Finally we finished developing our latest iPad game, Sideways! As you have guessed, Sideways is a racing game. We tried to aim for semi-realistic traction physics, and introduced a bit of collision fun, nitro and other crazy power-up items. We wanted to aim for a diorama look for the 9 race tracks and give our cars a toy-like appearance. The camera follows the car and its orientation, so you basically control the vehicle from a bird's eye view, through a D-pad like interface. We have another optional steering mode that requires you to swipe the iPad screen (which is unique to touch interfaces only). The controls are very easy to learn, but don't be fooled, you won't be going on a Sunday drive.

This was largely a two-man team project, one bloke worked on the artwork, I did the game code. Took two years to complete! (My first too.) We recruited couple of other people to help us with specific parts of the game; one talented programmer for iOS and menu programming, a 3D artist to do our car models, another artist for menu background paintings, and plus another to help us with concept artwork. Hard work, but lots of fun!

The screen shots highlight the different race tracks, and in some of them you can actually see the bonus items/halos around the player's car. Also included are shots of the menu system. The menus are simple to navigate; we deliberately aimed for the keep-it-simple principle. We wanted to get game play happening in just 2 menu clicks.

The enemy cars use a ray-casting AI system, they are somewhat self-organising and are completely autonomous from each other. Which means we are not using the traditional raceline method to tug them around the race track. This created some challenging problems in getting the cars behave, but eventually I got that sorted.

The game took much longer to finish then we anticipated, and we had some setbacks along the way, such as getting artwork completed in time, or going through uncharted territory on the technical side of things.

Couple of lessons/tips:

* Make sure you have solid idea what you want in the game very early in the project. This avoids big coding tear-downs halfway though the project. We did ok in that respect.
* Use existing tools for editing assets, don't bother making your own (if you are small team).
* Research research research. See what others are doing in the same gaming genre.
* Get other people to test your game while you are developing it. They can give you very useful tips along the way.

We are planning to release the game on Monday via the app store. For more info, check here:

http://bjango.com/ipad/sideways/

Click here to view the iotd

I suppose that's how Death Rally might look like if it had be redone in HD.
Good!

Tip: click inside this box to load the editor

I hit submit accidentally... doh.

Game looks awesome, do you have any plans to port it to a different platform, I'd love to play it but I won't be shelling out for a iPad in this lifetime. Brings me back to the days of the nickle arcade and offroad.

Thanks for your replies, much appreciated!

Game looks awesome, do you have any plans to port it to a different platform, I'd love to play it but I won't be shelling out for a iPad in this lifetime.[/quote]

No immediate plans at the moment, but it is a possibility. The game core is cross platform, most of that was done in Visual C/C++. It should also compile under Linux. The menu system is 100% iOS (Objective-C), so that requires a complete rewrite on other platforms. All depends on how successful the game is. At the moment we are trying to break even... hahah. If we get good sales, we'll probably start toying around with the idea of doing a Steam release, plus some extra race tracks for good measure.

Steam release

Well if you do I'll definitely get it, I'm a steam junky especially with they're indie section.

Cheers! Will keep that in mid.

Took me a little while to get it happening, but I eventually recorded videos of the full game play in two different race tracks.


Game in rotating camera mode (i.e.. follows the car orientation):

[media][/media]


Fixed camera mode setting is also supported for those who get motion sickness:

[media][/media]

(I suck playing in fixed cam mode :S )


We are planning to release a patch in the near future. If you played the game or have any feedback re. improvements, etc. please let me know, and we'll consider implementing them.

We're in the process of adding iCade support for Sideways Racing... feels good to play with physical buttons

[media][/media]