Hi all,
Been working on a car racing game. All comments are much appreciated!
http://www.brasurf.com.au/CraigsRace/
http://home.exetel.com.au/craigmitchell/CraigsRace.jpg
Cheers,
Craig.
Looking good.
It does seem a little hard to control… that or my reflexs are really bad 
Cool game, with a little bit more work this could be a really nice game to play!
I was pleasantly surprised by the map rotation, combined with zooming ala GTA 1 (zooming out at high speeds / in at slower speeds) it would work out even nicer I think.
PS: I noticed short pauses / sudden accelerations while playing… probably a thread blocking that causes your gameloop trying to catch up?
My car physics are a little off. Drives a little like a hovercraft! ;D
Zooming! Brilliant! Can’t believe I didn’t think of that! I’ll get started on it. Thanks for the idea. 
The pauses / accel… Yea. I have one thread for the game loop and drawing, running at 30fps, and the EDT is left to do the the user input and whatever else. But, if the PC can’t do 30fps, then it’ll all go bad. Will have to think about how to fix that. :
Get stuck at "Creating cars … " WinXP, Java 1.6, FF 2.0 
Works well here: WinXP, Java 1.6.0_03, Opera 9.24
I found the controls to work pretty actually.
Still it was quite hard, and within half a lap the opponents were out of screen. Would be nice if the opponents would adapt their driving to my own skills so hat I would still feel like i’m in the race after 10 secs
All in all, a good start!
Sometimes my Internet connection is rather … sub optimal. : I also need to jar up the main contents, which should improve things.
Currently the other cars are just replays of the fastest people. I think my mate Cam set most of the records! My server will delete each time after it’s 7 days old. However, I totally agree, the player needs to feel like they’re winning, so I think I need computer cars. Oooh … that’s not going to be easy!!! :o
Hey, got it to start! Quite cool game. I thought the control of the car was quite nice. It has to be skidding a bit to be fun, and a nice twitch with the grip/pit stop thing. Boost runs out a bit too fast IMHO. I also noticed the pause and super catch up effect.
Maybe instead take the best player and then select players evenly spread out to the worst (or at least a quite slow one), so that one can place somewhere other than dead last all the time AI cars and collision detection would be nice though.
It’s cool ;D I actually like the fact that your race against previous players! No real need for AI.
Wow, I didn’t realise the bra boys had a website
…and your hosting a Java game off it, nice!
BTW, the game is pretty good. Id like to see a ghost car of my (i.e. the players) best lap. It could be coloured slightly differently to the other ghost cars.
The real opponents are great. To make it more challenging for different skilled players, you could split up the difficulty in different “leagues” (slowest 10%, average drivers, top 10) and make an evenly spread selection of 9 opponents in this leage. Thinking of this, you could easily implement a carreer mode this way. Lets say you split your recorded players into 10 groups, so a beginner would start in the first group and has to achieve at least a top 3 place before he can advance to the next better group of racers. This could actually be quite motivating.
Naa, the website it mine (and I’m not a bra boy). I just made it so I can check the surf off my balcony when I’m at work. ;D
Great idea with identifying the winning ghost car. Will defo do that.
I noticed you recorded 2 VERY fast race times! Geez, I’m being beaten at my own game!!!
Great idea! And the beginners times would be wiped often, so the fast laps would disappear, while the experts would stay up for longer. Love it! And I don’t have to do computer cars!!! ;D
[quote]I noticed you recorded 2 VERY fast race times! Geez, I’m being beaten at my own game!!!
[/quote]
Yeah… dusts imaginary fluff off shoulders…I found some “unusual” physics. Are you going to use this forum as your main medium of communication regarding this game? I noticed you also have a blog but it seems inactive. I love this style of game and had actually started making something similar myself a couple of years ago. Unfortunately i’m too much of a perfectionists and can’t managed to actually finish anything. Have you ever played or heard of a game call Slicks 'n Slides? I wasted many hours when I was younger playing that with my brother and friends (up to four players at the same keyboard). For its time that game was awesome.
PS. I’m might have another go of your game now and see if I can beat my own best time I reckon something in the 2:01’s is possible!
hehe did it
I made that other blog before realising this site existed. So, yea, this will be the main blog. Oh yea, Slicks ruled! I remember not all keyboards could handle having 4 people pressing at least 2 keys each.
I see your new fast time. I just put in position labels on the players name, so now I know which “Stephen” car to chase!!! Thanks for that idea BTW.
Finally! I beat your time! Took me many attempts! 
…I think I’m a little competitive!
Very cool game, works like charm (macbook pro with mac os X leopard). But I seem to be very bad at it, I accelerate all I can and use all the boost, but even then I’m way behind the others.
Sweet. It works on a Mac. …I think that’s good… 
I’ll be putting in skill levels, where you first start against easy opponents. The speed against other players should be the same for everyone as it is based off frames drawn. However, if the system clock is not accurate, the overall gameplay could be faster or slower. Thanks for the testing and info!
Just got fastest driver, a 2:01 flat, yes I beat you again Sicko!
Yeah a varying skill levels would help people, otherwise as the times of the top 8 get quicker and quicker it will seem more impossible to new players. And for competition sack I’ll drop a few hints on getting fast laps:
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Probably the most important thing is to drive in a straight line for as long as possible. Making small twitches and corrections where you should be driving straight actually slows down your car quite a lot (i’d say more than is realistic).
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Now im not sure if this actually helps as I don’t think it was used for any of the current top 8 times, but if you use boost around corners you actually gain grip. That means if your angle of entry into a corner is not good you can correct without penalty by using a little boost. But as I said this ultimately wanted help getting fast times as boost is best to be used in conjunction with the point (1) i.e. straight line speed plus boost is very, very fast.