T4XI

Contests 4K Game Competition - 2005
#1

Something new, something fun?

Webstart:

http://games.cokeandcode.com/4k/city4k/city4k.jnlp

Jar:

http://games.cokeandcode.com/4k/city4k/city4k.jar

To Run:

java -cp city4k.jar R

Or for the screenshot inclined:

http://games.cokeandcode.com/4k/city4k/screenshot.gif

I’d be interested in feedback about performance on different platforms… cause I think it’ll blow on Linux and MacOS… also on controls… too sensitive? Alternatives?

If anyone has the time to test it’d be appreciated…

EDIT: Forget to mention inspiration for this one was GTA1 and Late4k.

Kev

#2

Quick test on my part, and I think the collision detection is a bit harsh, I kept getting stuck and it was frustrating. Perhaps I suck?

#3

Can I ask you a question? When do you sleep? I mean, this makes like five or so 4k games you’ve done?! That’s just crazy! :slight_smile:

[quote]I’d be interested in feedback about performance on different platforms… cause I think it’ll blow on Linux and MacOS… also on controls… too sensitive? Alternatives?
[/quote]
The performance on OS X is great! The controls, however, are so-so. I think all you need to do is slow the rate of turning and acceleration a smidge. This would help the player better control his vehicle (I think).

#4

Liked it, would be nice if you would bounce off the side when you hit it, ran really well. The controls seemed fine to me

#5

OMG! ;D

The graphics are awesome :slight_smile:

I suggest to make the street ~50% wider (scale doesn’t really matter in games).

#6

Wow, amazing! Lots of fun. As said earlier sticking to the walls is a bit frustrating. But really impressive. However, the cars are driving on the WRONG side of the road!!! :slight_smile:

#7

Ace ;D
Yeah, bounce of wall, rather than just stop dead, and go out and leave the javac in peace for a bit ;D

#8

Cool! Really alot like the early GTA, with the top down 3D-ish look. Performance quite OK on a 800MHz PC. But ctrls taking away some of the fun. I keept driving like a drunk from house on one side of the road into the house on the other side. Yes, make roads wider and maybe even more lanes at places if you can cram that in. Yep, cars are on the wrong side of road, but you can drive straight through them so I guess that is OK :slight_smile: Agree with suggestions from JBanes and oNyx.

[quote]Can I ask you a question? When do you sleep?
[/quote]
I guess he is doing 4K games cause he can’t sleep. I have though found out that doing 4K games makes it harder to sleep. Same thing as when I was coding games in Assembler some few 100 years ago. Must be some strange connection between the two.

Anyway, really impressive!

#9

Wow, he does it again :wink:

Perhaps if you made the turn speed slower as your velocity increases that’ll solve the turning problem.

#10

4K…Holy crap!

Amazing.

I had no problems with the controls, but I probably played way to much of the old GTA, Crazy Taxi and the Simpsons.

Great job.

#11

Thanks for the all the nice feedback! Good call on roads and bouncing… I’ll see if I can fit it in. I’ve not actually optimised for space yet and I still have 100 bytes spare… woot!

I feel like I better defend myself… 4k games really have inspired me but they really arn’t taking up much time. I generally get a couple of hours a night (based on the fact I don’t sleep much). This one for instance has been the product of the last 3 days (so around 6-9 hours dev time). My week so far has consisted of Cinema - Incredibles (Monday), Tai Chi (Tuesday), Home made Pizza by Me (Wednesday) and well nothing yesterday apart from evil traffic. Plus of course weekends are full of time to develop little games :slight_smile:

The point being I’m really not spending much time on these games… not like for instance when I was writing Mini Adventure - spending 4-5 hours a night and most of each weekend :slight_smile:

Obsessed yes, addicted no :slight_smile:

That said, 4k games are fantastic! I’m looking forward to seeing more entries from the folks that have them under wraps at the moment.

Changes should be up tonight… I’ve got another to start work on now tho :slight_smile:

Kev

#12

more like “havn’t even started yet” ::slight_smile:

Your gonna have to slow down Kev, your stealing all the good ideas :wink:

#13

Well Gee… Look what I get to look forward to ;D

#14

Ooops… sorry… I’ve got another 3 I think I’d like to do then I’m probably done… :slight_smile:

Just uploaded a new version with a bit of give in the collision with walls.

Note: You slow down if you hit walls, you lose money if you hit other cars.

Kev

#15

Oh, and for the record, I’m from the UK, so they’re driving on the RIGHT side of the road. i.e. the Left :slight_smile:

Kev

#16

[quote]Oh, and for the record, I’m from the UK, so they’re driving on the RIGHT side of the road. i.e. the Left :slight_smile:
[/quote]
Lemme see here, the inventors of the internal combustion engine (the Germans) drive on the right, the country that popularized automobiles and still has the largest number of any nation (the U.S.) drives on the right, and about 3/4 of the entire world drives on the right (see: Wikipedia) A quick check reveals that almost all countries that drive on the left were former British colonies! Not only that, but Britain was late in adopting automobiles because of a law that required a man on foot, with a red flag to precede the automobile!

With that in mind, I’d say it’s you blokes who are screwed up, and the rest of the world does it RIGHT! And don’t give me any nonsense about needing your sword hand for defense! :wink:

#17

Wow, this looks like a clear winner if you fix the gameplay a bit.
Controls are perfect for me, but it’s all too easy. After a while I just quit out of boredom.
For example it’s just no problem at all if you keep hitting cars. You just drive through them and maybe loose 1$, but so what? You will gain 100s of $ if you get to the next point.
It would be better if you hit a car, you will spin and bounce away out of control until you stop and losing way more money (and time!).
Maybe also an idea is to raise the number of cars as you progress and thus making the game more difficult as you go.
But other than that, it’s really amazing how you could cram all this into 4k! :smiley:

#18

Just amazing you did this under 4k !!!

:o

#19

Really great game. I’d prefer a bit more speed, larger roads => more action. You could zoom out with increasing speed (GTA anyone).

Although, could you please explain how you did that 3D Thing with the houses ?

#20

Thanks for the wonderful feedback… I’ll try and modify the gameplay… I was think about this (re: ericd) :

a) When you hit another car you bounce off backwards. (maybe a bit slower to prevent it gettng really annoying)
b) Increase cars on the road as time goes on (thought this could be a performance hit, the game logic is very expensive)
c) Make the time for taxi runs get harder and harder (less and less even).

I might have to do some optimising for size pretty soon, but I’ve just started work on the next creation.

I don’t think thats really true, although nice of you to say. Its the wonderful thing about games, they’re totally subjective :slight_smile:

The source for all my 4k games so far will be available soon. However, the “3D thing” is mind blowingly simple when it comes down to it.

The bottom of the buildings are a standard 30x30 grid. So you’ve got those 4 points really easy. With the top you offset by some amount for each corner normally. That would give you straight buildings. So maybe you bring the top out 10 pixes all round the 30x30. You then add to this the amount of the point is away from the center (i.e. the players car) multiplied by some scalar (in my case the height of the building). And Voila!

Working out which side of the building to draw is really easy. If the polygon you’d draw for the side appears under the top of the building - don’t draw it.

Its all a bit a sham really. I quite fancy doing an OpenGL version of this that would look remarkably like GTA1 but do something a bit different with the game play.

Kev