I am looking for pointers and design help and things to consider in developing a 2D racing game in the style of pole position or outrun. There are plenty of great resources on 2D side-scrolling type of games (like mario) or top-down maze games (like gauntlet) utilizing tiles. However, it does not seem that a tiled environment lends itself well to a racing game. So, how do you pull it off without 3D and how do you represent, store and draw the tracks that you''re racing? Thanks so much. Any links to websites that discuss this (source code or technical design info would be awesome) or recommendations on books are GREATLY appreciated. Thanks in advance!

one way is to use the tile system, then have another mode in the map editor to set the points that are allowed to be moved in.

Like set points, which join up into one giant region...using regions

quote:Original post by johnnyBravo
one way is to use the tile system, then have another mode in the map editor to set the points that are allowed to be moved in.

Like set points, which join up into one giant region...using regions

Please do not post when you have no idea what you''re talking about.

just store the level as a simple depth array containing the position/size/height of the road. then trace your way into it as you would in a voxel engine, drawing a line at a time.
then draw the objects as sprites in 3d space
take a look at the road in lotus for example and you''ll see how it''s done.

I''m not familiar with Lotus. Where can I find it?

"Lotus Turbo Challenge" is an old amiga game but there''s a pc version of lotus 3 from around 93. pretty sure i''ve seen a demo for the amiga too, if you wanna get it legally.

I would have to say that tiling should not be ruled out altogether as a method of defining the world. A well designed set of tiles could be used to design a track with a fairly high degree of flexibility. That being said... a much more flexible system would be to define the world on a continuos 2D plane. This method of definition would also give you an environment that is closer to a 3D one than you might imagine. If you choose this method, I think it would be nice to consider defining the track polygonally (connected quads), as this would lend itself quite nicely to simple physical interaction between the car and the edge of the track. It would also be very simple to make such a map (to test the idea, before coming up with a more complete map design strategy). Personally I would love to play a Top down racer that had a dynamic zoom (depending on speed possibly) and with greenscreen vector 3D graphics. In fact, I have almost convinced myself to go and write one :D. I really like the idea of that... but the good old tile/sprite based system can produce some really nice results too.