Stunts - Freestyle motocross 3D video game, 1990

Copyright 1990-2025 various people, some of them mentioned below


All the web pages mentioned are also available at web.archive.org


     1. THE DOS OPERATING SYSTEM
     2. RUNNING STUNTS AND SOME INFO
     3. SOME ADDITIONAL PROGRAMS


1. THE DOS OPERATING SYSTEM

The DOS operating system was initially a semi operating system bought by Bill
Gate$/Micro$oft with $25000, from a small company named Seattle Computer
Products. The system was initially called QDOS, from "Quick and Dirty Operating
System" and was largely copied after CP/M, produced by Gary Kildall. The best
version of DOS is currently FreeDOS, available at https://freedos.org along
with a large number of useful programs. However, it's often more convenient to
use an emulator such as DOSBox, which emulates FreeDOS as well as the hardware
on which it runs, so it can be used to run most of the programs that come with
FreeDOS. If you have an operating system installed, like GNU/Linux, then you
can install DOSBox, enter this directory from the terminal with command
"cd" and start DOSBox. If you use wind0w$ and don't have an operating system
installed, then just click on "setdb.bat" and then on "DOSBox.exe". You can also
edit file "dosbox.conf" here, according to the instructions provided inside.

After starting DOSBOX, you can press:

Ctrl + F11 to decrease the speed of the emulated CPU
Ctrl + F12 to increase the speed
Alt + Enter to view the image on the whole screen


2. RUNNING STUNTS AND SOME INFO

If DOSBox started, then type "cd STUNTS" and then "STUNTS" or "STUNTS.BAT", to
start the game. As the name suggests this is a freestyle motocross video game,
but as will be shown, there are a few problems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freestyle_motocross

"In 1991, Jose Yanez became the first person to backflip a motocross bike."

Stunts having been made in 1990, before the first backflip was made by Jose
Yanez on a motocross bike, the authors of Stunts didn't take backflips into
consideration, so unfortunately, backflips in this game are not possible.
Another problem is that the first motorbike was added to the game in 2022:

https://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=3966.0

"The first motorbike for Stunts is done."

So for 32 years, between 1990 and 2022, everything about the game was wrong,
including the documentation, although not many people noticed. Except for the
motorbike I obviously removed all the cars except for one, the wheels of which
are somewhat larger and therefore more appropriate for jumps. The problem with
the backflips remains, but with help from Lucas Pedrosa I adapted my game,
Simcar (https://matei.one/idxscr.html), to use tracks from Stunts and in my
game, backflips and frontflips are possible, because physics are taken into
consideration, including Newton's 3rd law of motion: if two bodies exert forces
on each other, these forces have the same magnitude but opposite directions. So
when the car is in the air, acceleration and brake will transfer torque from
the wheels to the car. You can watch the second video from the address above.
The problem with my game is that only cars are included and no motorbikes,
because you have to sit on a bike to keep it balanced; it doesn't work with a
simulation game. If someone recommends to you a video game with bikes or
skates, that person is trying to trick you. Stunts is not a simulation game, so
in Stunts, this not so much of a problem.

From the interviews with Kevin Pickell, the lead programmer of Stunts, file
"StuntsManual.txt":

"Kevin: I was the only programmer on Stunts. My previous game was Test Drive so
I was familiar with programming a car simulation but I had no 3d experience at
all."

"I don't have the source and frankly in what I have learned over the years I
would rewrite it from scratch anyway. It was pretty inefficient looking back on
it."

Skipping the fact that Kevin Pickell improperly used the expression "car
simulation", some people were involved in studying and reverse engineering the
game, and after 35 years, in 2025, the graphics were also fixed by Alberto
Marnetto. Details in files "rss16/BroderbundStunts...". If you want to change
the rendering settings, see "rss16/README.txt"


3. SOME ADDITIONAL PROGRAMS

SETUP.BAT - a script for configuring some settings, details in the menu

Type:

SETUP

TB.EXE - program for editing or viewing tracks, author Mark Nailwood

Type:

TB trkfile.trk

For instance:

TB DEFAULT.TRK

If you downloaded a track and you try to open it, the program might display:

"***  Unfortunately, this file has a wrong size ! ***"

Then type:

FIXTRK trkfile.trk

And again:

TB trkfile.trk

Using TB to edit the tracks is easy, but you should also try the built-in track
editor from Stunts - details in "StuntsManual.txt", where there is, however, an
undocumented feature: to edit the terrain, press Shift + F1.

sgar.com - details in directory "STUNTS/tools/sgar".

"Simple Garage (Garage manager program for Stunts)
 Copyright (C) 2022-2023 Lucas Pedrosa"

The program improperly refers to cars, but you can type:

sgar

and then:

help
