Moved to www.sionco.com/blog

I've decided to join my blog and website together on a new site using wordpress,
you can access the blog at :

sionco.com/blog

or the website at:

sionco.com

After a disappointing 10 months, no new game releases and a lot of unfinished games and demos, I'm currently working out my strategy going forwards.   But, I'll definitely get back to game programming 100%: continue reading at sionco.com/blog

still alive..

I'm still alive.
Currently considering whether to continue the racing game in 3D with monkey or change to Unity3D (which I've been looking at today) or to go 2D and overhead with the racing.

Car Racing Game, Still going...

I'm still going with the car racing game.

I've been beating my head on the table for a few days and wasted a lot of paper trying to work things out, regarding the AI movement, and how I am going to create the tracks,.

The computer car movement still needs to be improved, but it does look like I'm getting somewhere with track creation:

My two initial options where either to create the track as a flat 2D image, which would have been the easiest, yet least visually appealing option, or create a 3D track.  I've finally decided to go with the 3D track option and have made several attempts to create an initial track, that I can work with in this demoing phase, although I haven't added hills or trackside objects such as barriers.  But this means that I hopefully can add elevation to the track and give the game more options and possibilities for the future, such as I could have an American banked-oval style circuit or the Eau-Rouge section of the Spa F1 circuit?, that's if the game changes from being a BTCC/WTCC touring car based arcade racing game.

Touring Car Arcade Racing Game, Update of Afternoon 5

Seems like I get most work done on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as the last 5 entries have been on the nights of these days, interesting to know!

I'm still working away on my game. I call it a 3D arcade touring car racing game.  Im thinking of two possible names for it using abbreviations:

1. TCAR (Touring Car Arcade Racer)
2. TC-CAR (Touring Car - Championship Arcade Racer)

What do you think?

#Progress

As the screenshots below, I've added barriers to the game, I do this by driving to the start and end point of each race track straight and recording the position and angle of the car.  I store this in a textfile under the circuit name, and then the game loads the barrier positions and works out how many sections of barriers can be fitted between the start and end positions that I recorded.  I've also added trees, which are automatically created a certain distance behind the barriers.

It's not perfect, as it's only working properly down the x-axis at the moment, but that's a small fix to make in the future, the important thing is that the system is in the game. 

I've also created the sky dome  Which draws a graphic representing the sky on the inside of a giant 3D sphere that surrounds the whole game, this means that the sky is different in each direction.  The current sky graphic has been borrowed from Google images, and I'll eventually replace it with my own. 

#Fixes and Improvement

• Better checkpoint detection
• Improved the cars initial grid positions so they start all lined up in a 'zig-zag' way down the road as in top motorsport racing. (I still need to add the graphics to show the grid lines)
• Fixed a problem with the game creating too many checkpoints.
• Fixed a problem with the game increasing the car's current checkpoint at the start of the race before the car has reached that checkpoint.

#Latest Screenshots:

Update, Afternoon 4 on my touring car arcade racing game

Today, I've been working on three areas:

 I'd already implemented a basic system where I can drive around the circuit and record the path the computer cars should follow, but now I've added braking and acceleration areas. The computer movement is still not perfect and needs to be improved (especially the turning which is very jerky) but at least for the moment the computer cars don't whizz around the track at full-speed.

If this game succeeds and I manage to finish it (fingers crossed) I want this game to be editable and mod friendly, so I've created an easily editable file with all the car stats and drivers. So, the player will be able to change the characteristics of the drivers such as their names as well as of the car such as the car's speed, acceleration, braking and weight. Also, the Windows/Linux PC version should also allow the user to create and draw new car liveries (any maybe even 3D models for the PC version).

 Finally, I've implemented the system that keeps track of who is in which position, depending on lap-times and checkpoints, although it needs fine-tuning. For anyone who has followed my blog or seen previous posts, they will see that after the initial week, I have often lost motivation for games, when the coding becomes overwhelming, and therefore there are a lot of unfinished games on my hard-drive ( As shown on the basement section of my website).
This time, I think I've started to manage myself better through two tactics; the first, is that I've created a nice colour-coded spreadsheet with all the task I have to do, and organized them by 4 columns:

1. Priority: how urgent is it that I create this part of the game now.
2. Time: How long will it take me.
3. Difficulty: How difficult will it be to do
4. Importance: How important is it to the final game.

 This has allowed me to sort tasks out, with the most important at the top (such as the game engine) and less important ones at the bottom (such as little graphical touches) 

Also, I continue to watch races from the BTCC each night, which are very exciting and make me want to get back into the code. Below are some screenshots showing the different teams (currently just colour coded) as well as a temporary table of race positions in the second.

 

small update on my 3D car racing game

I've now added acceleration and braking points to the invisible path that the computer cars loosely follow, which guides them around the track, so now the computer cars don't go at 100% speed all around the track and slow down for the corners. It's a bit jerky, so will need improving in the future, but for now it's okay. Will be watching the BTCC 2012 review tomorrow as well as highlights of this years race for inspiration. Here's a screenshot of the current state of the game, using an above camera view, the computer cars race towards the first checkpoint:

3D Arcade Racing Game, 3rd Afternoon

I'm still experimenting with creating a 3D racing game, who knows if it will turn into anything serious or if it'll end up in unfinished demos/projects like most of my other attempts at games.

Today, I've added a system that allows me to record points around the track as a drive around to create a basic racing line for the computer (AI) cars .

Here are some screenshots:

Oops! My first attempt at adding more cars

More ordered, they're on the grid, but no movement yet.

Still haven't setup collisions yet

Lots of cars!

We have basic movement! With the computer controlled cars erratically going from point to point around the track.

I'm back. Just playing around...

A car on a 2D image of a track..

A car on a 2D track graphic

2 Cameras and it moves!

My first attempt at modeling a BTCC type racing car

Lots of cameras

I'm not sure what's happened here.

The new track model I made is a little small... and white...

That looks better!

Acceleration feels better!

A couple of corners

Testing the sky-cam

Zoomed out to the max!