UPDATE 2017-05-16:
VEKTOR2089 is now up for early access on itch.io!
Features:
- Split screen multiplayer
- Trackmania style hotseat multiplayer
- Track editor
- 60 fps
- Multiple cars to choose from with different feels and styles
- 4 speed classes
- Maybe a story mode, we'll see!
New in 1.5.0beta:
- 8 set looping tracks, 3 laps each
- Level editor (needs some more work)
Missing some stuff from the previous version that still needs to be fixed up:
- Boosters
- Narrowing tracks
- Time attack replays
Wipeout inspired racing game!
Z to ACCEL
X to BRAKE
UP to BOOST
LEFT and RIGHT to STEER
Q for MENU
Update 1.2.0:
- Reduced token usage
- Multiple difficulty levels (Easy, Medium, Hard (original difficulty))
Update 1.1.0:
- Somewhat easier AI, might actually be possible to beat them now
- Sharper turning circle
- Nerfed boosting a bit
- Boosted normal acceleration
- Reduced ship size slightly
- Warnings about upcoming turns and narrowing
- Performance improvements
Challenge your ghost or AI racers.
now with music + sound!
5 difficulty levels
in game menu
parallax scrolling foreground
Works great in Pico-8. Can't get it to work in the web player, though. "Stand by.." "Timeout :("
Can someone explain the "Stand by.." and "Timeout :(" messages during start-up? That's from Pico-8, not the cart.
It's done that to me but it worked fine on reloading the page.
Asteroids called, they want to sign these racers up for some extreme danger-filled "courses."
:P
Wow, amazing. The spiral part was fantastic.
It seems very tough not being able to see far ahead. I felt like I was muddling my way through curves instead of taking corners like a race, and I didn't see much use for the boost. The long straight boost section near the end felt like a relief
@cheepicus thanks! yeah I was thinking of adding some kind of warning about upcoming turns and narrowing which might help with that. thanks for playing!
there are now some things sticking out of the side of the track to indicate upcoming turns!
Wow, this is awesome! I love the style of the game, it looks very retro. I also love the effect when you hit a wall. One suggestion I would have is to make the turning a little faster.
@Ivoah thanks! I'm considering that after watching some friends play it at work today. You need to brake a lot more around corners =)
I might add in different ships with different handlings.
Got AI working! the Pink car in the lead is an AI, I'm Red and Orange is my ghost.
Now to make the AI stupider so it doesn't win every time!
Wasted many hours trying to figure out why angles weren't working until I read the docs for atan2 and saw it returns in the range 0..1 not 0..2*pi.
new version with AI competition and time trial mode.
pretty much done now! and i'm out of code space =)
i was going to have a slipstreaming feature but it kept freezing =(
zooming out might kill the CPU, but I could rescale everything to fit more on screen I guess.
new version should fix most issues raised.
can see a bit further ahead and have warnings about upcoming turns and narrowing.
sharper turning circle!
easier AI
boost isn't quite as much of a game changer now, just a boost.
@richy486 it's possible, but not sure how well it'd work.
I guess it'd have to be like the micromachines game where if the losing player falls too far behind they'd get exploded and respawn or something since I can't really zoom out to show more of the track.
I was thinking of adding a Trackmania style hotseat multiplayer mode though
The big gifs are lagging this page and so the load of the game :s
I had more fun on your game than on most modern wipeout games ! The physic is really similar to the 1-3 series, I miss this feeling so much !!
sorry @schminitz, i've removed most of the gifs, hopefully it runs a bit better now.
@benjamin Soulé thanks so much! yeah i'm pretty happy with the movement. i loved the early wipeout games, but the later ones have been kind of disappointing.
Impressive! Could you explain the technique you used to generate the track?
@alexr thanks!
i generate a path by picking a length and curve and a width.
eg. curve: -0.02 length: 32. then loop and decrement length until length is 0 each time adding a new segment to the path.
once it reaches length == 0 then it picks a new curve and length and repeats until the length of the track is the desired size.
different difficulties use different posibilities of curve and length and widths.
when rendering the track and calculating collisions i check against points along a line perpendicular to the path and width/2 distance from it.
the problem with this method is it's difficult to make looping tracks, need to figure out a solution for that.
@impbox thanks for explaining. Clear.
Looping tracks... I don't see how one could reconcile your approach with the creation of those. I would try instead generating a sequence of random points, then appending a duplicate of the starting point, finally fitting a curve for each segment (assuming that's at all possible given the constraints of the platform).
I'm just floored! I can't stop playing. It's hard to keep track of the course. But. the style is really good!
@Angrycrow thanks so much! The next version should have set levels (and level editor hopefully) instead of randomly generated ones so you can actually get familiar with the courses.
Awesome work! It's been a while since I've played it, but this reminds me a bit of MicroMachines. I love the music and the graphics style, well done!
whoaaa this is super cool! really like the style you have going with this. the glitch effect when you hit a wall is great.
updated with easier difficulties because watching people play it i realised it was way too hard!
Thanks for the update, the tighter turning radius makes it much more fun to play (for me at least)
@Ivoah, @RobbyDuguay: cheers!
next on the agenda:
*fixed looping tracks rather than randomly generated ones.
I've never liked 2D racers because of the reliance on isometric; picoracer-2048 is a joy to race instead!
The no.1 thing that stuck out to me that's missing beyond the obvious Wipeout-inspired evolution (weapons) is strafing! Being able to strafe would be like the 2D equivalent of air-brakes; it would help with quickly lining yourself up with boost-pads when you go around a corner at the wrong angle, as well as lending itself to: 1. more track options, like forks/splits and 2. weapon avoidance in some future version maybe.
Thanks kindly.
Kroc
@Kroc thanks!
I mainly took my influence from early wipeout games which didn't have strafing, but i could probably add it for a double tap left/right, i'll give it a try.
The current break button+direction is supposed to feel like the wipeout airbreaks, they convert speed into turning power.
I'd love to do forks/splits but it would require a lot of changes to how the tracks are done, and not how feasible it would be.
Weapons I've considered but I definitely don't have enough code space to implement those =(
I just sat there and listened to the music cause I kept running out of fuel but I had a lot of fun either way.
Would you consider adding more songs? I was always enjoying how there would be different songs not bound to the tracks in Wipeout.
@Pizza there's no fuel limit, use X for acceleration, UP is to boost which is limited and regenerates, if you use it all up you'll overheat and pause regeneration for a while.
This used to be more obvious, but I changed the UI a bit to reduce tokens, probably less clear now =(
More songs would be great, haven't really played much more with the music stuff in pico8 yet as I find the UI frustrating.
This is so beautiful! Would you be able to explain how you fixed looping tracks and how the tracks are stored? I found the earlier comment you made about track generation/collision checking really cool!
@jctwood, well the looping tracks have to be created manually, i couldn't come up with a nice way to generate them dynamically unfortunately =( hence the addition of a track editor, i think i need to make it a bit easier to line the end up with the start as it's quite fiddley to get right.
I'm storing the tracks in the map data (4096 bytes / 8 tracks = 512 bytes per track / 3 bytes per section = 170 sections per track, unlikely you'll need that many for a track and i plan to reduce that limit and use the left over space for storing booster locations) each 3 bytes in the track is [length, curve, width], i could probably compress this a bit to make it more compact if necessary since the range of useful values is quite small. the track ends when the length is 0.
when drawing the track in game all the functions wrap around so any request for segments > tracklength are wrapped to the start and any segments < 0 are wrapped to the end, the player's current segment is stored unwrapped so if the track is 300 segments and you're on segment 650 then you're on the second lap.
hey can you fix up Jakarta's bugs? I love the map but fuck up sub 100 sec time because of bugs 50% of my plays.
@smokerockpunchcops sorry what's the bug you're encountering?
I just tried Jakarta a few times and it worked fine.
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