Forums » Games » Yet another WIP : topdown racer

My 2 cents in this world of talented impacters :

Nitrid

Just a retro racegame, inspired from Micromachines, Super Offroad, Nitro and so on.
Still buggy alpha, but yet playable. Try to follow the arrowed path (it' a 8 shape).

The track is ugly, and the "car" ride like a steamboat. Yes, I know ^^

Started out from the Biolab Box2D + impact demo code, since i'm keen on physics simulation. In fact seeing box2D lib (that I knew before) so well integrated with Impact forced my to buy the latter...

Then I savagely push all the knobs I could (5 level paralax, 120x120 tiles map, 100+ dynamic entities...) just to see what could be a modern HTML5 total waste of ressources !

However it -sometimes- runs smoothly on my computer, then I'm happy.

What do you think if it ?
Gameplay suggestions or performance issues are all welcome.

love it! Wish i knew how you did the car physics. Having issues with my own game.

Thanks !

Physics of the vehicle is "native" Box2D behaviour, basically.
With no gravity, of course.

- Applying force to accelerate, limited with a kind of speed dampening (like any physic object in the game).

- Steering just make a hard rotate of the entity

That's why it drives more than an astronef than a car. The tires have simply no grip !

- Lowering (by kind of 0.998 factor) linear speed when braking (instead if applying inverted force)

I simply think it would have been easier to use box2D for a side view game (like platformers or "lateral" race games, or worms-like's.

Friction and bumpyness would be simpler to implement and greater on screen...

Small update :

- vehicle animations : a bit more life in the hero

- bonuses now have colors, blinks after a while, scores at various values (25-50-75-100) when collected, and will respan with random params.

Also added an ugly "collect notification" when you grab it.

Hope you enjoy !

Looking good. Solved that pesky background issue I see. Good work.

Well, the "pesky" thing solved by itself, by having me no longer using repeated background layers.

Part of my urgent todo list, I guess...

I thought the background was distracting and made me feel like the car was flying.

Besides that its really cool, i like top down driving games.

Small update


NITRID Racer WIP : game

@seeders : the background was a benchmark for parallax scrolling. Now I got calmed down ! Thanks for the feedback, I removed it.

- New feature : Nitro boost (with red smoke exhaust) ! Hit the "v" key while accellerating (up arrow) for extra engine power (25% at the moment). Boost eats your score, so you have to collect bonuses (fast and ugly gameplay, I know...).

- Finally, I got a lap counter ! So comes the current laptime, and last and best laptimes. For a lap to be counted, you must first reach a trigger zone (on the oposite ot the track), then come back to the "finish line".
Multiple checkpoints are planned, this is just pre-alpha prototyping...

- Solved some bugs with bullets collisions, improved a bit the spritemap.

I have known bugs, like bonuses not scoring the correct value, or bullet ("c" key) VS bonuses collisions badly handled.

Roadmap :

- Vehicle collision => car damage
- HUD minimap track view
- one day, a menu / state engine / options settings / real game making...


Stay tuned, thanks for feedbacking !

To make the driving better, you should try to set the friction as a function of the direction of the car. If the car is moving forward, it would have less friction, but more if its moving sideways.

Yes, I basically intended to use box2D in order to implement friction forces, like tires VS road.

A bit ago I played with Blender 3D game engine, with a vehicle model featuring independant wheels, spring modelization, engine torque on drived wheels, grip of the tires + friction of the terrain and so on...

I intended to port that model into impact, but I just fooled one dimension in the process...

My game should be side-viewed in order to take full benefits from box2D, in short.
Like Flash game "Shadow factory", or "Canvas rider" (this one is kool : canvasrider.com) for those I know.

Assuming my top view, I haven't any "terrain", the car never touches any ground !
Box 2D only simulates an x;y world, with a bit of "air friction" dampening effect.

That's why it feels like riding an astronef, and why I have to look for another way of hard-coding passive steering, with no accelleration. I did it once in "AMOS" language on my amiga 500, 15 years ago. I kept the faith...

I want the vehicle (the could finally be a boat or something else than a car) to drift and slide over the track, involving a skill-based driving. Most of my references were quite slow motion games, I tend to experiment with speedy racing (think of the inertia gap between mario and sonic).

Any suggestions about vehicle simulation are all welcome !

You're thinking Powerslide by ratbag games. Kick-ass game that was. We used to play it at the office after hours, something like 12 years ago.

Your vehicle is really hard to control: so much drifting. I would try applying a secondary, drift cancelling rotational force opposite that of your angular velocity, and see what that would give.

Sorry, I didn't find time to upgrade the vehicle handling logic, though it's on the rails !
Think about it as a hoovercraft in the meanwhile :p

UPDATE : now with HQX 3X filtering !

=> http://flipbackstudio.com/000/nitrid/

I'm benching here my new hqx resizing plugin integration (as just being jealous of biolab disaster hqx for a while now).

Adaptative canvas size (depending on the available viewport) is the next step. But much more difficulte than hqx to achieve, still loads of work to do !

Cheerz !

one quick fix for the handling might be to test if the direction the car is facing is within a certain angle of the velocity, and if it is, "snap" the velocity to the car direction as if the tires were catching the road and getting traction.


Also for effects, i think the smoke you have behind the car should only be rendered when you are drifting.

Failed to load on ipad2 here

Wow. Nice work! I love the exhaust particle effect :)