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Midtown Madness
Midtown Madness (also known as Midtown Madness: Chicago Edition) is a 1999 racing game developed by Angel Studios and published by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows. The demo version was released in August 1999. Two sequels followed, with Midtown Madness 2 released in September 2000 and Midtown Madness 3 released in June 2003 for the Xbox. The game is set in Chicago; the object is for the player to win street races and obtain new cars.
Unlike racing games that restrict the player to a race track, Midtown Madness offers an open world recreation of Chicago. This setting was said to provide "an unprecedented degree of freedom to drive around in a virtual city". Players can explore the city using one of several modes and can determine the weather and traffic conditions for each race. The game supports multiplayer races over a local area network or the Internet. The game received generally positive reviews from gaming websites. Angel Studios developed another video game featuring open-world recreations of cities, Midnight Club: Street Racing.
Midtown Madness features four single-player modes: Blitz, Circuit, Checkpoint, and Cruise. In Blitz mode, the player must swing through three checkpoints and drive to the finish line within a time limit. Circuit mode curtains off most of the city to resemble race tracks and pits the player against other cars. Checkpoint mode combines the features of Blitz and Circuit modes and has the player race against other cars to a destination—but also adds the complication of other traffic, such as police cars and pedestrians. In Cruise mode, the player can simply explore the city at their own pace. Each mode except Cruise is divided into missions—completing one unlocks the next. Environmental conditions found in each mode include: weather (sunny, rainy, cloudy, and snowy), time of day (sunrise, afternoon, sunset, and night-time), and the density of pedestrians, traffic, and police vehicles. The heads-up display includes information about the race and a detailed map, but this display can be turned off.
Players start off with five vehicles; five more are unlockable. The available vehicles range from a Volkswagen New Beetle and a Ford F-350 to a city bus and a Freightliner Century truck. Unlocking vehicles requires completing goals such as placing within the top three in any two races. If the player has previously won a race mission, they can change the race's duration and the weather when replaying it. The Checkpoint mode allows players to set the frequency of traffic, police cars, and pedestrians. Vehicles can accrue damage from collisions, and can be disabled if excessive damage is accrued, resulting in premature failure of Blitz or Checkpoint races, or several seconds of time lost before the vehicle is immediately restored in Circuit races and Cruise.
The game's city environment is modeled after Chicago, including many of its landmarks, such as the 'L', the Willis Tower (then known as the Sears Tower), Wrigley Field, and Soldier Field. The streets feature a number of objects the player can crash into including trash bins, parking meters, mailboxes and traffic lights. In Checkpoint mode other vehicles move in accordance with traffic lights, but the player is under no obligation to obey them.
Midtown Madness supports multiplayer games on a local area network, the Internet, or by serial cable connection. The Multiplayer mode was originally supported by Microsoft's MSN Gaming Zone, but this service was retired on June 19, 2006. It is now supported by similar services such as GameSpy Arcade and XFire, via DirectPlay. The Multiplayer mode includes a Cops and Robbers mode, a capture the flag-style game in which players form two teams and each team tries to steal the opposing team's cache of gold and return it to their own hideout.
Midtown Madness was one of the first games that Angel Studios developed for the PC, using the ARTS (Angel Real Time Simulation) development technology. Microsoft planned to publish sequels to racing computer games with the word Madness in the title, including Motocross Madness and Monster Truck Madness. According to project director Clinton Keith, the concept behind the game came to two Microsoft employees during an attempt to cross a crowded Paris street. They proposed their idea to Angel Studios, which had tried to sell Microsoft a 3D vehicle simulator. Initially, Angel Studios was hesitant to accept Microsoft's offer given the magnitude of the proposed undertaking. They ultimately agreed, and on July 3, 1997, Angel Studios signed a contract with Microsoft to develop a prototype of Midtown Madness. Development of the prototype started in September 1997 and completed in January 1998. A preliminary game design document was then created on February 6, 1998, with the final version being completed on March 2, 1998. The city of Chicago was chosen due to it featuring in several famous car chases in films, including The Blues Brothers. The development team asked Chicago residents to playtest the game to ensure that the city was recreated faithfully. PC Gamer reported that the re-creation was mostly accurate, although certain landmarks were moved to enhance gameplay. 8 to 15 people were working on the game at any one time.
Angel Studios and Microsoft included regular cars in addition to the "overpowered Italian sports cars" often seen in racing games. The developers obtained permission from manufacturers to use the likenesses of selected vehicles. Microsoft received authorization from Volkswagen for the New Beetle, and Ford, for the Mustang and the F-350 Super Duty. The decision to make only half the cars available at the outset was intended to promote a sense of competition. The audio team affixed microphones to cars and had Kiki Wolfkill, one of the few developers with track racing experience, drive around the track while they recorded.
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Midtown Madness AI simulator
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Midtown Madness
Midtown Madness (also known as Midtown Madness: Chicago Edition) is a 1999 racing game developed by Angel Studios and published by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows. The demo version was released in August 1999. Two sequels followed, with Midtown Madness 2 released in September 2000 and Midtown Madness 3 released in June 2003 for the Xbox. The game is set in Chicago; the object is for the player to win street races and obtain new cars.
Unlike racing games that restrict the player to a race track, Midtown Madness offers an open world recreation of Chicago. This setting was said to provide "an unprecedented degree of freedom to drive around in a virtual city". Players can explore the city using one of several modes and can determine the weather and traffic conditions for each race. The game supports multiplayer races over a local area network or the Internet. The game received generally positive reviews from gaming websites. Angel Studios developed another video game featuring open-world recreations of cities, Midnight Club: Street Racing.
Midtown Madness features four single-player modes: Blitz, Circuit, Checkpoint, and Cruise. In Blitz mode, the player must swing through three checkpoints and drive to the finish line within a time limit. Circuit mode curtains off most of the city to resemble race tracks and pits the player against other cars. Checkpoint mode combines the features of Blitz and Circuit modes and has the player race against other cars to a destination—but also adds the complication of other traffic, such as police cars and pedestrians. In Cruise mode, the player can simply explore the city at their own pace. Each mode except Cruise is divided into missions—completing one unlocks the next. Environmental conditions found in each mode include: weather (sunny, rainy, cloudy, and snowy), time of day (sunrise, afternoon, sunset, and night-time), and the density of pedestrians, traffic, and police vehicles. The heads-up display includes information about the race and a detailed map, but this display can be turned off.
Players start off with five vehicles; five more are unlockable. The available vehicles range from a Volkswagen New Beetle and a Ford F-350 to a city bus and a Freightliner Century truck. Unlocking vehicles requires completing goals such as placing within the top three in any two races. If the player has previously won a race mission, they can change the race's duration and the weather when replaying it. The Checkpoint mode allows players to set the frequency of traffic, police cars, and pedestrians. Vehicles can accrue damage from collisions, and can be disabled if excessive damage is accrued, resulting in premature failure of Blitz or Checkpoint races, or several seconds of time lost before the vehicle is immediately restored in Circuit races and Cruise.
The game's city environment is modeled after Chicago, including many of its landmarks, such as the 'L', the Willis Tower (then known as the Sears Tower), Wrigley Field, and Soldier Field. The streets feature a number of objects the player can crash into including trash bins, parking meters, mailboxes and traffic lights. In Checkpoint mode other vehicles move in accordance with traffic lights, but the player is under no obligation to obey them.
Midtown Madness supports multiplayer games on a local area network, the Internet, or by serial cable connection. The Multiplayer mode was originally supported by Microsoft's MSN Gaming Zone, but this service was retired on June 19, 2006. It is now supported by similar services such as GameSpy Arcade and XFire, via DirectPlay. The Multiplayer mode includes a Cops and Robbers mode, a capture the flag-style game in which players form two teams and each team tries to steal the opposing team's cache of gold and return it to their own hideout.
Midtown Madness was one of the first games that Angel Studios developed for the PC, using the ARTS (Angel Real Time Simulation) development technology. Microsoft planned to publish sequels to racing computer games with the word Madness in the title, including Motocross Madness and Monster Truck Madness. According to project director Clinton Keith, the concept behind the game came to two Microsoft employees during an attempt to cross a crowded Paris street. They proposed their idea to Angel Studios, which had tried to sell Microsoft a 3D vehicle simulator. Initially, Angel Studios was hesitant to accept Microsoft's offer given the magnitude of the proposed undertaking. They ultimately agreed, and on July 3, 1997, Angel Studios signed a contract with Microsoft to develop a prototype of Midtown Madness. Development of the prototype started in September 1997 and completed in January 1998. A preliminary game design document was then created on February 6, 1998, with the final version being completed on March 2, 1998. The city of Chicago was chosen due to it featuring in several famous car chases in films, including The Blues Brothers. The development team asked Chicago residents to playtest the game to ensure that the city was recreated faithfully. PC Gamer reported that the re-creation was mostly accurate, although certain landmarks were moved to enhance gameplay. 8 to 15 people were working on the game at any one time.
Angel Studios and Microsoft included regular cars in addition to the "overpowered Italian sports cars" often seen in racing games. The developers obtained permission from manufacturers to use the likenesses of selected vehicles. Microsoft received authorization from Volkswagen for the New Beetle, and Ford, for the Mustang and the F-350 Super Duty. The decision to make only half the cars available at the outset was intended to promote a sense of competition. The audio team affixed microphones to cars and had Kiki Wolfkill, one of the few developers with track racing experience, drive around the track while they recorded.