Games Project Hovercats (OFFICIAL TITLE FINALIZED) - Procedural arcade racer

Hello everyone! For those who saw one of my recent posts on my other project's WIP thread (Link: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/wip-neodash-a-sci-fi-not-yet-d-arcade-racer-for-android.267972/) and was wondering "another project?! where is it?" here it is; an idea born from something my mother said about our pet rats at home, so...

I bring you Jet Rat Speedway! (Working title, may be different on final release!) 2017 edit: The game is now officially named "Plasma Fauna" as the game will feature more than just rats as playable characters.

And again, this is an android game! Will also make a high-end version for PC. This project was basically a pet project of mine that stemmed from a dynamic track generation tool I built myself!

"Wait, did I hear 'Dynamic track generation?'" Yes, every track in this game is a single straight road twisting upwards into the sky. I also aim to make at least six different base environemnts to generate tracks with, that way, there's a bit more variety.

And, like neoDash, (my other project!) there are power-ups. Only really two or three this time (I wanted to keep things simple for this project, that was the point of it) but power-ups noetheless. atm, I plan to have:
- A grenade (this one is already in the game! )
- A projectile of some sort. (Don't know what yet)
- anything else you guys feel would be suitable!

As for visuals... I wanted a blend between N64-style shading and realism, and the turnout... is actually fairly pleasing to the eyes! I also added some minecraft-y visual flare (no pun intended) in some places too.
This game is also the first to use a custom designed font by me, so feel free to critique!

And, last of all... WIP screenshots:




Yes, thats the grenade...

Anyway, let me know what you guys think. I also aim to use this game as a testbed for testing out Unity 5.1's UNET capabilities, given it's simplicity (and addictiveness... very surprisingly, it actually is, trust me! )
Such findings will be incorporated into the other project.

And yea, since this is the first time I have "themed" a game, suggestions of what kinds of power-ups would suit a bunch of rat-shaped madmen are welcome!

All the best to you other devs!

-FuzzyQuills

EDIT: Captured some new screens up top!

2017 edit: Please note this information is not current, as the mobile version is postponed to free up resources on developing the PC version for my uni assessment. (Time constraints means I have to abandon the Android builds for now)

 

For those interested in gameplay, it ian't much atm, but here's a decent play session:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2tqYgzg1_lWekFUZzhUdlpmeUU/view
atm, Google Drive's converting it, so you may have to wait a bit...

EDIT: Converting's done, enjoy!

 

Unless you change the player model I'd say "Jet Rat Speedway" is a good name.

 

Fair enough then! Like your profile pic, BTW.
I'm mainly tuning a few things before making any more major changes. (Even though the graphics side is actually quite performant, it does have a couple of things worth tuning!)

As for major changes... I might as well pop this up:

Just the starting segment of the forest environment! The other segments (and my rock textures. ) are on the way soon... along with the rest of the game of course.

I also have a good projectile idea now; it's probably going to be some sort of torpedo. Perhaps a light-speed torpedo, who knows?

 

Changelog:
VISUALS:
- Per-pixel specular removed, shaders tweaked: This was necessary to squeeze a bit more performance out fo the game. On top of this, the shader wouldn't compile properly in OpenGL with it there the other night for some reason...
- Texture resolution raised up a bit. Now the desert looks a bit more lively...

CORE:
- Forest environment completed. Now the main menu presents a "select environment" option, where you get to pick from the desert road and the forest as bases. There are some issues on my tablet however, where sections close to each other cause performance drops. (I am yet to add an occlusion culling system in place to drop this factor)
- Added a torpedo: Now the track is a bit more chaotic! Rats, grenades, jet bikes and ramjet torpedoes ensue!
- Physics and frame timing tweaked for better performance and playability: After finding issues where I either got sloppy steering or bad performance, I decided to try locking both the physics and the game framerate to 30. the result was the best I could get, so now everything is clocked to 30FPS for performance!
- Added "rumble pak" functionality: On supported devices, the phone/tablet will vibrate when hitting an explosion, running into a wall, or if the jet bike touches the ground a little bit! (Occasinally happens when you land on the ground from a massive fall)
- Other performance tweaks and fixes.
EDIT: Primitive rubber-banding: when you are in last, you only get torpedoes, allowing you to easily catch up. In first, you only recieve grenades! atm, only having grenades in first is a workaround for the hit-yourself glitch with the torpedoes, but it will stay when I fix it. Means that useless torpedoes don't come about as easily!

ISSUES:
- Torpedoes don't respect the player yet: atm, if you are carrying a torpedo when you pass an opponent into first place, firing that torpedo will blow you up instead. This is also why it's possible to run into the explosion and spin out yourself when hitting an opponent in close range!
- Odd lag sometimes when all 6 rats are on screen: I still haven't worked out why this is the case, it only does it on my tablet. (My mum's Samsung Galaxy J1 runs it fine)
- Respawning needs work: atm, if you fall off the track donw the side, if you are a bit too far out, you miss the trigger, and fall for a good 30 seconds before hitting the emergency trigger on the bottom of the map. I will be fixing this with a bounding box check for seeing if the rats are inside the segments themselves, rather than checking outside the segments for out-of-bounds players.
- (Edited 9/8/15) Slowdown sometimes when two rats are colliding: When a collision with another rat, or a stage object happens, a spark lights from where the collision occured. atm though, this is a bit of a massive Garbage Collection hog, as it has to spawn and destroy a single spark prefab multiple times! I do know the fix for this, I just haven't implemented it yet. Oh, and the upshoot? When two AIs are very content with turning a direction, they often "grind" against each other trying to get past, and this sets off a massive stream of sparks... I wonder why my tablet's lagging...

COMING SOON:
- Two other environments: I plan on adding a beach/ocean road environment, and a futuristic space tunnel environment! Two more will come after this, I haven't worked out what they should be.
- Boost pads on the tracks and as an additional power-up.
- Profile menu.
- Primitive multiplayer: This will require upgrading to Unity 5.1.1, so wish me luck!

 

Change Log:
VISUALS:
- Added rain to forest biome: This gives the fog a good excuse to stay around, for performance reasons...
- Massive performance increase for low-end devices after some shader tweaking: A few days back, since I aim to emulate the N64 visuals engine the best I can with this game to give that sort of "retro" look, I also wondered something; how many lights was the N64 actually capable of rendering at once? This question lead to the decision to drop the number of lights to 4 instead of 8, of which fixed several issues with slowdowns!
- Speaking of lighting... Added lights to explosions and missiles: When an explosion goes off, the area around it now gets illuminated! Definitely suits the forest really well.

(NEW!) RESEARCH:
- UNET Multiplayer may be more advanced than you might think by release: I have been using another project to test UNET, and so far, apart from some issues probably caused by poor scripting, I may be able to use UNET well enough to get decent online action in! Only gripe is that I have to make a massive switch to C# to use the networkbehaviour type. (The project was started before I got ahold of C# scripting!) there has also been some interesting (negative kind) things going on with SyncVars lately...

CORE:
- Fixed self-shooting glitch: Now if you come into first with a missile, you won't shoot yourself anymore when deploying it. It also stops the possibility of being blown back by your own explosion when hitting an opponent at close range...
- slowdown caused by all 6 rats (sometimes less than that) being on-screen fixed: This was a knock-on effect from the shader tweaking. Should mean that older devices run this perfectly now!

COMING SOON (In addition to last change-log, should probably move this to first post... ):
- Additional elements in environments: This mainly includes extra background elements to spruce up the less visually appealing stages. (Desert environment, I'm looking at you! ) However, some course-affecting elements may come in, so stay tuned!
- Motion Blur (Possibly...): When doing an image efects test on PC, I accidentally left the motion blur on when building to android later that night, and was surprised to find that it worked without slowdown on tablet! So you guys, if you want it, give me a shout!
- New Font: I am re-working the retro font I built for this game to be better spaced and nicer looking than this one. (Some characters were either poorly sized or poorly spaced, giving odd results!)

And, one thing I should have done last changelog, but couldn't get around to it, is post screens of the forest, so here they are!






That's all for now. May post a video later.

 

The standard shader should run well on mobile devices, I don't see why there's a slow down. If you want some script optimization help, PM me and I'll see what I can do with what you have to make it faster, I've got a few tricks up my sleeve to save some ms.

 

Most mobile devices... I don't think my pendo pad was included in the test subjects. Last time I checked, it didn't perform well at 30fps. BTW, the changelog above (the second-last post) is a bit out of date; the lag issue with all 6 rats was fixed by reducing the light count in the shader for-loop.

As for script optimization, I am planning on switching to C# for UNET, that may speed things up a little, as I have heard that some JS code compiles a bit oddly when it comes to optimizing it. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to send over some of my scripts for a check, I suppose... Might PM you tomorrow with them. I am also planning on fixing the sparking lag with a different implementation of the effect. (Current one eats up GC cycles!)

EDIT: I also forgot to mention that I do plan on releasing a PC version of this game that will most likely use the standard shader, so that's a plus. (It will be cross-platform compaitble in the network multiplayer department too!) This same plan goes for my other project as well.

 

Changelog:
VISUALS:
- Full-screen bloom and motion blur: These two effects are turned off by default, but are accessbile in the options menu. Tested on Pendo Pad 4.0 (about 10fps with bloom on) and Samsung Galaxy J1 (30-60fps)
- Sucker Bomb and Torpedo have their final models done:



- New lighting code in vertex shader: Now the shader only calculates ligthing if the light color luminance is above 0, a behaviour that doesn't occur in any of Unity's built-in vertex-lit shaders. (Can be seen by opening a fixed-function shader's generated code) Also added spot light attenuation as well as a multi_compile switch to skip certain expensive operations for directional lights, since attenuation is always 1 (or 2, can't remember which) for directional lights.
- (LATE ADDITION) Gradient-based ambient lighting removed: it no longer looked that good after making the new code, so I now use plain ambient lighting...
- High Framerate option added: Now it is possible to play the game at 60fps frame cap rather than 30fps, so long as the device is fast enough. Recommended to have this on when motion blur is used.
- Drawing distance increased in the forest environment: Had to do this, as before, it was hard to see if you were going to run into something at times!
- New start line: now, instead of the two torches, I have a big start line beam.

- New explosion effect: Now the explosions are a bit more lively! Screenshot:

The bloom effect's also turned on here... pretty!

CORE:
- Game now has a logo:

Rendered in Cycles using Blender. "Hello players!" The pyramid in the background may show up as an extra element later in the desert environment as part of the "extra track elements" thing I mentioned in a previous post.
- ENTIRE PROJECT CONVERTED TO C#: This for some reason actually gave a farily noticeable performance increase! This also allows me to integrate UNET properly at some point.
- Collision sparks no longer lag: By repositioning a particle system and firing it, the spark effect no longer generates unnecessary garbage collections!
- Options button finally does something; it now opens a graphics settings menu: This may change into a full-blown option menu at some point. Profile info may show up here also
- Ranking system now runs at 4fps rather than every frame: This speeds up the game on devices that take a while running IComparer operations, like my Pendo Pad 4...
- THE GAME NOW HAS SOME SOUND! The soundtrack may be coming soon. Jet bike engine sounds aren't present yet either. Currently, the bomb and torpedo have sound, as well as the explosions.
- Item generation is now better distributed: Before, the track generator would sometimes generate way too many item spawns, of which turned the racetrack into a battlefield really quickly. Item spawns are also grouped into six now, arranged in a triangle shape for each lot placed.
- Pause menu added: It is now possible to pause the game by pressing the back button on the android device. (Esc key or Joystick Button 9 on PC) Two options, "Continue" and "Quit" anre present... and somewhat self-explanatory.
- (PC feature only at the moment...) Bomb throw: If you push the analog stick up (or press up on arrow keys/Dpad) when deploying a bomb, you can and will throw the bomb in front of you. Throw distance depends on speed and angle you're travelling. (unintentional mechanic)
- plenty of other little fixes here and there, there are that many that I haven't really kept track of them...(Whoops!)


ISSUES:
- Flickering on meshes with edge splits when batching is used: Any pointers for this one?
- Respawning isn't fixed yet: Still possible to fall forever and ever when too far out of bounds... Doesn't seem to affect AIs though, as they aim for the center of the course when going out of bounds, putting them in the correct triggerbox when falling...
- Explosions sometimes lag at the start of the race: This could be fixed by making it a pre-loaded asset. Would have to test this one.
- Picking up another item box with an item equipped overwrites what's in the slot: This shouldn't happen, and can be a pain in the a** when you get a torpedo, but then dash through another box and end up with a bomb instead...
- Bombs sometimes fall through the floor: Only really happens when you throw it in front of you, and that's thanks to discrete collisions... Depends on the angle of the surface it collides with as well.
- Sometimes, throwing a bomb after being hit by an item sends it flying REALLY FAR! I don't actually know the reason for this one... could be how it's spawning!
- AIs often get stuck behind the rocks either side of the track in the forest environment: They usually can free themselves after a while, but still...

COMING SOON:
- Primitive UNET multiplayer: I wonder how complex this will get...
- Profile and Save file.
- Multi-item pickup: I am planning on adding a feature where picking up an item box sometimes gives you more than one of the item you pick up. How many you pick up will be a random number between 2 and 10. (SO MANY TORPEDOES!!! )
- Finalized mode layout: I haven't quite decided how this game shall be played yet, so as of yet the game modes layout isn't drawn up. Of what I have come up with so far: Your usual racing mode, a battle mode, some sort of single-player mash-up, and obviously some sort of online multiplayer. Again, not finalized, feel free to make suggestions!
- Animation: The rats need a bit more character I think, so at some point, I will be adding animations for the following: throwing/dropping items, boosting (will come with boosting mechanics and items), an "I got you" animation (like Mario Kart... ), a hit animation. Currently, there's an animation where the rats run up and jump onto the bikes at the start of the race, and that's it.
- I may be going to try out IL2CPP for android soon: I am yet to download the Android NDK for it though, so stay tuned for when I do get aroud to doing this!

 

ChangeLog:
A note to everyone before I begin; being that I haven't done much since last post and now, there's only a small amount of changes and things to list here. (Well, apart from my sphere mapping mini-paragraph... )

Anyway... onto the changelog!
VISUALS:
- New Lens Flare: I decided to drop in my own lens flare after realising that the original one I was using (a unity version of Brigade engine's 3.0 flare) didn't really fit the atmosphere.
Here's the flare as viewed in the forest environment:

- (Experimental) Realtime sphere mapping: This technique is what the N64 used in some games to do realtime reflection. True, it isn't accurate like cube mapping, but it's good enough in some situations, such as a racing game. Plus, it's a WHOLE LOT FASTER than rendering six cameras for a cubemap! (The spheremap is also quite small, like the N64, aka. 32x32, making things amazingly quick at times!)

Being that it's experimental, it isn't in the mainstream game yet, but it does look good on a sphere! (I also tested the main menu jet rat with it) I did however find that switching to spheremap coordinates actually improved one of my static spheremaps on the jet bike. (Looks like a fancy sparkly BRDF spheremap now... )

One more note; the realtime spheremaps were improved by using a modified version of Unity's fisheye lens on the reflection camera, but due to the exorbitant atan2 functions in the shader, I don't use this in real-world situations, mainly due to mobile's poor handling of such functions! Likewise, I emulate the N64-way; just render without the fancy frills...

CORE:
- Item overwrite bug fixed: Now you properly hold the item you have rather than losing it on the next item-box pickup.

ISSUES:
- Other than the ones posted previously, no new ones. (Batching flicker temporarily fixed by disabling dynamic batching)

COMING SOON:
- Same as above post...

EDIT: New entry added (forgot to post it too!)

 

new playthrough! About time I uploaded a gameplay video... I can see a very obvious difficulty issue though; it's too easy half the time!
Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2tqYgzg1_lWV05SZHVqS3Jaak0/view?usp=sharing

Also, I recommend muting your speakers, I accidentally recorded with the mic on, so now there's background noise mixed into the audio!

As always, you may have to wait for google to process my clip...

 

Never expected to post another one so soon! It won't have a coming soon section, as last one isn't quite fulfilled yet! Check below, I ended up posting one in the end...

ChangeLog:
VISUALS:
- New Main Menu: Same options, different art... Now it's more dynamic:

- Reflection mapping added as a menu option: I gave the real-world test a go, and it looked pretty damn funky, so now it's possible to turn on realtime reflection mapping in options. Really improves the desert level!

As a bonus, if the setting is turned on, when loading the main menu again, that setting's reflected (no pun intended ) in the jet rat's bike on the main screen. (Screenshot above actually has the setting on!)
CORE:
- Game speed adjustment: After porting to C# a while ago, a lot of my references broke, so I had to rebuild them, and in the process, I half-forgot what speed I actually had everything going at, making races a bit too easy. Now the bikes hurtle along at 30 units of speed!
- Re-arranged starting grid: I finally worked out why the game was easy to beat; it was actually the starting grid layout! Basically, the old layout mean't that the AIs bunched together at the beginning, making it too easy to take the lot out with one bomb. Now the starting grid is more like mario kart/f-zero where the cars are in rows from left to right, with a slight shift backwards on the second one. (viewed sideways below) This time though, the AI's spread out... at least the game's a bit more difficult now!

ISSUES:
- Reflection mapping isn't quite optimized yet: Currently, it renders the reflection at 15fps, but being that all the reflections render all at once, this causes stuttering on some devices. I may be planning on adding a global time-slicing option so that not all of them are rendered at once!
EDIT: On second thought, I will add ONE thing to the coming soon section:
COMING SOON:
- With the last two environments I mentioned, I also got some good ideas for a volcanic environment after playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl... The castle siege stage (well, the third underground section) looked like a good place to get ideas for texturing anyway.

 

Looks good, as usual, I'd be willing to help optimize this game and get it running better if needed.

 

Thank you, will definitely let you know if I need help with anything.

EDIT: Actually, I may be posting a bit later on beta-testing. Would you be interested?

 

Reminds me a lot of Mario Kart, great game. Keep it up!

 

Well, again, I will soon be writing a post on beta-testing. would you be interested?

 

I would most definitely be interested!

 

Righto then, when I finally get IL2CPP to work, I will write up on beta-testing two builds (One's normal, the other's... IL2CPP. )

 

ChangeLog:
CORE:
- Added sound for jet bikes: It's a WIP though so don't expect whizz-bang sounds yet...
- Changed the way bikes accelerate: Due to the engine noise sounding ridiculous with a high acceleration setting, I made adjustments that make the acceleration moderately quick, while the engines now sound better.

BETA TESTING:
Ok people, I am now ready to send out beta APKs. I finally got IL2CPP compilation working, but I am yet to test how it works with the game, so I will release two APKs. Other details below. NOTE: These links WILL be removed if:

1) the game builds are updated.
2) I get to release stage, at which point the reason's obvious!

Also... How to play the game (NOTE: Controls are WIP, I will add a no-tilt option soon! ):
Steering: tilt device left and right.
Acceleration: keep finger on the white panel in the bottom-left corner to accelerate, release to slow down.
Use item: when you break an item box, a panel will slide out from the right side of the screen. touch it to fire.
Pause: press (or touch) your phone/tablet's back button to pause.

To use graphical effects, head to options and try out each one and see how your game performs afterwards. (Also worth a look at the experimental reflection option! )

Jet Rat Speedway Engine Ver. 0.3.0: Normal Mono2x build:
This is the normal build of the game. Has all the latest changes.
LINK: taken down, go further down for new build!
File size: 20, 615 KB (20MB approx.)

Jet Rat Speedway Engine Ver. 0.3.1: IL2CPP experimental build:
Taken down due to unity 5.2 bug...

For those who are interested in beta-testing this game... let me know by PM so I can later lock-down the links a bit better.

EDIT: Forgot the pause button, added to instructions (whoops!)

 

Okay, tried it on my HTC One M8. Few things:

• Add a different control style, too. I personally like this style:

• My phone kept vibrating when playing it, also.
• No sound appeared, turned up my volume

 

This is great man. The first post I could not stop laughing. In a good way. Really cool. Love rats

 

The control scheme thing's actually something I will definitely add, I won't be locking in motion controls. Not sure about the double-arrow thing for steering though, will have to test this. (I may be adding cross platfrom input in so that I don't have to have separate code for the acceleration button, plus I can add the control scheme in!)

The vibration is actually intentional, everytime you run into something or hit an explosion, it will vibrate on supported devices.

Also, which build did you test? if it was the IL2CPP build and the sound wouldn't come on, I will file that as a bug. Otherwise... Are you aware that there's a separate setting for other sounds in android? You could try turning the lot of them up...

@Baldinoboy: You are in the awesome minority then.

 

Ok guys... I am afriad that the IL2CPP build will crash for most of you, I am investigating what's causing this. In the meantime... just go and download the Mono2x version!

 

Unfortunately, due to a unity 5.2 bug, I won't be publishing IL2CPP builds again until unity 5.3. The link has been taken down.

EDIT: One more thing; I have code stripping on, I am going to turn it off and see if anything improves.

EDIT2: Confirmed: it's an issue with unity, will have to wait for a fix...

 

Hi guys. If you're wondering what's going on, I took a massive break from doing unity development. (Mainly so I could get more of my school stuff done, but there were other more personal reasons too...) Likewise, I haven't done muchother than testing with other people's devices. (I have a few people at my school who like testing my stuff! )

Anyway, reason for posting; I have made a start on the futuristic environment:

That there is the starting segment. And yes, I'm aware that the texture needs work, I have that there as a placeholder.
And below is the current end segment:

I should probably get around to making the extra track elements bit as well some time. Stay tuned for more, and last of all, it's my final two weeks of school. Wish me luck!

 

Okay after trying this out, my thoughts are

- There is too much vibration preventing me from concentrating on the race itself.
The idea of vibration is not a bad one but when I run into an item, it is kind of annoying to have that vibration going while i try to use the item and race at the same time.

- Indicators?
Maybe you can add like a visual indicator to show that you are going the wrong way other than by vibration and also some distance meters to show the distance between the player and the position in front and behind him.

Just my 2 cents.

 

Oh, I forgot to ask, how do I use the APK? Never done this before, so kinda am a newb to it lol.

 

Just copy it to your device, make sure Install from Unknown Sources is checked in your settings(security I believe). And install and play.

 

Yes, someone else mentioned that the built-in "rumble" function was just a pain in the ass, I will definitely be making this an experimental option in the near future.

On top of this, it is also a bit rough-edged. (I atm use a simple collision callback to trigger it, whereas you only technically feel any real shock when you run into something at full speed!) I've also noticed that on some phones and tablets, a simple collision (scraping against something?) has a far longer rumble than is required for such collision; this is a limit of the phone hardware I can't easily change.

And I am not using the vibration as a "going backwards" indicator, that was most likely coincidence... Definitely a good idea to add visual ones though!

 

Ok! After last night's dev run, I have something to show!

ChangeLog:
VISUALS:
- Made bases for the item spawns:

Now it looks a bit more... fancy.
- Course selection portraits: Now there's a small portrait of the track (taken within unity) next to the text and nested in the buttons.
- On the new futuristic environment, I did the earth pre-render so that you can see Australia from the track side!
- Other visual improvements are mainly based around the new dash pads, see below.

CORE:
- (NEW ENVIRONMENT) The Futuristic environment is now in! Some screens:

The glowing blue rings in this shot are actually shockwaves from the dash pad, a by-product of the reaction between it and the jet bike's main engine.

Don't ask what was happening at the finish line... Someone blew up the cheese!

- Added dash pads and boosting: (FINALLY!) Now the track generator puts down dash pads in various spots! Be prepared for extreme speed!
- Fixed infinite fall bug: To beta testers: Did any of you ever go too far off-course and just started falling forever? I've fixed this by measuring vertical distance. If you miss the trigger, but go under the track a bit too far (10 units under is the threshold I have set for now) you get picked up and placed on the track again (YAY!)
- Fixed turn-around-and-fall-off AI glitch: Sometimes, if an AI falls off the track, it's placed back on... and hurtles down the track the wrong way to head to the last targeted waypoint, of which often results in falling off again! Now if AIs fall too far from a waypoint, they target a nearer waypoint, preventing this bug from occurring. (It was amusing to watch though... )
- Added an option to turn off vibration: However, due to my laziness, I forgot to make the explosions acknowledge the setting too. (This will be fixed shortly in next beta build coming!)
- Increased track length: Once upon a time, there were large tracks designed for high-speed racing. Jet bike pilots, the racers for these tracks, were well suited to these roads... until dash pads were introduced. Long story short, (no pun intended) the races ended too quick for the audience! So... I increased the track generation length to 70 on the futuristic environment to remedy this. (For some reason, the other tracks aren't affected by this...) Now races go for a decent time!

ISSUES:
- Some devices didn't display the main menu correctly: On a friend's android device, the main menu bloom mask was tiled making the main menu virtually impossible to navigate... This hasn't shown up on my test devices however. Oddly, touch events occurred in the right spots.
- Still need a way to make the Earth a proper background element without having a huge draw distance: Occasionally, it's easy to notice the Earth in the futuristic environment intersecting with the track, ruining immersion a little bit. (It's supposed to look really far away!!!) Only really noticeable though when sections of track are visible above the player.
- Rumble setting isn't respected by explosions: Only temporary, and will be fixed in next beta build coming.

COMING SOON:
- Different coloured rats: There will be an option to select a colour scheme for your rat. (I will be basing them on actual rat breed colours) Gives actual rat breeders something to play with!
- Different bikes: I have finally decided to bite the bullet and go with adding multiple bikes to choose from, to add more variety to the game.
- Control Schemes: Since not everyone (or every device) is suited to using the accelerometer for steering, I will be adding a control scheme soon. Probably two actually, as I thought of a good idea for acceleration control as well. (Could potentially be coming in next beta build! )
- Extra track element generation: I've actually mentioned this in a previous changelog, and am prepared to implement it sometime now.

I will be posting a playthrough soon, as the gameplay is actually looking too good to simply hide from non-beta testers!

 

Wow dude , this looks nice! People love to play such games on their phones.
Ground texture is a bit low quality , why not use water instead?
Keep going , I like the rat

 

Which one? I do use low-res textures, mainly to keep the size down. (Trying to fit entire game into 50MB...)
However, on the other hand, most of the game uses a low-res texture tiled something like 40 times, whereas the new futuristic environment uses baked UV layouts. (Avoids high poly counts in some cases)

And also, the ground texture was designed in MS paint...

As for water, I was planing on adding some sort of water-based environment anyway, but I'm still not sure of how to tackle that with dynamic tracks.

 

Here you go, playthrough is ready!

EDIT: Link taken down, something went wrong with the upload!

EDIT2: Link up again. (Issue before was that youtube api wasn't uploading the whole video)
LINK: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2tqYgzg1_lWMkZNRzdXcmx1UmM/preview

 

Ok LOL xD

 

How did you made the race track ? It is one model ?

 

The game made it... literally; I model the segments, and the trackgen script I built takes care of the rest on game start. Also means that every track is randomly generated. (This is also why I am calling the tracks "environments" )

Only issue I might have is saving replays, of which may be coming. In that case though, I could probably store a pattern and load it on opening the replay.

 

So the other racers passing by are also randomly spawned ?

 

Nope, they're spawned at the start with the player, and appear on the starting grid. (Once I add customization of bikes and rat colours though, the customizations on AIs will be random ones)

 

So how do you manage their racing AI as they must follow spawning circuit tiles ? each tiles has navigation points ?
And how do you manage them to have the player be able to beat them and not have them too skilled using power ups ?

 

Yes, every tile has two to four navigation points. (Usually two, but I sometimes have to place down more to guide AIs round rocks or other obstacles, mainly in the forest, where parts of rocks tend to protrude into their paths!)

Also, all the tiles generate at once and stay in the scene until the game finishes, then loading another scene (usually triggered by the "return to main menu" button in the race results screen) removes the track instance. (It would be really bad to generate procedurally ALL the tiles dynamically!)

As for skill level... I will have to get more feedback before tuning anything like that, but generally the AIs use Random.Range as a lookup table to adjust how long they should wait before using a power-up.

One way to make it "easy" I guess for newer players would just be to increase the minimum value, as making that minimum small maximizes the chance that an AI will use an item as soon as it's picked up. Adjusting the max value of Random.Range would increase the amount of times an AI is likely to use it straight away after picking it up. Either way, I actually have a fairly flexible way of adding race difficulty settings in.

And overall, the AI's not half-bad. There are still silly flaws in the design that make them easily exploitable though, with the main one caused by the fact that a single missile can take out multiple opponents if they're near the intended target...

 

Consider if it was no power ups , would the AI runs always faster then the player ? Or does AI have some random parameters to race slower when turning in a corner or some random speed slowdowns ?
How do you manage to keep the AI not stay too far away backwards or not go too fast and be far away forward from the player ?

I would destroy tiles after their creation using some time value factor, to keep memory low on mobile if your race track is big.

 

If there was no power-ups at all, then all the AIs simply race normally, with one factor that does influence how they behave; a random turning factor that changes their steering angle a bit. (This was mainly put in place to prevent them driving in a straight line) This is the reason why often at the start of a race, the AIs drift left and right for a few seconds, and make steering adjustments throughout the race overall.

As for actual speed, like I stated before, the AIs are basically the same as the human player, with the AI code used as input, rather than player controls. (I use this method in a different project as well)

I do have some sort of rubber-banding in place, but it only really applies to items, and it's as simple as you can get it. (If player is in last, spam missiles, if in first, drop bombs like crazy... )

As for destroying tiles, the tiles end up destroyed after the match finishes. And plus, if I were to destroy tiles, it would cause AI to fall out of the map if they're still there... And it would trigger the garbage collector, of which I'd rather not do intentionally, even if it happens every now and then anyway.

Also, one thing worth a mention is that the amount of tiles/sections generated for a track isn't random; with the exception of the futuristic environment, the other two environments generate tracks with a maximum of approximately 50 segments. (races on the futuristic environment for some reason were too short on this setting, so it has either 60 or 75 as the segment count) Of course, I can easily set that to 1000... and have a match go for 10 minutes! (Not a good idea on mobile though... )

EDIT: Just looked at them, and the environments have these values for the segment count:

• Desert: 50
• Forest: 50 (might have to be 60, it's races are looking short too... :/)
• Futuristic: 70

 

Hello everyone, I am here to announce a new changelog! And this time around, there will be a new beta build. (The new control layout is not yet done though)

For a couple of days, this will also be the last beta, as I have to get my laptop wiped by my school to clear software licenses off the machine. Oh yea, and reason for this is that I am officially finished Year 12!

ChangeLog:
VISUALS:
- Added a shockwave to the explosion (uses GrabPass): This performed better than I expected, so I kept it in current builds.
- Explosion effects tuned and made bigger: I decided to try and eliminate more overdraw on the explosions, and on top of this, the initial blast is a bit brighter
- Render distance of realtime sphere map camera increased: Now there's a slight bit more detail with "refl" turned on...

CORE:
- Fixed some issues with dash pad generation: Now they are aligned correctly (in most cases) with the track. I also added a user-defined offset to correct an issue in the forest where dash panels weren't visible in a lot of the turns.
- Dash pads now come in groups of two: This was done to stop AIs from bypassing the majority of the dash panels, thus making them more challenging to beat. Also makes it easier for the player to steer into them!
- Engine sounds tuned: They still need work (to my ears they don't quite sound the same as what I envisioned) but they're a bit better, nonetheless.
- Sound added for going over a dash pad: Now when someone (including the player) runs over a dash panel, a massive reaction boom can be heard.
- (LATE ADDITION): Hover bike physics re-done: Now the bikes behave a bit more like F-Zero racing machines. (Stops the bikes from dropping too low to the ground when landing from a massive height!)

ISSUES:
- None yet. When I put out the next beta, feel free to point out any I didn't see...

COMING SOON:
- Customization. Already stated in last changelog, and simply added here to refresh memories.
- Alternate controls: Another thing that was already in the last one as well.
- Music: I've been trying to get a good theme tune out, but haven't quite got it yet. Will let you know of more soon.
- Multi-item pickup (Quick reminder!!! ) This I planned ages ago, then forgot, so next beta will have it!
- Beta build 0.4.4: This will be uploaded today! Will include all major changes since the last one. Unfortunately, the IL2CPP build won't be coming back anytime soon, as Unity still crashes on loading scenes using IL2CPP...

 

Ok people, new beta builds!

Mini Changelog:
VISUALS:
- None

CORE:
- Engine startup sound added: Now engines actually fire up, rather than being constantly on at the startline!

ISSUES:
- None currently, let me know when testing if you find anything wrong.

Jet Rat Speedway Engine Ver 0.4.4:
Link: (new update, link removed)
File Size: 27,404 KB (26.7MB)

INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS:
- First, make sure you device has developer options on. (This may be required to activate unknown sources) On samsung phones, this means tapping the build number in the "about" section a few times to activate it. (If you're a unity dev though, you have probably done this to your phone/tablet already)
2016 Update: It's looking like other devices have this too now... must be becoming a standard.
- Enter the applications menu (or is it developer options? I can't remember... ) and make sure "Install from unknown sources" is checked. This allows the APK to install
- Download from the above link, transfer the APK to your device, then on your device, use the file manager on your device to open it and install.

One more thing; I may have decided a new title; it is...

"Rattus Nitro"

What do you guys think? If you're wondering what "Rattus" is, then simply look up the scientific name of any rat species...

 

Hey people, I am now properly back up and running again. (Machine now running windows 10, and free from school IT department!) Stay tuned for future updates!

One more thing too; I am noticing high CPU usage in the game now, so I will report back with what I find in the profiler. (This is why some recent builds may be a bit slow on some devices)

 

Still haven't got the APK to work, can you give me step by step instructions to install it? it always gives me an error message.

 

I have the same issue, it just crashes after the cutscreen.

As far as "Rattus Nitro" I think it sounds a little... nerdy? Sounds like my science teacher telling me about some hybrid rat.

Anyways, the same looks cool, keep it up.

 

Which build did you download? If you downloaded a previous IL2CPP build, that will crash at startup. (a known Unity bug... )

If however, it's crashing on the normal build... my dev systems up and running again now, will upload a new one.

 

What's it say? One thing as well; Don't use a USB drive to install the game, I found an odd problem where the android device switches to the USB for SD storage, rendering it useless until the system's rebooted. (Not something I can fix, as it's android-specific)

Either way, for android 4.x:
NOTE: These instructions should work for android 5 also, I don't have an android 5 device to test this however.
- First, make sure "unknown sources" is checked in security settings.
if you know ADB commands, skip the next two below:
- Make sure a file explorer app (e.g. ES File Explorer) is installed. (If you download the APK through your phone/tablet, this may not be required in some cases, as the download notification gives you the ability to install directly)
- Either download through your phone/tablet or download through your computer, then transfer to your device. I recommend transferring to either the external SD or the emulated SD card.
If you know ADB commands... just use adb install <apk filename> on the PC to install to android
- Install the game, and test!

 

I redownloaded, installed, and started up the game. After the logos went by I got a blue screen for a bit (like last time) and eventually it loaded up a bunch of weird circles and dots. I furiously tapped the screen hoping something would happen. It did I started a race and got last. I tried reloading the game and it had the same behavior again. I'm not really sure whats going on but it seems the menu scene is not loading the way it should.

As far as the game goes, I was able to load/furiously tap and get it to work twice. It was quite fun actually, I did find the controls something to get used to, I'm not really a fan of the tilt controls, is that an option (I couldnt really explore the menu so I dont know if its an option), if its not though I would suggest making it a setting. I did load the same map both times, the sci-fi map that reminded me of rainbow road, I liked the tract textures and the lens flare, but my phone kept vibrating ever time I got near an edge (which was alot as I sucked at the game ), and that got annoying after a while, my hand felt like they had a seizure after the race.

I will try to reinstall it and see if that works, or maybe my phone isnt able to run the scene right as it is just crap.

The game was fun thow, I enjoyed the super fast feel it had.