GPSM - Race Simulation . Overtaking & Accidents

This week, I'm finally starting to get some good work done on the race simulation part of Grand Prix Super Manager.

I've added basic overtaking to the game which, depending on many different variables, has currently has 4 outcomes ( a successful pass, an unsuccessful pass, a slight off circuit moment and a big crash). I'll eventually add more.

I've also added the possibilities of a random accident, with the probability depending on the weather, tyres, car condition, driver command, driver abilities. The current possible results are: locked tyres, a moment going off the circuit or a complete spin or crash. (Again, more will be added).

The bodywork and some parts of the car will also be damaged to a random amount after a crash.

Grand Prix Super Manager, Update

I'm back working on my F1 management game.
Unfortunately, progress has been very slow again, as I've been very busy. To be honest, I can't say when this will be finished as I don't have a lot of time to work on it, and there's a long way to go.

I've been working on the race simulation part, and mainly the overtaking, updating the car condition and the transition between the qualifying and the race.  As well as the in-race messaging system, which will provide text updates of what is happening in the race to the user (although the graphical display of the text isn't complete).

The screenshot shows a race in progress and some temporary output in the debug console.

Twitter or blog for tiny Updates?

I'm not sure whether I should continue to post on my blog for tiny updates to the Grand Prix Super Manager game or just on my twitter account:

https://twitter.com/sionco

My theory is that in a time like this, when I haven't had time to do major work on the game, I'd still like to keep the blog looking active, as this helps to attract new people and also to show anyone who is kind enough to follow the blog that I am still continuing the game.  However, I don't want to release too many blog posts which only reveal a tiny update.  Any opinions are welcome...

Anyway, I've only had 2 hours to work on the game, so I've fixed a couple of small issues today, and also added a value for the teams public reputation (as shown by the green bar on the team select screen below):

This statistic will affect things such as which sponsors and drivers are willing to talk to your team.    Your teams reputation rating will be affected by things such as your race results and championship position, breaking contracts, sponsor and marketing days, the drivers you sign and any fines. 

In the future I'd also like to introduce a media/journalism section, where the player can release stories to the press about the team, drivers, other teams, which could affect the teams reputation either way.

GP Super Manager home screen update

I've been playing with many different ideas for the home screen, some displaying a lot of data from the game and some more simple.  Anyway, for the time being I've decided to use the following style for the Android version (whether I'll also use this for the Windows and Linux PC version is still undecided).  The colours and theme could change in the future, but for now I'm happy with the layout.

GP Race Manager: Lots of updates.

Wow, it's been just over a month since I restarted this, so, I thought that I'd write some a post with what has been updated since version 0.2, which was released for testing.

Hopefully, I'll have version 0.3 ready any day soon to test, once I have added the championship tables and give points at the end of each race (even though the race result, is currently decided by the total rating of the car and driver).

Major:
*GAME: Can progress through all races.
*RACE: Started the race weekend engine with temporary screen framework for setup,racing and results of each session, which can be navigated through.
*RACE: before FP/Quali the drivers best possible lap is worked out.
*EDITOR: can edit/delete/create drivers, engines.
*EDITOR: can edit teams names,engines and who're their drivers.
*GAME: Added option of 13th team to the game,not used if not selected.
*GAME: Created the start of the season database, which will store each season.

Minor:
*GUI: on team's drivers screen, now there's only 1 button (options) which brings up an options screen for that driver
*GUI: now drivers market screen displays 2 columns of drivers
*DRIVERS: Added driver potential, but a better formula could be made
*DATA: added description of variables in each data file for drivers, teams,engines,circuits.
*DATA: Upto 200 drivers.

Fixed:
*UPDATING: problem with drivers not being released when their contracts ran out.
*UPDATING: teams and drivers and contracts not being updated on a race weekend.
*GUI: Fixed problem of last driver not being displayed on driver's market.
*GUI: Fixed problem of drivers market screen not wrapping around
*GUI: backgrounds now display properly on all resolutions.
*GUI: many resolution fixes for text, graphics.


And some screenshots

Beginning of the race weekend (and yes , I know that secs and milliseconds less than 10 are being displayed as .9 instead of .09, it's on my list of minor fixes).

The current home screen:

Two columns for drivers market screen:

GP Race Manager. Small Update

I've added a new feature where you can choose to start the game as a brand new 13th team, who (as the screenshot of the team select screen shows) have no drivers.  They can be edited with the editor, but I may allow the user to change the name and colours from the team select screen.  If you don't choose to play as them, they aren't included in the game.

  I've also started to work on parts of the race weekend engine.   I think the first version won't be a totally involved experience, but will give results based on the drivers, teams and tyres, and then I'll add features to it at a later date.

GP Race Manager Editor

I've been away for a week working.  But today I've returned.  While I need another days rest before I get back into working on GP Race Manager, I have started making a basic editor for myself, to quickly edit the games data.

here is the current progress:

GP Race Manager Update: Potential and Fixes:

To the screen that shows the list of drivers, I've added a bar which shows their overall rating in red, as well as their potential ability. The potential ability is only worked out by their age motivation and ambition at this moment (that's why drivers over 32 don't have any!).

Before, saying "driver A isn't that good!" please remember that I've entered mostly random numbers for each drivers statistics.

and the team select screen, now with 3 drivers, their rating and potential:

Other Fixes:
*Can add upto 200 drivers to the drivers.txt file.
*Each data file now has a description of what each attribute means (if anybody wants to make an editor in the future )
*Added an engine data file, upto 15 engines.
*Fixed a couple of problems (3rd driver on team select screen, some drivers not being released from the team at the end of their contract,
*I've also started a bit on setting up arrays and things for the big task of the race weekend engine

GP Race Manager Update: Driver contracts and updating

Today, I've made progress in two areas of my F1 manager game.

Firstly, the main screen now has a continue button, that advances a week if their is no Grand Prix that weekend.  This updates the drivers contracts (if it's the end of their contract they leave, if they have a contract with another team they join that team), and sets the designers to work on parts of the car that have been selected to be worked on, and updates the car part with any progress made.

Also, it's now possible to sign drivers from other teams or the free driver market, and they either join immediately or for next year, depending on contracts.

I will go back to this and add contract negotiation and add different factors such as a big driver not wanting to join a small team.

The ability to sign a driver:

This screen shows who the drivers are for next year, shown after the word 'Next':

GP Race Manager. Slowly getting to where I was previously.

As mentioned before, my full attention isn't currently on my F1 management game, so I'm only working on it a couple of hours a week, and only doing small things.

But, I'm slowly getting to the stage of development where I was the previous time I attempted to make a Formula 1 management game.  But, it's a lot easier going this time, because I still remember freshly how I did things in the previous project, so for the moment, while I haven't started programming the actual race day engine, I don't have to think HOW I'm going to program a certain feature. Also, again as mentioned before, I'm only using one programming language to program the game for Android and PC (Windows and Linux) called processing, although I do miss programming in BlitzMax, which is great for making PC games.

Anyway, today, I have implemented some buttons that allow you to resign your drivers for next year or sack him (although, they will be improved in the future).
Also, I've added the third or test driver to each team, these updates can be seen in the screenshot below, which shows the game running on an Android mobile.

Finally, I've found a couple (not many) images of Ferrari and Toyota F1 cars which are royalty free.  One is shown in the screenshot of the game running on a linux PC below:

GP Race Manager. Garage Screen

Today, in my restarted project GP Race Manager, I started to do the R&D
screen.

As shown in the screenshots below, currently you can:

• Set the budget of how much money goes into R&D
• View the quality of each part.
• Click the parts to get the designers to start trying to improve that area of the car.

Eventually I'd like to improve this screen, maybe have a graphical representation for each part and also be able to set how much resources go onto next years.


Current screen on an Android mobile phone:

Current screen on a PC running Linux:

GP Race Manager. Drivers market

Just a small update on the GP Race Manager (Android/linux/windows) F1 style management game.  Today I've added the ability to browse and see all the drivers in the game. This will eventually be the way that new drivers can be signed.

I'll probably change the look in the final version, such as having two columns and nice graphics behind each box. But, for now the most important thing is getting the basics working.  I've also set the screens to show the players teams colours, these are stored in the data files.

The screenshots below show:

1. The driver browser on a mobile screen
2. The driver browser on a PC screen.
3. The current driver details screen that appears when a driver is selected.

GP Race Manager: Resolutions

The following images show the how I'm designing the GUI/layout of the screens relative to the size of the screen and resolution of the device.  Because a PC screen is completely different to an Android mobile phone.

It does add more work to each screen, to make sure buttons and text appear in the right place on different size screens, but it will be worth the effort.

Yes, it needs a lot of work in all aspects such as better looking buttons/graphics, but I'll leave that until the end of the project.

800x600 window

320x480 resolution

480x320 resolution

As you can see, while I'm not working on this project 100% yet, my focus is on getting all the screens to display the correct data.  Although, the OK and left and right buttons work, I'll only start working on functionality and the race engine after I've completed mission: infiltrate.


Any suggestions welcome...

Finally, if anyone wants to become part of the development testing team, where I send you the PC version of the game after every development update, please leave a message (although initial versions wont have any real functionality).

GP Race Manager: The Rebirth

In March/April I started making a F1 management game for Android , Linux and Windows systems (called GP Race Manager - here and here ).  But, I was using two seperate programming languages, Basic4Android for the android version and blitzMax for the PC version.  But, this was too much as they are completely different development tools (As well my opinion that b4a, not being up to the task of a management game) and I was writing two different versions of the same code.   The game was put on hold and I started other projects.

But now, I've restarted the game.  I'm using one language to make the game (processing) and the Linux/Windows PC version will be identical to the Android version, except for the screen layout.   This is because I think the buttons for a touchscreen Android device (mobile phones, tablets)  need to be different to a mouse driven device such as a PC or laptop.

My main focus will be to try and finish the other game (mission: infiltrate) as talked about on this blog, but occasionally when need a break from mission: infiltrate, I will do a little work on GP Race Manager.  And when I've finished mission: infiltrate I'll turn my full attention to GP Race Manager.



Progress: Version 0.1
Basic navigation system setup(buttons, different 'screens').
Loads data about teams, drivers and engines.
Can select a team.

Screenshots:

mission: infiltrate - enemies cone of sight

Here it is, the beginning of a working cone of sight, obviously from the screenshot, a future fix will to make it that the guards can't see through walls.

If the player does walk into their cone of sight (or their view/sight range), they are set to the alert mode 'kill' as discussed before.

Still hoping to finish this action/stealth game for Android phones/tablets by the end of this month, but it will be tight.  And then I'll try and optimize it for Linux and Windows PC's because the current basic control system works best on a touch screen, so for PC's I'm thinking of introducing keyboard control.

After this game, my plans continue to be to restart my Android F1 management game and also make a small space shooter game.

F1 Manager Game

Don't worry I haven't given up on neither the Android or PC version.  I'm just concentrating on making small mobile games as I said in a previous post, which will hopefully increase my weekly income, so I'll have more time to develop the games this summer.

Grand Prix Race Manager (PC day 5 & Android Day 11) Update

Today, I've spent a few hours on both the PC and Android Versions of my (hopefully) up and coming Formula One Grand Prix Management game.
I've spent the day working with the championship tables, making sure they work with no problems and include drivers that are sacked / fired half way through the season.  I've also had to redo the development of new parts for the android version.



A screenshot from the current state of the PC Version:

Hopefully, soon I will have a 'current development' version for Linux and Windows PC's.  I might also let people keep upto date with an android development version.


Current Development Comparison:
Here's the current functionality of the game:
 Select team to manage (PC - YES) , (Android - YEs)
Fire and renew your drivers contracts (PC - YES) , (Android - Yes)
Sign other teams drivers (PC - YES), (Android - Yes)
Sign free drivers, (PC - YES), (Android-Yes)
View car part development ( PC - YES) ,(Android -YES)
Develop new parts, (PC- YES) , (Android- YES, more basic)
Increase engineering team (PC - No), (Android - YES)
Work out lap times depending on diver skill /car / engine, (PC - YES), (PC - YES)
Basic lap by lap race, (PC - NO), (Android - yes)
Give points depending on race result, (PC - YEs), (Android - YES)
Show updated championship tables, (PC - YES), (Android -YES)
Advance time onto next grand prix, (PC, YES), Android -YES)

GP Race Manager

Don't worry, I'm still alive.  I haven't had time to work on the PC or Android version for over a week, but today I've got back to them for an hour or two.

No real progress to report.
For the Android version, I've been editing the screen that shows the championship standings.
For the PC version, I've been playing with the order in that the screen is drawn, as this works differently on Windows and Linux, and I had some buttons semi-hidden behind labels.

F1 PC Manager Game, Day 4

 I haven't had much time to work on the game.   (current working title: GP Race Manager)

I've added a few things to the PC version, and it is nearly at the same stage as the android version.  I've added free drivers, and the development of parts.






















Here's the current functionality of the game:
Select team to manage (PC - YES) , (Android - No)
Fire and renew your drivers contracts (PC - YES) , (Android - Yes)
Sign other teams drivers (PC - YES), (Android - Yes)
Sign free drivers, (PC - nearly), (Android-Yes)
View car part development ( PC - YES) ,(Android -YES)
Develop new parts, (PC- No) , (Android- YES, basic system)
Increate engineering team (PC - No), (Android - YES)
Work out lap times depending on diver skill /car / engine, (PC - YES), (PC - NO)
Basic lap by lap race, (PC - NO), (Android - yes)
Give points depending on race result, (PC - NO), (Android - YES)
Advance time onto next grand prix, (PC, NO), Android -YES)

F1 Race Manager, Day 4 - Screenshot update

I still continue on this big (maybe too big) project. I have just started today's few hours of work on the game (an F1 Management game for Android mobile phones). But I think some screenshots will demonstrate better, to where I am upto (very early)

The first screenshot shows the team selection screen.

The second screen shot shows the current state of the 'home screen' from where the player can reach most other screens. I intend to add screens for : sponsorship, finance and testing.

This screen shows the 'garage' which shows the stats of the car, and also where the user can set their mechanics to build/upgrade new parts.

This screen shows the driver information screen, where the user can see the stats of their own drivers, and eventually will be able to hire and fire drivers.