The history of ReCaged (sort of)

(some people are refered to by forum nicknames)

In 1999 Psygnosis and ATD ("Attention To Detail") released a game called "RollCage". The game featured unique driving possibilities (as the cars were double-sided and could drive on walls and ceilings) and (for that time) impressive 3D graphics. It received good reviews and was a success. In 2000 it was followed by "Rollcage Stage II", featuring mostly more vehicles, weapons, tracks and gameplay. But after the second game, nothing more happened. ATD was liquidated in 2003, Psygnosis was bought by Sony and renamed to "SCE Studio Liverpool" focusing mostly on continuing another hit, the Wipeout series (featuring less impressive physics and gameplay, but more eyecandy).

Despite the absence of new games, the RollCage series kept attracting (and still creates) new fans. Among the most active forums concerning rollcage was the one found on Planet Rollcage (a site which does not exist anymore). This forum featured both rollcage and off-topic discussions, and was also the place where the idea of creating a fan-made rollcage game was born (another site, Rollcagepassion, had also attempted on creation of a new rollcage game before). Eventually Planet Rollcage went offline, but before that happened the "RollCageX" project had been created.

In 2006 the "RollCageX" project was created by Jon, with the main goal of creating an "open source" rollcage game to continue the rollcage series. Over time the goal changed into creation of a Free Software racing simulator (in contrary to a racing game), inspired by the rollcage games. While the project had a slow start, the forum quickly took the place after the planet rollcage forum (which went offline with the rest of planet rollcage) occasionally visited by some of the developers of the original games. Among the usual rollcage, project and off-topic discussions found the forum was also a reoccuring discussion about alternative names, because of fear of legal problems with the current name. Jon was the administrator of the webpage and forum (and also provided the domain name and hosting) but was often not able to participate in the development.

Eventually RollCageX became playable, although only featuring a sandbox "gameplay" as a demo. The person developing the game, "Slinger" (me), and many other members on the forum followed the progress of the project, exchanged ideas and helped: one member on the forum, "Codie Morgan", developed 3D models for the game (which unfortunately can not yet be distributed because of lack of proper licensing information), another one, "Spontificus", created several interesting hacks, helped fixing some bugs and was responsible for the project eventually moving from C to C++, and many others helped testing and provided ideas - "K.Mac" definitely deserves mentioning here: he has spent a long time - and still is - both testing, brainstorming and hacking.

In 2011, a new name for the project, "ReCaged", was somewhat decided, and I decided to create a new project on Savannah (nongnu) for it. The goals are still to create a Free Software Racing Simulator inspired by the Rollcage games.