Prev/Next Blog
by date

Plan for BigPapa

Name:	BigPapa
Date Posted:	Nov 21, 2005
Rating:	Not Rated
Public:	YES
Comments:	YES
RSS Feed:	or Subscribe with .
Profile Page:	View profile page for BigPapa

Blog post

I finally decided it was time post a .plane to share with the comunity what I've been working on.

Back in March of 2005, I purchased TGE 1.3 and like many new Torque owners, I decided that the best way to get my development skills up to snuff was by making a game. I wanted to start small so decided to use the Racing starter kit as a starting point and develop a new game around it.

The working title is Ambush Racing. It's a small scale car racing game like many but with the distinction that you don't use weapons to thwart your opponent. Instead, you use the track as your weapon.

Part of the game design process is the design document. I've looked at some templates but decided to just ad-lib it and modify as needed but keeping an eye out for the evil "feature creep". Here is what I have so far:

Working title: Ambush Racing
Concept: Small scale car racing on interactive tracks rigged with traps used for blocking, tricking and frustrating your opponents.
Similar games: dRacer, Nitro, Bugged Out Rally
What makes this game different? No weapon on your car. The track is your weapon.

Features:
- Pop-up walls triggered by cars.
- Game contains ready-made interactive tracks rigged with traps.
- Local multiplayer races.
- Internet multiplayer races. (Not working yet)
- OS X, Linux, Windows versions can play together.
- Track editor used to make your own tracks out of "snap-on" track sections.(planned)

Technology Needs:
- Game engine - TGE 1.3
- 3D modelers - Blender and Hammer (Later switch to *sigh* Constructor)
- Audio editor Audacity
- Compilers/IDE Eclipse(Win), Xcode(OS X), GCC(Linux)

Engine modifications:
- Better vehicle tracking and re-spawning methods: Self created (Torquescript).
- Better vehicle steering: Vehicle Steering Upgrade resource
- Car 3D preview: GuiObjectView resource

Enough jabbering! Download it for either OS X Panther, Linux or Windows. That's right! multi-platform! Please give me all the feedback you can think of. The more I have, the more I learn.

I will be posting more images on Flickr later.

Recent Blog Posts

List:	05/17/07 - Concept Art and Dev Website 04/03/07 - Started work on new game. 01/15/07 - Change in direction 06/14/06 - Progress so far 04/04/06 - Whats taking up my time 12/03/05 - Plan for BigPapa 11/21/05 - Plan for BigPapa

Submit your own resources!

John Rockefeller (Nov 21, 2005 at 07:16 GMT)

This is really cool :) The most interesting aspect I've seen from a developer's standpoint is how well you got the car to handle. In my racing game, the car wildly slides along the road :/

Adrian Tysoe (Nov 21, 2005 at 07:39 GMT)

Hey cool, I'm hoping to eventualy port my racing game over to torque at some point too. Look forward to checking yours out.

Adam deGrandis (Nov 21, 2005 at 18:25 GMT)

Sounds pretty cool. I look forward to seeing how this progresses.

Treb Connell (formerlyMasterTreb (Nov 21, 2005 at 23:46 GMT)

I was thinking of an F-zero game like this but since you're already doing one I might as well lend ideas of things I thought up.

Useing other cars to reach special areas eg. pushing a car into a pilar which falls down and leads to a ramp where you can trigger more things down onto enemies below.

this one probably would work better in my game then yours but and ability to match the speed of a adjacent car for better smashing.

my game was a bit more centralized on destroying other cars physically rather than using traps but maybe these could spark further Ideas.
Edited on Nov 21, 2005 23:46 GMT

BigPapa (Nov 22, 2005 at 01:17 GMT)

Thanks for the comments guys but don't stop! I want more!

@John - I achieved this by playing around with the WheeledVehicleTire variables and the center of gravity. Although, if you press ctrl-c and get put the camera really close to the tire, you can actually see it vibrate for some weird reason.

@Adrian - Start playing with the racing starter kit to see what you can accomplish. Also check out the links I provided to games that are similar to mine to see what others have done.

@Adam - I will certainly keep all of you updated.

@Master - Destroying cars... I like the way you think. Thanks for the suggestions. This first prototype only has pop-up walls but later I want to add pop-up ramps that will allow you to take shortcuts or lead you to dead ends.

Nice to see that some people have downloaded it already. So far the windows version is the most popular and I

Charles B (Nov 22, 2005 at 20:14 GMT)

Are u pulling my Linux leg?

There are no cars in game?
When selecting the vehicle color blue is yellow?
When selecting vehicle, sometimes there are 4 tires sometimes 3 tires sometimes 2 tires

'r' key doesnt do anything

red console messages about the vehicle spawn
warnings about the collision-1 exceeding bound

BigPapa (Nov 23, 2005 at 12:48 GMT)

@Charles:

- I checked it out and both cars were in the preview and in the race. Perhaps the spawn points did not load.
- Yeah, the blue Ferrari is actually yellow. I just have to change the image.
- The tires is a know problem with the guiObjectView resource I

Charles B (Nov 23, 2005 at 17:31 GMT)

I would also like to comment...

Thanks for the Linux version ;)

BigPapa (Nov 23, 2005 at 20:05 GMT)

You

Grant Kessler (Jul 27, 2006 at 18:02 GMT)

I was kind of wondering exactly how you got the guiobjectview to work with eclipse. i cant get it to work at all, too many build errors and for some reason it wont realize it for me.

BigPapa (Jul 31, 2006 at 11:38 GMT)

Sorry. Switched to Visual Studio express since Eclipse is not supported anymore. http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/26331/9314

You must be a member and be logged in to either append comments or rate this resource.