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How about monsters meet in a person and decide to fight a pub?

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.

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.

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!

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')!

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!

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!

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?).

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.

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!

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?

I tested the inv item with alpha channel problem in a new 32-bit game.

When you use an image without alpha channel as gui background, put an inv window control on there and put an inv item with alpha channel in that, it doesn't work at all. The alpha channel of the inv item is ignored.

As you guys have pointed out, when you put an image with alpha channel as gui background, it does work - well, kinda.

This is what I'm getting:



The semi-transparent black circle loos right only in the middle, we have some ugly artifacts around the edges...

Any further ideas? Anything we're doing wrong?

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!

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.

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!

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!

We have tried giving the GUI that the inventory window is on a background graphic that uses an alpha channel, to no avail as subspark says. We're really out of ideas and it's quite annoying. Would be awesome if the Draconian Edition would fix this very annoying problem!

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!

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?

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!

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!

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!

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).