[game] 3D Rally Racing.... 4 years in the making?!

[PercyPea]

Hi all, it has been almost 4 years to the month since I posted the original flash mario kart type engine.

Not alot has happened with the engine on my behalf since then, other than a version I tried to get complete for mousebreaker and have yet to do so (sorry Stotty!)

However, mid Feb of this year Lets Design contacted me asking for my collaboration in creating a new racing game, sponsored by, and used to help promote a new site, www.gamersenterprise.com

http://www.3drallyracing.com/play.php is the current result.

A Flash 8, 5 track rally game with a choice of 2 different cars and 3 AI opponents.

The game is yet to be officially launched (the site is obviously still being worked on and I'd still like to add some more features/tweak some bits) but am hoping you all will be able to test it and report any bugs back, or make any suggestions to add to the game.

Thanks

PercyPea

p.s. Hopefully the next version will be flash 9 and AS3 powered

p.p.s. For those interested, heres some technical/marketing type press release i've been asked to put together for the game :-

3D rally racing uses a 2nd generation mode 7 engine, significantly enchanced over the original mario kart style engine developed by PercyPea in 2003.

Based on Fred Heintz' flash 8 mode 7 engine, the 3D rally racing engine uses new flash 8 bitmapFill features to draw the race track, which offers far greater performance over the older engine that used masked bitmaps.

The freed processing power allows for far more visual effects over previous games that use similar engines. Tracks can now include real time weather effects such as the snow level, and real time reflections as found in the rain level.

The game also features an unprecedented amount of objects on the track. The forest level features an astounding total of 2207 trees!!! The game engine then determines which trees should be shown depending on their distance to the camera. Although small, the desert level can feature upwards of 2800 shrubs, on top of 150 rocks and 40 cacti that also feature, the latter of which are all permanently visible.

The entire game is housed inside one single swf, as opposed to external swfs/files for individual levels/audio. Yet the 5 track game comes in at under 2.3MB. This is even more impressive, when we realise that over a third (770KB) of the 2.3MB is audio!

To minimise waiting, the game uses a multitude of preloaders. Most of which a typical broadband user will never see. An initial preloader loads a mere 35KB prior to showing the GamersEnterprise bumper animation. Whilst this is playing the 40KB title screen is seemlessly preloaded. The submenus from the title screen are then next to seemlessly load with the track selection screen accessible after another 40KB. At a total of 935KB the first desert level is completely loaded and able to be raced. By the time the player has completed the desert level the 2.3MB game in its entirity should have been completely downloaded.

Graphically, the biggest objects are the cars, which take up a combined 250KB. The 2 car models each feature just under 100 frames for the mulitple viewing angles, aswell as individual wheel graphics.

So how big are the actual tracks?

Using flash 8 bitmap drawing methods, the tracks ground image is in fact generated via code, rather than being stored as 2880x2880 pixel jpgs. As soon as the player picks a track to race, the game engine starts drawing the ground image. This drawing takes place while the player then chooses their car along with colour. If the player chooses quickly, they'll be taken to a screen that shows a percentage for the remaining track generation, otherwise they'll be seemlessly taken to the start of the race.

Most tracks use just simple 64x64 pixel textures designed to tile in generating. These textures are tiny in file size, for example the night tracks grass and tarmac textures are just 612 and 398 bytes respectively. Meaning the largest individual track item are the high quality scrolling backdrops.

Infact, negating any file size differences for changing the track selection menu, new tracks, which reuse existing textures and backdrops, yet have entirely unique layouts, complete with drive routes for the AI cars, collision barriers and object locations can be added in to the game at a mere 15KB!!

The complete datasets that make up all the data needed to generate the 5 Tracks comes to just 72KB.

[renderhjs]

nice game,- nice graphics

the only crit I can give you is the very hard steering wich makes it somewhat hard to steer smoothly through corners.

[Cimmerian]

Amazing Amazing
Im your fan since the first mario kart engine,now soon is mario kart in as3,oh my god i cant even imagine
Anyway, you said you used f8 powers...i dont know if thats the case, but i've made some tests before and, considering only rotation, imported bitmaps are faster them rotating a bitmapData or a movieClip cached as a bitmap
But anyway, do you remember that another engine you've made, with hills?That one was too slow at that time, have you tested it with AS3?
Impressive, always loved that engine

[walnoot]

the generating process freezes my comp at 100%
(windows, opera, 1.91ghz, amd athlon, broadband connection)

First time totally, had to shut everything down.
Too curious tried it a second time and after 3 minutes or so it unfroze. Looks amazing! Still it is a bit laggy at certain times and I didn't want to get frozen generating track2, so I quit.

I'll try it in firefox later, maybe that gives me better results, I'll let you know.

[Squize]

Wow mate.

I remember us having an email chat ( 4 years ago ? ) about you doing a full blown game with the engine. Worth the wait.

The game plays really well, the engine is silky smooth. I just think the presentation needs some love and you'll have something really special.

Good work mate

Squize.

[bomesar]

A few words...Technically, the best game I have ever played made in Flash. Amazing work.

[YaiEf]

Technically it's really cool. However, it feels like you're looking through tunnel vision - like looking through a zoom lens. You can't even see where you're turning to. It actually gave me a bit of nausea

[Pointless]

Sound and music is repetitive.

[mr_malee]

fantastic work

if only you knew how many times that "3D enigne" thread has been resurrected

excellent stuff

[hooligan2001]

Hey PercyPea,

I remember thinking back then you better make something out of this. Excellent work.

[BlinkOk]

very nice mr pea!
the texture tiling is a great idea.
ditto on the hud though. less is more there i think.

[EvilKris]

Dude, that was sweet.
Well, if Mode 7 can be used to make a racing game, maybe it could be used for other types of games too.

[ajmacdad]

a script in flash caused it to become unresponsive after it generated tracks at 100%. I couldn't play, but it seems it works for everyone else.

[Sietjp]

I remember this topic about your engine, one of the biggest toic of this forum. Congratulations. It's always nice to see something new in flash.

[Orkahm52]

Awesome! One of the best games I've seen using this engine. It's well worth the wait. :P Well done!

~Ork.

[everfornever]

looks cool man, plays ok.

Shame about it is that I see half skilled shockwave games that low this away, and I am sure they were not nearly as hard to create.

Ever thought of using director for this stuff?

Just seems its not flash's best side.

[Cimmerian]

Originally Posted by everfornever

looks cool man, plays ok.

Shame about it is that I see half skilled shockwave games that low this away, and I am sure they were not nearly as hard to create.

Ever thought of using director for this stuff?

Just seems its not flash's best side.

Yes but the thing is not just the engine itself,but what it shows, the possibilities...

[Cimmerian]

Off course, there is no way i can test with THAT engine, but since the tracks are generated by BitmapData, have you compared their speed with the version in wich the tracks are imported bimaps?
I mean, when there is rotation noone beats imported bitmaps

[charlie_says]

Like the others here, you'll get a big WOW from me - it's really nice to see the engine finally in play.

My only criticism: I found the 'dashboard' on the bottom right interfered with my game play (it felt like it was obscuring my view.)

Lovely stuff tho.

[phreax]

I'm impressed PercyPea!
I would love to see a version 2 with some love and care! The thing that would really improve gameplay IMO is the steering...but that is coming from a guy that doesn't play car games much, so for more experienced players it might be alright It's just, I end up outside the track all the time and that slows down the gameplay so much, that it's almost intolerable! But as said before. The game shows so much potential and it's great to see, that you got to work on it again

Also thanks for sharing a bit of the details! Great work