[WIP] Alternator Power: (New working title) Arcade racer for Windows 10, Android and SteamOS+Linux

Hi guys.

This game is neoDash, a futuristic arcade racer for android! in this game, you will be flying over ramps, flinging missiles at your opponents, juggling boosters, and tearing around at a CRAZY FAST SPEED!

(EDITED) Still a WIP, but the game's current state is starting to match the description now...
Either way, here are some screens of the game so far (EDITED):




What this game will have at release:

• Items: (UPDATED!) Shield, Uranium Rod (Name suggested by Baldinoboy. special thanks to him for coming up with this! ), Missile, Scatter Missile, V-Bomb (A black hole!!!), InfraRed Mine (With tracking cam!), [NEW!] Scatter Missile (A special missile that spawns three others upon hitting a car... )
• Rev Panel: boost your speed by running over these panels.
• A few decent Single-player modes. (Original decision to have story mode at release was cut, mostly due to the lack of MovieTexture support on Unity Free Below dot point explains strikeout...
  
• Now with Unity 5, I may be able to make this game a lot better performing, depends on if any porting attempts are successful...After some fiddling, the Unity 5 port is ready to roll!

What this game shall have in future, post-release:

• LAN and Online multi-player (Possibly will be added pre-release! )
• More items, if other people wish for more of them! Feel free to suggest power-ups you think would fit this game!
• More tracks. atm, I plan on adding 10 tracks to the game initially, but for those tracks that missed out... will be added in these future updates! I also plan to try and squeeze the entire game into 50 MB if I can for first release.So far, due to stage file size, not gonna happen...
  
• After fixing some weird issues, Unity 5 porting has been successful! So expect some awesome visual changes down the road.

What do you think?

I also ask, can any of you do track and car designs? I have a collaboration thread here for cars:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/car-designs-and-models-needed.267973/

If you wish to contribute to track design, this is the place to go:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/for-wip-game-track-design-comp-for-splashdown.268385/

NEW: If you want to help beta-test the game (Like one kind Unity Forum User has been doing for me! ) then feel free to drop me an email at neubot321@gmail.com!

Oh, and I also forgot to mention: this is (possibly...) my first game! so wish me luck guys!

Also, who would like LAN/ad-hoc/online multi-player for initial release? Since I wrote a framework for another game, I was considering throwing it into this one straight after everything else is done and ready! The next release of Unity 5.x might have the new API in it, and if so, then I have some re-writing to do...

 

Cool man. I think the hardest part of games like this is the maps. Design open, fun, and living maps and this will be a hit.

By the way instead of Boost Bottle what about Uranium Rod. Could be like the cars are nuclear powered.

 

@Baldinoboy:

Now THAT'S AN IDEA!
Once I get time, I will add this promptly!

And I agree about the maps. the map there you see is a test one. the actual maps should look, feel, and, er, race far better!

 

I Know these are not the final maps. Just meant later on in development. Will be difficult but will pay off.

 

@Baldinoboy: Well, one thing I could ask for is: how's about you try designing a map? I am not sure if my collaboration thread's up yet, (still waiting for moderator approval... ) but when it's up, I will update the first post with a link.

The collaboration thread is there for people to give a shot at designing a track, then posting it there. that way, I can then make a poll/vote on which tracks should make it into the initial 10 to start with. (all other designs will be added in future updates) Sounds cool, right?

(up top ^) I am also planning a similar thing with the car designs, but more on that later.

EDIT: the collaboration thread, I got the wrong way round: the one I posted is actually my car design thread! I will have a track design thread up when I next get the chance, as right now, I'm supposed to be in bed...

 

Ok, one more thing to add; a playthrough!
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2tqYgzg1_lWUVpVOGxLOFQ4djg/preview

Note you have to download this vid to display it, as for some reason, playing from google drive won't work...

EDIT: Link changed, now it should play in your browser!

 

I am busy with things but any time I have I would like to help out. Have not worked with Sci-Fi stuff yet but wanted to give it a try anyway.

 

@Baldinoboy: cool. I actually banged out a really LONG track last night. once I get around to modelling it, I will post the finished track.

EDIT: also note, the playthrough has a different shield shader, which explains the bubble reflection...

 

Ok people, track design thread is up. to access, click link in first post. PM me or post there if you have any questions.

 

Another playthrough, now showcasing the new speed bar. this charges at the beginning of a race when you press the accelerate button, but too high and... you spin out! (This part isn't finished yet!)
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2tqYgzg1_lWUVpVOGxLOFQ4djg/preview
I also plan to speed up the cars a bit more, as I think this is a bit slow for a sci-fi game, don't you think?

 

Man. Is really playable already. Really nice.

 

...And about to get both a drift and rocket start mechanic!

Also, what do you think of the sounds? (Also, was the sound on when you viewed it? )

 

The sound was on and was good.

 

Cool! BTW, added primitive drift mechanic. now for tuning and particle decoration...

 

Now drifting & rocket start are complete!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2tqYgzg1_lWV3ZxZVJnd3hubGM&authuser=0

I also added the speed bar (more like a speed coil... ) and a basic form of jostling. (not really noticeable though... )

 

bump

 

Time to check the tracks thread guys, I uploaded rendered images form blender!

 

New playthrough!
Changelog:

• Drifting is now more mario-kart style
• sped up cars to 24 units
• speed fx. now edges of screen streak when running over rev panel. FOV also changes dynamically with speed.
• increased player count to 12.
• added GUI Skin to actual game script (Was only on main menu and options menu before!)
• Missiles make gong-electric explosion sound when it hit's an opponent. This is easily heard throughout the race, as players/AIs take each other out...
• The AIs now turn in mid-air again. Also, AIs use items more viciously. (meant to increase difficulty, as the AIs were too soft... )

Video link: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2tqYgzg1_lWSi1QUGJCZUJ3Ymc/preview

 

Looks really good man. The ai are presenting a challenge. That is always important.

Instead of the car going up in the air you should just lose traction for a few seconds. Each missile should do more damage, depending on the cars strength, and eventually explode.

When I can design a track what do you think about flying. You do not have to make a flying script. I can just put a track and remove the mesh renderer. So you would be flying through a metropolis.

 

@Baldinoboy: flying... maybe I can consider that in the updates that follow, but for now, I am having issues with performance on my Pendo Pad, and need to fix them. (It's CPU-bound, and that is probably because all the cars use rigidbodies... Also mean't I had to drop the number of players to 6 again, as it was doing 9fps on 12... )

It appears at this point that the only major physics component I could change to in order to increase performance is a character controller, but I have had bad "bouncing" experiences with those...

If I did make the change properly, however, I could apply artificial gravity, and use a stabilizer, and that would fix the cars flying up into the air. (All those times they flew upwards... wasn't supposed to happen! ) and having the car stabilizing to the plane would eliminate the bouncing too.

 

Been having ideas to make a game like this!
Massive Fan for Arcade Racers Can't wait to try the final product!

How many players are you considering for multiplayer?

 

Heh. I thought the bouncing was on purpose.

I did not even know Unity physics could work on android.

Hope you can get it working good.

 

@Baldinoboy: Yes, atm, I am attemting to eliminate needless stuff. (I found a way of using only capsule colliders around the length of the car, that way mesh colliders are gone, of which could do speedup) I also increased the gravity, and the mass, of the cars, and now the cars don't fly up as much!

@Ra1den: So you want multi-player too? well then, I shall put it in first release!
As for number of players though... that depends on how many AIs my Pendo pad can handle... As of last night, putting in 12 made it LAG BADLY, and I had to drop it back to 6... Right now, I am optimizing stuff the best I can, including caching rigidbodies. (Is it true that the quick access modifiers are a performance problem? An answer to this question helps! )

And also, if you know some good ideas for tracks, feel free to drop a design in the tracks thread! I'm open to any sort of criticism! Also, if you wish, I can PM you an alpha build to do performance testing. (It worked ok on my pendo pad, until the stuff happening in the game got intensive, and that was when the CPU started taking 30ms! a friend of mine's Xperia Z runs it fine though.)

It is also about time I put the online functionality in too, so I have a decent game to test my home-built master server with! (Been dying to do this, as I wanted to see how a Dell mini 9 with Xubuntu 14.04 would handle 1000 players!)

 

Guys... THE CARS NO LONGER FLY UPWARDS ON COLLISION! YEAAAAA!

Also wondering how I would go about pushing cars away from each other on collision. so far, the "fly-upwards" bug occurs still when this occurs!

 

You could try to reduce the fixed time step for physics calculation, as long as you get the desired results. Also where are you calculating your AI? In Update()? If yes I suggest you to move the AI into a coroutine which updates every second+random.value and not every frame ( 60 fps = 60x ai code execution) !

And yes if you acces often per script onto your components it would be better to cache them in a variable at start. I heard that UT are slowly increasing the performance with this quick access, but I am not sure when this happens.

 

@0tacun: sounds like an idea! I am actually using FixedUpdate for calculations, but moving them anywhere else breaks the AI...

I could do it that way by operating a timer in FixedUpdate, and only calling a function once the passed time reaches 1 or something. Or maybe every time a car hits a waypoint...

 

Well, I might as well post my 3D modelling progress on the first track here as well as on the tracks thread:

What do you think? Also note, it's rendered in blender, not Unity! (Wish we had such pretty visuals though... )

 

This looks great!!

I just watched your video from earlier post. The game-play is looking great.

I would love to see a PC version with wheel support

 

@Zaddo67:

erm, sorry? What do you mean by wheel- *brainfart* Oh!
Now I get it! Racing wheel, right? I was definitely thinking of putting this on PC too, maybe even at release. I am just not sure where to put PC version yet... Also, as far as I know, Racing wheels operate on the X-axis, if I'm correct.

 

6 is Plenty! Back in the day 4 players used to be the max!

You should have some crazy expansive tracks! like racing in space or Next to a star or something! ^^

 

@Ra1den:

This guy's flooding with ideas I see!
BTW, Mario Kart has 12 maximum online. imagine 16 players though... HECK YEA!
And I was thinking of a track where you're racing through clouds too!

 

@FuzzyQuills
Noo wayy! Mario Kart had 16? I remember it on gamcube wasn't it like 8 only? 0____0
Think bigger! Planets! Nebulas! Black holes! (clouds has been done before in other games )

 

@Ra1den: No, no, I said, imagine if there was 16! (Actually, I am pretty sure Sugar Rush on Wreck-it Ralph showed 16 players on the grid)
And yes, Gamecube/NDS/3DS/N64/SNES was only 8. Wii and Wii U versions have 12. And I was thinking, Racing up a GIANT track going away from a planet, then a GIANT hairpin, back down again!

Nebulas... Not sure of what to think of that, most nebulas are like clouds: go inside one, and it just looks like stars and dust!

Black Holes... Interesting! would cause problems once it suck in the track though! (Technically speaking)

Also means if, I end up adding features like this, I will need to write a good culling system to remove unneeded vertices during render. (And that is simply because, frustum culling works, but it means having to still load vertices. MY culling system will disable out-of-view mesh renderers, meaning it doesn't even need to load the mesh in the first place!)

 

Hi guys, been a while since I posted a playthrough, but finally worked out most of the performance bugs. 12 players still lag on low-end hardware though... And I do know the culprit now: it's the AI players! Probably all the waypoint look-ups...

So, without further ado... here is a realtime demo of the (almost complete) lighting system! almost... smooth fade sometimes doesn't work when switching probes, and no car shadows yet... Also, system works like a charm on mobile devices.

Video link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2tqYgzg1_lWNG9ub0ZhZ0o1Ujg&authuser=0

Also note... leave Google Drive some time to convert the link if it says, "Whoops! This video is not yet processed."

 

New screenshots. This shows cars in shadow:

...And normal lighting! Missile isn't affected by lights however:

Also, ironically, both were taken when I was boosting the car!

 

bump

 

Hi again!
New rendered image of the first track, of which hasn't been textured yet, but is finished otherwise!

I plan to create textures soon.

 

Lighting has improved!

Also set quality to highest level (Has 2x MSAA turned on as well) That is also why the framerate is only 100. (Usually get 550-1000fps, 60-30 on tablet)

 

Ok, I have decided on the final player count. it is... *drums rolling*
...10 PLAYERS! *crash!*
My reasons for this decision: basically, I want this game to be highly playable on most android devices, including the $2 phones you pick up off the ground. (Just Kidding! ) And I also wanted a high player count, to add a decent amount of variety to the game. Initially, I was going to settle on 16, but only 12 players was enough to bring down performance significantly, so I went back to 6. After tuning the physics engine though... it was possible to have more players at once. so I first tried 8, then 12, then 10.

The results (Note that I am guessing the frame-rate numbers from how much stuttering I get):

• 8 players: stable 60 fps. Not an option, since most arcade racers use 8 players, and I wish to make this game more unique that way.
• 12 players: 50-30 fps. Reasonable, but the play-field was too cluttered, and the game didn't perform all that well.
• 10 players: 60 fps (Occasional stutter, mostly a tablet driver bug) This was perfect, as it had a really good balance of number of players, and performance.

So the final decision is 10 players. What do you think? I also am working on the instantiation system, as there is a bug where the car's are placed back on the track (after falling off of course) the wrong way round sometimes...

EDIT: Old post, I know, but the stutter ended up being caused by my ranking system doing sorts every frame...

 

(test post)

 

3D modelling of the first course is complete!
A rendered view from blender:

Feel free to use this for a desktop wallpaper, I don't mind!

Pitty games of this quality aren't possible in free version...

EDIT: Well, two of the buildings are still missing textures, but that's easily fixed!

 

Heeey! Not looking too bad!

 

Bump

 

Still working on the level above... I now have it mostly playable, but now the missiles make the cars fall through the floor...

 

Ok people... new playthrough... OF THE FIRST COMPLETE TRACK!
Link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2tqYgzg1_lWQi0xQUJBYVNBQjA&authuser=0 (NOTE: Video may not play initially! simply wait a little while for it to convert in Google Drive before viewing! )

I also recommend you put on earphones to hear this, as my music isn't quite perfect yet... (Some parts too quiet! )

Screenshots for those not able to view videos at this time...




Also, who wouldn't mind testing an APK? for those with android devices, I can send a dev build via PM for testing. lower-end devices also welcome, as I wish to target these as well.

I also fixed the "falling-through-the-floor-on-missile-hit" bug, it turns out I was translating the car BELOW THE FLOOR when a missile hit it, aka. old, dead code that should have left the room ages ago!

 

bump

 

sountrack has been remixed, will upload playthrough soon.

Also changed a couple of instruments...

 

Hey FuzzyQuills. Did not get any message of any post. Watching the thread does nothing for me. It is looking amazing. Will be happy to try out the apk. Have a decent tablet to try it out on.

 

@Baldinoboy: I actually am working on the game now, so I can definitely record a quick playthrough!

Will PM the APK to you. Only problem is that the game exceeds 50MB atm. (I am trying to compress the textures to the smallest size possible, as they are the culprit! )

EDIT: It's actually smaller than I expected! Sent link to Inbox!

 

Works on my tablet like a charm. A quite fun charm too. Really great job.

I am quite upset as I placed 9th.

Keep it up. This is coming along great.