Pandadoor

DarkRoomGames

Thank you guys for your interest and comments!

I thought I was gonna call it Rust Racers – but seemingly there's a mod or a vpp or some damn thing already with that name. I picked then Black Sunshine on the go, just to call it something here in the this thread. It's a cool title, although not 100% definitive yet ("Jesus Built My Hotrod" being another tempting possibility). Anyway I like the reference very much, so I made a car directly inspired in it – another Mustang, obviously. I'm gonna make it an unblockable car and... but well, here I am again leaping into the far future...

Black top rolling below the asphalt drive / A concrete fascination scraping the edge of nothing...

Here! This is one of the veriest firstiest things I ever did in C2, some one thousand years ago or so. Makes no sense at all i'm afraid, but it's arguably the first sketch for this project so I put it here just as a curiosity... No such a thing as proper “gameplay”, but pressing the arrows and spacebar seems to trigger some sluggish reaction.

erickson400

Pandadoor

Thanks guys! I'm still defining the graphic style, but you see i'm going for thick cartoonish lines, brownish colours... Still a lot's gonna change, like that speedometer, which looks like a clock, or the finishline, which as for now is a copy of the startpoint with some checks on it. I intend to plagiarize VASTLY from that earn to die series XD

You should be able to pass (over) other cars using nitro (press space bar, or touch the speedometer shortly), which makes and impulse forward and a bit upwards too, kind of jumping. They work better if you hit them when running fast. At the current state of it you should be able to get 1st somewhat easily if you run the beetle (and if you dont meet too many pickups), which is the lightest and fastest of the three models. The pickup is not too bad either, i usually get 2nd or 3rd with it. The nazi mustang (the "rustang" it's calld) sucks big time tho. All them to be tweaked in the future. I explain, or try to, the race mechanics below...

There are already warning signs! They're tiny and blurry and just perching over the very edge of each cliff

Mechanics (as everything else) are very provisional as for now. I indeed may set it to scale outer, so you have a bit more of visual field, but i'd like it to be, hum, short-ranged of sorts. Sure will be fuelcans to collect, barriers to break and exploding kegs, and most likely some firearms too. Collisions between cars stays tho! Furthermore i'm planning to make them break into pieces when hit! I might enhance the nitro to make it easier to pass (or be passed by) other cars, or introduce some other powerup.

The race thing is very wip still. It works as follows. (I'd particularly appreciate feedback on this, cos it's a bit weird).

• You start alone. Don't really like this, i may do some mock animation in which all cars seems to start a second before you or something and leave you behind from the beginning (happens to me in all racing games). Has to be mock, as you'll see.
• Scattered along the way you meet some invisible (orange) spawnboxes. When you (the pc car) hit one from the left, an enemy car is spawned offscreen in the oposite side of the spawnbox, which is destroyed. So shortly after that, you meet the enemy car on the road.

• If an enemy car hits one of these spawnboxes before yo tho, the later is destroyed and no other car is spawned, but you get one penalty point, which means that you've already lost 1 position. This means that if you stay just behind another car without somehow passing it for a long distance, chances are that it (enemy car) is hitting all the spawnboxes and making you loose positions. So you need to pass them fast!
• If any enemy car crosses the finish line earlier than you, obviously you get another penalty point...
• And at the end, the textbox (dat spritefont belongs of course to another project, still need to make one for this one) shows your final position which is equal to all your penalties + 1 (as it's 0 based). No penalties = 0 + 1, youre first. Six penalties = 6 + 1, yer 7th.

-Hope it makes sense...

Notice thus that there's no eight cars running towards the goalpoint from the beginning -- and as many fall down the cliffs, it would be very rare to have eight cars on the layout at any given time (but maybe i should destroy them anyway when theyre left behind far enough, yknow for performance). It might seem unfair the fact that maybe you've already lost several positions when you're not even half race done, but the player shouldnt be aware of how it works, so the whole thing should feel consistent. (And anyway, he shoulve been FASTAH!).

One interesting thing of this method (?) is that it will hopefully allow me to make something halfway between a "classic" race circuit and a more arcade oriented level. I could have several cars to be spawned at a certain order (weaker, of slower, first), and a big bad boss at the end -- which you may meet only if you pass all the previous cars on time or something. But hey now i'm rushing too ahead! I'd like this project to be simple.

Oh shit look at that post. Sorry guys. Ah, one last thing! The game is much easier on PC than on mobile/tablet -- because of that thing about physics being always framerate-dependent for some reason, i reckon. What's the approach, here? Is there any turnaround? Or sould I just go mobile-first?

Thanks for your patience!

[quote:28njrbs9]Gripping the wheel his knuckles went white with desire

The wheels of his Mustang exploding on the highway like a slug from a .45

True Death: 400 Horsepower of maximum performance piercing the night

This is Black Sunshine.

Hey people. Here's a prototype for a physics side-view racing game. Mad max inspired of sorts. It's my first attempt with physics. Still rather boring, i need to add me some more scenery and props, and music and powerups and fancy effects, and also them cars are probably gonna be redesigned at some point (plus there should be 8 different models), to make them a bit brighter and, ehm, breakable.

As always, your opinions and suggestions are appreciated

Click or touch to move, press space or hit the speedometer to nitro.

PLAY!

hey NetOne , thanks (as usual!) for your advice and support

you think so? I've been myself three damn years or so groping C2, and i feel that you already know more about arrays than me :S I have some rudimentary (think of an ape with a stick) programming knowledge, although i'm more in the artistic department. the mighty MEGAQÜEST is my only long-running project -- longer than it should, actually. A monstrously oversized for-fun project, developed on the go without any previous coherent planification whatsoever (aka organically). still to be seen if it's ever finished. I hope so because by now is somewhat "too big to fail". some of us will never learn.

json. I guessed sooner or later it would come to that. I am currently implementing important (severe even) changes in the code, we'll see what comes out of it. If nothing else works, i'll have to learn me damn ajax... i envy that "for knowledge's sake" philosophy. years keep falling apart (cheers!), and sometimes I feel that nothing ever comes up.

so don't let that shmup take that long

hey, i'm a complete beginner on physics... Should i start straightaway with chipmunk, or would it be better if i master first (and i'm far from mastering nothing as for now) the basic C2 physics?

chill out brother. screen resolutions are dark and full of terrors until you get to them. look, your game most likely won't look perfectly fullscreened in all devices. well it could, but that would mean other restrictions, that may or may not be applicable to your project. So usually what you do is target a common resolution, and from there you try your best to make it look good in any other. some musings:

• "scale inner" gives you full screen coverage, but "eats" playable space, which means that stuff close to the borders of the screen size (the dotted grey line as appears in the editor) may actually be offscreen. if all the action happens in the close area around the centre of the screen, this can work.

• "scale outer" gives you the full playable space, but if you move towards the border of the layout you can get past the background image (the "sky") and see the white, or black, background behind, which aint no good. you may avoid this by leaving some padding inside the layout, so the player cannot actually get too close to the border. "scale outer" doesnt guaratee you full screen coverage tho: in a ridiculously thin or wide screen you'll always see a bit of the background colour (you can try this stretching your browser window).

• the "anchor" behaviour is useful too. if you're for "scale inner" it's actually crucial. it "sticks" objects, like hud's or screen buttons or whatever, to the edges of the screen.

• letterbox is not that bad if you use some kind of frame or something -- it may even make your game look fancier. and if you're making a pixel game, you should choose "integer letterbox scale" (so pixels look right), which pretty much guarantees you're gonna get some black stripes.

Well I'm veeery new at physics.

Trying to do a "infinite driver" sort of thing, with a car composed of a body with two wheels attached, "traction" comes from the rear wheel spin. When the car reaches certain X, it's moved to Self.X-5000, so the level loops over itself. Works fine, but there's a noticeable bump in the car motion right after "teleporting". Is there any way to fix that?

Thanks!

hey there, i finally managed something with those performance issues! used a tilemap instead of many instances of them pills Feedback appreciated, specially about how it behaves on mobile devices.

PLAY

NetOne cheers brother, I really appreciate the interest I put the whole project on stand-by for a couple of months, to get some perspective and curse the heavens and gather energies for what gonna be, I'm afraid, quite a deep redesign of the whole damn thing (again). That's a step I dont wanna take too lightly though, so Im considering how should i approach the whole thing from the beginning.

So this array solution seems to be the "proper" (even the "old school") thing to do, thus i really want to give it a try -- or a look, at least. The problem is, I'm not even sure of what you guys mean by "load-level-from-array"... you mean, load them tiles? Or load uh... coordinates of things? Enemy encounters, or what? I know i can export a tilemap to json (im not 100% sure what a json file is tho), but I dont think my tilemap is the problem (gots collisions off). Whatever. Any tutorial or article or blog entry on this technique? (not NetOne necessarily, but hey ;P )

About the "Tilemap Solution" discussed some posts above, I tried it (or something resembling it) in some little pacmanoid project i had which was giving me (yeah also) performance problems -- and it's working pretty good, although it requires a quite strict "checkboard" approach that i'm not sure is gonna work for the mighty MEGAQUEST...

Finally, I havent completely dropped the idea of splitting the whole thing into several layouts. Even faking some seamless-looking effect somehow. That would be somewhat safer, as these performance issues tend to appear when the game gets a certain size (and consequently a lot of work behind), i wouldn't like to discover then that whatever the path i choose happens to be useless again...

NetOne Sorry for the late response. I've been experimenting with tilemaps meself. Lots of trouble and not sure if i'm getting any improvements. Your news about arrays dont look very encouraging either, although i'm also having a look at it -- arrays for dummies or something, still a long way to go. Ow Im getting the dev blues ´-` I'm aware i'll most likely have recode (at least!) deeply the whole project. So im doing the wise coward thing and focusing on some simpler side project for the time being. Hey, just to learn me some stuff. The mighty megaqüest has already survived many of these emotional drags bfore.

— (dunno how to you mate) Yeah, a valid question innit. I love the concept since i played Fallout2. I wanted the game to be, well... more based in areas than in levels or stages, I guess. The idea of a whole world for you to explore and so. But mainly, i didnt know enough to see that it was going to become such a pain in the end :\

randomly well thank you so very much for your effort -- it's awesomely commented n everything! I'll dig into it right now, and see how it goes. Cheers!

Bump! Nobody wants to make a sandbox? C'mon people where's your megalomania??

As this array thing looks rather too difficult for me apelike coding prowess, I'm currently struggling with other idea: i'm replacing (or intend to) dormant offscreen sprites with tiles from a tilemap, which should be lighter. Then is always possible that after all the effort it proves useless, performance-wise.