Super Truckin' - Multiplayer mini games

We here at in8b.it would like to introduce "Super Truckin'". We have been working on it for the past several months and are excited to show it to you guys. Questions and comments are always welcome!


Launching of our Steam GREENLIGHT is underway!
Please check us out and if you like it please vote for us here!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=332377826

Video of a soccer level match!

•“Super Off Road”-style game play
•Up to 8-player multiplayer
•Mini game-style levels
•Themed trucks
•Customizable truck items
•“Mario Kart”-style power-ups
•Cross platform (mobile and PC)
•Unique controls


Check us out at http://in8bitblog.wordpress.com/

more pictures at http://imgur.com/a/XY8ht

 

Gameplay animation of the gameplay showing off 2 items.

 

Very funny to play in my opinion, simple and addictive

 

Powerups!!!




Barrel: These little guys you can lay anywhere and act like a mine. They explode causing your truck to go flying.

Fire Balls: You shoot 2 fireballs that can knock anyone out of the way. Great for offense and defense.

Oil Slick: Lay down one of these and anything that runs over it slides across the level with almost no control. Watch out!

Mega Truck: Ever wanted to just smash into everything? Well here is your chance. Mega truck makes you bigger, stronger, and heavier. Plow through anyone and everything.

The Dozer: Flips trucks and other objects behind you. Giving you that great feeling of ruining their day.

Electro Ball: This bad boy is like having a wrecking ball attached to your truck. swinging it into anything will send them flying. Its a great way to create enemies!

 

And we have the Racing level up and going. It is a ton of fun using all the power-ups and turboing all over the course. Need to watch out for the crane because it will knock you out if you're not careful.




Blog | Twitter

 

Just got the AI running on this map. Caught it mid jump right after the box spawned and you can see a bomb in the center of the jump. The crane is ready to block anyone trying to go through.



Blog | Twitter

 

We have been playing with different types of controllers for the game and here is one of the things that we have come up with.


Using your smart phone as the controller you can connect to your PC and race, smash, and score!

We are currently focused on a PC/Android release where you use your Android phone as the controller to the Super Truckin’ game running on your PC. Initial tests with Android tablets, iPads and the Ouya has shown that we can leverage all of these as second screens as well – so when we get closer to being done we hope to try and support those too.

Each of the three initial levels we have created allows up to eight different people to control eight separate trucks on the same screen at the same time, over the local Wi-Fi.


Today the controller is where you select your truck color, find the game that is already started on the PC and then join it. We are hoping to add more to the controller in time with vehicle add-ons truck selection and similar, but at this early stage customization is just color. Once joining a Super Truckin’ game you turn your truck by turning your phone like a steering wheel (leveraging the accelerometer), gas by pressing the right hand side of the phone, and after picking up a power up you can press the left hand side of the screen to use it. Double tapping the gas will enable turbos and releasing the gas for a quick second turns the turbo’s off. Tapping the center of the screen will honk the truck horn and also display your name on screen in case you lost your truck after getting blown up or respawning after going out of bounds.

What do you guys think?

Blog | Twitter

 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Super Truckin'

With AI comes many complications. We not only wanted AI for racing, but we wanted it for all of our game types. I would like to go over what we needed for the game type, what problems happened and how we battled it. If you'd like to see some code let me know! Want be in the beta? contact us! https://twitter.com/in8bitgames

-Soccer-
Need: Each AI follows the ball to knock it into the opposing goal.

First thing we needed to add was how to track a single way-point. This is pretty standard and allowing our trucks to follow a way-point was pretty straight forward.


You want to hit a ball... you make the ball the way-point and your done. Right? Wrong! this will allow the AI to just smash into the ball with no clear direction. The soccer field will be like a 5 year old playing pool and smashing the ball off every wall in hopes to make it in the pocket.

So we thought about adding direction. Adding this was a little bit more complicated, we had to basically get the AI to get behind the ball and aim it towards the goal. Math cant do this? or can it! We need to know the goal and ball location, the direction in which to hit the ball towards the goal and some math magic to get the arch to go around the ball. Our first test results with this logic.


Whew... we started playing with it... and wow... this made it a lot harder to play against. They would steal the ball away from you and try to knock it towards their goal. It is not perfect but it works pretty well.

The problem with this approach is it acts as if the target is stationary for that moment in time. By the time the next update happens the trajectory changes. This makes the AI not as accurate when the ball is moving quickly.

That is all it really took to get AI working for soccer. Can we make it better? Oh yes, there are many ways to improve it. We could look at the trajectory of the ball, and speed of the vehicle and account that in the algorithm to where it needs to hit the ball. Eventually we will add this but for now the AI is already pretty challenging. If you guys want it to be harder then we wont want to disappoint.

-Hay-
Need: Each player tries to go for the hay and knock it out of the arena

We now have single way-point navigation, all we need to really do is turn off ability for aiming it towards a soccer goal. Sweet! Done and done... until we tried it....


They became experts in finding the hay, and knocking it out before you ever have a chance to get to it as well. They were impossible to play against and it wasn't fun.

So we added Object avoidance Which i will explain later. not only are they trying to always hit the hay, but they are actively trying to avoid it as well. This nifty trick made them just easy enough to be playable. They don't score every time they get the hay just like a real player would.

-Racing-
Need: Each player follows the track.

So adding onto the single way-point system we already have. we needed to add more to be able to allow the AI to follow a track. Awesome, easy enough. Just make the way-point a list of way-points and when it gets close to the current way-point make it go to the next one.



So now we have an AI set up for our racing level but this is when we saw problems we were not expecting.

The problem we had with this approach was we have several areas that a vehicle can get knocked into (such as the quad jump and hills they can fall off of) and how does the AI react when this happens? Right now they will keep trying to get to the next way-point and get stuck on a wall. So how we battled this was to implement zones. This allowed the AI to validate that this is the zone it should be in, and if not to react by either going to a new way-point or follow the track where it dropped like a normal player would.

Bad behavior:



Good behavior with Zones:



AWESOME! it looks like we have a way-point system and a zone system that the AI follows and if knocked out of either system it can figure its way back. We now have pretty amazing race AI.



-Object Avoidance-

I believe this needed its own section because we have now integrated this behavior in each of our AI's.
• In every Level (especially racing) the trucks would pile up leaning into each other as they go to a way-point, ball or hay. This caused the trucks to crash and slow down and didn't look fluid. I could easily pass them when they are in this state.
• Early tests on the Soccer level you would see the vehicles stuck against a wall because they were trying to go through the wall to get to the other side of the ball.
• Testing the hay level they would pile up more than hitting the hay as well as clipping edges of jumps and causing them to lose control all the time.

The answer to these issues is to make the cars see. we basically gave them eyes so that they can listen to things around them and react. This changed our game. This made the AI react in ways that were more what a player would. It felt they were more human when obstacles popped up.



we added ray's in front of the vehicles that listen to touching objects such as cars, sides of jumps, and walls. Left ray is touched turn to the right, right ray is touched turn to the left.

We could add the barrel mine to the things to avoid but this gif wouldn't have been as awesome.


It has been a lot of trial and error. Testing constantly with and without people. We think we have solid AI for each level and each having completely different behaviors. Are we done with the AI? nope! We do plan to constantly improve and balance each level to make them as fun as possible.

Thank you guys for reading and check back often for more awesome posts! If you guys want more information about anything else we have done please let us know!

 

Update on progress!

Lots of amazing happings to get this game closer to release!

• We have added some background music to each level as well as some engine/dirt sounds.
• The Dozer has a new graphic.
• The FireBalls are now physics based and will now go up and off of ramps and jumps
• The race level has checkponts you need to go through to complete a lap.
• The race level also now displays your position every time you go through a checkpoint above your vehicle.
• We changed the center of gravity on the trucks and added sparks when they hit eachother or walls.
• If you are using your phone as a controller we added the turbo meter and what powerup you picked up.

Right now we are concentrating on UI on both the actual game as well as the phone controller.
The changes we have changed since this design are that all the signs are now floating and not going to be part of the actual level (will help when porting to all the crazy resolution screens that android has.

Here is our initial prototype of the phone controller menu's

 

From Dino, our sound/art guy:
Making of Super Truckin's Music. #1 can be found on http://in8b.it

Although my mind changes depending on my mood, the Future Soccer level is my current favorite, and thus we will begin there…

Imagine playing soccer in space. What would that sound like? This was the challenge Alex and Jason brought to me for this level. A futuristic setting calls for some type of electronic music, so I immediately knew I wanted some nice synths. I didn’t, however, want to lose sight of the fact that this was still a soccer match…it needed an anthem, something with a catchy melody that would be easy to chant. What I needed was the lovechild of the Fifa’s Ole’ and Depeche Mode. Inspiration in hand, I went to work. Once I achieved something that I liked, I used a place holder synth to hold that melody and put it on repeat. With that on loop, I can start to play around with some new ideas.

http://w.soundcloud.com/player?url=...ay=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true

Next, I started testing out drum patterns until something felt right. Often, I don’t know what I am about to play and begin by just simply hitting random notes. Hearing them play will often spark an idea – as if I am not really playing it, only listening and anticipating what the music might do next. I expected to come out of this song with a simple 4 to the floor kick, with a snare on 2 and 4 (which is common in most electronic music), so I am pleasantly happy with the drums because they have a bit of a hiccup by dropping the last kick.

http://w.soundcloud.com/player?url=...ay=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true

So at this point I have a melody and a basic drum rhythm…which means it’s time to add some personality – a little bit of flair, if you will. Creativity and an open mind can go far, but patience is really the key in this department. I found this sound that when held sounded neat, but when played percussively had such awesome and different character. I’m a big advocate for trying every avenue when you are creating something – you’ll never know when you’ll create something beautiful out of an idea you almost dismissed for insanity.

http://w.soundcloud.com/player?url=...ay=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true

Now the song is at a point where it is ear friendly – basically meaning that it’s listenable and easy to understand. At this point, I’ll let the team listen and get feedback, as well as any concerns. Compliments never hurt either

Our journey for the week is at an end and I’m pleased to share all the put together pieces that make up what I consider the backbone of the music for the Soccer Level.

http://w.soundcloud.com/player?url=...ay=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true

On an ending note….a word of advice. If I ever find myself overwhelmed and hitting a wall, I either take a break, or start on a different song. It can be frustrating, but even a little bit of progress can create momentum towards completion and sometimes taking a step back is the best thing for the big picture.

 

Been working hard on getting this game closer and closer to release.

We have just updated the soccer level's graphics.

Top is the old design and bottom is the new design.
We wanted the levels to have more texture work and a higher quality to them. In doing this we are also updating the vehicles texture/models as well.

 

We have been doing a lot of graphical changes lately.

We used to have way to many draw calls and with all these new changes we are considerably less.
Along with the graphical changes we are doing a texture pass and the first thing hit was the futuristic truck (shown in the picture below). We will be doing a pass on the other trucks and powerups in the near future.

We also added Sounds to the vehicles/weapons/goals.
UI and menus are still being worked on and hope to finish within the week.
After that we hope to do some final passes on the other 2 levels as well.

 

Just added a video of a soccer level match! check it out!

 

We are getting closer and closer to a steam greenlight push and we are extremely excited. I have been getting the game ready for a demo-able state while the rest of the team has been working on the greenlight page/trailer/webpage.

The UI Menus at the beginning of the game has gone through some revisions and is just about finished. The menu system is currently 3 states: Join, Select Team, Configure. Where selecting team is currently only enabled for the soccer level.

 

Launching of our Steam GREENLIGHT is underway!
Please check us out and if you like it please vote for us here!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=332377826