I've run out of time today, will try for a new build tomorrow @NewJorg
In other news I've increased the number of sprites for each car from 32x3 to 32x9 so now it will show weight transfer to front/rear (braking/accelerating) as well as to left/right (turning)
bonus: the test Renault Twingo sprite sheet looks mesmerising!
Thanks for letting me know! Given this most unnacceptable delay (
), may I make a feature request? Can your game have an Isetta or its modern spiritual successor, the Microlino? image|666x500
Rebuild for 0.11.0 of the old July version is in the post above: Matt's Prototypes - #44 by matt
Praise be to source control!
I also added some quick menus:
Enjoy @NewJorg!
Hey Matt -
This is great, thank you. I have played the first level several times and it's great fun drifting and turning already. And that's a high compliment seeing as I've just spent the evening playing the beautiful art of rally on PC.
I noticed a couple of things and am curious if they're unique to my device / installation:
Sometimes even though I am pushing A and other buttons, the game won't respond, as if all input is turned off.
On another occasion, the car suddenly stopped and no button presses made a difference. I had to wait a few seconds and eventually the game let me accelerate/turn again.
Selecting "next stage" gave me a "cannot resume dead coroutine" error screen a few times but I just tried it again and it's suddenly working.
Hope this is helpful in some way? 
Cannot wait to see where you take it next. Now, if you excuse me, I'll return to playing it now.
J
Sorry I forgot about those!
They are issues in 0.11.0, I'll update the build when 0.11.1 is released
As long as my Playdate isn’t broken, I’m happy! Looking forward to the next update!
Finally! Back on it after a bit of a break. 0.11.x was not kind to my game.
First draft of weight transfer is in, so the car nose raises during acceleration and dips during braking. Coupled with the existing left and right tilt during turning, the cars have never felt more alive - the visual feedback really adds something extra, even with this test/unretouched rendered sprite.
From here I want to finesse this it a little bit more, so that cars level out after the initial acceleration/braking.
Superb. Can’t wait to play it!
Still some 0.11.x vs 0.10.x quirks to iron out before i can do a working build of the last demo, thanks for your patience @NewJorg !
I’ll try to be strong!
New 0.11.1 demo has been added above!
Note: you might want to mount device as data disk then delete any previous install of the game and any settings folder.
Thanks Matt! I just gave it a whirl and the controls are super responsive and fun!
Does the game register laps yet or am I just doing it wrong?
Really love how it's coming together. I've been on a racing car trip lately and you've already distilled some of the best feelings we get from them into this tiny screen.
J
Thanks!
In this old build lap checkpoints are probably broken if it shows anything. Maybe they work on some levels that I did not include in this demo. Next time!
Ah, cool. It’s not clear to me what my path should be (unless it’s freestyle): do I have to circle around each cone, hit them or avoid them altogether?
That said, it would be great to have a challenge / achievement system where the player has to “draw” specific shapes as fast as possible without hitting any cones!
In this demo it's up to you.
There's a timer if you want to try to hit all the cones (it will stop when they're all hit).
Or create your own routes and do them as fast as possible.
BUT, since this demo there are now many objectives of different types, plus a freestyle mode where you can just skid around the screen with no goal. I have played with the idea of a gesture recogniser but... probably not.
One of the challenges I'm wrestling with is how to represent the path around the cones in that mode - whether to use numbers, or arrows, or a "next gate" marker, or... something else. Fun to figure this stuff out!
In preparation for regenerating my many cars with x3 the number of sprites, I thought I'd try to sort the rendered frames automatically into named folders because this is fiddly manual work I really don't enjoy, and a bit of a bottleneck in my asset generation. For each pose I have to render the frames then group the new image files into a folder that describes that pose, as these multiple folders are later be used for batch processing.
I could use macOS Folder Actions for this, but I've been using an app called Hazel for many years to do this sort of thing, so that was my first choice.
The hard work is done with a shell script, as I'm quite comfortable writing those.
This means that the folder name will change based on the render settings in the file — perfect!
I still have to make 9 small sets of manual text changes to render each car pose, so that's the next thing I'll try to automate by running OpenSCAD from the command line.
Well forget all that from yesterday, wasted effort.
I've just finished a new workflow solely using the command-line!
this sprite has had no manual touch up - it is the best render result i've had without manual work.
i can now quickly iterate, tweaking the model to make sure elements render nicely in the final sprite.
The beauty of the command line!
If I run all the renders one after the other, maxing out a single CPU core (100% CPU usage): ~17 seconds
But with a simple & I can run them in parallel (well, one process each) using all 6 CPU cores (~450% CPU usage): 10 seconds
I hope you're safe and well and wish you a great 2021. I'm back at it, and am confident this year will be the year of Daily Driver and more besides!
Recent work on the game includes improvements to the physics of in-game objects and creation of yet more vehicles and levels.
"The car's the star", as they say, so I have sunk untold hours into both the physics and graphics of many different cars to ensure that the depth of control and animation is enough to hold a players interest for the time I hope they will spend with my game. There's no final vehicle line-up, as often some cars don't look unique enough after the first rough model is tested in the game. But these two are keepers!
Interestingly, both these vehicles show off one aspect of the game that I've not really talked about so far: reference and nods to classic games. Here we can see an RC car (whose antenna wobbles!) that is a nod to games like Re-volt, RC Revenge, Smash Cars, RC de Go!, Excite Truck, RC Pro-Am etc. And the forklift is a nod to Shenmue and the infamous New Yokosuka Harbor District.
BONUS
I forgot to post my logo tests from December in this thread. These actually aren't used in the game exactly like this but that's a post for another day.
English uses Futura Bold Oblique.
Japanese uses a custom typeface of my own.
Influenced by all the old Japanese PC magazines I've read and games I've played/swooned at over the years.
