Stunts in Wikipedia

[JTK]

Do you know the huge online encyclopedia "Wikipedia" (http://www.wikipedia.org)? In the German version now there is aan article called "Stunts" (read it here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunts). Wikipedia exists in many languages (Danish, Esperanto, Espagnol, Francais, Portugues, Magyar...) and maybe we should place a Stunts article everywhere.  

[DieselJoe]

Guess that was you! Really great job!

[zaqrack]

yes indeed, its kinda worth to translate it to Hungarian and other languages
I will do that soon

[BonzaiJoe]

I have translated it into english now. If you want to do a different translation, that's okay, as you would probably find it easier, being german. I won't be hurt!  

You might want to add a direct link to downloading Stunts.




Stunts
?Stunts? is a car game from the year 1990. The game was released by DSI and Broderbund respectively, in the versions 1.0 and 1.1 for PC. At the same time, Mindscape released the same game under the name ?4D Sports Driving?, in the versions 1.0 and 1.1 for PC, and 1.2 for Amiga. The game came out with 3D-polygon-graphics, which were stunning and revolting at the time. The influence from the predecessor ?Test Drive? (also released by DSI) was easy to spot because of the similar graphics and game structure.

The game
On a big square area defined and surrounded by a fence, you can race on a track (or off the track) in different cars, with either automatic or manual transmission. You can either race against the clock or choose between six different opponents. The goal is to go from start to finish as quickly as possible. A great thing about this game is that you don?t have to race only the racetracks that come with it - there is a built-in track editor that lets you design your own racetracks with all the different track parts. The game is called ?Stunts? because there are track parts such as loops, jumps (over tall buildings!), slalom roads and corkscrews. You can save every race you drive in the so-called ?replays?, and then watch them again and again afterwards from several different perspectives.

Stunts today
Although the game is obviously more than 10 years old, it is still greatly loved all over the world. When close to the end of the 90?s, the game was first declared abandonware and then finally declared freeware by the game developers themselves, many people discovered it anew. Already in the middle of the 90?s the websites about Stunts and the first online Stunts downloads were created. First of all, the game spread quickly over the internet, because the game size is less than 1MB when zipped.
When the first online competitions (in which the competition master would receive race replays on certain tracks per email) started, the game began - considering its age - to boom. Even today there is a world-wide Stunts community. Several competitions are acitve right now, and there are hundreds of Stunts websites, a big Stunts forum and a Stunts chatroom. In early August this year (2004), the first World Stunts Meeting took place in Budapest, Hungary.

Link 1: The Stunts Racing Portal
Link 2: One of the oldest and most famous sites, with lots of information and many downloads

Picture 1: Menu
Picture 2: Cars
Picture 3: Track
Picture 4: Opponent
Picture 5: Racing
Picture 6: Jump

[JTK]

Yeah, cool Jacky! I'll soon put the text to the English Wikipedia site. By the way, there is no special need to take my text (yes, of course it was me, DieselJoe), maybe your article will be even better (and of course the second link I put to the article links to us only :shock:)...

[BonzaiJoe]

Well, I was trying to make a direct translation of your text  :roll:  I didn't know my german was that bad   The only change I suggest (apart from some minor structural changes I made in the article) is to add a direct download link. I will translate it into danish as well, of course.

[JTK]

No no, your translation is good (maybe I'll change one ot two words)! Your German seems to be very good (why didn't we talk in Budapest? Well, my Danish is very bad, I only know some very important words, like havn, ristet Hot Dog, Øl, ...  :shock:   ). I simply wanted to say, that my article may not be the best all in all Anyway, good, that you translate it to Danish, then you only have to put it to http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forside.

I really like the Wikipedia project, by the way. I already made many articles in the German version, of course. Here some advertising:

[JTK]

...Øl, ...

That should have been the Danish word for beer but somehow the forum did not like the slashed O I used...  :?

[BonzaiJoe]

Ah, I get it - yes, those are important words
And I did use a bit of dictionary for the translation...
An encyclopedia like that must require oceans of web space...
Your article is great, no need to alter it.

[DieselJoe]

Really good translation, Jacky (as far as I can pronounce that)!
The only word I would have changed would be "racing game" instead of "car game" at the beginning. But maybe for english readers some native english speaker should check it. :roll: Maybe he would see something we don't.

[satanziege]

Saw that site somedays ago on slashdot: http://www.liberatedgames.com/
As they only include games that have been officially  "liberated" by their owners perhaps you JTK or KHR could tell them, as AFAIK you got the communication with the respective owners.

*edit*: Besides: Pretty neat idea with wikipedia you got

[JTK]

Well, Satanziege, that was not my idea... It would be great, if I invented Wikipedia, no, I am only part of it (look for user "Okatjerute" at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Okatjerute, there you'll find me and my activities).

And the other thing you suggested: I do not believe that Stunts is more than accepted abandonware in the end. It definitely is not GNU General Public License. But that brings me to the idea to contact DSI, Broderbund and Mindscape again and ask them, if they could definitely declare Stunts/4 D Sports Driving as freeware (on papaer, that would be great). All we have until now is the things, they told KHR on the phone, where all of them said "We don't care. You cannot have the source code but you may keep it for download on the internet free of charge." Anyway, these words can easily be turned around by 180 degrees. I'll send a nice letter to them (or what is left of them), describing the Stunts situation as it is right now and asking for a declaration of freedom.

[JTK]

O.K., I put the article to the english Wikipedia, you can find it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunts. As you can see, already some people changed the original text a little bit, but not much (so your translation was not that bad at all, Jacky ). The German version also was slightly edited (among other users also a user "KHR" changed something ).

Now you should create an article at the Wikipedia of your language, still the Danish and the Hungarian Wikipedias have no article "Stunts" or "4D Sports Driving". :shock: Here is a list, where you can find the Wikipedia in your language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page#lang.

[BonzaiJoe]

Well, I'm glad some corrected my misunderstandings, but two of those corrections are simply wrong:

1. Remove "respectively", because DSI and Brøderbund didn't do the same thing with the game.

2. "The game obviously is" should be "The game is obviously"

3. Remove comma after "90's" (maybe that was my error)

4. Already in the middle of the 90's, the FIRST websites about etc. (my mistake)

5. This forum is not "vital". Vital means necessary for someone's survival. May whoever wrote it means it's lively or active...

Okay that was 5, but two of them were mine.

[JTK]

Thanks Jacky, I corrected the article (you could have done this, too, by the way. Wikipedia wants people to edit and correct articles from whoever thay are). The "vital forum" was my fault, a translation of a far too German idiom ("ein sehr lebendiges Forum").

Now , Jacky, head for the Danish Wikipedia

And who can translate the text from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunts to Spanish, Prtuguese and Hungarian?