Racing template prototype

Dear friends,

I have finished a racing demo that will serve as a base for a racing template that should be released in the very near future.
Please download it, play with it and post your observations, suggestions, and so on. Get the demo from here (56 MB):

http://aum.conitec.net/racer1.zip

Thank you. I look forward to hearing your opinion about the demo.
George

thanks

General feedback

• After loading it takes some seconds before the music starts
• The needle offset in the main menu is wrong... not centered
• Does the spectrum react on the music or is this a random wave?
• The helpscreen in the main menu is hurting my eyes.. use an underlayed panel and a better readable font with additional images instead of pure text
• When I press ESC ingame, the game quits... better show an ingame menu instead rather than shutting down
• In some cases the spectrum was visible for a moment after I have entered the level

gameplay specific feedback

The game is simply unplayable in my oppinion caused by the following reasons:

• The player accelerates jerky: when I press constantly the arrow up key, I accelerate smoothly and then all in a sudden very fast
• I suggest that you implement a better collision control while removing the need of a "Lift". The whole physics implementation of the car looks and feels buggy. During my very first trial I drove against a wall and the car was stucked between the ground and the rock so that I was not able to drive backwards and using the Lift-Key didnt helped as well.
• I feel cheated by the enemies, because my left/right controls are too hard compared to how the enemies drive. I always drive like out of control, maybe caused by the fast speed.

Hope, that helps.

Thank you for the comments. The spectrum is a random wave built on the fly. Keep the comments coming.

Why the suspension of the car is so hard, not very relastic. And sometimes when I block the road, the opponent not try to avoid but still rushs towards me and crash.

The suspensions were softer, but the terrain model has too few vertices and the car was shaking a bit too hard. You will be able to adjust the suspensions in the template version, adapting them to your levels.

The opponents slow down when they approach you; however, if you don't move out of their way they will hit you. They run on predefined paths, so it wasn't possible to make them avoid the player completely, especially in a level with narrow roads like this.

Weak system / video card and steady ~7 FPS?
Use F5 key to reduce resolution, add a few FPS and regain some control over movement.?


What tools were used to construct and setup the landscape for the demo?

The car is too fast.

BTW, Can you show us the source code?

testDummy: what are the specs of your PC? From what I remember, the level was created using Med (from an imported heightmap). It's an older level that has been floating around for some time now.

Cowabanga: I thought that fast is good . Sure, I will release all the source code and the resources as soon as the demo is 100% finished.

Quoting George.

Normally, a reply would not be offered for that query, however...

In this case, it may be very likely that: weak video card + shaders = low FPS.
Previously, (in this thread,) there was no explicitly declared assumption (by THIS), that low FPS was a result of some fault in the demo or the engine.

Racing template protoype demo run on PC with:
processor: ~2.93 GHz
RAM: 2 GB
(weaker link)
video card: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500
- 256 MB RAM

Video card replaces Intel Accelerated Graphics (on board).
At some time, options for card replacement were limited by available slot types on motherboard.

For the demo sample offered above, with lower FPS (press F11 to view), player vehicle movement might seem faster with more jerks and less control. Of course, low FPS probably only occurs with modest specs, like those above.

Thank you. I have only asked for the specs of your PC because I want to optimize the demo, making it run fine on as many computers as possible. I didn't know that it is inappropriate to do it.

@cowabanga: ha! that's a short and precise one, forever! but you don't have a clue, neither?

A clue for what?

I like the options screen with the gauges as the selectors...Maybe you can add another gauge for vehicle selection? I would like to see a different AI system besides the pre-defined paths - maybe use the models in the game as waypoints? Then the cars could race towards the models at slightly different randomly generated angles or offsets (one car would pass X pixels to left other car Y pixels to right)?

Can't wait to view the code...Thanks so much!
-Bruce

Thank you for the suggestions; I will cover at least some of them in the following magazines.

Why is asking for hardware specs not acceptable?