Micro Sprint - Demo
Community Forums/Showcase/Micro Sprint - Demo
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| Following on from this topic: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=96714 See attached link for details and demo. http://www.charliesgames.com/microsprint.html All feedback welcome. Many thanks to Charlie K for setting this up for me! Cheers Stevie |
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| This is cool, it looks great and sounds are good... and very Scalextric type of controls. I would have liked being able to "try" to control the car myself though... |
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| Thanks for trying. Trust me, I've tried to race with full control over steering and it's just a crash fest. Most of the tracks have sections which you can take at full pelt, if you were controlling the line yourself you'd be last every time. |
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| I like it myself, pretty much exactly what I was expecting. Much better than having to put the cars back on the track all the time like in real life. Though I, like therevills, wouldn't mind trying to control it. |
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| Cool Game Love the Title Screen Music :) I do agree with therevills on "I would have liked being able to "try" to control the car myself though... " Do you go to the pit shop if the car is damage or low fuel? :) Last edited 2012 |
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| Setting up keyboard, I set accelerate to Return key and was trying to set brake to apostrophe key (left of return key) and it crashed with a memory exception. It also seemed to crash (black window with program is not responding warning from windows 7) the first time it ran. But it has stopped doing that. |
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| Cool. Yes controlling yourself would have improved it though. Maybe with some computer assist if it really is that difficult to control. And maybe a pop up cam to show what's happening under the tunnel sections. I got a memory exception when increasing the wing angle. |
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| @ HotShot. The computer automatically selects the lap(s) on which your going to pit depending on the number of stops you choose. For one stop it's the middle of the race, for two, it's every 3rd of the race etc.. The amount of fuel and length of stop is dependant on how much fuel you need for the next stint. Made a school boy error on the gui - will fix this - thanks for pointing out Skid / Steve. I'm not going to add a pop up cam for the tunnels - how about an arrow over your car to tell you your direction? A few folk on other forums have mentioned that the track gets squashed if you play widescreen. I'll look into adding a preference to scale to fit or rotate to fit (i.e. a lower view of the track). It's difficult to test when I don't have a widescreen monitor. Any thoughts? Last edited 2012 |
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| simulate the widescreen res by creating a window at a scaled width/height. 1280*720 -> 640*360 Cheers Charlie |
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| lol glad you have the bug squashed. No the problem with tunnels is you can't see if you're about to crash into other cars. Perhaps you could change the alpha of the tunnels at that point to make them semi transparent. |
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| New version of demo which fixes the GUI bugs. Includes option in preferences to toggle widescreen scaling or rotation (rotation default) + option to toggle tunnel tags (to see there your car is when in a tunnel). http://www.charliesgames.com/microSprint/MicroSprint_Demo.zip |
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| Good solution on the tunnel problem, and it hasn't crashed so far. Enjoying this. And did notice polymaniacs coming soon :D |
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| If anyone fancies a challenge, here is my best ghost lap for the GOODWOOD track. Just dump the file into the Data/Ghost folder. http://www.steviegoodwin.plus.com/DEMO_GOODWOOD.dat |
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| This could easily take the place of Gene Rally in my opinion, more options, like screen scalability or zooming in on the action scrolling race tracks for larger cars, then maybe you could allow manual control of the steering. Probably not what you're going for, but just an idea. If you don't know what Gene Rally or Turbo Sliders are, here's some links: http://gene-rally.com/ http://www.turbosliders.com/ Anyways as I said before I like it as is & will definitely purchase this one when you release it as well as Polymaniacs. |
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| @ OSJ, I could but I won't. I have a question regarding unlockables. At the moment in the full game, there are 9 tournaments, each of 4 races of 5 minutes. You can play at easy, medium or hard. If you get a gold in the tourney, you unlock 2 tracks at that difficulty. If you finish the tourney in the top 3 you unlock the next tourney for that difficulty. If you get gold in all tourney's you unlock the expert difficulty and the ability to race each track in reverse. Only unlocked tracks can be played in the other game modes. The first 2 tracks being unlocked automatically. I'm wondering if it would be better to do it differently, for example, each track is a new challenge and the difficulty starts easy and gets progressively harder. You would then unlock the next track if you come in the top 3. If you get all golds in the first 10 tracks you'd unlock expert difficulty and all gold in all 20 tracks would unlock 'race in reverse'. Which would you prefer and any suggestions for alternatives? |
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| Love this game, very addictive. I would not like to be forced to race the lower difficulties, as they are too easy. |
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| By the way, this being a "one button" type game, it would be a great game to put on a mobile platform (android/iphone), since the control is so easy. |
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| @ Taskmaster. Are you winning races in Hard mode? Me and the mates are so used to it we couldn't get a challenge on anything less than expert so it's difficult to judge how quickly others will pick it up. Maybe, I should leave the current tournament set up in then. If it sells ok I'll be looking into other platforms. I'd love to see it on the Ipad for example. |
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| Hey Steve G Check out the "DANNY SULLVAN`S INDY HEAT" as that is brilliant game that you could learn from.... When I played it and I got hooked for 3 season even thought it was too easy when I became Champ in second season and onward... I love the fact that when INDY HEAT Car or CPU Car is damage or need fuel then they go to the pit to do somethings... The only problem I can think of when come playing your game is when come inside the tunnel and try control the car manual would be Nightmare hence why Scalextric type game is very good Idea! Maybe your next game that would make own DANNY SULLVAN`S INDY HEAT Part 2 LOL :D Last edited 2012 |
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| Lol. Indy Heat was terrible! The whole game was designed around the simplicity of the Scalextric control, it was my original vision and I think it works so I won't be changing it I'm afraid. I already have fuel consumption, wing settings, weather and pit stops which all have a major influence on the car handling and your ability to win races. I do have damage in one of the party games 'Bambi on Ice' which also involves driving on black ice. Let's be honest, there are a thousand top down racers, I've played most of them but I wanted to do something which played and looked different. I think I've acheived that but I really do appreciate that it's not everyone's cup of tea. |
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| Yes, I win about 25% of the races on hard. On the easier levels, I win almost 100% of the time, unless I just completely screw up. |
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| Addictive game. Any plans to add more background animation? On 1 course you have volcanos going off, other's the ships never move, or any sea movement. |
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| Doh! Last edited 2012 |
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| Currently, there are only the volcanoes and rain affects, the volcanoes were a last minute thing. The ships are static tiles and it would be alot of work to have them move around. At one point I had the water moving up and down very slightly but it didn't look too good so I took it back out. I do like attention to detail so I'm open to some suggestions which would be easy to add? I've been finishing off the tournament mode and the plan is to record the number of attempts you've had for each cup and automatically award you a pass if you've failed for the 3rd time. Given that each cup takes about 20 mins to complete ( 4 x 5 min races) I think this is fair. Any thoughts? Last edited 2012 |
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| Reminded me of Platypus lol. I would definitely think to include more animation. The crowds for one. The ships look kinda odd at the moment. Let them set sail! lol. |
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| What reminded you of platypus? I've reintroduced the water moving up and down (only for shallow and deep water, no rivers) and any ships or boats move up and down with it, albeit not quite as much - quite a subtle effect but looks ok. All the boats have their anchors down! No idea how I could make the crowds look alive other than an animated texture. Maybe I could do something with the particles. Any thoughts? |
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| Oh the volcanos, for some reason lol. Sounds good. Is that in the latest download yet? Yes, the crowd are tiny, so I was thinking just an animated texture when the cars cross the line - as they're cheering. Just to make things come alive a bit more. |
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| I've managed to figure out a way of animating the crowds. It's a constant thing, rather than when you cross the line. I created a gray noise texture with each texel relating to one person in the crowd, then created 16 versions based on cosine interpolation. Looks not too bad, at least they look like they're moving. Thinking about adding a crowd loop which gets louder if your on a part of the track which a stadium is facing. We'll see. No new version up yet. Maybe tomorrow. |
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| Just tried it out Stevie, awesome fun - very reminiscent of skidmarks |
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| New Version up and this will be the last demo unless bugs found. Additions include: * Animated water and boats (best seen on the new BASIN track) * Animated crowds * Crowd noises when cars go past stadiums (option to turn down volume in preferences) * New track - BASIN.  * Speed Assist (activated in preferences. gives you a rough idea of when you need to slow down or speed up - for beginners) * Easy & Normal difficulty made slightly harder. Extract this in the same place as the existing file the keep config and any records. http://www.charliesgames.com/microSprint/MicroSprint_Demo.zip Again, feedback is much appreciated. Cheers Stevie Last edited 2012 |
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| Awesome looking game! |
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| I for one cannot wait for the final release of this and of course Polymaniacs. Thanks StevieG One minor suggestion I think would be cool, if in spectator mode you could go 1st person view between the cars, also maybe a pit crew in the pit area. Last edited 2012 |
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| Very nasty issue with the game. If the game window loses focus, the mouse is locked and you can't do anything else on your system with the mouse. |
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| Very nasty issue with the game. If the game window loses focus, the mouse is locked and you can't do anything else on your system with the mouse. I know about this. Agree that it's very frustrating but not sure how to resolve. Shouldn't any mouse detection be disabled automatically when focus is moved back to desktop? Advice much appreciated on this one! One minor suggestion I think would be cool, if in spectator mode you could go 1st person view between the cars, also maybe a pit crew in the pit area. A few different camera views, cycled with the mouse or player 1's control is doable. I played with 3rd person cams with a high cam in the center of the track,zooming in and out on the lead car and it looked pretty good. We'll see though. As for a pit crew. There would be a fatality fest if anyone was standing in that pit lane ;) Don't think it would add too much. Maybe could have a few guys of you're car's colour appear in the pit building when you're about to pit? |
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| Re the mouse issue. One solution is allowing the user to toggle mouse control focus to the game or windows. If the focus is in the game window then the pointer is hidden, otherwise visible with no movement restrictions. I also have a screen message for windowed mode only which states: WINDOWED MODE: TO RELEASE MOUSE FOCUS HIT *ESCAPE* WINDOWED MODE: TO AQUIRE MOUSE FOCUS HIT *ESCAPE* Personally I never play games in a window unless I've no option but I don't want to upset anyone. Do you think that this is sufficient? |
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| Playing Window Mode is good and good things you have is options where the users can have look at options and change whatever he/she prefer if is Full Screen or Window or whatever there is :) I like your Menu as so easy to used when hoover over with the mouse... Nice one:) |
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| As for a pit crew. There would be a fatality fest if anyone was standing in that pit lane ;) Don't think it would add too much. Maybe could have a few guys of you're car's colour appear in the pit building when you're about to pit? Yeah, I think that would be perfect actually. |
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| Shouldn't any mouse detection be disabled automatically when focus is moved back to desktop? Advice much appreciated on this one! No, because the whole purpose of moving the mouse back to the desktop is to use your mouse on the desktop or another program. You can't do this when you have the mouse trapped and unable to move when it is not on the game window. |
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| No, because the whole purpose of moving the mouse back to the desktop is to use your mouse on the desktop or another program. You can't do this when you have the mouse trapped and unable to move when it is not on the game window. Yes, I am aware of this now. The solution I implemented works so I'll stick with it. |
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| Nice Game. I'd love to play it on my Mac, rather than on a mobile platform. And if you're at rewriting some part of code, please toss in the "pro" mode: nothing wrong with the "one-button-thing", but I'd love to crash my tiny car into walls! :-) Congratulations for the awesome work. Last edited 2012 |
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| This is very cool and very nicely polished! It definitely needs to be running on my iPhone right now! |
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| Yes, this would be perfect for the iPad. Think it could do quite well actually. |
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