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Original post by Cubed3 LightStrike: That is quite awesome!! Looks like a fun game! Seems interesting to use the camera to zoom out for the sense of speed, I was thinking of doing motion blurring to give the sense of speed. Im going with a much more retro design though for the graphics, mainly so that I can do them myself, but also because I like the look. Not to mention significantly less physics for something that just floats around in space vs simulating the wheels/suspension/stuff in a car. Question: For the AI, when you create a map, do you have to define a race line? I was thinking of making a small neural net to handle line tracking for my AI. Pretty simple to implement and its supposed to have good results. Too bad I can't test out the game, Im using OS X.

Thanks for your kind words! Motionblurring would definitely be cool. Don't know how I'd do that efficiently. I guess we could just draw the cars alphablended several times after but I'm not sure that would look nice enough.

It's a good idea using floating cars. Could be just as cool in another way :)

Yes, kind of. You have to place waypoints to give the AI the general route. Then it uses that information and the environment to make decisions about steering and accelerating and braking.
Neural nets sounds advanced. Just the word has scared me away in the past :)

Too bad. Well the current version is about to be replaced in a week or so anyway.

EDIT: Death rally and micro machines are definite inspirations for us along with super cars and other top down classics. We left out the weapons for a pure racing experience though to save time (its been over 4 years anyway!).

Loved F-Zero. I gotta get a gamecube some day to play the 3d ones.

We're looking for sound editors and graphic artists. I went to anthem audio demos but none of the links worked :(

site being overhauled...want to hear anything specific? I'll PM ya.

Neural nets for driving line? Colin McRae Rally 2.0 used that method...
Hannan interview
or you could use steering behaviours to follow a driving line adjusted for driver ability...
Steering
Finally, AI Game Programming Wisdom 2 has an article for generating racing lines.
Finally, finally, Racing AI pops up in the AI forum quite often so they'll be plenty to read in there.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster Micro Machines was one of the best multiplayer games i ever played :) top down view was also a key part of the gameplay.

I agree, it was one of the best ways to use an Amiga, right there with North & South or Sensible Soccer.

Micro Machines offers an important lesson about "fun": there is no realistic depiction of speed (and in fact speed is bad: as soon as you go fast you lose control), the point of the game is tactical maneuver to get the lead.
In 2D games, since it is impossible to see far, obstacles should be densely packed in the visible part of the playfield, and as a consequence speed has to be low; a multiplayer game like Micro Machines is self-regulating (less playfield obstacles -> more thinking -> more pvp action).

Ok! So I have been playing around with SDL_gfx, and also figuring out how I am going to represent the map and such.
Anyways ive come up with some concept pictures of the ideas that are stuck in my head.
Note: The proportions aren't right, the ship will most likely be smaller and a bigger field of view will be present. Also the ship itself is just a filled polygon, I plan on having it be a bitmap thats going to be rotozoomed for nice special effects.

Heres the pic:(This is like 20 minutes of work toying with SDL_gfx)
The only thing I can really do at this point is move the ship around! But wow the sense of speed is definetly there. I got plenty of tricks up my sleeve for making this thing feel fast.


Features that I hope to add are:
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Combat
Agressive AI
Online Multiplayer
Spiffy Vector Graphics combined with bitmap art
And most importantly a Nice Map Maker!