Bikepark - A BMX/MTB Game and Park Builder - WIP

Sweet update, hope to see more soon

 

Hey guys, just thought I would post a new video of what I've been doing before I take off for a 6 day weekend .

Basically just minor tweaks, but everything is starting to work much better.

 

its very wooden, have you thought about using mecanim and some better animations ?

 

Better animations are definitely in the works, I'm going to be bringing on an animator to make them look really slick.

 

[video=youtube;5ikZYEoIIsc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmpWIlUjjPE

Hey guys, haven't posted in a while (bad Alex, bad), but anyways, this video is just sort of a general overview of the game as it currently stands.

I've also launched an Indiegogo campaign! You can check it out here: http://igg.me/at/bikepark/x/3416298 Any support would be great, even just sharing the campaign with your friends!

 

Hey guys! I've released a new alpha, as always you can grab it at: http://www.bikeparkgame.com

I've posted the what's new section from the release notes below, it's not a comprehensive list but most of the major changes are there.

////////////////////////////////////////////////// What's new in version 13.6.14? /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


Better animation blending, and the flickering is gone.


Manuals are now done by moving the left analog stick or W and S keys up and down.


Ledges and grinding works better than it did before, you can also do icepicks and toothpick by moving the analog stick back or forward. However, you might get stuck in the ledge, or the rider might shoot off in a random direction, hit the end of the world and die. This seems to happen more often when two ledges are connected together, I would recommend not doing that for now. Gapping from one ledge to another should work though.


Spins and flips now have a bit of a momentum effect.


Moving stuff in the park editor now works based on your camera's direction! If you don't get what I mean, just move an object around in the editor using the wasdqe keys, it's much easier than it was before! I've also gotten rid of the gizmo.. It didn't work too well, won't work at all with gamepads, and nobody I've talked to seemed to like it.


It's possible to air quarter pipes by pulling back on the left analog stick as you approach the lip, but it's still pretty funky, and the camera isn't right for it. I'll need to add something to the camera which will make it kind of go to a top down view or something.


You can bunnyhop by pulling down on the right analog stick then pushing up quickly, this also works for the arrow keys. This will give you a bit of a taste of what the "modern" control scheme will feel like.


I've removed the handle editing system you might have seen in the last video, it's causing too many problems right now and I'm using a really bizarre control scheme to manipulate it. But in the coming weeks I'll be showing how you'll be able to use it to distort ramps into all sorts of shapes to get your parks away from feeling like they're built on a grid, and build bowls and snake runs and ditches and water slides!


Lots of other small changes too, and some new and fun glitches.


The physics are again, a top priority. Right now, they're far too unpredictable and bouncy to be really fun, and crash detection is not working how I would like it to at all. Right now, it works by taking your y angle at launch and at landing and comparing the two to see if you've landed sideways, but it causes lots of problems if you take off at an odd angle and straighten out a bit in the air.


I'll be the first to admit I haven't made as much progress as I had hoped to by this point, especially in the physics department. But everything tends to take 4 times as long as you think it will, and the game is definitely progressing. I've decided on a release date of December 2nd, 2013, and how much progress I'll be able to make is going to depend in part on the results of the Indiegogo campaign. I'm confident that there will be a game come December, and if you've enjoyed playing these alphas, then I'm sure the final game won't disappoint. But to really make it shine, I will need some funding, so please consider contributing at: http://igg.me/at/bikepark/x/3416298

Thanks for reading!

 

Hey guys, I thought I would share a couple of W.I.P. shots of various things.

First off, I've put a new logo together, which I think I'm finally happy with.



I've also started working on an actual level for the game, it's basically 3rd Army, although probably not 100% accurate. I'm also planning on doing a drainage ditch, but it's still just in the concept stage. Textures and trees aren't final, but the layout is pretty much done.



Thanks for looking!

 

This is looking so cool!

 

Thanks man! There's still a LOOOOOONG way to go, but overall I'm happy with how it's turning out

I've been working on the control scheme a bit among other things, hopefully this video will give you an idea of where things are going. It's still very robotic, but bunnyhopping already feels more natural flicking the analog stick rather than just pushing a button.

Grinding and stalling is also coming along nicely, I've managed to squash a lot of the bugs that were making it unusable, now it's almost to the point of being predictable.. Almost. You can also affect which direction you hop off in using the left analog stick or AD keys. I'll probably tie this into some sort of balance system, so that if you're leaning to the right you'll hop off to the right, because as it is currently, it's almost impossible to avoid spinning off when you are choosing a direction.

And being my unfocused self, I've also started on multiplayer. Right now it's just split screen with one person on the keyboard and one on the gamepad, with no scoring or anything, but you can run into each other and generally cause a ruckus. I think that I should probably work towards online multiplayer, but that's probably getting ahead of myself for now.

I've also been blocking out another level, inspired by the drainage ditches in places like Albuquerque.. It'll have a full pipe, snake run, lots of banks and walls, and of course, a big flat area in the middle to build whatever you want.

 

Just thought I would update, I've pretty much just been working on bug fixes, so there's not really anything new to show right now. But I am working on having a browser based version available sometime soon.

 

cant wait

 

Just played the 13.6.14 alpha. The bike editor is super fun! I made my own bike (which has lots of different colors) so it's really cool that you can edit separate parts (like front and back rims). I get a serious Stevie Churchill vibe with those wild 540s down the small stair set One thing I guess I could ask for is having the possibility to set a lower resolution in the launcher. My laptop is getting old and the game gets choppy from time to time. I tried it with the gamepad and I gotta say, the experience was really cool Looking forward to the next update, I want to try that park you showed in a screen a bit earlier!

 

Wow, AWESOME ^^ It looks like a mix between SKATE (the console game) and Project Powder / Snowbound Online (a Snowboarding game with imposible tricks). Keep it up!

~Aiizy

 

Thanks for playing guys! I was trying something a bit different with the GUI which is why not all resolutions are supported in the current version, but I've decided to go back to the good ol' Unity GUI so everything should be supported next run.

 

That's good news! I think they'll be introducing the new GUI system to Unity soon (hopefully for Unity indie as well), so if speed and flexibility was an issue, you should have no problem with the new system.

 

Hey all, I just thought I should mention that I'm doing a short term job so I haven't had much time to work on the game recently, and there probably won't be much in the way of updates until mid-August. I'm planning on narrowing the focus of the game a little bit to just BMX, and putting other stuff like the rider and challenge editor on hold, so that I can get everything really tight and make the core riding experience as fun as possible.

 

Awesome project ! Already love it

 

Okie dokie, time to post some progress. I have been working on the gameplay, but it's not much to look at yet, but I've made some improvements to the bike editor which is what this video shows. You can change all the colors as before, although you have more options, such as bolts and valve stem caps, and you can also start to swap out parts and remove pegs and brakes. The video is sped up 3x but you should be able to get a pretty good idea of what's new.

 

Hey guys, thought I should update a little bit. I'm on track to have a new version available to play by the end of next week, and it's looking pretty good. I've added 6 more tricks and done lots of under the hood fixes to make the game more playable. It's certainly nowhere near where I had hoped it would be by now, but if nothing else, this project has been a huge learning experience, especially in what I can and can't do.

I also finally set up a proper version control system, so I won't have to destroy old features to implement new ones! (yay)

 

Great news, do you think putting it on steam greenlight?

 

I might at some point, probably want to get it looking a bit prettier first though.

 

Your game is looking great so far im interested in how you made the custom bike editor so that you could change specific parts of the bike colour, is it that all the bike parts are seperate parts in the Unity editor? or is it done in some other way? Keep up the great work!

 

Thanks! Yeah, each part is it's own mesh which gets an instance of the bike material, which can be changed at runtime.

 

Okay, I've added a new version. You can get it from www.bikeparkgame.com, the link is on the bottom of the main page. So yeah let me know what you think!

 

Hey Alex!

I just played the newest release - it's coming up quite nice! I love the new bike editor, I actually managed to replicate my bike and it looks pretty damn good. I don't know if the color changes work and just don't show up on my end since my video card is kinda old, or if they're just placeholders for now, but I think it's a super addition and it will add so much depth to bike designing (EDIT: by colors I mean the color type - gloss, matte, metallic - they don't show up as different on my end). I also love that there are modifiers now (maybe there were before, I just didn't know?) and it's pretty fun to do some combos. I'm wondering what the thought process behind grinding is. Are you approaching it as in Skate, where it's the player's responsibility to actually lead the character to the grind and balance it or will it be more like THPS/MHPBMX/DMFBMX, where there's a button for grinding and is generally more arcady? I personally feel that the arcady approach would fit the game better, but it may be to early to truly say, since the game is still deep in development. The auto snap to grind is a bit confusing tho and sometimes breaks nice combos/lines.

The control scheme and general feel of the character is starting to feel very solid. There are still moments where you crash on landings that should've been no problem, albeit a bit sketchy perhaps, so maybe that could be a solution - have a zone of possible landing degrees that make a sketchy landing which subtracts some of the points the player would make with a trick (THPS-and-the-likes-like). Also another thing is fakie olies. Right now when you're in a fakie and you make an olie you immediately start moving in the opposite (then forward) direction and this breaks lines like crazy And there's nothing cooler than fakie barspinning over a rail or a bank I'm sure you've already thought about all of that stuff, but I just thought I'd share some of the stuff that has fallen into my eyesight as things that would boost the gameplay quite a lot.

Also about the manuals - I find the way they used to work before quite nice. I really hated the double-tap a direction way of doing manuals in Dave Mirra's Freestyle BMX and the Up-Down/Down-Up way of doing them in THPS/MHPBMX might be a bit hard on an analog stick. That's why I think the most intuitive way of doing it is like it was before - the more you push your character's body backwards the more the bike's front lifts and there you go - a manual

Anyway - love the new build and looking forward to the next one! Keep rockin' and have a happy new year!

EDIT 2: Here's a little line I tried out. I suck at making gifs so I hope it doesn't show up weird or something...

 

Yeah sorry, I should mention somewhere, the paint types are placeholders right now.

My idea is to have two different control schemes, one that would be closer to Tony Hawk's with push button to grind and such, and another more Skate-like, but I think I need to walk before I run and just get one scheme working really well, so I'll probably leave the snap to grind as is for now, although I can adjust the distance from the rail/ledge to be smaller if he's going into grinds when you're not intending him to. It's a bit of a balancing act really, so through testing and player input (big thanks btw) I'll find the right number eventually.

I'm addressing the issue of crash detection as well, right now it's completely based on the difference between the angle you took off from and the angle you land at, but there needs to be some exceptions for landing on hips and such, since you can easily land at a harsh angle and still ride away if it's not on flat.

Manuals I'm going to keep as they were, I took them out for now because they were really messing with the animations. But yeah thanks for the input, and I'm glad you're enjoying the game!!

 

Hey alex can you email me leoarmstead@hotmail.com

 

I like the building mechanics ,but the game itself looks very choppy at the moment.

 

Hi Alex, I read your thread and love what you have achieved so far! Well done. I'd definitely buy it if you release it
I'm making a trial biking game so it relates to bikes too but different disciplines with backwheel hops etc.. .. you can check an early beta version here http://www.wooglie.com/games/Sports/3d-Trial-Biking , what I'd like to ask if you would be willing to part on some knowledge, how did you get the ragroll/mechanim looking so nice and how did you get it to stay on the bike so nicely? I'm trying to add a rider to my trials bike game but am at loss how to do it at the moment. Using Hinges? Any ideas or tips would be most appreciated.

Cheers,
Kim

 

Always great to see another bike game in progress! I built the character skeleton and the rig for the bike as one rig in Blender, and the character mesh is skinned to the skeleton, and the bike parts are children of their correct bones, then I just animate the whole thing. This rig is then a child of my actual bike object, which holds all the colliders and scripts and rigidbody. So I guess the best answer is that the bike and character are one object.

This does cause some weirdness when I crash him though, because I need to have a different set of colliders for the character and bike so that they will separate and the character will ragdoll while the bike bounces away and such.

 

Awesome, many thanks for the info, so if I understand correctly you animate the pedal and human all in blender and import that over to unity. I might need to back the drawing board for my one..
Is it difficult to animate things in Blender? I'll take a look at tutorials etc.

 

Just thought I would post an update.. I've been working on the game for a few hours here and there, and I'm doing a total rewrite of the physics, and so far it's pretty promising, so I'll post a new video or something soon.

 

Sounds Awesome cant wait to see a video

 

Hi, I'm looking forward to seeing a new video! I'm still stuck on getting plain old pedalling going in my trial bike game spent loads of time trying to figure it out, any clues on how you did things would be nice, did you stick with using blender animations?

 

Yeah basically. The bike and rider are all skinned or parented to one rig which I animate in Blender. I then get the speed of the back wheel and set the pedalling animation's speed based on that value, or reverse if he's gone fakie. I played for a while with rotating the cranks through code and then linking the rider's feet to the pedals with a fixed joint, and it gives really nice results a lot of the time, but sometimes if he's moving around really fast, it can't keep up I guess and stuff starts to break.

 

Would you mind to share your code (even if is pseudo code) for following the pedals? I use:

transform.position.y = leftpedal.transform.position.y;
transform.position.x = leftpedal.transform.position.x;
transform.position.z = leftpedal.transform.position.z;
and same again for the right foot...

It seems ok until I try turning, then the legs joints seem to change direction, I am not sure how to make the legs follow the direction/rotation of the pedals.

You say your code seems to work ok but not if going fast, this would be just perfect for my game, my bike game is about slow/controlled stuff. If you would share how you wrote it I would be most appreciative. But of course I understand if you don't want to.

I tried code like:
transform.localRotation.y = Mathf.Clamp(transform.localRotation.y, -1, 1);
to limit rotation but that does not seem to have any effect.
How did you limit rotation of the leg parts when the bike turns when you tried with code instead of the blender way?
It's driving me up the wall not being able to get past this part!

 

That sounds to me like something is rotating in world space instead of local. You would need to have some sort of IK rig to be able to set the position of the feet to match the pedals I think.

Well, what I basically did was create a ragdoll for my guy, and then I stuck him in the position I wanted him to start in on the bike, and used fixed joints to attach his feet to the pedals and his hands to the bars. I also had a fixed joint attaching his pelvis to a point above the seat to keep him from falling over. The only real code involved was something like:

cranks.Rotate(Vector3.right * rearWheel.rpm / 60)

This is assuming that you have the bike rigged so that the cranks can rotate on their own axis while inheriting the position and rotation of the rest of the bike. I attached the pedal models to the bottom of his feet to keep them from rotating with the cranks.

Then when the cranks turned, his legs would bend and move to keep his feet on the pedals. If the ragdoll is set up properly the joints should bend realistically, but it seemed to fall apart for me as I said at high speeds. I gave up on it because it was a pain to switch him from being physics driven to being animation driven when I needed to do a trick, but if I were doing a game where his feet never leave the pedals I would go the physics route instead of the Blender animation route.

 

Okay, I've released an updated version at www.bikeparkgame.com! There's lots of changes, I've outlined them in the release notes, and it's an .exe installer now instead of a .rar file.

So yeah, let me know what you think!

 

New video:

 

Really cool!

 

Thanks man!

Just a clarification, I've added a .zip file in the same Dropbox folder as the .exe. They're exactly the same, I just added the .zip for people who weren't able to run a .exe due to restrictions on their computer or who wanted it to be easier to carry the game around on a flash drive.

So yeah, you only need one of the files to play the game. If you're not sure if the .exe will work, grab the .zip.

 

hi i tested your game out. its pretty good, there is a bug where i go up a ramp and try a 360 and i sometimes fly into the sky. what kind of controllers can you use for this game?

 

Hmm that sounds fun, yeah the physics can do strange things sometimes. It's getting less buggy with each release though, so hopefully I'll catch whatever is causing that soon!

It should work with any controller that uses the Xbox 360 for Windows interface (360 controller or Logitech G510 for example). It might work with other controllers, but I haven't tested any others, and the controls might not be perfect. Most controller mappings can be changed from the launcher, but some stuff is hard coded.

 

Ok i tried a ps3 controller but that didn't work. probably because its Sony not Microsoft

 

how did you animate the player please help me

 

please tell me how to rotate or animate bike on mid air or while jumping please help me