivative, they couldn't execute on any of them, so what's the point?

Oh man I was just watching some videos of their Zorro game and as per my avatar I am personally offended. It's like a bad Prince of Persia hack that also totally ruins the controls, the physics and the swordfighting.

I have no interest in the developer as a whole, I just think there are some cool art assets and gameplay mechanics that could be used for something fun.

I was looking at this:

https://moddingwiki.shikadi.net/wiki/ART_Format_(Build)

And I don't think it would be terribly hard to write a program that would extract all the sprites and textures from a local legal copy of a Build game. I don't know if it's possible to make a GZDoom mod that would depend on such an external resource, though.

Edit: I was playing a little bit of Witchaven today and I have to mention that I also really like the music, especially now that I'm hearing it with a good soundbank.