[ALPHA ] Rally Game

I have finally decided to implement v3 of my skidwrx rally game. Its been a VERY long time in the making.

Anyways, im using a simple copypixels tile engine and the hard part was getting box2d to make a sort of fun rally car. A simple test of the engine is here:

http://www.blastone.com/wip/rally/Racers.html

Ive got a LOT left to go,
- solid objects
- moveable objects eg cones, people :D
- car upgrades
- more tracks
- handbrake

Mr_Malee came up with some good ideas as well.
- camera to allow more of the track to be seen

This is my baby one I have been thinking of for ever, any suggestions welcome!

Very nice engine,

It ran very smooth on my computer, 40fps on flash 10 beta 2, ubuntu 64bit, 1.8ghz dual core, 2 gig of ram, 8400 geforce go.

I liked the collisions with other cars, that was almost every flash racing game seems to be missing. The kicked up dirt effect was also very good.

I found it very hard to control the car, and when going in reverse it slides a little instead of turning like it should.

It would be really cool if you could make solid walls, with decent collision detection and reaction.

Overall it seems really good, there were no dips in fps or anything.

Solid walls are no problem at all and they will react perfectly :D the reverse does need a little love though

Awesome, this could turn into an amazing game, I think your the first to combined box2d with a racing game. Brilliant idea.

looking good. Love the dust. it was 41/40 on my machine.

41/40
Simply awsome!

Your a game making machine! Thats sexy, ran perfect.

You should bring some realism into it like GRID, where you can damage tyres and that effects the steering. Engine damage effects performance. So if you go off the track, hit rocks, other cars etc you incur damage. The body doesn't have to look damaged just have a pic of the car parts and for really damaged parts highlight in red. I hope I'm making sense. I need some sleep.

some ideas:
- like destruction derby 2 the ability to loose car parts (bumper, doors, back, mirrors, wheels,...) and collide with them as well
- race into walls, trees, plants,.... and collide as well
- some muddy parts where water sparks from the sides of the car as it drives through it - and steer differently
- let the car become more dirty from time to time, add scratches if it collides with something (like GTA1)
- let some parts rattle if they are damaged,- like a very smal random movement

Sweeet!

Sorry I missed you on msn earlier mate, give me a shout when you get the chance 'cause I've got a colab idea so sexy it could model swimwear.

Squize.

I think the controls feel great :)

I find myself craving a nitro/boost button (like super off road).

thanks for the feedback guys.

planned:

- all obstacles moveable and immoveable and running spectators (with splat)
- Nitro is a sweet idea im also thinking a fuel gauge as well so you have to pick up fuel nice one rachil0
- hooligan I am going to have damage, but I love your idea render of having bits fall off onto the track. Got to find me a sweet 3d renderer now lol.
- water and different surfaces good ideas too.

I've already added the easing camera that gives you a better view of whats in front as you drive, and space for handbrake, though that needs a little love.

The way I plan on having the levels and they will be BIG is not to have the car slow down offroad, that really annoys me in games, but there will be a number of checkpoints and they need to be passed through to complete the level.

On that note does anyone have any advice on getting a cool voice over like in sega rally, I need a 3, 2, 1 go and Checkpoint from someone who doesnt sound like a twat in the mike (ie me!)

After playing it some more with that ( Stunning ) new track, a hand brake would be really cool.

Although last night I was joking ( A bit ) about having the mini-map in mode7 so it looks like a sat-nav, I think the option to show the full map ( As it is now ) and a zoomed in version would be handy.
I found I was driving via the map last night when playing it, rather than watching the road. I know that'll change when there are more things to avoid, but it's an easy habit to get into.

As it's a Rally game, having warning signs about the on-coming road would be good ( Basically grab Dirt for the 360 and just drink it all in :) ).

Lots more ideas, but no time to share them atm.

Squize.

Why does it stall after you push left then right then left then right? like trying to swerve it stalls.

Mark,

What you have so far looks pretty cool. Perhaps the turning radius of the car could be a little tighter. And yes, reverse needs some work, as the car continues to reverse to the left or right after the left or right key is released.

I am curious to see how you will handle the car engine sound effects.. I am working on a driving game with simpler graphics. The car sound loops in my game, when stopped, produce a single, brief, audible click sound. I strongly dislike this. But I don't see any way to avoid it.. For example, you have a V8 engine sound at speed looping while the throttle key is pressed and held down. You then release the throttle key, and my code halts the playback of the looped "at speed" sound (which causes an audible "click" at the moment it is stopped during mid-playback). Then my "deacceleration" sound is started. So the bottom line is, every time I press or release my throttle key, a single "click" is heard over the speakers. This "click" or "pop" is accentuated due to the fact that the car sound mp3 file is very deep with lots of bass to it.

I have observed this same annoying effect in some games running on MAME which use sound sample audio files, instead of emulated, digitally produced sound effects. One game in particular that this is very noticeable on is Star Castle running on MAME. Every time you release the thrust button, a loud click or pop is heard very clearly (the thrust sound sample is very deep with a lot of bass too).

This is one aspect of flash gaming that I sure wish there was a solution to! As it ruins the audio experience for me. Arcade games that used discrete sound circuits or digitally generated on board audio (not pre-recorded audio), don't have this problem.

Furthermore, this could be eliminated by a rapid (fraction of a second in duration), dynamically generated, sound envelope. One that was created on the fly. I have tried rapidly ramping flash's volume control down, doesn't work, it only adds more clicks as it ramps down, making it sound even worse.

I've yet to get any input on this problem from anybody...Perhaps since you founded this site, you might understand what I am talking about..

Steve

P.S. Every time I type a post, by the time I am done, your watchdog login timer expires (logging me out) and I have to copy and paste my post into wordpad, then re-login and reply to the thread all over again, pasting my original post back into a new window.

To get a nice engine sound, have a few samples at different pitches ( ie, for the different gears, both going up and down ), and cross fade them quickly.

It removes the click and sounds a lot smoother, the only downside is when you're going flat out and having to loop that top pitched sample ( I remember how grating that was on Pitstop II on the C64 ), but depending on the samples you use, and the game, hopefully that won't happen too often as the player will need to break before it gets too grating.

Another workaround on the above could be not to set the engine volume too high and run some music or ambient sounds over the top, so the engine sound is more implied rather than prominent ( So the player is aware of it, but it's not at the forefront of all the other sounds ).

Sorry Mark, back to your thread mate :)

Squize.

All good. I have basically that system in a test file somewhere about 6 different engine pitches and I play them all at once and depending on your speed the volume of them changes. It does sound a bit funny at the top speed though so I might hunt down a more varied top speed loop :D

new demo soon.....

Very nice looking game. I'm very interested to know about the box2d side of things, as I'm just about to start work on the physics side of my current project, which also involves moving vehicles (not in fact cars, but I want the motion to be similar). I haven't given it a huge amount of thought yet, but I was thinking about using the ApplyForce method for thrust in the forward direction. What I'm not sure about at the moment is how I'm going to get the lateral friction, without which the vehicle will move more like a hovercraft. You seem to have it nailed pretty well here. Did you do it by applying forces, or by manually adjusting the linear velocity? Or a different way? Any info would be a big help. :)

Ric.

I'm in love with this. My first flash projects were racing games. I'm glad to see someone is taking the time to really do it right!

I thought I saw the front wheels underneath the car. Does this mean that the car's movement is actually based on the front wheels' angle and the rear/front wheels' velocity? Is traction involved?

I guess the simplest way to ask is how deep does the simulation go? Weight, traction, weight distribution, tire types, 2wheel/4wheel drive?

Also, any plans for a 3rd dimension? Jumps, bumps, valleys, climbs, downhills? It might be a pain to implement at this point, but it would really add a level of depth that most racing games lack. (Pun intended.)

Oh, and do you plan to enclose the tracks to keep players from wandering off into the endless wilderness? I turned north and just kept going and going... It was pretty neat, actually.

Ghost racer is implemented now :D currently it just has a prerecorded lap of one of my games hardwired in. Working on the db saving and restoring stuff now using amfphp

the movement is based on the angle of the front wheels, and force is given from the rear angles. I intend to add jumps, bumps maybe down the track :D we will see.

As far as the box2d movement goes... a LOT of trial and error, but basically you need to apply a force perpendicular to the car tyre direction to simulate it on the road. Have a search around the box2d forums as well as there is some relvant and useful stuff in there.

Thanks - I have found some useful stuff on the box2D forum. I thought it might be a case of applying a negating force to simulate lateral grip - it looks like that's what you've done here. How big to make that force though ... I guess it must be proportonal to the lateral velocity and the car's mass, but I guess that's where the trial and error comes into play.

just another nice demo I found today:
http://www.gumbird.com/contenu/labo/...ine/index.html
it seems to be sometimes wacky but on the otherhand it seems to better do turn physics.

good link. It has 4 wheel turning which is nice... I opted more for the slide :D
its always dangerous when you get caught up in the movement... you can go a little crazy trying to get it just right

the gumbird race engine is running extremely slowly on my P4,the CPU is not overloaded but the frame rate is about 2 img/s !!

Flashkit, I can't see the ghost racer in your demo (using the link of your first post), is there something to do ?