My first post, Hi-Octane from Bullfrog
Posted: August 3rd, 2025, 3:41 pm
Hello,
as this is my first ever post in this forum I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself: My name is Alexander, I live in Austria, and I am already 41 years old (time is unfortunetly flying). I am very happy that I seem to be not the only one thinking back about the great games from my childhood (and DOS times) from time to time
And I am very thankful that I found this forum.
I can still remember when I first played "Hi-Octane" from Bullfrog somewhere around the year 1995 at a 80486 computer at someones computer during a visit. I was completely blown away, I since then somehow this game always followed me during my live. Around 2010 when I was at the university I tried the first time if I could somehow recreate this game (at least partly) myself. I made a crude craft model in Blender, and was able to open it in a self written program. But I gave up pretty quick.
Around 2021 I was looking around the internet, and just by sheer luck I found out that around 2017 some people did reverse engineer most of the necessary file formats of the original game (HiOctaneTools project at Github). The user also introduced this project (a level editor) in your forum, as far as I saw before. For me this was a real game changer, and I immediately decided to start another attempt to recreate this game myself somehow based on this new information. Another blessing were the informations I was able to find on the DOS Game Modding Wiki about this game as well. Especially about the used sound and music formats.
Some years later I have a playable version of the game, but of course there are still problems and bugs to fix, and many improvements to be made. I also started working on a level editor for Hi-Octane myself recently. Some things in the map can already be modified, but there are still most of the things to be implemented over time.
I just wanted to let you know that there is this project out there, in case there is someone else that really liked this game as much as I do. Unfortunetly my project is almost impossible to be found otherwise. If you want to check the project out: https://github.com/woalexan/hi-octane202x
If you have any feedback, thoughts, questions or ideas regarding this project, please let me know
Have a nice day, with Kind Regards,
Alexander
as this is my first ever post in this forum I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself: My name is Alexander, I live in Austria, and I am already 41 years old (time is unfortunetly flying). I am very happy that I seem to be not the only one thinking back about the great games from my childhood (and DOS times) from time to time
And I am very thankful that I found this forum.I can still remember when I first played "Hi-Octane" from Bullfrog somewhere around the year 1995 at a 80486 computer at someones computer during a visit. I was completely blown away, I since then somehow this game always followed me during my live. Around 2010 when I was at the university I tried the first time if I could somehow recreate this game (at least partly) myself. I made a crude craft model in Blender, and was able to open it in a self written program. But I gave up pretty quick.
Around 2021 I was looking around the internet, and just by sheer luck I found out that around 2017 some people did reverse engineer most of the necessary file formats of the original game (HiOctaneTools project at Github). The user also introduced this project (a level editor) in your forum, as far as I saw before. For me this was a real game changer, and I immediately decided to start another attempt to recreate this game myself somehow based on this new information. Another blessing were the informations I was able to find on the DOS Game Modding Wiki about this game as well. Especially about the used sound and music formats.
Some years later I have a playable version of the game, but of course there are still problems and bugs to fix, and many improvements to be made. I also started working on a level editor for Hi-Octane myself recently. Some things in the map can already be modified, but there are still most of the things to be implemented over time.
I just wanted to let you know that there is this project out there, in case there is someone else that really liked this game as much as I do. Unfortunetly my project is almost impossible to be found otherwise. If you want to check the project out: https://github.com/woalexan/hi-octane202x
If you have any feedback, thoughts, questions or ideas regarding this project, please let me know
Have a nice day, with Kind Regards,
Alexander