About
Carmageddon is a 1997 driving/vehicular-mayhem game. Dethrace is a from-scratch, function-by-function reimplementation of Carmageddon (1997), gradually replacing the original assembly code with equivalent C code, built with CMake and SDL2. It does not ship with any game content — it expects to be placed inside an existing Carmageddon installation (from the original CD or the GOG release) alongside the original CARMA.EXE.
Getting started
Dethrace needs to be placed in the same folder as an original Carmageddon installation (recognizable by the presence of CARMA.EXE), plus SDL2.dll on Windows; it also works with several official freeware demos (the original Carmageddon demo, and the Splat Pack and Splat Pack Xmas demos). Settings can be customized via a configuration file, and original CD audio can be replaced with OGG tracks placed in a MUSIC folder, following GOG's convention.
History
The project began after Watcom debug symbols from an early internal build, named DETHRSC.SYM, were discovered on the Carmageddon Splat Pack expansion CD and documented in a 2014 blog post; although the symbols didn't match any released executable, they provided function names that helped reverse-engineer the game.
Additional notes
- Trivia
- The project's name is believed to derive from the original game's internal folder (named DETHRACE) and its debug symbol file DETHSRC.SYM, possibly shortened for 8.3 filename compatibility.
- Legal
- Dethrace itself is released to the public domain, but using it requires assets from an owned copy of Carmageddon, and the source is for non-commercial use only.