Blitz Rally Demo
Community Forums/Showcase/Blitz Rally Demo
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| Evening all, I've just uploaded a demo of my Blitz Rally game - http://www.jameskett.dsl.pipex.com/BRDemo.zip It's an old-style top-down game (well, 3/4 view anyway). Currently keyboard controls only. Here are some screenshots -      Please note that it's a WIP, so all the frills are missing. Also, the Lancer model is not mine, it's a borrowed NFS addon and the sounds are borrowed from Xpand Rally, to be replaced with my own. The Lancer model is to be replaced with my model of a Lancia 037 group B rally car, shown partially textured below -  Let me know what you think. James |
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| Now that looks like one kickass game!! Just downloading the demo now! |
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| Had a go. Couple of points: 1. Consider making it first person. This viewpoint really doesn't work at all. 2. The car stops dead if you hit the grass at either side of the track. Kind of ironic considering all that time you've spent faffing about with ODE. It needs to be way more forgiving. 3. The trees look bad. Far too primitive for the type of game - you're going for realism, right? 4. As a whole it generally feels awkward. I'm not sure if this is solely down to the odd Q/A/O/P keyboard combination. 5. The shadow seems to drop through the ground when you go over bumps (as can be seen in picture 4, above). |
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| Hey it is one kick ass game!! The only thing i would say is make the road a bit wider. It is very hard unless you practice heeps at it to get the turning and stuff exactly right. Other than that is is wicked. Did you use ode? or write your own phisics? |
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| Great stuff James! This has bags of potential. If I may... The view angle is too steep and the camera is quite close to the vehicle, so when you're moving fast I find my eyes were constantly flicking trying to follow the road and looking where the car was pointing. The view feels about 60degrees from vertical? Can you make it 40 or lower, or zoom out a bit more, I think you can easy get away with zooming out more. The steering speed is too slow, though that would be a setting in preferences at some point I guess. The road *maybe* feels a little narrow, although I think that was exagerated because of the slow steering speed mentioned above, made me hit the sides more often. Lovely sound FX! :) Tom |
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| -Why can't you use a regular view? The trees are sprites, they are supposed to be viewed from the side. The top-down view looks shitty and I can't see what's coming. -The road's too narrow -What were you thinking when you thought up those controls? Q,A,Z,O,P??? -It needs weapons. I like it a lot, now fix it so I can play. |
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| Great so far. Keep the top down view,... reminds of the old arcade game "great 1000 mile rally" (awesome game) unfortunately, the screen flickers horribly (to the point of not being playable) on my system. I'll try my other system later. Often the car is not even visible due to blue flickering bands across the width of the screen. Using GeForce 5200 on P4 I agree I'd like to see the roads a bit wider, but it also needs a bit more "throw" in the steering. That way you can really turn it and slide through the corners properly. edit: the emrgency brake really helps to do this, but I'd still like to be able to steer more. I'm also having the problem of not seeing the car often due to the flickering issue mentioned above. Controls,... I agree with the others,... I'd like to see a bit more conventional,... arrow keys for steering, either a/z or up/down for throttle. weapons? God no,... please no. Driving games are about driving! (or at least they used to be) |
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| did you ever play gran tourismo if you did then what the hell were you thinking when you decieded to use those controls and that camera view. overall its has potential, best car simulation on blitz so far. keep up |
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| I'd hate to see this become another First Person racer. I think the view is perfect as it is. Controls are not comfortable. They were on my speccy, but not any more. Arrows please. The steering could do with being a bit more responsive. It'd be nice if I only had to use the handbrake for really sharp turns. Dear god, no weapons. I can't imagine you ever would. I thought it was great. Bit of tweaking to be done, sure, but great. |
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| I think it would work fine with a third person camera (rear view), as it is the camera is awkward, either that or the turn indicator should be relative to the current facing of the car. |
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| Yah I think your foliage needs some work, the colors are quite washed out and not very authentic, but the car looks good and the road is okay too. I think most people are being way too hard on you. Keep up the good work. |
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| The car looks excellent and the replacement one looks even better. |
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| Tried it on my other system,... still got graphical glitches. The car would ocassionally blink or shift in position, but no where near as bad as on my other system where the whole screen was going nuts. Second system is a laptop P4 with a Geforce4,... maybe it's an Nvidia thing? I've never seen these types of graphical errors before,... really bad z-buffering or something. Anyways, since it was more playable I thought I'd add a few more comments. The arrows are pretty confusing for the most part,... I think it would make more sense for the arrows to always show direction of the turn in the view rather than relative to the car. I race RC cars, so I don't have a problem controlling from different orientations, but I never knew which way the road was going to turn based on the arrows! Anyways,.. once again,... looking great,... I look forward to seeing this develop further. |
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| This rules ... it's really hard to control and it seems like I just can't turn unless I'm going really slow but at least it's fast ... these ODE demos keep getting better and better! |
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| It looks really, really nice. Amazing exhaust/smoke effects, nice details (lights, exhaust backfiring when going backwards). Couple of points though: - Very hard to control, near impossible to take any corners unless you're going a snails pace on my PC. - The shadow under the car frequently disappears into the road, typically half of it at the time, so only a very boxy shadow under either the front or back half of the car show up, also resulting in a flashing effect when going fast (you see the shadow flickering into and out of existence) I realize that it's difficult to keep the shadow on top of an uneven road, but not having a shadow at all would actually look a lot less distracting than what it's doing now, I think. - I assume that the 'damage' is intentional, but it did end up looking a bit weird -- after a little big, the front axis of didn't line up with the body of the car anymore, they were almost an entire wheel length too far to the front, so the tires were obviously passing straight through the metal of the front panels and such, while there wa s a big gap behind them where the wheels are normally supposed to be. - Also, the Q-A-O-P controls are a bit awkward, hard to get used to... standard cursor keys (with the break and reverse as they are now) would be much preferred |
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| Wowy this is really very good!! The way the camera moves, and the heavy feel and realistic steering of the car, really nice. To make it a bit easier you could make the camera zoom out quicker and more as speed increases. Perhaps a better set of keys to be used is A and Z for throttle/brake, and < and > (the angular brackets, or in fact the comma and full stop) for steering. And the arrow keys as a second option. The problem with Q/A and O/P is that these keys are a bit high on the keyboard. But I think the idea of using such sets of keys as opposed to the arrow keys is not bad, because at least you can then use two hands; using just the arrow keys you have to do steering and throttle/brake with one hand and I sometimes feel that the fingers get a bit confused and it's less easy to do subtle driving. Games such as Revs and F1GP also used such keysets. I think this is one of the most impressive game demos for Blitz that I have seen. The 3rd person view is great too, and I didn't think the game was too hard. (Not much too hard anyway.) |
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| This is pretty good - I like how the car handles .. pretty realistic when on the tarmac. Like others though .. The car looks very nice. The car handles very well but how about an analogue option? I'm not sure I like the view. The camera seems to lurch to keep up with the car - maybe a tweening issue or maybe just my shit system!! It's only running at 20fps. Shadows could be alot better. Would prefer to be able to drive off the road too .. the sudden stop is a bit irratating. Wider track would be good also to give you a decent run at the track and get a bit of power slidding on the go. Weapons have no place in this game!! Will be keeping my eye on this one. Cheers. |
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| I really like this. The view is great and reminds me of some arcade rally game I've forgotten the name of, and the control feels really nice, although I'd like to be able to turn tighter. It's almost impossible to take corners at present from where I'm sitting. I also agree with Gfk that it needs to be much more forgiving on touching the sides, eg. bounce off, maybe losing just a little speed. Wider tracks would be nicer too! Really cool though. |
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| I get a jerky car here. By that I mean, the car glitches forward and back. Probably the same as what Pongo is experiencing. Tested on: Sony Vaio laptop Ati 9200 Mobility 64MB DirectX 9.0c |
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| Reminds me of some of the old arcade games like the Drift-out rally games and the great 1000miles rally games. like this one http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8001&letter=G I think the trees need to be improved a bit as they don't look right at the moment :) |
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| Thanks for all the feedback. You guys are using the brakes are you? I can get around the course just fine, sideways all the way, but you need to use the brakes, slow down in advance for corners, position the car correctly and start it sliding early. You can't just steam into the corner and turn. In answer to a few points - 1st - ODE - there's no ODE used at all, it's all my own physics system. 2nd - the viewpoint - I deliberately went for a top down view because I like the old school feel. I might make the viewpoint position customisable though as it can get a bit too close to the car, but I've tried 1st and 3rd-person view and I don't like it much. The direction arrow certainly needs some work as it's very confusing when you're going the wrong way - it'll be changed to a rotating arrow linked to the orientation of the car. 3rd - the graphics - just what i had laying around at the moment, so the trees will look crap as they're meant for a 1st person viewpoint. The shadow isn't aligned to the floor yet, but it will be. 4th - the road width - it's narrow on this track, but that's the way it's meant to be - real rally tracks have very narrow lanes. However I may expand the collision area a bit so the car can slide a little way into the foliage. I uderstand that people like more room to slide the car so I might make the track wider on the corners. 5th - the glitches and poor frame rates - no idea. I have a P4 2.4 with a Radeon9800 Pro, but it runs at 60fps on my Athlon 1.4 also, which only has a Geforce3. 6th - the steering response - I'll have a play around with the physics parameters and see if I can make it more 'flicky', but I quite like the heavy feel as it forces a more technical driving style, and it means you have to use your brakes and anticipate turns in advance. Finally - QAOP - did no one else ever have a Spectrum??? Bah. I'm NOT using the arrow keys!! However, I will add joypad/joystick support :) |
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| I like QAOP, I did have a spectrum, they were my preferred keys for games (I used to hate it when you played games that used zxpl, strange freaky people that use those keys). |
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| Vorderman, I like what I see so far dude! Nice work, especially the sounds and the physics too (none ODE - cool). Where did you get the sounds from? There are some nice details in there! And as for many people's disparaging comments regarding the keys used for the cars controls and your thought processes... guys this is an early demo! Get a grip! Yes it would be nice to use normal controls but you're looking at the finger again, and missing all the heavenly glory! They will probably change during development and testing so don't fret overly. Tck! (rolls eyes!) IPete2. |
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| Thanks IPete - the sounds were actually borrowed from XPand Rally, so I can't take any credit for the way they actually sound, just the way they're used I suppose :) |
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