AGS Kart

[Monsieur OUXX]

The biggest problem is drawing the track.
The only way I see doing this in the style of the original without using a plugin is to rotate a pretty big sprite, then draw it line by line to squash it into perspective.
There's room for optimization, but if you're near the edge of the track looking at the rest of it, pretty much the entire sprite has to be transformed.
I don't think AGS can do that natively without slowing down to a crawl.

One alternative is to draw the track using triangles, i.e. without texture.

I believe you're mistaken. With the proper optimization, considering we're using 320*200, you can narrow down the drawing a lot -- it's totally feasible.
Otherwise there wouldn't be such modules as "Lake" or "Panorama".
If it used to work on a 286 intel chip, it can work in the AGS Engine.
I'm too lazy to dig up the transformation algorithm, but it must be all over the Internet by now.

Having said that, I still believe it's a bit silly to do that instead of using the existing 3D plugins to render a simple textured rectangle.
Oh, and I'm advertising for Technocrat and Abstauber again, for all that is tile-related.

[Khris]

Neither the lake nor the panorama module rotate anything, and that's precisely where I think the bottleneck is.
To quote the manual:
NOTE: Rotating is a relatively slow operation, so do not attempt to rotate sprites every game loop; only do it when necessary.

But of course it comes down to how fast the PC is, and maybe current machines can do it fast enough.

[Kweepa]

Khris's solution will be plenty fast enough, I'm sure. One problem is that the rotation is only at 1 degree increments, which shouldn't matter for this game. Another problem is the compensation for the sprite offsets that you get when rotating. There may also be rounding errors introduced since you're effectively performing two transformations (rotation, then projection) with rounding between each step.

If you're willing to put up with a slightly lower camera and the track taking up about half the screen it could be done at about 20 FPS with a low-resolution (low resolution in screen space) texture mapper (I've texture mapped the floor and ceiling in a raycaster this way). But it would have to use the network plugin - I don't think you could do splitscreen without dropping framerate significantly, so it might as well use a plugin for the texture mapping too.

[Kweepa]

Tech demo (without object sorting): http://www.kweepa.com/step/ags/tech/AGS_Kart_2012_04_25.zip

[Khris]

That's amazing!

Mine suffers greatly from the wonky built-in rotation: https://www.dropbox.com/s/im5yqnrc6v8jnb8/AGSKart.rar

[Ghost]

Just dippin into the thread, but Mode7 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_7) is pretty well dokumented and I am dead sure some forum member already used it with good speed.

Kweepa's prototype runs well on my machine, and Kris' is still playable.

[nihilyst]

I'm baffled about how fast you guys code such a thing.
Yeah, Khris, the rotation in yours is nervous as hell, but the whole thing is astonishing.
Kweepa, yours generates an error log which constantly increases its size. After a few minutes, the log was bigger in size than the game itself

I'm curious about where this will lead. Even these early results look promising enough to keep an eye on it

[Technocrat]

I'm amazed, and 100% on board! We'll have to make it do multiplayer as well!

A few years ago, I was experimenting with using the AGS3D plugin to make something like the 3d-cuboid with a texture on top for things to move around on top of. It was a little unstable, is what I remember, but that's probably just all the other things I was trying to make it do.

[SinSin]

OMG :o
Kweepa, Khris how do you do this?
I can barely make an object fade thru transparency and you two take an idea and spin the entire structure of it (PRACTICALLY)
I am amazed that this has come so far I actually thought it was going to fade.
Looks like we have a lot of interested parties.

So what do we think?
Should we swarm, Or do we create a team....    Where do we go from here?

[Peder 🚀]

I'd love to see AGS Kart!

I think trying to do a swarm of it would probably be a good idea!

[SinSin]

We could swarm initially, create a number of tracks and characters and once its finished leave it in a fashion so we can update it.
Eg. New Tracks, Characters and weapons people cook up in their spare time.

Would it be possible to encorporate Grand Prix style racing ie 8 players online over 5 courses and the winner gets a forum trophy  ??

What about time trials could we integrate this so we can fight out who is the fastest on a specific course ??

oooo the Possibilities      off designing tracks now   buh bye

*EDIT    I just tried a basic square layout and the Kart handles like a hovercraft tee hee oooo the fun

[Kweepa]

Sorry about the warnings (the background wasn't 32 bit colour depth).
This version should be good (and run a little faster as a result!).
http://www.kweepa.com/step/ags/tech/AGS_Kart_2012_04_26.zip

[SinSin]

It shows a track which has ducks on it for a second then reverts to the original    Dont know if iv done something here tho
Looked at the backgrounds   looking sweet    Awesome work Kweepa

[Peder 🚀]

that seems to be the loading screen Sinsin. Check the image called "loading" in the folder .

[Snake]

This is going to be incredible

Nice work - ALREADY - guys!! This is VERY exciting!

Question, will we get our chance to design characters and tracks? I've only skimmed the thread so far (not much time at the moment) but my first thought on characters is, obviously, the characters would all be from AGS games, yes?

I know I'm just rambling on now, but playing this online with other AGSers would be a must!

\\--EDIT--//
BTW, I love the new forums!

[SinSin]

that seems to be the loading screen Sinsin. Check the image called "loading" in the folder .

Whoopsie  i'm not that stooopid really   heh heh     just excited

[Darth Mandarb]

Question, will we get our chance to design characters and tracks? I've only skimmed the thread so far (not much time at the moment) but my first thought on characters is, obviously, the characters would all be from AGS games, yes?

I was thinking more along the lines of forum members being the drivers/karts ... but now that you mention it, it would probably make more sense to use characters from games because not all members have avatars that would be suitable! 

I'm giving serious thought to actually making this a reality! I'm talking GiP thread and everything (once I have two screenshots of course)

[Snake]

That was an automatic thought really, but what also made me think further was seeing the mouse/rat karter in Kweepa's tech demo. It reminded me of Indiana Rodent - which would be a nice character to kart with. Also Larry Vales, Pirate Fry, the guy from Permanent Daylight, Trilby, the robot from "!"....the list just goes on and on AND ON AND ON!

[Kweepa]

That's Blombo (an elephant!) from Wacky Wheels.
http://www.spriters-resource.com/pc_computer/PCWackyWheels/
I played this long before I ever knew of the existence of Mario Kart.

[SinSin]

There be no limit on characters really as the limits on AGS are already excessive (33000 tracks is alot lol)
AGS characters and approved racers with a standardised kart would be awesome all we need is a moderator for them.