Snapple Speedway was designed as a follow-up to the successful Good Fruit! Bad Fruit! game that helped launch www.snapple.com. The game plays like an interactive cartoon, with crazy fruit contraptions bouncing off of each other as they race around the track.

Snapple Speedway was built using the Race3D engine created by David Brackeen. Written entirely in Java, Race3D is actually not a true 3D renderer. Instead, it scales sprites (static bitmaps) dynamically to give the illusion of depth and motion. This technique, sometimes called "2.5D", is most well known from its use in the popular first-person shooter Doom.

The powerup pictured here allows the player to shrink the other racers, making it easier to pass them. Other items on the track can give the player a temporary turbo boost of speed, or cause his racer to spin out.

Players could choose from one of four cars: Top Banana Dragster, Fuzzy Formula 1, Sportberry Utility Vehicle, Cosmic Cherry Bomb.

The car names that ended up in the game were not the original ones I came up with. The original car names were: Banana Buggy, Peachmobile, Strawberry Utility Vehicle, Cosmic Cherry Contraption.

Paradise Parkway

Adventure Island

Just Deserts

Secret Track: Fruits in Space

A visual track editor allowed me to quickly design and test the different race tracks. There were three regular tracks and one secret track. The secret track ("Fruits in Space", designed by Don Reed) could only be accessed by entering a code at the start of the game that was hidden on Snapple's website.

The Race3D engine automatically created all terrain used in the game from just two files.

Numerous sprites (static bitmaps) were used in the game for obstacles and scenery. The mysterious origin of these Fruitiki Statues is revealed in the Fruits in Space track.

Billboards in the game advertising Snapple products were a key selling point.

Players successfully completing the game were rewarded with this exciting graphic and some banjo music.

Here are Antonio Sanchez's original concept sketches for the four racers.

An initial high resolution test render of the most popular car in the game, the Cosmic Cherry Contraption, driven by the Bing Brothers.

An early test render of the Cosmic Cherry Contraption composited against a sample background let us know we were on the right track, so to speak.

An animation test and the final game artwork for the Cosmic Cherry Contraption. In the final game, only half the sprites seen here (a 180-degree rotation from front to back) are actually used. The Race3D engine automatically creates the complete rotation sequence by flipping the images. This technique reduces download time tremendously.

Pineapple Punk and his Tankmobile never made it into the game. Pineapple Punk was first seen in the Good Fruit! Bad Fruit! game, chomping his cigar and looking generally displeased.

Interesting facts about Snapple Speedway:

One of the key inspirations for the game was the old MS-DOS racing game Wacky Wheels. Snapple Speedway was only the second game created using the Race3D engine. To date, Race3D has powered over half a dozen games. Over 1,200,000 people played Snapple Speedway in the two years it was online. On average, each player spent 8 minutes in the game. Graphically, the hardest element to create was the track itself. The 3D racers by comparison were easy.

Snapple Speedway Credits

Lead Engineer: David Brackeen Server-Side Programming: Bret Barker, Don Reed Producer for SFInteractive: Gene Paek Producer for Gamelet.com: Tom Jacobson Artwork: Antonio Sanchez Track Artwork: David Brackeen, Antonio Sanchez Track Design: Tom Jacobson, Don Reed

©2002 Tom Jacobson. All rights reserved.