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

Me want capstone revival, but instead of bad games, they make good game, and make sequel to OBC and Corridor 7

would you like capstone be revived into a good company?

capstone but good.....

so something completely different from capstone then?

19 minutes ago, roadworx said:

capstone but good.....

 

so something completely different from capstone then?

I mean, it CAN be still janky, can't capstone without jank, but it playable and fun

Why? Their reputation doesn't have much worth salvaging. They're on GOG and Steam because Civvie showed off their hilarious jankiness.

Having said that, Corridor 7 wasn't bad and Tekwar/Witchaven could be much better if development was actually managed decently.

But no, we don't need "The Pinnacle of Entertainment Software" getting a revival.

We'd all be looking forward to Marvel vs Capstone...

:D

25 minutes ago, LadyMistDragon said:

Why? Their reputation doesn't have much worth salvaging. They're on GOG and Steam because Civvie showed off their hilarious jankiness.

 

Having said that, Corridor 7 wasn't bad and Tekwar/Witchaven could be much better if development was actually managed decently.

 

But no, we don't need "The Pinnacle of Entertainment Software" getting a revival.

But what if it did got revived, and it make good game instead of bad game?

Capstone was a crap company that made crap games. I know people find some charm in them and that's fine. But their overwhelming reputation is for crap games, and even a fan of them can surely summon enough objectivity to see why. As the old saying goes, sometimes dead is better, and that is 100% applicable for Capstone.

Besides, I am pretty sure the news would give Civvie a brain aneurysm powerful enough to shoot grey matter out of his ears. And as I like him, I would rather he not die horribly like that.

The best thing would be trying to salvage whatever few good ideas were in original game and try to use to make a good mod/game.

For example like this mod: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Operation_Body_Count

Capstone had a lot of neat ideas for the time but they rushed all their games and did not have the experience necessary for making the games they were trying to make, and when I say they rushed their games I mean they really rushed their games.
 

It is unlikely Capstone would amount to much these days with all the retro inspired FPS games on the market today they’d just feel like another company imitating the past and it would just feel soulless. 

They are notorious for having made sub-par games. You'd also need completely new people, so why reuse an old name that has no brand value at all. All their output was either crap or, if you want to take a more positive spin, decidedly unimpressive. There's nothing there that could give a new startup any boost in popularity. So what you'd end up is maybe the rights to the "Witchaven" name, but that's most likely all the company is worth.

There are more than enough companies with the same business model - cranking out games cheap and fast with little regard for quality. Most often they're in the mobile market because that's where the real money is made. Gameloft is still alive and well, remember Gameloft? Anyway, there's plenty of companies like that targeting pc and consoles. Like Game Mill who famously made The Rise of Kong. 

There's no good reason Capstone should come back, we're better off without it. But if it did come back, it would fit in nicely with all the others flooding the market with minimal viable product and/or copypasted trash. 

3 hours ago, Grungo said:

if nothing nice say, then no say it

 

what did grungo ever do to you? me not pillage your tribe's village, so why mean?

pssst...the problem with gimmick accounts is that if their gimmick isn't really really good or really well-executed, they get old really really quick...

gotta do something new, or at least shake up the current gimmick a bit. either that or space out the posts considerably, that way it never gets stale :p

I for one am all for the notion of remaking bad/subpar games. Maybe Capstone itself does not need to be revived, but its IPs might be up for grab and could be reworked or reimagined into something actually good. A good example would be the Alien Breed 3D remake, which, granted, is not based on a Capstone title, but does an amazing job at improving upon the source material.

7 hours ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

There's no good reason Capcom should come back

I think you meant "Capstone" there. XD

7 hours ago, roadworx said:

gotta do something new, or at least shake up the current gimmick a bit. either that or space out the posts considerably, that way it never gets stale :p

Or you could always, you know, just not engage with that person?

Yeah, I'm also in the "salvage/reimagine" camp.

This seems to be a theme that is coming up a lot. If there's sufficient interest, I see two strategies:

1. Mod or fork the game, especially if there's a modern sourceport that can be easily used to improve the game.

2. Port the game assets into GZDoom

#1 is potentially more difficult, but #2 raises the problem of distributing assets to be used in a different engine. I wonder how hard it would be to make a script that would extract assets from a legal copy of one of these games and package them for GZDoom.

I think the approach would vary based on the engine and how bad the original game is. Does anyone have experience modding Build engine games? Do sourceports support modding to the extent that we could easily polish any of them up? Like, what would our todo list be to turn TekWar into a good game?

And where does C7 sit in the modern Wolf3d ecosystem? Some of these Wolf projects are pretty ambitious.

Make a better version of Operation Body Count. I loved that game. I played it for hours.

Oh yeah we could get a TekWar remastered with better gameplay, better levels, better everything, in the end a totally different game 😁

15 hours ago, Grungo said:

Me want capstone revival, but instead of bad games, they make good game, and make sequel to OBC and Corridor 7

 

would you like capstone be revived into a good company?

Wow , did capstone had people from the stone age too? That explains a couple of things 

15 hours ago, Grungo said:

if nothing nice say, then no say it

 

what did grungo ever do to you? me not pillage your tribe's village, so why mean?

Grungo need not worry. Grungo have support from me.

On 1/5/2024 at 1:50 AM, Murdoch said:

Capstone was a crap company that made crap games. I know people find some charm in them and that's fine. But their overwhelming reputation is for crap games

Wrong. This reputation only exists now, in the age of internet and youtube channels. The perception at the time was average. Overshadowed by more advanced titles like Doom, but nothing worse than that.
 

On 1/5/2024 at 1:50 AM, Murdoch said:

even a fan of them can surely summon enough objectivity to see why

There's no objectivity in game design.

17 hours ago, Murdoch said:

sometimes dead is better

Yes true... also cats were the gangsters of the animal world 😋

2 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.

That is true.

If IPs such as the Giana Sisters and even fucking Bubsy can get contemporary sequels, then I do not see why a game like Corridor 7 could not get a sequel or even a remake. Also, I am not sure just how popular or well-received Rise of the Triad was back in the days, but it both got a remake and more recently a remaster; personally, I think they are dreadful to play, but clearly, they have their fans.

44 minutes ago, dasho said:

 

Could you please do this with politics thanks.

 

Also Grungo, I think you should commit even harder to this if you want it to work. Your posts should be almost incomprehensible when talking about Doom concepts instead of having normal words interspersed with unga bunga talk.

Grungo understand but grungo try to talk at least so other can understand and not confuse

2 hours ago, fruity lerlups said:

what if they started releasing shovelware adult games on steam and became fapstone

"The Climax of Entertainment Software"

6 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.
 

There's no objectivity in game design.

They're not shit because everyone says they are now, they were always shit.

Putting the passage of time aside, even when I played things like Witchaven or Corridor 7 just because they looked good (and were basically in my ballpark of 90's shooters) without YouTube channels clouding my judgement, however when actually playing them I could tell that they were fucking dreck.

The only mid game Capstone ever made was Corridor 7, the entire capstone library outside of it is either a half constructed technical nightmare or a poorly designed mess born from over ambition and lack of talent (or licenced shovelware, can't forget that). I could personally and painfully disect down to each detail why they are shit in their own interesting ways.

I refuse to accept this take that modern YouTubers/internet have created this negative image, they're just really that piss poor, not only that but Capstone closed because ain't nobody bought that garbage (bit of a lie, it was the parent company that ate shit).

21 hours ago, DNSKILL5 said:

I mean they really rushed their games.

well somebody rushed them, probably a soulless corporate type. 

having said that, theres probably a few games that wouldve never seen release without the crack of the whip. its not easy being cheesy.

i do wish there was a nightdive type outfit that fixed up old jank games that shouldve been cool.

22 minutes ago, mrthejoshmon said:

They're not shit because everyone says they are now, they were always shit.

 

Putting the passage of time aside, even when I played things like Witchaven or Corridor 7 just because they looked good (and were basically in my ballpark of 90's shooters) without YouTube channels clouding my judgement, however when actually playing them I could tell that they were fucking dreck.

 

The only mid game Capstone ever made was Corridor 7, the entire capstone library outside of it is either a half constructed technical nightmare or a poorly designed mess born from over ambition and lack of talent (or licenced shovelware, can't forget that). I could personally and painfully disect down to each detail why they are shit in their own interesting ways.

 

I refuse to accept this take that modern YouTubers/internet have created this negative image, they're just really that piss poor, not only that but Capstone closed because ain't nobody bought that garbage (bit of a lie, it was the parent company that ate shit).

I think that most in-touch gamers recognized Capstone as being shit back in the 90's just as they'd recognize other publishers as being shit. There's always plenty of publishers/developers like that, even from my own experience, before Youtube was really even a thing. For example, in the early-mid 2000's, if you noticed a Gameloft logo on a CD, you knew it was casual shit. If there was a Popcap logo, it was good casual shit. I don't see how anybody in the know wasn't aware of Capstone being a poor company. Sure, they weren't made fun of all over Youtube, but that's just because that wasn't a thing yet.

4 hours ago, mrthejoshmon said:

They're not shit because everyone says they are now, they were always shit.

Subjective claim. There's no value here.

4 hours ago, mrthejoshmon said:

Putting the passage of time aside, even when I played things like Witchaven or Corridor 7 just because they looked good (and were basically in my ballpark of 90's shooters) without YouTube channels clouding my judgement, however when actually playing them I could tell that they were fucking dreck.

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.

4 hours ago, mrthejoshmon said:

I refuse to accept this take that modern YouTubers/internet have created this negative image, they're just really that piss poor,

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.
 

4 hours ago, mrthejoshmon said:

not only that but Capstone closed because ain't nobody bought that garbage (bit of a lie, it was the parent company that ate shit).

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. 

I think that regardless of the discussion of Captsone being shit or not, it's impossible to "reboot" a company. It's like if we said "let's reboot id". We can't. It was very specific people that made it what it was, and a specific set of circumstances.