Homebrew working on a quick little wii racing game

[matt!]

That's fine on all points.

If no engine noise then I'll need to find another way to figure out what effects my acceleration is having on the craft. Currently I find it difficult to gauge.

The random traffic, as it is currently, does not add much to the challenge in my playing.
More CPUs and more penalty for collisions would make it a much more interesting game.

I'm cool with it being a series of A-B challenges, more like Out Run than F-Zero.

Happy to adjust my expectations.

 

[newo]

@matt! In the current beta I have added more wind effects and a vehicle flame that animates and glows red when you are accelerating at full speed.

Are you playing on easy or hard? The game start on easy difficulty to ease in new players. At the moment more that 80% of the players never pass first stage so I am getting the vibes that even easy mode is too hard for the majority of first-time players.

Everything is a bit more challenging on hard. I also plan to add an arcade mode which is yet to be determined if it will have harder tracks or probably random tracks.

 

[matt!]

Ah! I'm on easy and use the internal view

 

[newo]

Ah! I'm on easy and use the internal view

And you think the game is easy? Internal view is the hardest way to play! Did you make it to level 10?

 

[BlazeMasterBM]

Ah! I'm on easy and use the internal view

I would never use internal view lol. But it does look fun, challenging as it may be.

 

[newo]

@BlazeMasterBM @matt! funny thing is I was messaging mr reaper about controller bugs and we started bouncing around ideas which lead to this video below. Let me know if yall think about this new cockpit view;



* the image will be loaded from the game folder so it can always be changed. We could have images submitted by the community and we could pick a few to include in the game.

 

[BlazeMasterBM]

Guess what I was messaging mr reaper about controller bugs and we started bouncing around ideas which lead to this video below. Let me know if yall think about this new cockpit view;

dude nice!!! Let me know as soon as that version is available for download because that looks really awesome!

 

[matt!]

Cockpit looks cool! Would use.

I always go for the internal view in any racer. I find it easier than the external views for some reason. Maybe it's just me!?

I also use motion control!

Did you make it to level 10?

Just made it to 10/final but did not complete it. Died at 68%. Using Easy/internal/motion.

2nd attempt got to 89% on 10/final

I'd like the percentage of track completion and energy to be more visible. Maybe with the cockpit view that can happen.

3rd attempt, starting at level 9, I finished 10.

game crashed for me when lowering music to zero. can't reproduce it though.

Edit: my camera was set at 2/lower not FP.

Brain dump:

Would be cool if leaderboard showed who was using motion control, like Mario Kart Wii does. They track percent of motion used and show either a white wheel or gold wheel depending on some criteria.

Feels wrong that you can drive through a drone car with not much damage result.

Any chance of replays being saved/uploaded?

Wind sound effect would be nice.

what are the purple gated sections of track for? If they recharge then a sound there would be nice too.

I'd prefer a craft with more momentum so I can slide around corners. As it is it feels very rigid and almost in rails.

Edit:

Couple more tries and finished 1-10 on Easy with camera 2 and motion controls. Was fun!

On easy there's no real need to slow down. No sharp turns to navigate. I San the accelerator often. But hardly ever really let go completely for any length of time.

How do normal and hard differ from easy? Will try soon.

 

[newo]

@matt! you've never played on normal or hard? well you are gonna be in for a surprise! Totally new tracks. Download the new build below! lots of fixes since v1.

The leader board doesn't track the controller and there would be no way to show it unfortunately. The collision boxes on the traffic are very small on purpose because they tend be annoying if its hard to avoid them.

Replays? unlikely too much extra programming unless I find a easy way to do it in the future. The purple gated sections are underground tunnels, they do not do anything else. No recharge pads in this game. The vehicle drops speed very fast because people complained about bouncing all over the track constantly like a ping pong ball but there might be room to tweek its momentum. Once you get the hang of the game there is no real reason to let off the gas, you get better the more you play - even on hard the tracks are designed to be high speed corners. But players wont realize how the arcade physics works at first.


@BlazeMasterBM cockpit view is now in beta

Also

Beta Build v1.088 is avaible for direct download (autoupdate doesnt download beta builds so you have to download manually. you can keep your old settings file)

- fixes to controls (mr reaper)
- cockpit view for cam 1 and 2. new meter positions, accel meter, brighter UI (mr reaper)
- new introscreen for controls (mr reaper)
- new large font for the level start and loading screen
- bug fixes and a new debug option (frustum 2)

Beta Download: test build.

 

[matt!]

Exciting! I'm enjoying it immensely.

Ready to dive into Normal!

Edit: normal is gooooood!

I just got to my first tunnel at the end of Normal level 2. The thing I was referring to before that I guess are bridges with magenta road? either side of the road there are diagonal lines going up with a square at the top end.

Would be cool if sounds had echo/reverb in tunnels.

Would be useful if there were some track side markers at 25/50/75% of progress.

Edit:

Normal finished! Very fun tracks.

New font extends off screen.

 

[newo]

@matt! ah I get you now, those sections have no particular purpose right now, except to break up the aesthetic of the track. Before I thought you were referring to tunnels but now that I think back I should have remembered that there are NO TUNNELS on easy mode so you would not have seen them. Reverb/echo sounds are beyond my skillset - the code for mp3 player is causing enough trouble as it is. It would be cool but I am not able to cant do that right now. Getting a constant repeating sound effect is something I have to figure out at some point, same thing for the wind and engine sounds.

 

[matt!]

Just finished normal. LOVED those tracks.

Minor font issue posted above.

Hard is HARD and just my style.

(Don't dwell on my suggestions, they would just be the cherry on the cake. Game is great as it is)

 

[newo]

@matt! yeah I increased the font size and forgot about that bit of long text. will fix it later.

The added verticality really makes a difference. The game originally was set to start on normal difficulty but it appeared that new players were finding it too difficult to play ( 80% not passing the first level ). But yeah, they are better looking, and challenging than the easy levels. I particularly like level 8 on normal (that high over lap section gave me major problems, lol)

How are you liking the overlay? Hopefully we can get people to design a couple options so that they can be selected in game. Are you playing it on a CRT? old schoool!

 

[matt!]

I'm playing on a 20" 480p LCD. Pixel perfect Wii gaming (no scaling)

Cockpit is great. Not sure I'll design my own. maybe if there was a choice of craft that handled differently. Otherwise this cockpit does the job.

How about screen shaking the cockpit image when colliding? Or swaying the cockpit as the craft turns and banks. Details.

I think the difficulty curve and starting on easy is the right choice.

 

[matt!]

I haven't tried this in the game as yet, but...

(I drew this as vector so I can modify freely if required)

I also cleaned up the cockpit from the test version, which had some odd coloured artefacts

 

[newo]

I wonder how circles are going to stretch on anamorphic widescreen tvs/monitors

 

[Dcep1501]

Can't wait to try the added cockpit view!

 

[newo]

Can't wait to try the added cockpit view!

You can try it now, download the beta:

Beta Download: test build.

Beta 1.0882

- did some work on the controller button code so let me know if anything breaks.
- fixed a bug where the roling start does not happen at the start of the track
- speed meter now animates correctly
- fixed game win long text bug

 

[matt!]

I tried my cockpit and it's a bit too clean/smooth.

I'll need to pixelate it a bit to make it match the game a little more. I use 4:3 display but good point about the circle.

I noticed buttons are often missed on the menu. Most items take a couple of presses to register for me.

 

[newo]

@matt! I think the problem with the menu is that I use the same timer for the up/down movement that I use for making a selection. So when you press down and attempt to select an option you get no response because the time has not elapsed. I will have to fix that by using 2 timers instead of one. This way you wont have to wait after moving the menu.

* I use the same menu code in all my games and I'm just figuring out how to fix this issue. I rarely make changes to its code for fear that I will break something in one of the old games that would be hard to detect years later when I try to re-compile something I did in 2010. But I think its fixed now. Separate timer and a idle timer for the start/pause menu bug.

* If you are using motion controls there is also a new debug option called "no turn filter" which disables the speed based turn filtering that happens for controllers.

* fyi: leave the game idle on the title screen for 20 seconds and it activates "attract mode" and plays itself like a arcade machine