Introducing the Quickstart Racing project!

[gekido]

Or, otherwise known as Midnite Core

One of the biggest issues that we have in promoting GameCore is a library of finished games that have been produced with the engine.  I have been tasked to solve that problem  ;}

The Concept

1) Helios provides the basic framework and structure for a game project (in this case, a racing game)
2) Helios provides a library of assets and content that can be used to create new tracks / worlds
3) ...
4) Helios packages community-created tracks & content periodically until we have a finished game that will be given away and everyone can then dissect / reverse engineer & (more importantly) Play!

Step 3 is where the community comes in.  I have a basic racing game, setup in an urban / city environment.  Originally this was going to be a game called 'Midnite Core' that we were planning to release to the community, however client projects and other issues slowed development to a crawl.  What we DO have however is a large number of assets (urban props, buildings, vehicles) and the basic framework for a game that we can continue building on, assuming that people want to contribute.

Your Mission (should you accept it

To be willing to contribute time into a community project, by either:
1) Be willing to spend some time building tracks / worlds using the guidelines that we set forth
2) Creating content that can then be bundled with the project in a future release
3) Be willing to QA / Playtest the game and contribute productively to the creation of a communal game.

Thoughts?  Ideas?  Comments?

[Ron]

One of the biggest issues that we have in promoting GameCore is a library of finished games that have been produced with the engine.  I have been tasked to solve that problem  ;}

Nice project  , racing is by far my favorite genre of game. Unfortunately 3d modeling is my weakest area (quality is decent, but 9 out of 10 times its more economical to purchase). I do have a few items I have made on my own that I would be glad to donate if they help any.

Also, I have alot of ideas I have learned over the years to help promote GC in general, be glad to send them via pm if desired. Be really great to get alot of new users here on the forums using GC instead of some of the other game engines that don't even compare in quality to GC.

Two vehicles I have made so far





also have a set of bleachers and static flag that are decent and a few other misc items.

[gekido]

sweet - was hoping you'd be into the idea ;}

basically what we have are a large library of outdoor / urban props - street signs, benches, modular buildings (fronts, signs etc), parking meters, you name it.

our objective is to 'fast forward' development of games that people want to make as much as possible by providing these 'quickstart kits'.

racing games are one of the easiest kind of game to build in gamecore for many reasons, but the biggest is that they do not require animated characters.  fps games being the second easiest (which you'll hear more about soon enough .  hence we want to provide everyone with the raw assets, the game framework that allows you to essentially 'mod' your own game very quickly, while doing so while taking some 'best practices' as far as design / scripting framework in mind.

granted this won't solve everyone's 'make game type x' questions and problems, but hopefully it will give everyone a good starting point for launching their game design dreams ;}

i'm heading up to vancouver tomorrow to spend a few days with the family, but will be back mid-next week and hopefully by then our new artist will have finished organizing the majority of the rest of the content and i can do a quick 'show and tell' ;}

[Steely Dane]

I'd be into throwing some custom assets your way....all I need is a heads up on what the parameters are.

[pixel_legolas]

oh man, this something I have wanted forever when it comes to a RPG but I sure want to be part of a community based project. Don't know what I can contribute with so far though

[LutinMalefique]

Cool idea, i'm in   
i made some test for a racing game last year but now i'm on another project. But if you provide a lot of assets i will love to make some tracks in parallel of my own game.

[JimB]

At last a move in the right direction I will help I'm a modeler though 

[BigDaz]

Count me in too
I think a racing game is the ideal genre for a community to build like this, tracks and content can be built independently and then just bolted on.

[Merrie]

I would be happy to jump in here as well with assets, testing and Q/A. I did some drag racing, mud drags some years ago as well as was on a dirt bike team so I have some knowledge to contribute. Glad to have the time finally to get back in the community.

When I have some of my model pics up Ill post a reference.

[gekido]

Ok, almost have the first pass on the game framework completed.  Basically what we have is:

1) lap-based racing, including:
- Timing (overall / per-lap)
- placement (1st, 2nd, etc)
- AI racers (up to 3 in addition to the player at the moment, pretty easy to expand though)
- finish lines & race finish state (returns to menu once race is done, lets you pick a new track etc).

2) race / track selection
- each race has a config file that allows you to specify some details such as the name of the race, which object in the world is used for the finish line etc.

Basically all I want to add before release is the ability to pick which car you are using and then things should be ready to go.

The track itself is pretty disposable, my goal is to get the basic framework ready to go and let everyone run with it ;}

Some other features that I may add in the future:
- checkpoint-based racing - timer counts down until you hit a check point, at which point it adds additional time, etc...

- leaderboards / top scores - this is pretty easy to do, but I would rather just get it released.

[cowblack920]

I'll try to help, but I wont be so much help, just learning how to do this stuff, maybe I will just test the game or something

[pixel_legolas]

Just tried it and seems like a very nice addon to gamecore. I do get some errors....84 to be exact when starting the template but it's mostly missing textures, don't know why.

Could you do something to water because when entereing water you just sink to bottom and nothing happens My bad driving took me there

[gekido]

Most of the startup messages when loading the world the first time are simply warnings while the objects cache themselves - basically these are textures that have been replaced / updated via the OPR files.

As long as everything looks ok (ie doesn't have the lovely pink 'missing texture' texture) then you should be good to go.

We're experimenting with ways to better handle driving in the water etc ;}

[pixel_legolas]

there was one box that had a pink texture and maybe somewhere else. Nothing that was very visible and easy to change

Another notice is that sun shadows is of and when turning it on framerate drops down to 1FPS, it could have something to do with all trees getting shadows etc

[gekido]

The shadowing is disabled in the sky simply to ensure that the majority of people can enjoy the content pack as it was provided.

We also designed the world so that it should run pretty well on a 512 Mb video card (with shader model 3.0 or higher) in DirectX9 mode - if your machine doesn't meet or exceed this spec, then again, performance may not be ideal.