GP2X Unnamed Gp2X Race Game Might Get It's Name On The Caanoo ...


joyrider

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www.willemssoft.be
Hey guys,

i don't know if you remember this from the gp2x days ... (check video below)..

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CMPWrYSwPQ[/youtube]
blue car = cpu (will be removed)
Dark green car = me playing
Light green car = ghost car of my best time ;)

One of the reasons i never released it was that i was unable to implement the cpu players, but today i downloaded "mobile racer" on my android phone and it's a similar game as that unnamed gp2x game i was trying to make except without cpu players...

So how does this game play then (on the android) ? Well it uses ghost car data, you select oponents from people who have driven the around the track before and you have to beat that "ghost car" it also has online score rankings and such...

Now that gave me a nostalgic feeling and i might pick up the game again for the caanoo and implement it with the same game play as on the android since it is possible to do this now on caanoo since we have wifi ....

and that solves the cpu players problem(s) as well and i already had a ghost car support implemented !!

Before i do this though is that i would like to know if there is any intrest in such game, i'm not going to spend the next 2-3 months trying to (re)implement it when nobody is actually going to play it or like it ...

when and if i implement the game i will need some help of the community for basically 2 things :
1) graphics for the levels, the way i designed the game levels in that never released version is by using 2 pictures / layers Picture 1 is the mask to define the level layout bridges road etc and a second one is just a layer on top of that mask with the real graphics you get to see... What does that mean ??? well it means anyone can use any gfx editor tool to create levels giving a few simple rules, you don't have to type any text just use your imagination and mspaint.exe or whatever :) I also think i might let you people host self created levels on my webhosting, i still have plenty of space left so i can do that and create a kind of share & play system for the caanoo (compare it with little big planet on ps3, user created content)
(the graphics on the video came from a dos game)


2) music / sounds
i can make certain gfx myselve, but SFX i'm not good at it, so i'm kinda hoping certain people are willing to create sfx sounds (although i can sfxr probably a bit) but for music i really need people that have the talent to create music for games something i'm not good at since well i actually don't listen to any music in my real life ;)


i know there was some intrest during the gp2x days but i never finished it, maybe now i will ........
 
Seems like a lot of fun. Especially if you implement more dynamic track sections.

I think I could help you graphics-wise, nothing awesome (or maybe it will be?), but it could work. Gonna see what I can whip up and post it here later. Also I understand the layers part, but how exactly are they defined? Color-based collision detection?

And also, do you still plan on developing it for the GP2X as well or will just move on to the Caanoo?

Anyway, looks promising!
 
If I remember correctly you make two bmp files one in colour and one monochrome. The monochrome version just has a black track which is drivable area. I might be confusing it with another racing game with custom tracks like generally or something though...
 
Oh I would love to be able to create tracks for myself and others! I hope you do make it as I would certainly support it!! :D
 
looks neat and simple! go for it (and a recompile for the wiz pls :))
 
there's a very-very similar game, maybe on CPS2 or NeoGeo, and I loved that too, it would be awesome to have this game as native!
 
Hey guys,

I decided to pick it up again, seems enough interest for it :)

I do still have user made levels from the alpha versions, but i won't be using those anymore.. You see i'm thinking of adding a camera *effect* that follows the car around the track so that means larger tracks are possible and you wont have one small track cramped on 320x240 image but say like a track defined by a 3200x2400 where always get to see a 320x240 part of it (the camera would be on top of your car like a birds eye view, that always follows your car around the track).

About the graphics and levels, i'm going to redo the level images again, it will have 3 (or possible more ) layers but keep the same basics for it. like you define everything with diffrent kind of collored rectangles (blue rectangle = start / finish, green = sliding doors etc, black = places you can't drive through and will bounce back, white = driveable area (road), orange = driveable area where car slows down, (like grass grind etc). They don't have to be rectangles, but certain items will have to be (maybe), as long as a track *mask* (1st layer) defines full track the colors :) (almost anything is possible then, like hidden shortcuts etc) I'll try to add more obstacles etc if i can get them to work :) the next layer 2nd image is are the graphics you get to see below the car like alle the grass roads etc, so like the real track image and the 3rd layer will be used for graphics that hide the car... like for example the finish line, the car drives under it, not over it so those kind of things go on the 3rd layer... I could add more layers for a diffrent kind of effect (like clouds)

So the same functionality remains, a level will be completely build inside a graphics editing program :)

I already started looking up the http protocol and it seems relativly easy to do a http post command with SDL_NET, so your best time can be uploaded to my webserver and other people can drive against your best time on a certain track.

Also online play might be a future possibility (but cars will drive through each other and not bump into each other).

It will be a wifi enabled game, so you can download other ghost cars from people from my webserver transparantly inside the game as well as upload your best times / tracks, to support none wifi enabled devices i might make options to import ghost cars and tracks so a WIZ and Dingoo version should be possible although i only own a dingoo and not a wiz.

I still have to think through many things and certain things won't be easy and i also don't really have much time, but i'll try to do my best :)

Thanks for the interest
 
glezmen said:
there's a very-very similar game, maybe on CPS2 or NeoGeo, and I loved that too, it would be awesome to have this game as native!

yes i want to make it like that game more or less, it was a kind of rally game but i can't remember its name atm (world rally championship or something), although i'm not going to create skidding effects from braking etc, that i don't know how to do, just a simple car game where you drive around a track and obstacles and you'll always be driving against other people either directly (online play if i succeed in that) or single play with using other peoples best time's as a ghost car
 
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one suggestion: most of the good looking, technically excellent hobby games are not fut because the gameplay offers nothing fun. please, be careful not to make the same mistake :)
what i'm thinking about is adding some kind of carreer mode, maybe even achievements, races with computer players. without that the game will be great, but soon becomes boring
 
glezmen said:
one suggestion: most of the good looking, technically excellent hobby games are not fut because the gameplay offers nothing fun. please, be careful not to make the same mistake :)
what i'm thinking about is adding some kind of carreer mode, maybe even achievements, races with computer players. without that the game will be great, but soon becomes boring

i understand that, but my main problem why i never finished it were the CPU PLAYERS, i could barely implement one cpu player using a simple system which is shown on the video (the tentacles) let alone 3-4 diffrent behaving cpu players that interacted, so a career mode and computer players seems unlikely, it was also the reason why i, at that time believed the game would be boring so never finished it. However as i said in my first post i downloaded a similar game (named "mobile racer") as the one i was doing on my android powered mobile phone. The game didn't had any cpu players, yet it was still fun. They did this as i explained as well in previous posts by letting players download other players ghostcars. i'm not certain if you understand this concept .. you drive around a track and your best run on the track (say from 3 laps) will be kept in memory and afterwards uploaded to my webserver, This defines the ranking system, but other players (who have a wifi enabled caanoo) can download these ghost car's (/ recordings) and you drive against those people trying to beat there time and thus by doing so also getting a higher ranking. Best time = best player = ranking 1. I'm thinking of making a subsection on my website just for this game so people can browse through all the game's ghost cars, see the rankings etc without having a caanoo, and also let them download the ghost cars from my website, by doing so i let people without wifi enabled devices play as well... This also means i'm aiming to make it cross device compatible given all devices can let the game run on a constant speed (there exist techniques for this). So players owning a caanoo can compete with players owning a dingoo / wiz or even on windows.

I'll probably make it closed source in the beginning and maybe make it open later on, since well there are security concerns, people could just read the security out of it and hack the hell out of the ranking system online.

Eventually i'm also aiming to let players play online against each other (not on the same device) i think i should be able to do this, this also means (again) that people owning a caanoo could potentially be able to play against people owning a wiz or something else :)

I know i see it big but i think i'm capable of doing this, i have enough knowledge about how i could implement certain things (like online server browsers for the online gameing part) using just a website or the gameplay itselve (without cpu players) since i already have build something i can continue with ;) I have no idea how long this will take But i do know i'll have to test and experiment much, so initially i'm going to make it without multiplayer (player against player online) but i will add the "content creation / upload / download part".

About achievements and career mode again, that seems possible if i create for example 3 (default) ghost cars per track (and force people to do the same) so you get some kind of gameplay like the game "track mania" OR "the license things" in "Gran turismo". For example when you never played a track before you get to see all 3 other ghostcars, the 3 ghostcars are diffrent in the sense that they reached the finish line faster then each other. so like 1 minute 2 minutes 3 minutes. if you play the track you did it in 1 minute 50, you have gotten a silver medal, since you beated ghost player 3 & 2 timewise, the next time you drive the track again, you'll only get to see the ghost player who did it in 1 minute :) so that way i can create a caareer mode, but not with cpu players although the ghost cars act as cpu players

Maybe i'll start a dev blog again just for this game or keep expanding this thread:)
 
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yes, the other solution i wanted to suggest was using default, builtin ghost cars, exactly the way you said :) this way you don't have to code AI, but the game is still challenging
 
joyrider said:
About achievements and career mode again, that seems possible if i create for example 3 (default) ghost cars per track (and force people to do the same) so you get some kind of gameplay like the game "track mania" OR "the license things" in "Gran turismo". For example when you never played a track before you get to see all 3 other ghostcars, the 3 ghostcars are diffrent in the sense that they reached the finish line faster then each other. so like 1 minute 2 minutes 3 minutes. if you play the track you did it in 1 minute 50, you have gotten a silver medal, since you beated ghost player 3 & 2 timewise, the next time you drive the track again, you'll only get to see the ghost player who did it in 1 minute :) so that way i can create a caareer mode, but not with cpu players although the ghost cars act as cpu players

Heheh, I've been totally hooked up in playing Trackmania for about a year, racing against ghosts is still quite a big challenge, and fun, no need for CPU players! ;)

And if the tracks are bigger than 320x240 it would become insane. Just one suggestion there, for making the tracks, then up/downloading them, wouldn't it be better to make some sort of tile based map? I mean, to keep file-size a bit smaller. Trackmania for example uses a "block" based editor, you just join the pieces together.

Although I must admit, making custom, non-regular maps would be awesome too...
 
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with PNG compression the filesize is very small (at least for the mask, the image shown to the player could be JPG to be even smaller)
 
glezmen said:
with PNG compression the filesize is very small (at least for the mask, the image shown to the player could be JPG to be even smaller)

and i could also use zip files (/zlib) to compress everything before uploading the files to my webserver :) i was thinking on using only png though, i also think i'll create another graphic which gets shown at the beginning of a race with for example the level name and author as a graphic so they can style that as well..

about a tile based system:
I do understand that it might get big memory wise if i use very large images and not tiles, but it would render graphic artists in a difficult position and eventually everyone has to download a new tileset if they downloaded a map that used a certain tilset... I think i'll stay with a couple of larger images, i want it to be "fairly" easy to create levels and the easiest method to me seems to use a image editor for everything, it would give graphics artists much more room... The benefit of using tile based maps is that you skin everything like play every map with a diffrent tileset, but i have done that enough with previous games on the gp2x... i will have to check the memory footprint though to see what constraints i'm going to add to it :)

i just got home so haven't done anything yet and its already 20u30 so not sure if i start with something tonight i'll keep you guys posted if i did do anything though
 
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joyrider said:
about a tile based system:
I do understand that it might get big memory wise if i use very large images and not tiles, but it would render graphic artists in a difficult position and eventually everyone has to download a new tileset if they downloaded a map that used a certain tilset... I think i'll stay with a couple of larger images, i want it to be "fairly" easy to create levels and the easiest method to me seems to use a image editor for everything, it would give graphics artists much more room... The benefit of using tile based maps is that you skin everything like play every map with a diffrent tileset, but i have done that enough with previous games on the gp2x... i will have to check the memory footprint though to see what constraints i'm going to add to it :)

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking, making maps with fairly creative use of the layering system, very tricky turns, stuff like that which opens much more by creating the graphics manually rather than with tiles. I only mentioned the tiling system because of size optimization, but I actually like the idea of a really customized map.
 
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Okay, to get things going i had to make sure the original gp2x build still worked and had to make it work on the caanoo before i could even begin to modify anything... The build was in a messed up state from experiments i tried with the AI / CPU Players but i just managed to get everything going on the caanoo, it's still using the layered maps, and i noticed i had an extra layer for the logical ports, i completely forgot about this. The bridges are actually logical ports there are 2 vertical ones and 2 horizontal ones (one for entering the logical port and one for leaving it). when you enter logical port 1 (it's a rectangle you pass by on the mask) it will close all logical port 2's, like if you drive to the right, and on the top of a bridge, you can not go up or down the road since well otherwise you'd fall of the bridge or there would be no bridge at all. It also has it's own special layer like for showing items when a port is active (in bridges driving under / over it) I'm not certain if these "ports" can be used for something else though... and currently it seems all "special items" like a finish, the logical ports or a checkpoint or the sliding doors (which are just a combination of 2 ports) have to be a rectangle of a minimum size so i can detect the car passing over it but i don't see a big problem in this atm.

so here is a video taken with my mobile phone with gp2x car running on the caanoo, i couldn't show you the driving since i can't hold my phone and the caanoo at the same time, but it runs on the caanoo...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySCya8mqt5I[/youtube]

next time i work on it, i can see if i can create a top down view camera, which shouldn't be that hard to do, and larger maps that go with it :)

i'll edit this post soon to show you how the layers looked like in that version (they might change eventually so no need to start creating tracks already ;) )

here is the mask picture of level 4 :
level4mask.png

the blue rectangle was used to make the ai cars not go through that section of the road so it isn't used anymore now ;)

i'm going to add other items to the mask as well like i explained before, for slowing the car down medium (grass) or heavily (grind)

and the background picture of level 4:
level4background.png


i'll be keeping this kind of system in the future though :)

there is also a toplayer image that holds the tower (which i did not upload) to give the illusion that the car can drive behind it (the car becomes not visible).
 
joyrider said:
About achievements and career mode again, that seems possible if i create for example 3 (default) ghost cars per track (and force people to do the same) so you get some kind of gameplay like the game "track mania" OR "the license things" in "Gran turismo". For example when you never played a track before you get to see all 3 other ghostcars, the 3 ghostcars are diffrent in the sense that they reached the finish line faster then each other. so like 1 minute 2 minutes 3 minutes. if you play the track you did it in 1 minute 50, you have gotten a silver medal, since you beated ghost player 3 & 2 timewise, the next time you drive the track again, you'll only get to see the ghost player who did it in 1 minute :) so that way i can create a caareer mode, but not with cpu players although the ghost cars act as cpu players
Oh wow, I loved getting my licenses in Gran Turismo!! That would be awesome :D
 
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Chuckowski said:
Oh wow, I loved getting my licenses in Gran Turismo!! That would be awesome :D

+1, getting licences is actually lot of fun :)
 
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