Topic: AGS Kart

[icey games]

I think the work order should be:

Racers 
-Size of'em
-angle of'em( birds eye or Mario kart style )
-Maximum allowed

Tracks
-How big it should be to support a good size for all players
-Type of tracks ( Tracks should be made up of levels from each characters game or tracks could made up of those from trophy winning AGS games. )
-Angling of tracks

Grand prix design
-This and other small things

Weapons/power ups
 This should be the last thing cause it's already enough work to do for everyone with the other things.

[icey games]

Also you could use this as a reference on the whole Swarm Main page for the game.

http://www.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=43340.msg576290#msg576290

[Kweepa]

Before anything else, the physics of the cars should be polished up. Can't design tracks without that!

[Technocrat]

Before anything else, the physics of the cars should be polished up. Can't design tracks without that!

Much like other cartoon racing sorts of games, different handling characteristics of the vehicles for different characters (light, medium, heavy) would probably be a good idea. Speaking of which, I noticed that when turning left (in the test demo) the forward velocity barely slows, but turning right brings the thing to a halt.

It's a lot more straightforward (and probably, more appropriate I think) to have the same items/pickups for everyone. It means less work on creating them, and leads to a more unified "AGS" feel of the whole game - in my personal opinion.

[Snake]

Yes, I agree. I always tend to make things more complicated than necessary

[Sinsin]

Do we need a plan written out of what we're going to do? If so I'll gladly have a crack at it in the morning.

@Kweepa 100% behind ya on working the kart dynamics out first. Seems sensible fella 

[Kweepa]

@Kweepa 100% behind ya on working the kart dynamics out first. Seems sensible fella 

Erm, I don't remember volunteering to do that! I may have time, but no promises.

[Sinsin]

@Kweepa 100% behind ya on working the kart dynamics out first. Seems sensible fella 

Erm, I don't remember volunteering to do that! I may have time, but no promises.

Sorry no I meant I was totally behind the idea of where to begin sorry buddy 

[Hudders]

Do we need a plan written out of what we're going to do? If so I'll gladly have a crack at it in the morning.

I think it would be useful.

I think these two recent threads give a good indication of what people identify as iconic AGS characters and I think it would be great to get them all in this game:

http://www.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=45800.0
http://www.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=45723.0

Not just as characters but also as themed tracks: e.g. a Nelly Cootalot beach circuit.

EDIT: Spoonbeak Circuit

[Ali]

I'd definitely do a Nelly Cootalot sprite! As long as she isn't rubbish like Princess Peach in the original Mario Kart (i.e. only Mario Kart I've played).

[Monsieur OUXX]

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.

Khris, our misunderstanding came from the fact that I never suggested to used AGS' built-in rotation. When it comes to sumulating SNES'  "mode 7", the best idea is to write a pixel-by-pixel transformation routine rather than a standard rotation. that's what I meant by "the algorithm must be out somewhere".
I'm happy that Kweepa's demo works so well!

Oh, and yes, it would be awesome if there were characters based on famous AGS characters.

[Monsieur OUXX]

Before anything else, the physics of the cars should be polished up. Can't design tracks without that!

do we have anything to manage collisions? even an embryo of that? In another open-source game? What about Radiant's vectorial games for example?

[Sinsin]

I got stuck doing this    feel free to download and hack away Plan First Draft

[Monsieur OUXX]

Im just writing this doc and was wondering if online multiplayer would be do-able???
If so how hard ??

AGS now has several basic features for networking, so it's not very complicated to connect several AGSers together.

What's tricky in real-time arcade games, though (especially in FPS, and to a certain extent in Kart games, or any game that require fast-paced collisions) is to make the data stream between computers "stable" enough, so that nobody lags.
More specifically, this stability is often reached by working around the unavoidable lag. It's done by designing quite complex interpolation systems (in other words, your game is designed like this: "I don't know where player 1 is right now because he's slightly lagging, but I interpolate his probable current position from where he was 50ms ago, his orientation, and his speed. So I can tell if he's colliding with player 2.").

I don't know if that would be required for a tiny kart game, tough, or if we may leave that sort of worries to gigantic online servers.

[Hudders]

It might be wise to create a time-trial game first and then move forward from there.

[Sinsin]

whoops missed a couple of posts      I got stuck doing this     feel free to download and hack away Plan First Draft

@ Monsieur: thats understandable, I have to admit I am no coding genius (or novice really) but I understand that the game would not be too demanding its just that I cannot think in script lord knows I'v tried lol .

@ Hudders: yeah probably the best way really.

** Also I just noticed that when you test a track, the engine flips the layout so it is mirrored 

[Kweepa]

RE Collisions, one could start with the SpacePoolAlpha source: http://www.kweepa.com/step/ags/tech/SpacePool.zip

Depending on how many other objects are in there (barrels, trees etc) it might need some kind of spatial partition. Basically a 2d array holding the index of the objects in each square. It could also be used to speed up the z sort before drawing the objects - if there are more than 50 or so I'd recommend it.


Ah, I probably confused the sign of the Y texture coordinate. Should be an easy fix. Well spotted.

[Sinsin]

Depending on how many other objects are in there (barrels, trees etc) it might need some kind of spatial partition. Basically a 2d array holding the index of the objects in each square. It could also be used to speed up the z sort before drawing the objects - if there are more than 50 or so I'd recommend it.

I'm guessing there could be a few depending on the themes of the tracks. Maybe if we limit what is used per theme. Would track walls be classed as an object or would this be done via another route?

[icey games]

If you guys haven't figured anything out yet, I had a idea that one could use chat label(AGSirc) behind screen to better mange where the players are. It's like the game auto chatting the X,Y of each racers between each game. This way each racer seems to be in the same spot on your screen as they are in their game. I'm sure it can work for a few other things to but you just gotta think hard about it. 

[Deu2000]

@Noctis great idea!

Why isn't the character design part in the plan?