So I've been wondering if we can achieve a kart racing game with AGS?
This topic was raised in 2006 so I wondering have there been any substantial developments which would make this possible?
I was thinking ===> SNES Mario kart <=== styling with inportable players.
Come on whizz kids is it do-able ?
I think it's do-able. Mostly from a birds eye view. But I'm sure it would work.
Awesome!! I had this same idea back in ... 2009 I think? I actually made up some of the tracks.
I was envisioning it as Mode 7 (like Mario Kart on the SNES!) where the track (a large 2D graphic) would be an object and you would place other objects on it (for pipes, sandtraps, etc) and using some kind of scripting wizardry create the pseudo 3D (mode 7) effect and the kart would stay centered. I was also envisioning multiple layers for the background so you could get some parallax scrolling as you went around the tracks.
I wasn't able to find a willing code-slinger who would/could do the scripting (as 3D is slightly out of my purview) so the idea died slowly! I'd still be VERY interested in the concept though!!
edit - I was also playing around with the concept that the outer edges of the "track" graphic would use an alpha channel to fade out the track and blend into the bg layers behind it to create a very pleasing (I should think) horizon effect .
Now that there's a 3D-rendering plugin it should be rather easy.
Not that scripting the old-school fake 3D is hard, but, eh, why do something complicated when you can do something simple.
I back this idea 100%. I've been thinking about this for years. Mario Kart kicks ass and so would an AGS Kart.
Is it do-able? With all the great scripting minds from around here, fuck yeah, no doubt.
PS
By the way, Sinsin, your Mario Kart Wii racing skills also kick ass. Have we raced yet, or was it just you beating all my time trials - which I hate you for by the way ;)
Could be cool to do it similar to the swarm development thing from a few months ago.
Get a bunch of contributors ... each person could make their own kart and their own level/track as well (after the mechanics of the scripting are worked out and some guidelines and methods are established of course!)
@ Everyone Did not expect this much excitement :o
Would be fantastic to create a game which would captivate so many minds. I thought things would have been different these days what with the flood of coders and all (where are all the artists these days hehheh)
@ Snake hehheh I dont think we have raced man to man yet but it can be arranged ;D
Also with the superb work on Multiplayer games being done. This could possibly also be incorporated.
Maybe their could be a swarm for this. It would be nice if the game was able to feature racer sprites made by different swarm members.
Im useless at scripting so I would defo recommend a swarm for this (hmmm not so sure)
@monsieur : I suppose for nostalgias sake, Then again How fun would building 3D Models be?
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=41581.0 (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=41581.0) Would this be the right direction ? If so DKH has said that implementing multiplayer FPS would be possible although time consuming.
It would be very possible to do this with my Razorblade3D plugin if you want to go for a modern 3D looking racing game! You need 3D artists to create the tracks (or track pieces) and karts of course, as far as I know there aren't a whole lot of 3D artists around these parts (for a good reason)! :)
You could also go the retro pseudo 3D route where you need to hand-draw or render out the karts from all angles (think F zero for example).
As I mentioned previously I think a swarm would be a good idea for something like this.
I think the pseudo-3D route would be more appealing (to me at least) with sprite based objects and pre-rendered karts.
If we can get specs written up, I would be glad to provide a driver and maybe even a track. This sounds like an awesome project!
Definatly psuedo 3d route for me too for nostalgias sake.
Also we could (if permission is granted) incorporate AGS game characters ie Trilby, Roger, Girl from Spooks, Annie Android etc. Not too difficult, probably 10 views each (lets say 8 views mirrored for the opposite rotation ) and 2 for victory airpumps etc.
Darth how would we build the traks again using the method you were thinking?
Yeah I agree, pseudo 3D would be the way to go (F Zero would be, again, my main reference as far as the graphics are concerned)!
I wish I could help out with the coding as this sounds very interesting but I just don't have the time right now - at all!
But I vaguely remember seeing tech demos where people have included the track rendering with 2D 'slices' in AGS before, would be worth finding that out!
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=35278.0 (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=35278.0) is the only thing I can find so far will keep hunting tho
I haven't scripted in AGS in AGeS (it's literally been years). So a) I'm not sure I'm even using the right terminology and b) I'm not sure if what I was thinking was even possible but...
Basically you'd create a top-down view of the track (in Photoshop, Gimp, etc). It would contain all the stuff on the "ground". You import that into AGS as an object (each "track" would be it's own room?). You make the main background of the room a static image (the very back of the parallax scrolling that doesn't move... most likely just a color or gradient for the sky backdrop and other 'objects' would be the layers of parallax). You could then place other objects on the 'track' object that would be the sprites interpreted by the game (like pipes, sandtraps, power-ups, etc). Then, when run, all the objects would (through the aforementioned scripting wizardry) be handled pseudo-3D and you could cruise around the track!
I think creating the tracks/levels would be the easy part... we just need somebody willing to devote some time to figuring out the mechanics of the P3D!
If I have some time later today I'll whip up some example graphics for what I'm talking about. It's always easier to "show" rather than to explain :)
EDIT due to irrelevance ::)
Was just looking on wiki about it. It turns out that the tracks are layers, flat like you pointed out Darth but also they incorporate tiles 128 x 128 each track maximum (each will have variables like resistance to acceleration) and the carts are just sprites that alter to degree of the turn.
The Tracks could need mini teams like an artist and a coder
Its probably alot deeper but where scripting is concerned Im useless
The game itself would need a quality coder/mathematician
Quote from: Sinsin on Mon 23/04/2012 09:34:43
@monsieur : I suppose for nostalgias sake, Then again How fun would building 3D Models be?
I didn't mean that. I wasn't talking about the models. I was only talking about the 3D-rendered ground (like in Mario Kart, SpeedRacers, Whacky wheels, etc.). In those old games it was rough fake 3D (and in the case of the SNES it was even a dedicated circuitry). But nowadays you can do it in 2 seconds with a simple, flat 3D object.
PS:
Tor all the Tiles manipulation I strongly suggest to re-use the code from other AGS projects: Either Technocrat's code from
Project Forklift, or Abstauber's code from
Shattenreize.
that would be pretty damn elegant.
Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Mon 23/04/2012 15:44:35
But nowadays you can do it in 2 seconds with a simple, flat 3D object.
but how ?? is it easy in AGS?
After wandering thru the forums I stumbled upon this
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=26130.40 (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=26130.40)
It looks like the correct plugin we should use. although will the code allow us to rotate the map rather than walking forward and backward
After countless edits and plenty of headscratchingsI believe Wretcheds plugin is the way forward. There is a section in the module which has something about character camera which may help keep the camera behind the driver.. ;D
But still Im a useless scripter/coder
I have decifered that the sky is just another layered background and walls seem to have something to do with the room edges.
*Any luck with the track example Darth?
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.
Quote from: Khris on Wed 25/04/2012 12:58:10
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 (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=27356.0)" or "Panorama (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=27632.0)".
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.
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.
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.
Tech demo (without object sorting): http://www.kweepa.com/step/ags/tech/AGS_Kart_2012_04_25.zip
That's amazing!
Mine suffers greatly from the wonky built-in rotation: https://www.dropbox.com/s/im5yqnrc6v8jnb8/AGSKart.rar
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.
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 ;D
I'm curious about where this will lead. Even these early results look promising enough to keep an eye on it :)
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.
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?
I'd love to see AGS Kart!
I think trying to do a swarm of it would probably be a good idea!
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
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
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
that seems to be the loading screen Sinsin. Check the image called "loading" in the folder :P.
This is going to be incredible ;D
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!
Quote from: Peder Johnsen+ on Thu 26/04/2012 15:08:57
that seems to be the loading screen Sinsin. Check the image called "loading" in the folder :P.
Whoopsie i'm not that stooopid really heh heh just excited
Quote from: Snake on Thu 26/04/2012 15:14:51Question, 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) :)
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!
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.
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.
Quote from: Sinsin on Thu 26/04/2012 18:16:49
AGS characters and approved racers with a standardised kart would be awesome all we need is a moderator for them.
And a default template would be cool ;).
now I want to draw some tracks :D
So would it be possible to have another dimension in the 3d effects, like a tunnel and a way over the tunnel for an 8-track?
Also ice on the road for slippery driving?
Quote from: selmiak on Thu 26/04/2012 18:39:08
now I want to draw some tracks :D
So would it be possible to have another dimension in the 3d effects, like a tunnel and a way over the tunnel for an 8-track?
Also ice on the road for slippery driving?
I've been dragging the courses from Mario Kart into it for an experiment - haven't been able to find a full-size image for the tracks, but the ones that are 1024x1024 representations are working alright so far.
If we're going to standardise a character size, let's make them bigger than Mr Elephant from Wacky Wheels. It means I can give more details and definition to the Nancymobile.
(http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o33/Nedraed/nancykart1.png)
The player's cart in Mario Kart is about 36x32 on screen.
The Wacky Wheels cart is similar.
Any bigger and the gameplay will likely suffer. Plus, you lose the "template" from those games, and it makes the bar for adding a character higher as the size increases. Not everyone has days to devote to all the required angles. I suppose we could add a scalar to each character, but you want the sprite to be unscaled for the player cart for best effect.
3d is a whole 'nother level of difficulty for the engine, and I don't think we want to add to the difficulty! We could just have the track cross for added excitement. I was thinking that a separate track image would indicate the progression around the track, so you'd have to enter successive regions to finish a lap.
Ice/oil/bananas are of course possible.
A tunnel is also acheivable, with some polygons, but care would be needed when rendering and colliding.
Well, I'm sure I can make her smaller then. Everyone'll only be staring at the back of her head!
I've been experimenting with a parallaxing moutain-scape in the background - not a great deal of joy yet, I'm wondering if I make its speed of movement at the edges slower than the middle it'd look more realistic perhaps...better do some more research with Mario Kart...
You guys who are making this happen, you are my heroes.
Quote from: Technocrat on Thu 26/04/2012 19:28:38
I've been experimenting with a parallaxing moutain-scape in the background - not a great deal of joy yet, I'm wondering if I make its speed of movement at the edges slower than the middle it'd look more realistic perhaps...better do some more research with Mario Kart...
I wouldn't necessarily look to Mario Kart. The Panorama module should do the job. It might even be possible to just plop the module in above Kart. If not, it can be modified pretty easily.
I think if the separate swarm members are going to make their characters or just AGS for the game they should be seen in they respected look from what ever game their from. Their should just be a certain size for every body to go by.
I agree that the smaller the racers, the easier on the gameplay/visibility it'll be.
Also, let's not forget about Blue Cup for a racer.
(nod) <-- He agrees
The blue cup should be the trophy everyone's racing for.
Mario Kart has Star Cup, Mushroom Cup, Flower Cup, etc. AGS Racer has the Blue Cup.
Quote from: Hudders on Thu 26/04/2012 20:45:58
The blue cup should be the trophy everyone's racing for.
Mario Kart has Star Cup, Mushroom Cup, Flower Cup, etc. AGS Racer has the Blue Cup.
Blue-Baby-Cup, Blue Cup and Big Blue Cup?
Its like idea ping pong down here ;D
I just designed a layout and tested it on the second tester and the track seems too wide its hard to get it right lol
Quote from: Technocrat on Thu 26/04/2012 21:55:39
Blue-Baby-Cup
Now I not only want to see AGS Racer characters, but also baby versions of those AGS Racer characters.
Quote from: Hudders on Thu 26/04/2012 20:45:58
The blue cup should be the trophy everyone's racing for.
Great idea! It's such an obvious thing that I didn't see it!
The
Blue Cup: That's another great idea. It aught to be fun coming up with names for all the cups and courses :D
Here's an idea for items: Like in Mario Kart there will be items for dropping, throwing, homing, protection/shields, speed boosts, etc...(I'm assuming this is the route we're taking). What about having each of these items' graphics be character specific? What I mean by that is all of the specific items you can optain do the same thing for each character, they just look different for each character.
For instance, in Mario Kart there are the bananas that can be dropped/thrown and any character that hits them spins out. But what if, the banana was only for Donkey Kong? So if you chose to race as Yoshi, his drop/throw item was an egg. The egg would do the same thing as a banana. Just an idea :) Personally, I'd be fine with the items being either way, character specific or all the racers get the same items. And most likely, making an egg drop instead of a banana, because you're Yoshi, may be a pain in the ass to script anyway... I don't know, I can't script for shit ;)
Here's another idea, if it's not too much each character has 3 unlock-able items they can use during the race by unlocking them with enough Big Blue Tokens that you gain after races. you can set one of those items to use during if you get an item box, or you can make the game shuffle at random through the items and pick one. It's sorta like how the item boxes work in mario kart but with set items for each character.
This is very interesting, once again, wish I had the time to contribute more at this point!
Gameplay/-design wise I would heavily suggest to pay attention to how random you make the game. If you do add in a lot of random drops (like those mentioned two posts above by Snake - speed boosts, weapons, shields and such) you also make the game extremely dependent on luck. I for one really dislike this school of design and would favor a more pseudo-competitive, fair way. As an example: the afterburner (speed boost) I wouldn't have it come in the form of drops at all, have it be always useable but your engine overheats when it's used for too long of a time. The engine cools down on a, well, cooldown. This way there's a big element of skill immediately present in the game: good players know when to use their boost (during which parts of the track) and during which (sharp corners and the like) not to use it. And they can use short bursts of afterburner to help them accelerate and get up to speed after a crash or at the start of the race. Compare this to just hoping to get lucky and picking up some speed boost drop item!
This is just one example, I urge you to go deeper into this territory as it will improve the game's (re-) playability and fun factor in an extremely simple way. There can be drops but don't have these appear randomly on the track or out of crashed enemies, have them be planted in the tracks so their locations stay the same. And make sure that, still, what is dropped isn't too powerful!
Sorry for the stream of consciousness kinda writing style, I'm in the middle of doing about ten things at once, hope I made myself clear regarding the direction I'd like this game to take!
Kinda looks like we need to plan all these different areas.
Weapons
Tracks
Grand prix design (ie points designation and trophy design)
Racers
Any Ideas on planning
DKH the engine idea is a very F1 scenario (I kinda like it but if races are like 5 laps or less then why would the engine overheat? )
Very quick 1st draft some parts are very wide but coming along nicely
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v691/a1n2t3z4/grasstrack.png)
Quote from: Sinsin on Thu 26/04/2012 23:17:59
DKH the engine idea is a very F1 scenario (I kinda like it but if races are like 5 laps or less then why would the engine overheat? )
I don't think we're exactly going for a very realistic setting here, are we? Shouldn't be a problem to have engines overheating after about 6-8 seconds of using the afterburner! :)
And yes, what this project needs (apart from more tech demo updates) is a proper game design document I think!
Quote from: dkh on Thu 26/04/2012 23:20:52
Quote from: Sinsin on Thu 26/04/2012 23:17:59
DKH the engine idea is a very F1 scenario (I kinda like it but if races are like 5 laps or less then why would the engine overheat? )
And yes, what this project needs (apart from more tech demo updates) is a proper game design document I think!
Agreed...
*part of post removed
Why do you need to be PM'd? Just come up with a list of jobs that need doing and then people can sign up for them in this thread. That's how SWARMAGS worked. ;)
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.
Also you could use this as a reference on the whole Swarm Main page for the game.
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=43340.msg576290#msg576290
Before anything else, the physics of the cars should be polished up. Can't design tracks without that!
Quote from: Kweepa on Thu 26/04/2012 23:58:31
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.
Yes, I agree. I always tend to make things more complicated than necessary ;)
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 :-D
Quote from: Sinsin on Fri 27/04/2012 01:21:29
@Kweepa 100% behind ya on working the kart dynamics out first. Seems sensible fella :-D
Erm, I don't remember volunteering to do that! I may have time, but no promises.
Quote from: Kweepa on Fri 27/04/2012 01:23:41
Quote from: Sinsin on Fri 27/04/2012 01:21:29
@Kweepa 100% behind ya on working the kart dynamics out first. Seems sensible fella :-D
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 :-[
Quote from: Sinsin on Fri 27/04/2012 01:21:29
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.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=45800.0
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/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
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).
Quote from: Khris on Wed 25/04/2012 14:19:34
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.
Quote from: Kweepa on Thu 26/04/2012 23:58:31
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?
I got stuck doing this :( feel free to download and hack away Plan First Draft (http://www.mediafire.com/view/?2e3q4ojrayiompc)
Quote from: Sinsin on Fri 27/04/2012 12:41:59
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.
It might be wise to create a time-trial game first and then move forward from there.
whoops missed a couple of posts ??? I got stuck doing this :( feel free to download and hack away Plan First Draft (http://www.mediafire.com/view/?2e3q4ojrayiompc)
@ 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 :confused:
RE Collisions, one could start with the SpacePoolAlpha source: http://www.kweepa.org/step/ags/games/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.
[EDIT} updated link
Quote from: Kweepa on Fri 27/04/2012 14:47:24
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?
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. :cheesy:
@Noctis great idea!
Why isn't the character design part in the plan?
Quiet here... Right we need to get this moving so lets get organised, (he says )
We need some Ideas towards Title screens and character selction screens etc. anyone fancy having a go... Once we get some backgrounds done we can GIP this thing :-D
AGS Kart Go GO GO !!
I can do the title screen and the character selection screen.
So we know yet any of the base players for the game? it would be sorta cool if I could draw them together for the title screen.
I'm not sure that the graphics are the first thing to be thinking about. It's great that there's so much enthusiasm, but before we do anything else I think there's more scripting to be done.
I suggest we start with the minimum amount of graphics to begin with and then we can expand later. I think there's a danger of having eyes bigger than our bellies with some of this so keep it simple: one track, maybe a couple of characters. We began SWARMAGS with a style guide so that everybody's work was consistent, maybe we need something like that here?
Here's a brief list of jobs I think need doing. I've missed plenty out and got some stuff wrong, I know I have. This list isn't definitive, it's a starting point:
Scripting
- Track borders
- Starting conditions, (e.g. 3... 2... 1... GO!)
- Finish line / finish conditions
Graphics
- Style guide
- Character art
--- Sprites
--- Character-select portraits
- Backgrounds
--- Tracks
--- Character select screen
--- Track select screen
--- Leaderboard
GUI
- Timer
- Position numbers
- Map (?)
- Character select
- Speed indicator (?)
Audio
- Music
- Sound effects
And the size of the game? surely nothing to big, maybe 640 x400? I think it fits all monitors plus the bigger the game the bigger the tracks, characters, and overall work.
The resolution is going to have a HUGE impact on performance, I wouldn't go over 320x200 in order to keep framerates as high as possible for good input feedback (which is incredibly important in any decent racing game). I haven't tried the tech demos out yet, if you can get a minimum of 60fps in something larger than 320x200, then go for that. But with more objects and all, it will slow down even more in the end, keep that in mind! :)
And I still believe the biggest thing that this project is missing at the moment is a design document! How is the game going to be played? Controls? What gameplay mechanics are there?
Maybe the arrow keys to move. X for power item and Z for brakes. And for some fun why not make space bar a Picture taking button. It would be pretty sweet to post some awesome shots on the forums.
I wonder, if enough AGS games made with a online feature will make AGS make a separate forum for just Online games...
I think joypad/stick support is going to be a must, too. And with the amazing joypad plugin, it's extremely easy to do in AGS!
Joystick support is DEFINITELY a must. It's no fun playing a karting game with the keyboard :-\
At a option for key board cause someone might not have a Joystick or be near one at the moment. I'm not complaining cause I already got one. I'm just thinking for the better of the games future.
Quote from: Insane-Icey on Sat 28/04/2012 02:03:24
At a option for key board cause someone might not have a Joystick or be near one at the moment. I'm not complaining cause I already got one. I'm just thinking for the better of the games future.
Come again? At a option for key board? What?
Let me clarify: Joystick support ALONG SIDE keyboard control will be a must for people who prefer to use a fucking joystick/gamepad as opposed to being forced to use the keyboard... unless the user can define their own key configuration... but in any case, I've said this too many times already in such a short amount of posts (2), having joystick SUPPORT would be a good god-damn splendid idea.
Opps I men't at least.
But I think the joystic idea is great too.
Wait what would happen if a racer get's disconnected from the game like if He/She exits or something, what happens to the race? does the racer just vanish and the race goes on? But what about some of the things going on while the race is going? Could this they be effected and screwed up during the race or at the end?
Icey, why all the double posting?
I think both key mapping should be available so anyone can set up the keys to what they prefer and Joystick SUPPORT is a good idea!
About networking Icey I don't think that is the first priority to figure out for this game!
I'd also like to see a design document a bit more detailed and a list of jobs that needs to be assigned to people.
Then like so many others have mentioned we should really continue with the physics before starting with the graphics etc!
QuoteIcey, why all the double posting?
I'm usually wrong about everything I think I know something about, but I'll carry on with my ignorance and say, "Because...
a.) ...he honestly forgot he was the last person who had posted and also didn't see that he was."
b.) ...he's posting from his phone and for some reason he couldn't log in to edit."
c.) ...he thought that nobody would see his edit and miss what he wrote (I've been guilty of this in the past, but only because I'm a narcissistic ass) and so decided to bump the thread to ensure he is being heard."
d.) ...he didn't think before posting."
e.) ...of some other reason I can't think of at the moment."
f.) All of the above!
Before continuing, let me clarify
even further that keyboard controls is a STAPLE in computer gaming and OF COURSE will be the DEFAULT control. I'm saying joystick SUPPORT should be a must.
Champagne-on-Ice, we probably won't know what happens when a player gets disconnected/quits while there is a race in session until we get to this point. With Mario Kart Wii, if somebody gets disconnected, or they quit, what happens is that the race will abruptly end or the player who quit/disconnected disappears and the race continues without them.
I agree with Peder about physics being first priority. Let's get the control/feel/gameplay down first before worrying about the graphics...even though graphics are awful fun to produce ;)
But on the other hand, since this is a swarm, we COULD work on graphics without affecting the progress on scripting. Holy shit, I'm FULL of branching points tonight! I should be writing a CYOA! Pfft (as Al_Ninio would say to me), I wouldn't get THAT done either! HAR!
My bad for some reason I just couldn't edit my post but anyhow. Maybe we could have the game check to see if the racers are actually still in the game. Now if one of them leaves we can have the game quickly disconnect them even to stop it from messing up the game. Now all we would need to do next is to construct a way to boot the racer from the race with out having to just end the race.
Don't worry about what freaking happens when someone disconnects, that's the thing that is going to give whoever codes this by far THE LEAST amount of problems - compared to, you know, implementing the actual multiplayer. Unless an experienced netcoder (such as Wyz, from what I know) does this I really don't think multiplayer is realistic anyways. I wouldn't focus on it either way. Keep it simple, make it a fun singleplayer tournament-style racer for the moment!
Quote from: dkh on Sun 29/04/2012 10:17:52
Keep it simple, make it a fun singleplayer tournament-style racer for the moment!
With an online highscore/time trial table! :P. (That should hopefully keep Icey quiet about multiplayer for a while?!)
(This should be fairly easy even for me).
I'm not sure if it's mentioned at some of the in between pages 2-4 but since it has been a question on page 1, I dare tell you that if you look for it, very recently someone made a mode 7 thingie and posted the code as well. All you have to do is look.
Hint: SteveMcCrea (Kweepa)
Quote from: Dualnames on Sun 29/04/2012 13:45:30
I'm not sure if it's mentioned at some of the in between pages 2-4 but since it has been a question on page 1, I dare tell you that if you look for it, very recently someone made a mode 7 thingie and posted the code as well. All you have to do is look.
Hint: SteveMcCrea (Kweepa)
Yes true, the link for the download is near the start of the thread.
So what we need the most is for some capable coder with enough time to step forward and take on Kweepa's latest source and refine it. Improve driving physics, load an actual track graphic and so on.
I'd really like to see this get made!
Yep very cool stuff Ant and everyone else, great tech demos... would love to see how it develops and definitely interesting to see courses with obstacles in action, and such (nod)
I was going to snatch the tech-demo's source code and upload it to a SVN or CVS and write: "come on, make it your bitch", and then I suddenly remembered that script files are not externalized and don't work well with versioning tool.
This is SO frustrating! :-\
When it comes down to coding I really think a single capable coder with enough time on their hands should do it solo. Sharing a codebase is a pain even without SVN problems.
Quote from: dkh on Tue 01/05/2012 16:16:34
When it comes down to coding I really think a single capable coder with enough time on their hands should do it solo. Sharing a codebase is a pain even without SVN problems.
Well, that's the problem really, isn't it? The people who are enthusiastic about this project and who keep throwing ideas around aren't the people with the skills to make it happen. :(
I'm sure several people here are refrained from doing anything because they're afraid that after much work someone else will throw in a much better looking demo than theirs and ruin everything they did.
It would be so much simpler to collaborate. Like "you do the track management, I do the physics"
Guys, this is not that difficult.
Kweepa has done the hard work which is translating 2D coords on the track to a pseudo 3D image. Beyond that its just coding the tracks and the driving physics.
You need to separate in your mind the racing elements and the rendering elements. The rendering is more or less done. All you need to do it code a 2D racing simulation and plug the values into kweepas renderer.
Modelling the car in this case is pretty simple since it will always be parallel to the floor. You dont need to worry about torque of the individual wheels, you can essentially just treat the whole thing like a sled with a direction, acceleration and velocity.
for checkpoints just define a sequence of regions on the 2D track and make sure the player goes through them in order.
im thinking that there should be a team for this ... eg
1 person to code the driver physics and game layout
2 or 3 for track designs (myself, snake )
2 for kart drivers unless the selected characters original designers wanna do their own characters
2-3 people to work on themes of circuits ie Spoonbeak circuit etc
1 musician
as Calin said its not too difficult although Im thinking that this project is not really fully swarm anymore.
If people want to suggest extras then maybe we could do competitons in the future to get the track ideas across
It's about time Calin said something. He did a hell of a job on his Mario example thing he did, the physics were great. The feel of it was perfect.
I'll put my hand up for track design, though no scripting is coming from me.
I think the characters and karts should be worked on by more than 2 or 3 people, though.
I'd also like to do something for this as I really like the idea of a kartracer in AGS.
max/default dimensions for the tracks should be defined. And a colorscheme. Like, is it all happy mario primary colors or rather a worn out post apocalyptic track. Or both?
And I get the translation from mario kart to include AGS characters, but creating new racers should also be fun. Like with the whacky wheels all drivers were animals why not have fruits and vegetables. And make them look mean and competitive. For them dimensions and needed views and palette (and theme (like AGS Characters or vegetables or toasters or body parts or whatever)) should also be defined so this could easily be swarmed.
Quote from: Snake on Tue 01/05/2012 23:06:11It's about time Calin said did something.
Fixed that for you. :P
I can do a Kart or 2.
I an in :)
I'll give a try at coding during the lunch break today.
I'll start from Kweepa's tech demo.
In the meantime, could the volunteers for graphics complete the "pink girl kart" sprites set withe diagonal views? At the moment there are 4 views (from, back, left, right) but there should be 4 more for the diagonals.
EDIT: I can't find the "multiplayer tech demo" that was released by someone at some stage. All I could find was the old TCP/IP plugin on the one hand, and the newer"AGS IRC chat" module/plugin on the other hand. Does that thing exist or did I dream it?
EDIT2: Khris, could you release the source of your own demo? I'm interested in seeing what proportion of purely vectorial stuff you used.
I'm not really fond of releasing "just get it to work" source code.
When you say "purely vectorial stuff", are you talking about the vector graphics part? Or the calculations for the mode7 part?
The tech demo is in the modules and plugins forum
Quote from: Khris on Wed 02/05/2012 11:37:47
I'm not really fond of releasing "just get it to work" source code.
When you say "purely vectorial stuff", are you talking about the vector graphics part? Or the calculations for the mode7 part?
Nervermind, forget about it. It was just for research's sake, but it's not worth playing Q&A or studying out-of-context bits of code. I'll just continue starting solely from Kweepa's work.
Quote from: Deu2000 on Wed 02/05/2012 11:44:17
The tech demo is in the modules and plugins forum
I still can't find it. Are you talking about the chat client demo? That's not what I was talking about. I recall seeing a multiplayer game demo. Or was it in that multiplayer QfG thing? I can't remember.
Please, once again, don't even attempt multiplayer for a game like this unless you know exactly what you're doing. It's really not feasible at all. Focus on a good singleplayer, it'll be more than enough to worry about it! :)
Awesome to see this getting started though!
Before starting with the online multiplayer, we should make the 1-computer multiplayer first.
Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Wed 02/05/2012 12:10:11
I still can't find it. Are you talking about the chat client demo? That's not what I was talking about. I recall seeing a multiplayer game demo. Or was it in that multiplayer QfG thing? I can't remember.
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=45714.0 (in the critics lounge) maybe? We've got basically the same debate\ideas going on in 3+ threads at the moment.
Edit:- Restored the subject title to the thread title.
I overhauled the physics for the cart last night. It now has a bunch of tweakable parameters, skidding and non-skidding modes, and generally feels less like a hovercraft.
I'll upload the new version tonight.
Thank you Mr Kweepa you are a Legend through and through :)
Im going to do a few track layouts tonight and if you dont mind, test it out :)
Can I suggest we think about characters and themes.
Im working on track designs as they can be done in outline form just until we work out the overall Max width properties and general track lengths.
Characters need to be decided: Who we are gunning for and or should we design new ones.
Themes could well be tied into character choices quite easily as discussed previously e.g Spoonbeaks Circuit/Shipyard, Carnage Val Circuit (black and white themepark)
and maybe a city stage from a game. have a think people Im sure there are more bright ideas out there.
Could a story mode also be possible? One were you would have to to around the world racing in different cities to become the ultimate racer? You can choose a racer for racer for the story and you go from there.
Also when I make a racer can he ride a motorcycle if it still fits the dimensions of the other racers?
Quote from: Insane-Icey on Wed 02/05/2012 22:00:34
Could a story mode also be possible? One were you would have to to around the world racing in different cities to become the ultimate racer? You can choose a racer for racer for the story and you go from there.
Nothing like making hard work out of a Kart racing game Eh? We should probably just stick to working out the basics first.
Quote from: Insane-Icey on Wed 02/05/2012 22:00:34
Also when I make a racer can he ride a motorcycle if it still fits the dimensions of the other racers?
NO!! for goodness sake please don't... this just adds more physics and work. (leaning and such forth)
Quote from: Sinsin on Wed 02/05/2012 22:10:46
Quote from: Insane-Icey on Wed 02/05/2012 22:00:34
Could a story mode also be possible? One were you would have to to around the world racing in different cities to become the ultimate racer? You can choose a racer for racer for the story and you go from there.
Nothing like making hard work out of a Kart racing game Eh? We should probably just stick to working out the basics first.
Sticking to basics is an excellent idea!
Quote from: Sinsin on Wed 02/05/2012 22:10:46
Quote from: Insane-Icey on Wed 02/05/2012 22:00:34
Also when I make a racer can he ride a motorcycle if it still fits the dimensions of the other racers?
NO!! for goodness sake please don't... this just adds more physics and work. (leaning and such forth)
I think Icey's idea is perfectly fine, there's zero need for any different physics or leaning for a motorcycle in this kind of game, I'm sure?
Basics is cool. I like basics too ;D
Also I thought that each kart was going to be treated the same for speed, except for like turns or something?
I thought we were going with the light/med/heavy weights like the original snes game.
Dunno tho (im not completely against the idea of bikes) just as long as there is no real difference between the two (going with dkh) like on Mario Kart Wii whereas bikes reign supreme.
How about four stats per racer:
TOP SPEED (how fast does the vehicle go max?)
ACCELERATION (how quickly does the vehicle speed up to top speed?)
HANDLING (how quickly does the vehicle turn?)
STRENGTH (how much damage [inflicted by crashing into objects/track bounds or from your opponent's weapons if that exists?] can the vehicle take before blowing up?)
You want to balance all these stats and make the game interesting for players, have cars with great top speed have bad acceleration. Have cars with great acceleration have bad top speed. Have cars with both great top speed and acceleration have horrible handling and so on. Bikes could have great top speed, acceleration and handling but extremely bad strength to counter that.
Yes
Yes
Yes
Strength.. We could possibly incorporate a pit lane that refreshes the health of said player which could cost 2secs whereas blowing up could take 5 secs for track replacement.
Its either that or when a collision takes place the stat could dictate how much speed is lost due to said collision.
I don't like the idea of a pit lane at all, to be honest. It's fairly complex to implement and it's not fun at all in a race to have to take a pit stop. Why interrupt gameplay in an arcade racing game? What's the problem with having strength determining how much damage is taken whenever any is inflicted on the vehicle? Having it control how much speed is lost when colliding with something can work as well, depending on how collisions are implemented (if you hit a barrel object on the track dead on, for example, you'd stop dead on track anyways right?).
I agree with DKH, I'm not too fond of a pit stop either.
What are the specs for sprites and the courses? Or are there any yet?
Yes quite literally a dead stop haha, however hitting a cylindrical item such as a barrel could send the player outward,
and oil patches etc could just slow the player down for a second but make them continue in a straight line (as always )
The pit lane was a bit of a far fetched idea. Maybe an item in the power ups could replenish some damage. etc but we can cross that bridge when we get there..
I'm gonna continue with track plans. and await the yummy new upload from Sir Kweepa
The blombo sprite is around 40x30 and looks about right from where im sitting/standing lol
40x30 for 320x200 resolution sounds pretty good for racer sprites!
I think strength should affect how much damage can be taken by the vehicle AND how resilient the vehicle is to oil puddles AND how much you get bounced around when colliding with stuff! It's okay to have strength affect all that because the other three racer properties (top speed, acceleration and handling) are really, really important for racing in general and we don't want strength to be that forth property nobody cares about. They need to be balanced and roughly equally important!
Quote from: dkh on Wed 02/05/2012 23:21:33
40x30 for 320x200 resolution sounds pretty good for racer sprites!
I think STRENGTH should affect how much damage can be taken by the vehicle AND how resilient the vehicle is to oil puddles AND how much you get bounced around when colliding with stuff! It's okay to have strength affect all that because the other three racer properties (top speed, acceleration and handling) are really, really important for racing in general and we don't want strength to be that forth property nobody cares about. They need to be balanced and roughly equally important!
Agreed
However 320x200 sprites just add more blank space???
I tried and tested 320x320 and that works fine tho.
stick to just 320x320 for now fella and we will see (dont forget the current tech demo flips the tracks to a mirror image)
Are their still going to be power items?
I think 2 additional frames for each direction a cart will steer (left and right) will be good enough. one at ~20°-30° where you just tap the direction for small turns and one where you hold the direction button at ~40°-50°
For keyboardkeys I'd suggest using both the arrow keys and wasd and space for using a power up.
And both ctrls for a secondary powerup. Or rather alt and altgr for secondary?
this should be default and also have the ability to define personal keys. and no zxc. I hate it when games have this and the z is so far away on my qwertz keyboard.
How is this? I sorta wen't over 30 by like 2 pixel so will it still work?
(http://oi47.tinypic.com/fp00np.jpg)
have you ever played mario kart? Or is this actually a backview of a kart where you sit on sideways? ;)
lol I've played Mario kart since the one for the 64. the thing is I just started with the side view cause it's easier.
Here's a new version with improved physics, extracted out to Racer.asc.
http://www.kweepa.com/step/ags/tech/AGS_Kart_2012_05_02.zip
What ever you fixed sure made it run a lot smoother on my computer. it runs as fast at 17fps as it did in 40fps on my win8 laptop on my win7 laptop. :grin:
(http://oi48.tinypic.com/wuo65h.jpg)
I tried to add a shadow sprite under the player and have it constantly update. Thing is the track seems to push it off to somewhere you can't see.
Quote from: dkh on Wed 02/05/2012 12:15:57
Please, once again, don't even attempt multiplayer for a game like this unless you know exactly what you're doing. It's really not feasible at all. Focus on a good singleplayer, it'll be more than enough to worry about it! :)
Awesome to see this getting started though!
Not only it is feasible, but it's overall rather easy (not VERY easy, but rather easy).
Quote from: Kweepa on Thu 03/05/2012 01:32:14
Here's a new version with improved physics, extracted out to Racer.asc.
http://www.kweepa.com/step/ags/tech/AGS_Kart_2012_05_02.zip
SEE, that's EXACTLY what I was talking about.
as soon as someone said "I'll work on it", then someone released a parallel branch. >:(
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying Kweepa is silly, I mean the situation of coders "competing" because of the lack of sawrm development tools is silly.
Thank god, though, Kweepa, you uploaded it as an asc file :-) Thanks.
Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Thu 03/05/2012 09:09:53
Quote from: dkh on Wed 02/05/2012 12:15:57
Please, once again, don't even attempt multiplayer for a game like this unless you know exactly what you're doing. It's really not feasible at all. Focus on a good singleplayer, it'll be more than enough to worry about it! :)
Awesome to see this getting started though!
Not only it is feasible, but it's overall rather easy (not VERY easy, but rather easy).
So, since you say this with such confidence I assume you're an experienced netcoder then? Have you implemented a multiplayer mode for a comparable game before?
Tell me if I'm totally off-track here but I think you might have messed around (or seen other people play around) with the IRC stuff that works within AGS, you can chat and special text commands are translated into "Move cEgo here: x/y". If that is indeed the case and what you're basing your opinion about netcoding on, then you're unfortunately very, very much mistaken. A glorified chat room is one thing, a multiplayer action game another! We need movement prediction/lag compensation for one thing, that alone is highly complex to implement and requires the entire game engine to be designed around it.
In case I'm wrong, though, I'd be more than happy to see you write the multiplayer game mode for AGS Kart (since it's 'rather easy')!
Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Thu 03/05/2012 09:11:12
Quote from: Kweepa on Thu 03/05/2012 01:32:14
Here's a new version with improved physics, extracted out to Racer.asc.
http://www.kweepa.com/step/ags/tech/AGS_Kart_2012_05_02.zip
SEE, that's EXACTLY what I was talking about.
as soon as someone said "I'll work on it", then someone released a parallel branch. >:(
Not blaming Kweepa, just saying it's stupid. Thank god, though, Kweepa, you uploaded it as an asc file :-) Thanks.
I don't even understand what your problem is here, really? What's stupid? There are no parallel branches at all and as long as that's the case, everybody is welcome to chip in. That's what swarm development means!
Wow. Let's relax first :)
Lag compensation is not particularly difficult. Essentially you just allow objects to continue along their current path until told otherwise.
Also, a game like this would have *tiny* bandwidth needs so it might not even be necessary with modern networks.
I'm with frenchy on it being relatively easy in this case.
Well, if you guys are competent and willing to do Multiplayer then go ahead by all means. I'd be absolutely awesome to have it in AGS Kart of course, don't get me wrong! I'm just cautious because I've tried this before several times and it always ended in a huge nightmare, at the very least turning a simple 1-2 month development time into half a year or longer. But I'm no netcoder so if you guys know what you're doing it's all for the best! As an addition to my warning, I also don't think that Multiplayer code in a swarm developed game specifically works well either as this will make it extremely hard for anybody else to jump into the (net-) code and make some quick changes here or there so we're kind of limited to really having one guy code it all from beginning to end. But, again, if you guys think it's a good idea and feasible then go ahead and do it!
@Monsieur OUXX: I don't think I've said anything that implies that I need to relax in any way. I'm trying to give my input as a programmer and game designer to help this project out as much as possible because I'd really love to see it actually get made!
Quote from: dkh on Thu 03/05/2012 15:40:03
(happy ending)
I'm experimenting stuff in every direction at the moment, I'll re-surface when I've produced something interesting.
As one who made a failed attempt (http://parkinggoat.com/index.php/goatgames/68-dodgeball-from-hell) to create an online real-time multiplayer game in the past, I agree with dkh that it's really not that simple, it was a nightmare for me too, and I've used a dedicated library for it (Player.IO).
Though, I've used Flash which is known to be slow, so maybe AGS with dedicated sockets would be more suited?
Anyways, if anybody wants to have a go at it, this tutorial helped me a lot (it's for flash & Player.IO, but most of the information there should probably be true to any real-time muliplayer engine):
http://playerio.com/documentation/tutorials/building-flash-multiplayer-games-tutorial/flashversion
Things seem all over the place here. People not agreeing and people insisting that the KART racing game is now not one.
This was meant to be a happy project with a great team and now its chaos..... 8-0
I suggest that a team be built NOW!! (thats twice I think I've said this) before this thing loses all credibility.
I realize that a lot of people have put a lot of time into various pieces but I feel that this deserves better treatment than people just suggesting more and more.
Please do not be offended but without a team this will be lost and all that has been created so far will be gone due to zero direction.
Couldn't agree more.
hey guys don't let yourself be stunned by the passionate tone of the discussion: there is great stimulation at the moment, and several people ar eproducing great material for this game even as we speak. ;-D
I'm sure it will all fall into place very quickly! ;)
Sinsin: Why don't you take the lead (if you have time to dedicate to this), seeing how much motivation has been demonstrated, this could turn into another fine swarm project!
You would give the basic outlines and then call for help and organize the swarm :)
I'd be willing to work on a multiplayer feature, even if I fail in the end. I coded a working nbio tcp plugin for testing purpose, I can have a try after that week end and tell you.
The only problem I (fore)see with a multiplayer feat is the lack of bandwidth/cpu for clients (players computers), but it can be solved.
Anyways, good luck!
We could just add the basic parts of the multiplayer in the game and after the single player part of the game we could just add the rest of online stuff. You can have in the main menu Single player and Multiplayer. Clicking multiplayer can bring up the login textbox. Because you don't won't to make the player sign in right at load up cause it could interfere with the single player mode.
I think the most important part is to find a way to split work. Is there a decision on what the graphics should look like? What about the cars, drivers, tracks, the menu screens etc. So one part of the team could focus on the mechanics and one on the graphics (have you thought about a two player on the same PC mode with split screen? Might be easier then network)
Could someone please specify the size of the cars and the drivers (would be awesome if you can mix'n'match them)? I'd help to draw those sprites.
Quote from: cat on Fri 04/05/2012 06:41:58
Have you thought about a two player on the same PC mode with split screen? Might be easier then network
It's indeed a metric shit ton easier to implement but due to the nature of the renderer in this kind of game it would have to render the track twice - and that's a huge performance issue. It was discussed earlier in the thread and dismissed as not being possible unfortunately.
Quote from: cat on Fri 04/05/2012 06:41:58
Could someone please specify the size of the cars and the drivers (would be awesome if you can mix'n'match them)? I'd help to draw those sprites.
For vehicles, there is no need for a strict maximum size but as a guideline I think 40x30 should work fine (we're talking about a 320x200 game resolution) - this was the size we were throwing around on the last page, if some cars end up being slightly smaller or larger it shouldn't be an issue.
I can still do the main menu.
Personally I fail to see how this or things like previous swarm project can work effectively through a single thread. I'm not saying they won't, I'd just be interested in your opinions - would it be worth having a forum dedicated for specific swarm projects (perhaps under the Hosted Sites) board at the bottom. That way at least things can be contained and maintained a touch more coherently than pages upon pages of a single thread.
This game is no longer to be considered a swarm. It was a silly idea as the project isnt big enough to warrant multitudes of helpers. a dedicated team is being created thanks for the support and keep an eye on the GIP thread for updates
@ M0ds Definately set up a swarm thread maybe with its own GIP and Ideas area.. :)
I'm so upset right now ;) I spent the afternoon trying to enhance Kweepa's track rendering code -- to boost the performance.
I did it by removing every possible real-time calculation (e.g. I calculated the cosinuses and sinuses beforehand) , by removing every possible nested function call (especially IntToFloat and FloatToInt), by transforming everything into integers, etc. Serious shit.
The glorious result of this is... a framerate divided by two compared to Kweepa's code ;-D
I don't know how it's possible. for example, Kweepa is procedurally re-drawing the sky AND creating a dynamic sprite of the track every loop! Yet, changing these didn't save even one little FPS.
AGS optimization is still a mystery to me! :-[
EDIT: double post, I don't know how that happened
Good work man. how bad does 20 fps look ? is it not going to be possible to tighten these pixels ?
Kweepas 3rd tech demo was what I was working with originally so I wont send the Zip as you already have it
:)
Will this help at all?? (http://www.coranac.com/tonc/text/mode7.htm)
This is for Steve McCrea :
1. I don't get the point of your code from May 5th. It runs exactly at the same FPS rate as the April 26th version, but it's completely blocky, whereas the other one was smooth.
2. Did you notice that the sprites transformation routine doesn't seem to match the track transformation routine? The barrels don't rotate the same way as the track when the player turns -- sometimes you can see a barrel floating over the ground and "crossing the road" when you turn.
Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Fri 11/05/2012 14:55:04
This is for Steve McCrea :
1. I don't get the point of your code from May 5th. It runs exactly at the same FPS rate as the April 26th version, but it's completely blocky, whereas the other one was smooth.
As I said in PM, I forgot to switch it back to high detail. The pixels are 6x1 instead of 3x1 - it runs much faster on my laptop that way. If it's the same speed on your machine, it's probably because it's hitting the 40FPS limit.
Quote
2. Did you notice that the sprites transformation routine doesn't seem to match the track transformation routine? The barrels don't rotate the same way as the track when the player turns -- sometimes you can see a barrel floating over the ground and "crossing the road" when you turn.
I didn't see anything that drastic, but I did notice a little bit of drift. Two possibilities are that I messed up the baseline calculation, or that I messed up the horizontal rescale. I won't have a lot of time to investigate this weekend unfortunately.
Quote from: Kweepa on Fri 11/05/2012 15:43:36
If it's the same speed on your machine, it's probably because it's hitting the 40FPS limit.
It was. After increasing it to SetGameSpeed(70) I saw a very high increase in the FPS.
Quote from: Kweepa on Fri 11/05/2012 15:43:36
I didn't see anything that drastic, but I did notice a little bit of drift. Two possibilities are that I messed up the baseline calculation, or that I messed up the horizontal rescale. I won't have a lot of time to investigate this weekend unfortunately.
Well the drift is more visible in some situations than in other. It's really an issue with distant objects, when you turn.
Before you wrote this I started suspecting the baseline calculation, because when I don't display the sprites but only a dot, they look like they float above at some distance above the ground. However I can't see the issue. You used a 4.0 factor, the same as the camera height.
It could also be caused by the fact that the accuracy loss occurring in the track-rendering routine does not match the one occurring when you calculate the sprites coordinates. The former is long and based on cumulative steps, the later is a one-shot calculation with maximum accuracy.
I'd like to try calculating the sprites coordinates with exactly the same algorithm as the track's, to see what happens.
On a different subject:
All AGS Kart contributors, see my latest post here : http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=33448.msg617692#msg617692
It's going to be very important for code speed.
I never even realized that the graphics were so different between the second and third examples. 8-0
I just tested the track that I made with the second example and its much smoother .. than the third how strange!
Quote from: Sinsin on Fri 11/05/2012 18:58:33
I just tested the track that I made with the second example and its much smoother .. than the third how strange!
Sinsin : there are 2 independent resolution settings, that must not be confused:
1) The
scale of the track sprite. BUT only using a larger image is not enough to increase the resolution on the ground -- because you also need to adjust the scale (in other words: "for our elephant, how many meters represent one pixel of the track map?"). This is done very easily by changing the value "100.0" in the calculation d =
100.0*cam_h/y;
2) The accuracy of the track rendering onto the screen, when it comes to transforming coordinates from the track space to the screen space. This is done by using the buttons in the demo I'm uploading here. You can vary the
vertical and horizontal rendering accuracies independently.
small demo http://shutupload.com/dl/c0ae9e4516d5/
This is based on McCrea's demo from the 5th of May. I've just done a few changes. I think I broke something because the perspective is weird when you turn the kart around, but I'll fix it soon. as it is now, you can play with the veritcal and horizontal detail.
This is still alive right?
I must apologise for the complete lack of Comms on this one folks my internet went down and it has taken ages to get sorted. This project is still alive as Monsiuer has already put quite alot of time into it already but I must stress . I am no coder and am completely baffled by the script. I can design tracks etc but Scripting is a no go for me Does anyone feel as tho they can take the reins here?
PS Marvelous work Monsieur
I was wondering what happened to this :/
I'm still up for some track designs. Or at least until I figure out I'm no good at it ;)
Gotta keep this alive. Mainly because I would like to do the music for it :D
any chance to revive this idea?
I was really hoping that it would stay alive but we run aground somewhere.
Top of it was I could not work out the coding, but If someone was to code the thing I can create tracks for it (there is a list of about 6 people who can create the tracks if still interested)
Dantelechunk is also a fantastic musician who was really interested too.
Mr Kweepa constructed the initial demo build and it worked fine. all this project needs is a dedicated team who will finish it.
We run aground somewhere? Well, we had 9 pages of engaged discussion and quite a bit of productivity, until you, out of nowhere, put the lid on it and - all of the sudden - it wasn't supposed to be a swarm effort anymore:
Quote from: Sinsin on Mon 07/05/2012 11:43:44
This game is no longer to be considered a swarm.
Plenty of people were interested and I too would have really loved to contribute more (despite my frustration at people not understanding just how much of an additional difficulty actual multiplayer is haha) - I think you really screwed up there when you closed it off after the swarm got started on it (no offense, happens to the best of us). I have very little time these days but if this project was to rise again I certainly could try and help out. Still love the project idea!
I had a play with this today and I reckon its basically impossible to get decent quality mode 7 like graphics using AGS script. It's simply too slow.
Steve's version is all fancy and that but it looks fairly dreadful really. The number of shortcuts he had to take to get it to run at a reasonable speed makes it basically unplayable. If you compare the quality of Steve's version to something like wacky wheels then it's fairly obvious that its not going to fly.
I had more success in Lua (I reckon Lua is probably an order of magnitude faster than ags script) but there is still a huge bottleneck in selecting colours from the source texture because the drawing surface functions are so slow. This could possibly be alleviated by dumping the image to an array on load but I never tried.
Good luck guys, I hope you prove me wrong.
I may not know something (actually a lot) about this project, but why don't you make a plugin?
If I understand correctly, main idea is to draw a "rotated" bitmap?
Might be adding some functionality to the engine might help (in perspective)?
I love the idea, I very nearly started a side scrolling racing game in Game Maker (BLASPHEMY!).
Similar to flash games such as Cyclomaniacs and the like. It was going to have guest characters from the RoN series, but it ended up being another RAM Ghost like the other 50 or so game maker projects clogging up my hard drive. Made a few sprites though.
[imgzoom]http://s20.postimg.org/60o6qszgp/vroomvroom.png[/imgzoom]
VRROOOM! VRROOOM!
Haha, I remember seeing this when I was but a lurker. It's a really cool idea, and I wish I could offer more than my support, but it's far above my coding skills. I'd be happy to help in whatever way I can if the project gets going again: track design, beta testing, art, whatever's useful.
Why not make 2 games, one that controls the menus and everything and then when you want to play a level it would open up the other game and pass a bit of data over. The stages and everything can be in game 2. If they wont all fit cause the designs are different then maybe we can have total of 4 race games and the 1 menu game. This would make it less complicated to make I guess, I don't know how the whole code be hind the game works. But that seems work able. It doesn't seem like one game alone is stable enough to hold everything so why not just split it up?
Quote from: icey games on Thu 25/04/2013 02:01:12
Why not make 2 games, one that controls the menus and everything and then when you want to play a level it would open up the other game and pass a bit of data over. [..] It doesn't seem like one game alone is stable enough to hold everything so why not just split it up?
I don't understand the point - and why it would be worth the effort for something that can easily be in one game?
Because from the way I'm thinking of it and what calin is saying. I thought it would be to much work but still possible. The main thing I was thinking of was can ags run it all in one game? Will it run to slow or make a computer run to slow. I honestly don't know how it all would work out but I was just sharing maybe it would be best to divide the work up and focus 2 games. The menu and stuff won't take that long(btw the menu game is nothing more than just a launcher) and the 2nd game will be the race game. Sorry if I'm explaning it confusingly but really I'm just stating the same thing over and over so no says that I'm not making any sense. Need more of an example? I'l draw one up for you but not now cause I busy. :D
Quote from: icey games on Thu 25/04/2013 19:54:45
Because from the way I'm thinking of it and what calin is saying.
I haven't seen Calin saying anything that would suggest that there's a problem of fitting everything in one game.
What he said is that AGS script is too slow to program quality rendering in the race game.
Game speed does not depend on how much levels and menus you put into a game, because engine does not update all levels at once, naturally, only current room.
That's what I mean, the menu would be a launcher to launch a individual game instead of just sending the player to the next room. It seems to be for AGS to do, it's a smart engine but not a genius. Not saying you guys can't figure out another way or dig more into the source code of AGS itself. I don't know if coding the a race room is that easy for who's doing it but if it is then all they have to do is do a bit of copy and paste and if you 4 tracks then you can have 4 individual games, 1 track per game. Also if done this way even after it's finished let's say we wanted to make a extra track the source was released and someone wanted to make their own track then that all can be done so easily.
Eici pls
There's no reason AT ALL to split up the game into several exe files. (roll)
Let's move on.
I decided to give this another shot, and started over from scratch.
Here's a preliminary demo: download (https://www.dropbox.com/s/8197l4nxem8u1q0/AGSKart_v2.rar)
It's runs at a pretty decent framerate on my PC, and even on my old-ass laptop. It's still jittery but I have one or two ideas that might further reduce that.
(Also, no driving physics or other fancy stuff yet, this is all about the feasibility of mode7.)
That runs really, really well on my system. Excellent work, Khris!
wow running really smooth. But the map felt small, do you think it will still run that smooth with bigger maps?
Also would a mapdesigner have to draw in boundaries and powerups 360 times per map? Sounds like this would become a cool engine without maps ;)
if AGS could render these maps from a base map on first access and also rotate all the hotspots and walking areas which are like boundaries and powerups I want a mapeditor now ;)
even when AGS renders these maps from 1 file the filesize on hdd could explode, this is 64mb now, bigger maps mean more filesize (in exponential growth? dunno about relation of canvas size to filesize in pcx) and even triple doubling for rendered hotspot and walkable area maps. Not that hdd space is a problem nowadays but suddenly having 1GB occupied by a kartracergamelevel seems funny.
Can AGS created and later access zip files? Could be a solution. Or reduce the size of the kart and decrease movement speed so the world feels bigger.
Quote from: Khris on Fri 26/04/2013 05:33:44
I decided to give this another shot, and started over from scratch.
Here's a preliminary demo: download (https://www.dropbox.com/s/8197l4nxem8u1q0/AGSKart_v2.rar)
That's just cool :).
Just a small suggestion: set Multitasking Mode while level is loading so that the loading won't freeze if user switches to other window (may be annoying for long load times).
38fps nearly all the time. Great job!
Thanks guys!
What's still the biggest problem is the rotation of the map sprite. If I do it in real time, the game slows to a crawl for big maps, and it jumps like crazy (because of rounding errors in the way AGS rotates a sprite, I assume). I coded my own nearest neighbor sprite rotation, and since rotating a 512x512 sprite 359 times took around ten minutes, I decided to save them as files, hence the big download. The result is what you saw, it's still kinda jumpy, but that's in part because ints and shortcuts in the rendering loop. The rotation itself is actually really smooth.
I'm going to try and use my rotation for a 1024x1024 map, but it's going to take really long (thanks CW for the multi-tasking tip, I totally missed that!)
Let's see how that goes; once the rotated sprites are available, track size shouldn't matter except for Out of Memory errors (which I actually got when I tried a 1024 sprite...)
But, regarding map size: if you can live with the track being a bit pixelated, 512x512 isn't actually that small, as long as you "zoom in" on the track. I've changed the factor so that Mario is smaller in relation to the track, and also a bit slower, and it suddenly seems much wider.
Well, 1024 x 1024 x 360 = 377.487.360.
8-bit sprites: ~400 MB
16-bit sprites: 750+ MB
32-bit sprites: 1.5+ GB
This will make it perhaps the most memory consuming AGS game ever...
But I still don't understand, I remember there was an 3d engine plugin by DKH, why could not you use that for instance? Surely rotating camera over texture would be far less hassle.
Sure, one could write a plugin, or use an existing one. But I mostly see this as a challenge, like, can we get this to work with "just" AGS.
Regarding a track designer; imagine you'd have to redraw boundaries for every sprite or place every object 360 times, pure madness. And of course this isn't necessary at all, the game can easily calculate the position based on a level design for the angle 0-map.
I've switched to an 800x800 sprite. Works fine so far, but generating the rotated versions took ages, and the sprite folder takes up 360MB.
Switching to 8bit will quarter that size, so that's the next step. I've experimented with this but the colors ended up all wrong. I'll continue working on this tomorrow, for now: TGIF.
My attempt:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27247158/agskart.zip
That's about the best that is possible in the AGS engine as far as i can tell. It *might* be possible to do some filtering with some more precomputation but I'm sceptical.
(http://i.imgur.com/sZ6vuBj.png)
Cursor keys to move the camera.
That's cool!
The size feels right. The turning is slow, but you probably know that.
I remember there was other way to make racing games in pseudo-3d style; don't know how it is called properly.
The track is stored as polygons in 3d, but in game it is drawn by horizontal lines.
Hopefully what I say make sense, cause I can't figure how to explain this better.
Maybe this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanline_rendering
Latest version:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/udlvs98kdea6gzr/AGSKart_v3.rar
The proportions should make more sense now.
Warning, the download is a ridiculous 100MB! :D
Edit: Screenshots
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/vLGqOoe.png[/imgzoom] [imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/opP5JNB.png[/imgzoom]
Steady 40 FPS with an 800x800 map
I can't download your version at the moment, Khris (lazy and my hard drives are full as all hell - I might have to start deleting some movies before I order a new HD). Is there any chance you could post a screenshot?
Edit: Nevermind. I managed to find some space and downloaded it. Looks really nice buddy.
Vroooom Vroooom!!!
You guys are great.
@khris: Would it be possible to cut down filesize by only using 180 rotations and calculating or otherwise overlaying the images for the 1° in between?
@Ryan:
big screenshot in spoiler
Spoiler
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/fPIwRUU.png[/imgzoom]
I did try using just 180 frames. That way the kart can only go in the direction of 2°, 4°, 6° etc. but it doesn't look much different to what I'm currently using so yeah, that would cut the file size in half.
Still, going the 8-bit route is probably unavoidable in the long run.
Using both methods combined, an 800x800 track would use up 45MB. That's pretty reasonable I guess.
I may or may not be working on something. There's a chance it could look better than Calin's, but I'm not guaranteeing anything, or even if it's going to get finished and all the issues worked out.
(But I believe it may end up being too laggy to not actually be feasible.. I'll find out very shortly)
Just in case you're trying a raytracing approach: even if you draw 3x1 or 2x2 pixels, it's going to lag unless you reduce the width and height of the area.
Not sure how it could look better than Calin's though, unless you're actually incuding anti-aliasing in the process. Disregarding AA, Calin's looks like a 100% pixel-true transformation already.
Yea, mine is an optimized full translation. The only way you could improve it is with filtering which I think may be possible with more pre-computation but memory usage might be high.
The trick to mine, and the reason it runs so fast is that i only draw the line when i find a colour change which dramatically reduces the number of draw calls on a pixel art type image. Anything that was painted would run just as slow as Kweepa's probably.
With a very dodgy lateral anti-aliasing filter. I reckon you lose about 5-10 fps but my PC still kept it above 40fps at all times.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27247158/agsfilteredkart.zip
(http://i.imgur.com/9nqpX6d.png)
Press F to dis/enable the filter.
EDIT: (Sorry for the double post)
Quote from: Calin Leafshade on Sun 28/04/2013 17:23:43
The trick to mine, and the reason it runs so fast is that i only draw the line when i find a colour change which dramatically reduces the number of draw calls on a pixel art type image.
What did you mean by this?
Ok, so the image is rendered in scanlines from left to right. So a line might look like this after i have selected the correct color from the source texture via a matrix transformation (imagine different characters are different colors):
*******&&&&&&&&&&$$$$$$$$**********
So my draw func steps across a line like this:
1 2 3 4
*******&&&&&&&&&&$$$$$$$$**********
1) Found a new color, store that color and keep going:
2) Found a new color that is different from the last one, set the drawing color the color at point 1 and draw a line from 1 to here.
3 & 4) repeat 2.
In this way the drawing color only needs to be set 4 times (this is quite expensive) and only 4 lines needs to be drawn (which is also quite expensive).
Gotcha. I figured you were doing something along those lines.
I've been bench marking my tests and they definitely need some tweaking. This might not be likely.
Quote from: DoorKnobHandle on Sun 21/04/2013 19:54:29
We run aground somewhere? Well, we had 9 pages of engaged discussion and quite a bit of productivity, until you, out of nowhere, put the lid on it and - all of the sudden - it wasn't supposed to be a swarm effort anymore:
Quote from: Sinsin on Mon 07/05/2012 11:43:44
This game is no longer to be considered a swarm.
Plenty of people were interested and I too would have really loved to contribute more (despite my frustration at people not understanding just how much of an additional difficulty actual multiplayer is haha) - I think you really screwed up there when you closed it off after the swarm got started on it (no offense, happens to the best of us). I have very little time these days but if this project was to rise again I certainly could try and help out. Still love the project idea!
Ok my bad I'm sorry everybody.
* Apologies to everyone. I just thought that too many cooks and all that jazz.
As it turns out you chaps are doing a fantastic job with this. Keep it up!
:) again I actually feel like a massive ass right now...
As I said, everybody makes mistakes and it's clear you intended only the best for the project! It was just a bit abrupt after there was so much work put into it by SteveMcCrea, Khris and so on IIRC! No worries, and yes, I am very excited that this is being picked up again! I like the non-blurred renderer the best so far!
Argh. I hate math.
(I really don't.. I just get frustrated)
Oh yeah, I used the wrong angle in one line although I did use the right one on paper and it took me half an hour to find the mistake :) Good times.
I guess a double-post is in order:
I rewrote the previously hard-coded 3D translation in order to be able to have a free camera and managed to smooth out the sawtoothy look in the process. The track sprites are significantly smaller now (in filesize), and AGS loads the track much faster. Added lazy camera, horizontal and vertical objects, driving physics including driving on dirt and music.
You can move the camera up and down with I/K, pan with arrow up/down, and zoom with +/-
Controls: WASD, Esc to quit.
Only 30 MB this time :) (https://www.dropbox.com/s/r6ipuoxxztkczff/AGSKart_v4.7z)
No screenshots on purpose :-D (also, still 40 FPS)
Pretty sensational!
That's awesome man! I probably did over 30 laps.
Now I only need to work out my issues so I can upload my work. I need to google some math stuff or something - this is bugging me.
Wow, that is very credible! Out of curiosity, how big of a leap is it now to add other AI carts?
AI is definitely another challenge. You have to have a basic pathfinding system for them to know where a turn is, objects, other karts, bonus blocks, etc. Then you have to add a level of "stupidity" to them that randomly makes them crash, turn too sharp or too late, having them crash into each other.. etc. It would definitely be one of the last things I would get running.
Edit: Khris, I want to steal your driving physics.
Excellent work, Khris. Your latest build runs and plays great!
Ryan:
float turn_speed = 1.4;
float max_speed_forward = 4.0;
float max_speed_backward = 2.0;
// steer kart
float factor;
float max_factor = 1.5;
if (current_speed == 0.0) factor = 0.0;
else factor = max_speed_forward / current_speed;
if (factor > max_factor) factor = max_factor;
if (factor < -max_factor) factor = -max_factor;
if (IsKeyPressed(eKeyA)) kart_angle -= turn_speed * factor;
if (IsKeyPressed(eKeyD)) kart_angle += turn_speed * factor;
// move kart
float sin = Maths.Sin(Maths.DegreesToRadians(kart_angle));
float cos = Maths.Cos(Maths.DegreesToRadians(kart_angle));
float target_speed = 0.0;
if (IsKeyPressed(eKeyW) && !IsKeyPressed(eKeyS)) {
target_speed = max_speed_forward;
}
if (IsKeyPressed(eKeyS) && !IsKeyPressed(eKeyW)) {
if (current_speed <= 0.4) target_speed = -max_speed_backward;
}
current_speed += (target_speed - current_speed) * 0.05;
if (current_speed > -0.1 && current_speed < 0.1) current_speed = 0.0;
kart_position.x += current_speed * sin;
kart_position.z -= current_speed * cos;
Well I'll be..
This just keeps on going and going, Fantastic work so far.
Question is there anything that artists can be doing in the mean time.. I know that further development may change the size of the sprites used etc
Just want to help out thats all.
wow, fascinating ;D
I think my initial bench marking was a little too abusive. I think I can do this and hold at 40fps. I just need to do some distance optimizations, and maybe, just maybe I will have the smoothest looking version. Maybe.
I'll keep ya's updated.
Oh and thanks Khris for the driving physics. I felt it was smooth, wanted it to be similar (especially since I'm using the same map as you).
This is a fascinating project. It's amazing what you guys can do with this engine.
So.. I've got mine at 800x600 and for some reason it's running steady at 40fps (when early this week it was running at 35fps when it was only 320x200 - must be because Photoshop is open, I'll test that later). It's not nearly complete yet or doing everything it needs to do. I have a ton of distance optimizations that need to go into play. It's starting to look more and more possible that this might fly.
BUT I doubt it would become the official version that everyone will want to use. It's more of an experiment, really. So don't stop working on your versions guys, mine is likely just the test tube project. ;)
Any chance we could take a look?
I'd love it if you could. I need to work out a few glitches and the distance optimizations. Maybe a week?
Have you thought of how to make racing AI yet? I've been pondering about it while at work, I've got a few ideas, but I'm not sure what the best approach is just yet.
I had a sudden insight about that and I'm going to try it over the next few days.
I hope it's going to pan out; the biggest issue is avoiding obstacles though I guess.
I was thinking for how you control where they drive you add nodes on your roads every so often or before/middle/after turns that the drivers randomize to where they're heading (within a reasonable amount to avoid zig zagging drivers). As for avoiding walls, objects, or people, that's a little different.
I tried to run it with DD5 and it froze after preloading screen came up and I had to restart computer (plug out). On restarting it froze on a black screen and would not boot up. Had to reboot from disk.... Windows running now..
That's a neat little piece of code! :D
I got so gutted after I discovered that integer-computing wasn't optimizing anything that I completely forgot about this :D
But PLEASE give a way to change the keys assignment, hehe.
Hey Khris, your game seems to run easily at 40fps, have you tried to up your game resolution to 640x400/480? Assuming yours is as easy as mine at changing game resolutions.
Edit: I actually PM'd SteveMcCrea, 2 days ago to ask for his assistance on my temporary math issue (using parts of his source code), but didn't realize he hadn't been on since April 1st. Does anyone know if he's okay? Does anyone have him on Skype or anything?
Just to stir the dust and create anticipation, I'm currently working on the level editor for mine. Trying to decide what kind of gameplay I'm shooting for. I've ALWAYS had a strong passion for Diddy Kong Racing. It's probably the best karting game. But that's a lot of work.
I think I'll shoot for a direct copy of Mario Kart for now - maybe later versions of Diddy Kong? I still don't have a 100% test on rendering the whole map.
I'll just leave this here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybb0Yjrebmk
Thanks for posting that. It's actually quite embarrassing the glitches the players can exploit.
I ended up watching a regular speed run of SNES MK and it's terrible. Laps are super short. Sound effects are really bad. I don't quite understand how the steering all works out. I'm really just going to design my own system that feels right to me (unless people don't like it).
Go with what you feel, as long as its tweakable it shouldn't matter!
Man. My post saying it would only take maybe a week was a month ago! There goes that estimation.
Turns out making a level editor (with my obsessively terrible OCD) is a little more taxing than I had expected. I'd love to say soon that you can all see a preview, but even now it's still not drawing the map completely. I've asked Steve McCrea for some programming assistance, but haven't had the chance to implement it just yet as the editor is taking the majority of time. Maybe I should've just made the maps in notepad. Ha!
If you post what you have then maybe we can assist you in a collaborative way.
No need to shoulder the entire burden yourself.
The only reason this AGS Kart idea intrigued me was for the programming/math challenge. If I start outsourcing my burdens, there goes all my fun. :-\
For the physics of Karts bouncing into each other or walls, I'm at a complete loss to figure that out (a single Kart bouncing into walls, easy! But not with more than one Kart and each being able to bounce into each other. Imagine a Kart pile up against a wall - GLITCH TIME!). It's something I do want to figure out though as a challenge to myself. I never did make Road Racer 2 because of this reason alone, so I might just study, read, and work my way through this.
Khris, where in the world did you get your sprite sheet? I'm trying to add some new features and would like to just temporarily use the Mario Kart sprites and I can't for the life of me find one with all the dirt/dust/smoke effects and such, plus any other cool sprite.
Believe it or not, I fired up zsnes and took lots of screenshots :)
*believes nothing*
*nods knowingly* (http://www.spriters-resource.com/snes/smariokart/)
Try this:
Spriter's Resource (http://www.spriters-resource.com/snes/smariokart/)
I've been doing a lot of sprite art research there, and they have a lot of material.
Is this still moving along or has it fallen apart?
I keep meaning to get back into this. I got completely sidetracked by how amazing Unity 3D is. But I doubt I'll ever work on this again.
My method of improving speed was by using triangles instead of a pixel background. But AGS has many glitches when it comes to triangles. If a triangle is too large, it will sometimes even reverse the direction of the triangle. I had it so that any triangle that was partly off the screen would just not draw (just until I got around to manually splicing those triangles into something that won't be mostly off screen; but I never did). Overall it went super quick when all the triangles were on screen and looked very clean. It held steady at 40fps. I even had a nice level editor for it too where you can import a background sprite only for "tracing" and then create your triangles over that.
so for all intents and purposes this project is DEAD?
That is too bad I was really impressed by some of the tech demoes I saw coming out of this.
I know AGS really isn't the engine to use to creating something like this but it gave me hope for what could be possible with AGS.
Now if I could only program... Think Brain Think damn you!
Quote from: Dervish on Fri 08/11/2013 19:44:56
so for all intents and purposes this project is DEAD?
I can't say it's dead, as I can't speak for the others who posted tech demos, but my attempt is dead. That's for sure.
Care to share the source code of what you did make Ryan? :)