downhill - gravity powered racing game prototype

Hi friends!
It's time to show you my own leisure waster of last couple of months:

downhill

As title says, it is a gravity powered racing game.
One minute races in three driving styles.
Tracks are randomly generated to encourage intuitive driving and casualties.




Don't miss the VIDEO, and if you have a joytick the DEMO!! updated (2013/05/24)

Enjoy it!
Feedback will be apreciated

hey!
looks really awesome! is it possible to play with keyboard?
And i really like the look of the whole game!

Nice work man! I would advice few additions (you probably thought about them too), tire tracks when you break, "woooshhh" sound when you move near big object (check points) with a high speed (reminds me of underground 2) and maybe a little bit of radial blur when your speed is really hight

yeah some post processing (and maybe lighting improvements) could make
it look better but the gameplay already seems to be really nice and smooth!

great job (especially for a one-person-project)

EDIT: oh, just saw "Tracks are randomly generated to encourage intuitive driving and casualties."
Random levels / environments are so awesome!
They make the gameplay very interesting and it won't get boring after some time.

Thanks!


There is no keyboard control by the moment, but it is a must, I know.



Yeah! I will probably leave the tire traks for yaws, and include a raucous break sound. Something like an old bicycles break sound.


Good idea. Never thought on it.


I thought on implementing a radial blur stage for the impulse, so it will fit good on high speeds too.

The shadow looks sweet when you pass the street lights. The level looks sweet too. This is bad ass man. Good job! Perhaps some tunnels to race through would be pretty intense, like through a mountain or something.

Please provide a normal downloadlink and not an obscure "download patcher manager thingy". Before I download anythink i like to know a) how big it will be (so I can determine the downloadtime) and b) from where it comes.

Because it looks really, really cool and I´m eager to test it!

@Stansmedia
Tunnels are on my next things to do

@fogman
Sorry for the inconvenience.
It is just an updater. It does not advise about the download long, that is true. There are 75Mb to download.

@txesmi:
How do you download your files?
It took really long and there is also no real progress bar...

It is a ftp transfer from a server located in north america.
The numbers are bytes left of the current download.

yeah, this is somehow confusing
you should try to use http to transfer the files
much more security and also faster communications

That kind of depends on what kind of transfers you want to make. If it's a single shot file, FTP is probably going to be faster than HTTP. And FTP would also be a bit faster than HTTP 1.0, because neither of these protocols allow picking up TCP sockets (and yes, there are still servers out there that don't run HTTP 1.1). In terms of security, both are bad. Both have various attack vectors and neither is build to be actually secure. If you want it secure, use HTTPS (and for heavens sake, check the goddamn certificate on the client site, otherwise you are still vulnerable to man in the middle attacks).

I'd be proud of been hacked
----

Added a length ditorsion with a camera arc change for the impulse and drawn a new tree: a white poplar (chopo).

Don't like the new motion blur or what it is at all, sorry, at least until I see it in motion. If you keep it, please add an option to disable it in your menu. (This does not only apply to your game alone but to games in general, for example I wouldn't have played Duke Nukem Forever if I wasn't able to deactivate its horrible postprocessing effects.)

That image is not a good representation of the effect in motion, that's true.

Here is a VIDEO!

I'm pleasantly surprised, looks much better in motion! Still, every screenshot that you or someone else takes of this game when the effect is active will look a little weird and may give a negative impression. I obviously don't know how you've realized this effect in detail but couldn't you use different weights (maybe Gauß?) to smooth the look of the blur?

That is it! I put my hands on it right now.

In real pixel render, but not in the compressed video, the steps are slightly noticeable too.

Thank you for the idea!

really cool project! but the scene is a bit too dark, and the vehicle does not have headlights, imo that could improve the appearance a bit.

thanks!

Yes, darkness and high contrast. I love it
I believe that it does not hurt the gameplay and the road visibility at all.

There is something in the colors concept that is not yet implemented. I want add selflightened human buildings in the middle dark and cut the skyline with dark shaped light spots.

I did a quick collage:



I have a big fight in my brain with the vehicle light. By one side the effect would be cool and will overlight the vertical signs, but by the other side my asfalt singlepass pixel2.0 shader is exausted with the shadows and specularity.

In this part of the world, this kind of vehicles does not have electric intallations and lights. Is true that they do not race at night too xP

I would be really glad about a standard downloadlink.

I like the blur effect but a zoom-blur probably looks a bit better.
...and I agree with sivan, the game looks really dark.

Here's a graph which shows how much dark and bright colors are in a picture:
(taken from one of your screenshots)

x = brightness; y = amount of this brightness in the whole picture

you can clearly see that there are a lot of dark pixels but almost nothing above 50% brightness.
With this I don't want to say that you should make everything brighter but I think you could have
a better overall-balance between bright and dark colors.

maybe a tone-mapping post-processing shader? might distribute the brightness out a little more.

just a thought

Yes. I have to admit that is is darker than needed. I have been playing with gimp and there is a clear improvement proportionally moving that big amount of dark points to a brighter position.




but proportionally speaking, and taking the concept in mind, the most part of the pixels has to be in the third dark part of the histograma while the road (the playground) is a small proportion of the screen pixels, all the rest but signs is decoration.

@fogman
download

Finished with the speed up blur effect. It is less effective than the previous one, but it looks much better.



edited__
here is a video with new dead vegetation, a gamma corrector included into the last render chain and the acceleration blur effect in motion!
VIDEO

Hi!

I finally found a perfect nornals backing process and finished the wheel of this vehicle.



It time to renew the other assets.

hi,
I did some tests for renewing the checkpoints





14 polygons

Wow, I really like the idea having the stats actually written on the checkpoint. Will they refresh in real-time? And the glowing effect is also great!

Thanks! They will refresh for sure

There is a little problem. In the moment you grab your time, you can't see the checkpoint panel xP
I'm thinking on a secondary vertical sign on the side of the road with the actual position and the lapse to the best time.

Thanks for the download link.
Man, that´s pretty cool! Please give me a first person view, oculus rift support and I´ll throw my money at you!

Do you already have one? O.o

txesmi, I am really amazed by your work lately, in terms of assets, your shader programming and cool ideas

Don't panic! I have not even ordered. I want to wait until it gets a higher resolution.

How have you done the text on Texture?

With a render target of a panel set as skin of the mesh.