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Try a pre-pre-pre alpha demo of my game!

posted in Journal of mikeman
Published May 07, 2012
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Ok, it's been a while since I made a journal entry. These last few weeks I've been working AGAIN on the racing project, Windchasers. To greatly simplify things for AI,physics and graphics(and possibly to make it easier to port in mobile devices) I've now opted for a top-down racing view. I have been particularly inspired by Death Rally, a classic DOS game made by Remedy, which got a new release fo iPhone and iPad lately, with good success.

Anyway, I have for you a 30sec video of some gameplay, and an 155MB download of a first demo. Sorry for the size, I still use .BMP and .WAV uncompressed :)

Video:



Demo:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1171223/WindChasers.zip

Before launching it, read the instructions in the short Readme.txt. Let me know how it goes, if it ran properly, what kind of problems did you encounter(and if possible, your system specs). Be as harsh as you want, tell me what you don't like and what should be done differently but, you know, if you do like some bits, share that too :)
Previous Entry What kind of game I want to make...and what kind of game I can make?
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0 likes 10 comments

Comments

d h k
It works fine, looks good and all but the controls really ruined it for me. You drift like CRAZY, it's like you're on some kind of ice surface in other racing games constantly. Steering would need to be a LOT tighter for me to have any fun with it!

I do like the setting, I loved Death Rally and I'd like to see a remake, so I will keep my eyes out for your project!
May 07, 2012 08:29 PM
mikeman
Yeah, the heavy drifting is intentional...actually at first the steering was 'tight' as you said. I thought it would add some extra challenge to the game and make it more interesting. See this game: It takes some time to master, but it's possible...anyway, I'll wait for a few more people to test it and give their feedback on this one, as it is quite important. Is the drifting too much? Would tighter steering and higher speeds work better?

Thanks a lot for the info, keep it coming! I'll try to post update soon, based on the opinions of fellow gamedevvers.
May 07, 2012 11:59 PM
mikeman
Ok, here's a first update, it contains the .exe and it's just 155KB. Just unzip it in the main game directory. It features much more tighter steering, so let's see if this is more fun!

[url="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1171223/WC_Update1.zip"]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1171223/WC_Update1.zip[/url]
May 08, 2012 12:11 AM
mikeman
Yes, this is good advice...I was thinking all that myself. Actually, I will have different surfaces on the track and different routes that the pilot can choose from, so I will probably add the icy surfaces you mentioned...

Oh and I tried to upvote both your posts but I think I downvoted the last one...sorry, how the heck can I undo that? :P
May 08, 2012 12:44 AM
mikeman
Heck, I just deleted your post...didn't even know you could do that.

Sorry dkh, I really appreciate your input. Many thanks.
May 08, 2012 12:45 AM
Ashaman73
Your game looks cool (thought I'm unable to play it here). When you are looking for compressed audio, take a look at this [url="http://nothings.org/stb_vorbis/"]single .c file ogg decoder[/url] . As converter tool you can use [url="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/"]audacity[/url].
May 08, 2012 06:56 AM
mrjones
Worked well, didn't have any problems running it on AMD Phenom II X2 64bit with ATI Radeon HD 5570. It looks cool and I like the feel of it. I don't even think that controls are that bad, felt pretty comfortable.

The only thing that does feel kind of frustrating is having so low-energy shots. The bloody enemy ship was healing faster than I could hit it. Probably a learning curve, but I'd still like to have a slow shooting high-energy weapon as an option.

Nitpicker notes:
1. No widescreen resolutions! And most screens seem to be wide nowadays.
2. In Readme.txt: cvredist_x86 should be vcredist_x86.
3. Hints are quite unreadable during loading.
4. I lost. Twice.

Edit: Third time I got the other ship, but when it's health reached 0 it didn't explode and my shots started healing it instead!!! If you decided to keep it that way... Now that would be a bad design choice :D
May 08, 2012 09:19 AM
mikeman
[quote]
Edit: Third time I got the other ship, but when it's health reached 0 it didn't explode and my shots started healing it instead!!! If you decided to keep it that way... Now that would be a bad design choice
[/quote]

Yes, I know :) What happens is, I hadn't yet implemented the destruction of the ship, so the health just went to negative values - but since I don't have a glyph for the 'minus' sign, it just shows up as positive that increase(!) I will upload soon an update where the ships actually get destroyed, plus some other fixes.

Thanks a lot for the comments and suggestions guys, they're invaluable! And Ashaman73, thanks for the links, I'll look into them.
May 08, 2012 09:37 AM
peous
Nice to play, runs smoothly. Some feedbacks:
- Hitting the border slows you quite much (and I hit it a lot as a beginner)
- Maybe some larger road portions sometimes could be nice
- Weapon could fire in front & back ?
- Maybe the boost could be a bit more effective
- Knowing how far away is the opponent could motivate you
- An ingame help screen with keys could help
- Why not control ship with letters intread of arrows (then strafe would be more accessible)
- If you have some time, you could handle AZERTY (french) keyboard
May 08, 2012 05:54 PM
mikeman
All good suggestions, peous, but I want to address this specifically:

[quote name='peous' timestamp='1336499666']
- Weapon could fire in front & back ?
[/quote]

I've thought about this a lot...it is true that the vehicle in first position has a disadvantage, as it is an easy target, and a solution would be to be able to fire backwards. Ultimately though, I think I'm gonna go with special shield upgrades awarded to whoever manages to keep the 1st position for a specific amount of time, or something along this lines. But I could certainly use some more opinions. I have made progress with the game, but I think I'll post a new journal entry in a week or so with the update; until then, I'd encourage whoever reads the journal to download the demo and give me his/her insights, as they have proven very valuable till now :)
May 12, 2012 12:01 PM
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