we used our in-engine recording and video capturing technique to produce the Early Access Trailer. We use recorded session files from the game server in the engine and create splines for the camera to follow along or to attach a camera target to a vehicle. The gif below was taken from the editors preview mode. You can spot some parts are not physicalized in preview mode and are just frozen. This is of course not the case with the final render.
* used the same technique to produce the screenshots for the store page
these are pulled straight out of the engine. There was only a little bit of photoshopping involved with motion blur cleanup when the camera was moving very fast on the third shot. Thats also the one from the gif "situation" above. I will not add all screenshots here because you have probably seen them on the store page already.
* vp9 video codec support
this was unplanned but we had to move on from using theora video codec in the engine to vp9 because of the new 4k [at]60 fps video material. We use ffmpeg to encode our ingame videos and menu backgrounds as vp9.
* finalizing the game scripting
we are now completing the game scripting with tweening and fades everywhere and full testing.
* all tracks have ground foliage and gravel now
* added details to zone-c overhead structure
it's always good to have details like ladders or hand rails to convey the scale of things when building these kind of unfamiliar odd-looking structures.
* finished zone-c with the last two hero objects
the crane is inspired by an existing offshore crane but I wanted something more dramatic for this level to fit the art style. After blockout I made a high-poly / low-poly and textured in Substance Painter. The floor panels use a tiling material to save some texture space and increase the resolution for the rest of the crane.
* start-finishline zone-c
matching the style of the crane I also built the start-finishline. I reused parts of the light module from the other tracks to have some consistency throughout the maps.
* garage UI
we finished the garage UI with technical specs about the different vehicles and color choosers for primary and secondary customizable colors.
* capsule artwork / keyart
this was also rendered in engine and is used as our keyart and for all the capsules and as library / box artwork. I was struggling for a long time if I should add some color to it. But I really like this black and white look.
* engine and studio logo + animated splashscreen
one of the reasons why we had to switch to the vp9 codec was videos like this which we wanted at 4k 60 fps as well.
We will keep you updated with more behind the scenes content!
We also have a Discord now. We were told thats what the cool kids use these days. Join and distract us from work if you must. Just kidding it would be nice to see you guys there. https://discord.gg/hUDxpnN
At this point I would like to explain a little bit about our game design as well. Basically letting the pants down
DRAG introduces a new kind of vehicle-physics. Have you ever noticed how
cars in many racing games pivot around their center? With our 4CPT-technology
and soft-body tire model we simulate every component of the vehicles in
real time, down to the grab-mass of the tire profile. Resulting in
realistic, dynamic behavior. Driving fast on loose surface without
driving aids is exciting, challenging and ultimately hard to master.
Nevertheless DRAG is designed to be played with a gamepad or keyboard. Support for racing wheels will be added in Early Access though.
How does it work?
You can follow faster players by utilizing slipstream, hence the name of the game 'DRAG'. If
you follow your opponents closely you will also gain boost which is at
your disposal for overtaking, but should be used carefully and
strategically. However if you get too close and ram another vehicle your
car will take permanent damage. Also there's no respawn in online matches, we call it the out-is-out
principle, so if you like to push your opponents off track you better
be strategical about that as well. You might end up with a wheel or two
missing - which by the way shouldn't keep you from battling on. Three
wheels is plenty
We don't believe in stupid time penalties.
Play as dirty as you like, brake check if someone is following in your
slipstream. But be prepared to end up in a tree upside down if things go wrong.
To stay out of trouble or in case you can't pass someone without risk of damage, use the jokerlap. That's a longer route which everyone has to take at least once a race. If you have not taken the joker until the final lap the regular path will be blocked for you.
The jokerlap is another strategic element you can use to your advantage. If you are leading the race but you don't want to give others slipstream you can take the joker but you might end up between slower cars. So it's good to know how much time the joker will cost you on each track. There are live gap-times displayed for all drivers so you can judge when it's best to take the joker.
Hey guys! Your game looks great and i like the ideas you outlined above. Just make sure you add this on the steam page so that everyone knows what to expect from the game. Speaking of expectations, will there be a demo of sorts? Best of luck!
DRAG has been confirmed for the upcoming Steam Game Festival - Summer Edition
You'll be able to play the Demo between June 9-14
Follow our Steam page so you don't miss it.
Also Wishlist if you haven't already. It really helps us a lot!
I think that the demand for a second video came from the fact that there was some confusion around the trailer. Everything in the first trailer is 100% real gameplay. The slides and jumps and drifts are not scripted or driving aid assisted, but purely physical. This is why the game is more of a challenge than maybe other more arcady racing games.
We will still make a second trailer in the future. In the meantime we are also active on Twitter where we posted a couple more short videos. Follow us there if you want to know more about the game.
I'll keep posting modeling / texturing work and behind the scenes dev-stuff here on polycount because I think thats whats most interesting to you guys!
These cars look like a hybrid between a real life "Rock bouncer" and something more typical of an RC car. Was that the intent? or am I just mistaken? For instance you modeled a suped up engine that I'm assuming is either high octane gas or alcohol fueled, but your wheel models have electric coils indicative of a wheel end electric motor? Maybe I skipped over where it was explained. I'm just curious of the design. It all looks phenomenal non-the-less.
EDIT: I apologize, the mechanic in me is just trying to figure out how it works. Looking back further at the high poly I see you've modeled a standard unitized wheel hub and CV axles to the differentials which would eliminate the possibility of a wheel end electric motor. Which further confuses me on the exposed copper coils modeled in the wheel. If there's an explanation I've love to know how it works However on the off chance It was an oversight, I'd suggest looking up some bead-lock wheels that are more typical of rock bouncers, trophy trucks and pre-runner style trucks and buggies.
There was no intention to model it after a real life car. Not an engineer either, so I'm happy as long as it looks cool. Always liked the rock bouncer high octane vehicles and wanted to do something like that, but following my own vision of an offroad race car of the future!
There was no intention to model it after a real life car. Not an engineer either, so I'm happy as long as it looks cool. Always liked the rock bouncer high octane vehicles and wanted to do something like that, but following my own vision of an offroad race car of the future!
@defragger I'm 100% down with that, when it comes to custom vehicles the possibilities are endless for creativity, it was just the mechanic in me trying to figure out how it worked haha.
My first attempt was like Rocket League style and I totally did a face plant with this, haha
After driving for a few minutes I was like, meh this is a tad too much like a simulation for me, but when I was jumping around in the main menu and looked for other things todo in the demo I saw that there's a global ranking, well guess what, couldn't let myself sit at place 500#, a whopping 70 minutes later I finally broke 29.4 seconds mark and made it to place 102#!
It was pretty chilling to play after a while, the soundtrack is great and kept me going.
Graphics are looking nice as well. Runs butter smooth on a 1440p setup on maximum graphics.
Kudos to such a small team for accomplishing this kind of game while writing your own engine!
Will we be able to unlock some of the other challenges in the demo as well?
Kudos to such a small team for accomplishing this kind of game while writing your own engine!
Will we be able to unlock some of the other challenges in the demo as well?
Thank you so much! Appreciate it! We didn't want to confuse as of what people should be driving, considering the giveaway challenge taking place.
If you haven't seen it. Top-10 from the leaderboard (at the end of the event) will get a free copy of the game at launch, so tried to keep it as straight forward as possible.
Regarding the difficulty of the game. Zone-A is wider and less bumpy to get a feel for the vehicle before unlocking more advanced Zone-B and C, but we felt picking something from the middle is best. I think it worked well considering some are posting 10 hour playtimes ... on a single track DEMO Never thought this would be possible.
whopping 1,500 players are now competing in the DRAG Demo Challenge
And while I'm posting this, ◄Tanchi84► improved his time again to an amazing 28.007 Sec !! Since Tuesday it feels like there is a constant party going on in our Discord!
Maaan, my kids and I had so much fun playing the demo. Can't wait for the full game. Respect for adding split screen option!
Makes me really happy to hear that! I hope it wasn't too difficult for them. Thank you for this comment!!
All in all, the demo was a great time with a total of 2,323 players.
A few bugs here and there but that was to be expected and we can now fix them.
Sopze92 the "Tofu deliverer" improved from p4 to p1 on the last day and was the first to beat the 28-Second barrier! Tanchi84 tried to gain back his position and managed to improve his time, crossing the 28-Second barrier as well and achieving a great second place in the end!
Replies
Thanks for the great feedback we have received so far!
We are back again with a huge update.
* first and foremost our Steam store page is now live
we used our in-engine recording and video capturing technique to produce the Early Access Trailer. We use recorded session files from the game server in the engine and create splines for the camera to follow along or to attach a camera target to a vehicle. The gif below was taken from the editors preview mode. You can spot some parts are not physicalized in preview mode and are just frozen. This is of course not the case with the final render.
* vp9 video codec support
this was unplanned but we had to move on from using theora video codec in the engine to vp9 because of the new 4k [at]60 fps video material. We use ffmpeg to encode our ingame videos and menu backgrounds as vp9.
* finalizing the game scripting
we are now completing the game scripting with tweening and fades everywhere and full testing.
* all tracks have ground foliage and gravel now
* added details to zone-c overhead structure
it's always good to have details like ladders or hand rails to convey the scale of things when building these kind of unfamiliar odd-looking structures.
* finished zone-c with the last two hero objects
the crane is inspired by an existing offshore crane but I wanted something more dramatic for this level to fit the art style. After blockout I made a high-poly / low-poly and textured in Substance Painter. The floor panels use a tiling material to save some texture space and increase the resolution for the rest of the crane.
* start-finishline zone-c
matching the style of the crane I also built the start-finishline. I reused parts of the light module from the other tracks to have some consistency throughout the maps.
* garage UI
we finished the garage UI with technical specs about the different vehicles and color choosers for primary and secondary customizable colors.
* capsule artwork / keyart
this was also rendered in engine and is used as our keyart and for all the capsules and as library / box artwork. I was struggling for a long time if I should add some color to it. But I really like this black and white look.
* engine and studio logo + animated splashscreen
one of the reasons why we had to switch to the vp9 codec was videos like this which we wanted at 4k 60 fps as well.
https://discord.gg/hUDxpnN
greetings,
Christian & Thorsten
Nevertheless DRAG is designed to be played with a gamepad or keyboard.
Support for racing wheels will be added in Early Access though.
How does it work?
You can follow faster players by utilizing slipstream, hence the name of the game 'DRAG'.
If you follow your opponents closely you will also gain boost which is at your disposal for overtaking, but should be used carefully and strategically. However if you get too close and ram another vehicle your car will take permanent damage.
Also there's no respawn in online matches, we call it the out-is-out principle, so if you like to push your opponents off track you better be strategical about that as well. You might end up with a wheel or two missing - which by the way shouldn't keep you from battling on. Three wheels is plenty
We don't believe in stupid time penalties. Play as dirty as you like, brake check if someone is following in your slipstream. But be prepared to end up in a tree upside down if things go wrong.
Christian & Thorsten
Your game looks great and i like the ideas you outlined above. Just make sure you add this on the steam page so that everyone knows what to expect from the game. Speaking of expectations, will there be a demo of sorts?
Best of luck!
We have changed our mind about the demo.
I'll keep posting modeling / texturing work and behind the scenes dev-stuff here on polycount because I think thats whats most interesting to you guys!
@defragger I'm 100% down with that, when it comes to custom vehicles the possibilities are endless for creativity, it was just the mechanic in me trying to figure out how it worked haha.
Thank you so much! Appreciate it!
We didn't want to confuse as of what people should be driving, considering the giveaway challenge taking place.
Since Tuesday it feels like there is a constant party going on in our Discord!
All in all, the demo was a great time with a total of 2,323 players.
2. ◄Tanchi84► - 27.954
3. Multtari - 28.028
4. Fantasiian - 28.051
5. apemax - 28.066
7. lucaruby - 28.071
8. I'll Grape You - 28.074
9. Swifterik - 28.076
10. haefen - 28.099
Swifterik gets the most style points for this finish
Christian & Thorsten