Geoff Crammond

Geoff Crammond is a successful game developers in the UK, specializing in racing games.

He earned a bachelor's degree in physics, which explains the high degree of realism of his simulations. Among the most famous case certainly include the games of the Grand Prix series, and The Sentinel, a unique game that is often referred to as a mix of chess and puzzles in 3D.

Games

One of his first games was simulation Aviator, a flight simulation of the Spitfire aircraft from the Second World War. The game was sold by Acornsoft for the then hugely successful BBC Micro computer. Although the game only supported monochrome graphics, it had some similarities to today's modern flight simulations on much more powerful computers. It provided for that time a unique simulation, it was even possible that the wing broke off at about daring flight maneuvers. Extra Points were awarded for flying between blocks and under bridges, especially in the wrong direction.

Although Geoff Crammond is mainly known for its Formula 1 simulation, simulated as his first car racing game Revs ( rpm ), the British Formula 3 Championship at Silverstone. The game was also released in 1984 for the BBC Micro. Revs can certainly be described as the first racing simulation ever; so the environment was presented in 3D and the physics of the car realistically simulated - including ignition and clutch. Also included AI opponents gave Revs an enormous depth of play.

1986 appeared the C64 version of the game which contained another track, Brands Hatch. Shortly thereafter, Revs appeared Plus for the BBC Micro with the Donington Park, Oulton Park and Snetterton Circuit five racetracks contained.

Also in 1986 appeared with The Sentinel ( The Guardian ) that measured at the former prevalence of computers in the home, probably the most successful game by Geoff Crammond. This is a 3D puzzle game with 10,000 levels in which the player must maneuver a robot through a 3D landscape with cliffs, trees and stones to defeat the menacing Sentinel. The game was praised by the critics and compared the invention of the game of chess. The game was highly successful and has been converted to various platforms. In 1998, appeared with The Sentinel Returns a Successor with music by filmmaker John Carpenter for PC and Playstation, but hardly attracted attention.

After that Crammond concentrated again on race simulations, which in 1989 published Stunt Car Racer is a very special game of this genre. It's about to go with souped Rennbuggies built on stilts over a distance, like a roller coaster, with huge ascents and descents, and steep turns and jumps. There is no distance limitations, so that the difficulty of the game was also in not crashing off the track. Even if all this sounds like an action racing game, Stunt Car Racer nevertheless had excellent physics engine. For example, the attenuation was simulated realistic, led to daring jumps in damage to the car. Another special feature of the game was that it was the first car racing game ever with a multiplayer function. For example, two players could connect their computers via null -modem cable and compete against each other.

Since the early 1990s, Geoff Crammond developed exclusively formula -1 simulations its award-winning Grand Prix series. At this time, the Amiga Power magazine began to title as Sir Geoff Crammond, a running gag that spread so fast that some still believe today, he would be called " Sir Geoff Crammond ." In cooperation with the British development studio MicroProse Formula One Grand Prix was released in 1991 (F1 GP) (in the U.S. as World Circuit sold) for the Amiga and one year later also for the PC. The successor to Grand Prix 2 followed in 1996 and was the best time Formula 1 simulation on the market. After a long development period in 2000 appeared the third part of the series, Grand Prix 3, 2001 developed Infogrames Grand Prix 3 2000, an add -on for Grand Prix 3 Grand Prix 4 was the last part of the Grand Prix series, and in 2002 came to the market.

After the end of the Grand Prix series, there were rumors that Crammond was working on a new edition of Stunt Car Racer. The rumors were later confirmed, along with the announcement that the game was being developed together with Lost Toys. Lost Toys was closed due to financial problems the end of 2003, since then we have not heard anything from the game.

Published

Set development

• Stunt Car Racer Pro ( PC)
• Grand Prix series. The development of GP4 but develop several, mostly independent of each other, continue to be operated groups, the so-called mods for the PC. According to the latest state of the real Formula 1 shall be the dataset with respect to cars, including chassis, ride and noise, systems and control customer is changed, overriding the initial stock.