Looking tremendous, and a ton of fun to play. I agree about the tires of the other 2 cars, but I know ogre can be hard to tame when using different materials and stuff, and other that that, I think you have nailed it!
spent a little bit of time making some mock-ups thinking about how a few menus might work. The idea for the main menu is that the elements fly in from the edges of the screen, and a model of your character / kart on a stand screws into place from the bottom off screen.
The customization menu will be able to handle all your kart and character customization or tuning. The left of the screen is where you will pick which element you are changing, and you can browse through your options on the right side, as well and pull it out further like a drawer with the red arrow to view more options at one time. The bottom of the screen is where your customizable color swatch options will appear for the item you have selected.
Woah! Congrats on everything, this is going to be a great realease.
Do you plan to allow for user made customisation? It would be great to have custom heads, gloves, and wheels ... I am sure this would be hugely successful amongst modelers, and you could pick the ones you like and later add them to the game.
Do you plan to support normalmpas for characters? I think the default avatars are better without them but maybe allowing them for custom content would make for some nice visual contrast! Obviously, overdetailled normals would look like crap in there (you have a perfect shape unity and density atm, it would be a shame to break it), but if the normals are used to define broad shapes wedging together it could add a nice touch to future chars.
yes, user customization is going to be a huge part of the game, which means supporting custom models for all the karts and characters and accessories, as well as custom levels and custom gameplay modes in those levels via Lua scripts.
Right now we have no plans to support normal maps, although as it stands nothing would stop people from doing it since our renderer supports them. We are trying to keep the game somewhat low spec, which for now means pretty much only diffuse maps and single level environment maps. This keeps the look consistent as well as cutting down the content creation time.
we have recently been working on testing out our first test of some gameplay rules. In order to get a better grip on how our rules system is going to be layed out we are doing a quick game of tag, where the person who is "it" the longest wins, and whenever you run into the person who is it you become it. We are about halfway done with the mode, and have already happened upon some important fixes and tweaks in the process that will help us once we start on a racing mode.
Here is a screenshot of the level I made in the last few days to play tag in.
This weekend we are having another lan party in which we are going to test out the game mode with around 8 people hopefully. I will be capturing footage to make into another video.
In this video we are using a “Tag” type game mode as an intitial test of our gameplay scripting system. Using the experience from this we will design bigger and more exciting gameplay!
In this mode, players compete for the longest amount of time being "IT". The longer you are "IT" the more points you rack up. There is also a 3 second immunity after you have become "IT". For this level, we also made points accumulate faster the closer you are to the middle, to encourage people to duke it out in the middle ring.
The test was a lot of fun, and gave us a lot of ideas and feedback for how we are going to implement more gameplay features in the near future!
This is excellent!
Thought about implementing visual representations (customizable) of vehicle attribute enhancement? (IE: increase your vehicle's acceleration attribute and your cart's engine is represented as larger or different than the default engine. Increase your vehicle's handling attribute and perhaps the tires are widened beyond that of the default tire size). Such a feature might allow other players to visually tell what the strengths and weaknesses of their competition might be, before or during a match. This way, you could avoid having to apply specific default attributes to vehicles or players like Mario Kart does. This way, one man's pink pinto might not be the same as his competitor's pink pinto.
This is excellent!
Thought about implementing visual representations (customizable) of vehicle attribute enhancement? (IE: increase your vehicle's acceleration attribute and your cart's engine is represented as larger or different than the default engine. Increase your vehicle's handling attribute and perhaps the tires are widened beyond that of the default tire size). Such a feature might allow other players to visually tell what the strengths and weaknesses of their competition might be, before or during a match. This way, you could avoid having to apply specific default attributes to vehicles or players like Mario Kart does. This way, one man's pink pinto might not be the same as his competitor's pink pinto.
I really like the spirit of that idea, and I think it is a healthy medium between some debates me and my partner have a lot about tying kart appearance to the stats of your vehicle. I have always thought that tying the visual models to performance elements would be very in-elegant - but simply modifying the scale and positioning across all assets according to your stats would be very elegant if you could make it all fit. I think it's a great idea!
As you might have noticed in our last video, we have started putting particles in our game. For the non-developers out there, particles are how we create effects such as explosions, weather, dust or any situation where we need to animate some kind of graphical effect using many graphics moving together in a certain way. We are using an excellent particle library called Particle Universe which allows you to create these effects in a script type format. Here are a couple of effects I have been working on lately using this system.
Here is a snippet of the script of the second explosion effect, detailing how the system should animate the fireball part of the explosion:
real quick post, we just got our new level up and running for the next game mode we are building for the next video. Wanted to post a quick screenshot.
It needs some asteroids orbiting the map and planets in the distance, maybe even a comet flying by. Id bump up the cloudiness in the star field. I think it will help make it less stark, and more friendly.
Also you might want to make a astronaut helmet for the players if your making space maps.
No mater what this game is looking very slick already!
damn ! you guys keep evolving !i reeealy like the colored look of everything ! my suggestiuon might be a tad weird, but what about giving everything outlines ? it would accentuante the cartoony look and make it more interesting in my opinion
Dude, this looks fantastic! I don't even really care for cart racing games, but this one looks like a ton of fun! Can't wait to see/ play the final product!
I can see what people mean about the similarities to Mario Kart, and that might be cause for some worry. Honestly, though, with the customization, unique vehicles, and some sweet game modes, I wouldn't look at it so much as an MK clone as a fun cross between Little Big Planet and Mario Kart.
yea, I might play with doing outlines on the characters and kart via a shader at some later time, I'm not sure we are really going for a fully cel shaded look though. It could help the characters stand out though.
We are not too worried about being compared to mario kart - we are just aiming to be the most fun kart racing game on the PC. It's going to have lots of PC platform strengths that have never really been applied to a kart racing title before ( versatile multiplayer support, customization of game modes and visuals )
Looking excellent man. Love the solar panel and antenna wiggle idea.
Will the normal cars be allowed on the space map or will they be space only vehicles?
If space only, how about a retro-rocket and flying saucer to go along with the solar rover?
we had our first full test over the internet last night, it was a bit of a whirlwind trying to get everyone set up and working but it went pretty well. Here is a blog post Brian wrote about it:
as you can read in the post, we are looking for some kind of dedicated server to rent with decent bandwidth so we can test with more that a few people, if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to shoot me a PM.
Also, we were using our Zero Gear Steam group to co-ordinate during the test, even if we aren't on steam YET, anyone is free to join our group to show your support of getting us on Steam eventually! http://steamcommunity.com/groups/zerogear
spent today setting up some forums for the game, hopefully it will help us form a tighter community around the game as we get further along with development!
was reading the forums a little and saw character suggestions, you could so do a panda! i will do it for you if you wish :P oh and for a vehicle you should make a mini hummer like mine :P
Replies
The customization menu will be able to handle all your kart and character customization or tuning. The left of the screen is where you will pick which element you are changing, and you can browse through your options on the right side, as well and pull it out further like a drawer with the red arrow to view more options at one time. The bottom of the screen is where your customizable color swatch options will appear for the item you have selected.
Do you plan to allow for user made customisation? It would be great to have custom heads, gloves, and wheels ... I am sure this would be hugely successful amongst modelers, and you could pick the ones you like and later add them to the game.
Do you plan to support normalmpas for characters? I think the default avatars are better without them but maybe allowing them for custom content would make for some nice visual contrast! Obviously, overdetailled normals would look like crap in there (you have a perfect shape unity and density atm, it would be a shame to break it), but if the normals are used to define broad shapes wedging together it could add a nice touch to future chars.
Right now we have no plans to support normal maps, although as it stands nothing would stop people from doing it since our renderer supports them. We are trying to keep the game somewhat low spec, which for now means pretty much only diffuse maps and single level environment maps. This keeps the look consistent as well as cutting down the content creation time.
Here is a screenshot of the level I made in the last few days to play tag in.
This weekend we are having another lan party in which we are going to test out the game mode with around 8 people hopefully. I will be capturing footage to make into another video.
In this video we are using a “Tag” type game mode as an intitial test of our gameplay scripting system. Using the experience from this we will design bigger and more exciting gameplay!
In this mode, players compete for the longest amount of time being "IT". The longer you are "IT" the more points you rack up. There is also a 3 second immunity after you have become "IT". For this level, we also made points accumulate faster the closer you are to the middle, to encourage people to duke it out in the middle ring.
The test was a lot of fun, and gave us a lot of ideas and feedback for how we are going to implement more gameplay features in the near future!
I'd pay for it.
Thought about implementing visual representations (customizable) of vehicle attribute enhancement? (IE: increase your vehicle's acceleration attribute and your cart's engine is represented as larger or different than the default engine. Increase your vehicle's handling attribute and perhaps the tires are widened beyond that of the default tire size). Such a feature might allow other players to visually tell what the strengths and weaknesses of their competition might be, before or during a match. This way, you could avoid having to apply specific default attributes to vehicles or players like Mario Kart does. This way, one man's pink pinto might not be the same as his competitor's pink pinto.
I really like the spirit of that idea, and I think it is a healthy medium between some debates me and my partner have a lot about tying kart appearance to the stats of your vehicle. I have always thought that tying the visual models to performance elements would be very in-elegant - but simply modifying the scale and positioning across all assets according to your stats would be very elegant if you could make it all fit. I think it's a great idea!
Here is a snippet of the script of the second explosion effect, detailing how the system should animate the fireball part of the explosion:
// --------------- fireball --------------- technique { use_alias material fireball default_particle_width 25 default_particle_height 25 visual_particle_quota 500 emitter Point { emission_rate 1 force_emission true velocity 0 time_to_live 1 } // expand almost instantly then slower affector Scale { xyz_scale dyn_curved_linear { control_point 0 1 control_point 0.1 4500 control_point 0.3 500 } } affector Colour { colour_aff_time_colour 0 1 1 1 colour_aff_time_colour 0.1 1 1 1 colour_aff_time_colour 0.3 .8 .6 .6 colour_aff_time_colour 0.45 .2 .2 .2 colour_aff_time_colour 0.65 0 0 0 } }It needs some asteroids orbiting the map and planets in the distance, maybe even a comet flying by. Id bump up the cloudiness in the star field. I think it will help make it less stark, and more friendly.
Also you might want to make a astronaut helmet for the players if your making space maps.
No mater what this game is looking very slick already!
You could make a space track with a Northern Lights theme hehe (ala Rainbow Road!)
Can't wait to play, CAN'T WAIT TO MOD!
I can see what people mean about the similarities to Mario Kart, and that might be cause for some worry. Honestly, though, with the customization, unique vehicles, and some sweet game modes, I wouldn't look at it so much as an MK clone as a fun cross between Little Big Planet and Mario Kart.
Keep up the good work!
We are not too worried about being compared to mario kart - we are just aiming to be the most fun kart racing game on the PC. It's going to have lots of PC platform strengths that have never really been applied to a kart racing title before ( versatile multiplayer support, customization of game modes and visuals )
I've got it modeled and UV mapped with a starter ambient occlusion base texture. Will do the fun part and texture it next.
here is what the UV map looks like
and here is the flat texture
since there are no exhaust tubes to animate or anything, I am going to make the antennas wiggle around as an idle animation
Will the normal cars be allowed on the space map or will they be space only vehicles?
If space only, how about a retro-rocket and flying saucer to go along with the solar rover?
its nice!
altho i think i would prefer to see a reaper model .
would be ace.
with its little pitchfork and whatnot.. inside the car.
a comic version of this fella
http://nimblebit.blogspot.com/2008/05/first-big-internet-test-grand-ole-party.html
as you can read in the post, we are looking for some kind of dedicated server to rent with decent bandwidth so we can test with more that a few people, if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to shoot me a PM.
Also, we were using our Zero Gear Steam group to co-ordinate during the test, even if we aren't on steam YET, anyone is free to join our group to show your support of getting us on Steam eventually! http://steamcommunity.com/groups/zerogear
Also, I did a new accessory and hat this week!
http://myzerogear.com/phpBB3/index.php
I can't wait to see a blue and orange panda with a cowboy hat, monocle, and mustache driving a dune buggy in space!