I recently started this little prototype to test out few ideas.
One of the goal was to experiment with the car handling, something arcade but that would feel dynamic. I wanted also to be a two button gameplay, you don't have to hold a direction to turn. If you press a button the car will start to turn 90 degrees. It was inspired by the Die Hard game on PS1 where you could just do 90 degrees drifts to take corners.
Another idea I wanted to experiment with was with videos. Playing a video on a hit is a bit jarring but also quite fun and sell the crash better than any screen shake or effects. I was quite please to see that playing a video is video instantaneous.
This is not a game at the moment.
There is some obstacles to avoid but this is more to test the car handling and crashing. When I have more time I would like to try having a proper road system you would have to follow.
There is also a bunch of obvious issues like going out of the screen or the collisions precision. My focus was more on how it felt overall.
I rally like it.
Right now the car may feel a bit too hard to control, the speed you gain becomes way too high in a very small amount of time, but I like the idea of keeping it a rather hard game.
Also, I felt like a few crashing videos are about 1 second too long.
Very nice prototype anyway!
EDIT: alright I noticed there's a setting for the game style. Default style makes the car reasonably controllable.
Yeah the initial balancing I did is easier to control. But it was also a bit too slow which mean there was very little risk which doesn't really feel like Rally to me.
That's why I did a more extreme version. But the proper balance will be done when I know what the game will be of course.
No right now the videos are purely random. My original idea would be to have videos with some meta data, to compile the videos that fit the impact (speed, drift, collision type etc.) and to pick a random one in the list.
Now I am not sure it is worth the effort. The video is there to sell the impact and the randomness is kind of fun. It also feel very special when the video matches perfectly what you did.
It might just depend how much time I can dedicate to the project.
(I have so much fond memories of Excite Truck. This is one of the games we were using to showcase the Wii when it was just a gamecube with some wired motion controls)
