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Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 20 Jun 2011, 22:52
by domasx2
Hi!

For the past few months I have been developing a combat racing game called Bandit Racer.
You can play it at www.banditracer.eu.

It is a HTML5 game, written in pure javascript using gamejs game framework and box2d physics engine, playable in a browser.

Inspiration comes from an old combat racing game called Mini Car Racing, which I enjoyed very much and since felt that the genre was underrepresented, especially on PC.
This is a project I've been wanting to do for a long time, so hopefully I'll see it to completion :)

Current features:
- 6 upgradeable cars with distinct characteristics
- 15 tracks across 3 leagues
- 12 upgradable weapons/items
- Single player career mode
- In-game track editor
- Some crappy sound effects, working on it :)


Features I'm planning to add in the future:
-Multiplayer - previous version had it, planning on bringing it back soon (any year now).
-Powerups
-More game modes
-Sound :oops:

Links to source are on the website, it is licensed under MIT license.

Gameplay video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO4fWJjmKMg

Image Image

Re: Bandit Racer, an html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 20 Jun 2011, 23:30
by qubodup
Death Rally, is this you? :heart:

Well, it's close :)

The pause screen needs a text. I assumed space is for shooting and then when the game paused I assumed that shooting freezes the game :D

I once made pick-up icons for this kind of game and tuned a vector graphic that could be used in this kind of game:
http://opengameart.org/content/simple-shooter-icons
http://www.openclipart.org/detail/61201 ... by-qubodup

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 21 Jun 2011, 17:18
by oberhamsi
ah! that's where I knew it from. via IRC:

Image

Death Rally for PC. loved that game.

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 21 Jun 2011, 18:09
by domasx2
I must have been living under a rock, because this is the first time I've heard of Death Rally.
Will get it and see if I can borrow some good ideas :)

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 22 Jun 2011, 09:19
by oberhamsi
found the shareware version of death rally. runs great in dosbox:

http://www.3drealms.com/news/1996/10/de ... ly_11.html

their camera is much closer to the ground, the cars are slower and there's more drifting going on. i'd think that the slower pace made multiplayer encounters more interesting - kinda slow mow.

i remember the campaign was interesting: there were always three, different difficulty races going on at the same time. so you would have to chose between which one to risk :) winning races earns money, you needed money to repair & upgrade your car.

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 22 Jun 2011, 10:05
by domasx2
I also heard the same from others, that top speed in my game is too high, will try reducing it . This will also allow more space for speed upgrades/buffs.

AI bots cheat and speed up to catch up, but in multiplayer there is the problem of not being able to catch up with an oponent once he is out of line of fire. Speeding players up arbitarily like bots feels too hacky.
I am thinking of experimenting with a 'boost' system - a boost bar that can be expended to temporarily increase speed and engine power, refills quicker the lower your position in the race is.

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 22 Jun 2011, 10:53
by qubodup
Car speed: you can buy new cars and upgrade engines. When the game progresses the cars become crazy fast.

In DR, The camera zooms out depending on speed.

Boost can be also be a bar that can be filled up with pick-ups

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 22 Jun 2011, 11:46
by oberhamsi

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 22 Jun 2011, 12:29
by qubodup
also: http://opengameart.org/content/drought-tiles-pack

Ironically, TROPHY (open source Death Rally clone) released a new version yesterday: http://sourceforge.net/projects/trophy/ [ dl at http://sourceforge.net/projects/trophy/ ... phy/1.1.7/ ]

Nothing fancy actually, just a fix. The last time something fancy was added was v 1.1.3 in the year 2003)
{l Code}: {l Select All Code}
2011-06-21   1.1.7 Fix src/Makefile.am from 1.1.6
2010-02-14   1.1.6 Adapt makefiles for ClanLib 1.0
2007-08-08   1.1.5 Bugs fixes and code cleanup
2007-08-08   1.1.4 Ported to ClanLib-0.8
2003-05-15   1.1.3 Added tracks: snake, rally

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 22 Jun 2011, 12:48
by oberhamsi
qubodup {l Wrote}:In DR, The camera zooms out depending on speed.

Boost can be also be a bar that can be filled up with pick-ups


i think domas engine could do that too and the banditracer does it, but it's (too) subtle.

the boost bar!! always on the racers mind. made the game very tactical.

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 22 Jun 2011, 12:54
by domasx2
The engine does have a zoom feature, and it wouldn't be hard to tie it to car speed.
The main issue is performance, namely, that it's cut roughly in half in most browsers when zoom is not on default setting. And it makes firefox run out of memory pretty fast :o IE9, on the other hand, runs like a champ, zooming or no zooming, yay hardware acceleration! I might add dynamic zooming as a opt-in option.

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 20 Jul 2011, 17:14
by Tranberry
Nice, I'm also remembering Death Rally playing this game.

If you want some simple gfx I can supply some, here are some cars I did:
Image

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 21 Jul 2011, 11:58
by domasx2
Hey Tranberry,

First, thanks for your interest! Very unfortunately I've already included new original sprites By Dovile Lapinskaite for the three cars into the game just recently.
However, If you are interested in contributing, you're more than welcome! Just to avoid duplication of effort, please post what you'd like to work on.

Right now the game could really use nicer tarmac tiles, more variety for collidable walls (currently there's only tire stacks, which are also ugly-ish), missile sprite, smoke animation. Or, I'm open to suggestions

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 21 Jul 2011, 12:33
by Tranberry
Ok, to bad.
I'm more of a UI and simple gfx man, as I don't got the time to do more advanced stuff for the fine FOSS community at the moment.

So if you got one contributor for graphics, I'd like to talk to him to see if the three of us could agree on a style that fits together, as I'm a big fan of graphics that matches (meaning not mixing photos with illustrations and so on). Anyhow I went ahead and posted two of the cars I made here (SVG) open game art

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 21 Jul 2011, 13:14
by domasx2
I had a quick chat with Dovile, and she thinks she has ingame graphics covered for the moment :/

Hoever, if you're good with UI, that would also be great help: color scheme, graphics for UI elements, even UI layout mockups / suggestions, I suck at it.

I'm getting ready to do a car customization interface soon, where you can buy cars, buy weapons for them, upgrade car attributes (engine, armor, handling) and weapons. Don't yet have a good idea on how this should look and feel

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 21 Jul 2011, 13:24
by Tranberry
Oops, I feel real bad for saying 'him' now.

I can do some simple UI mockups for you, you should know I'm more in favor of simple and elegant UI.

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 21 Jul 2011, 13:31
by domasx2
Simple and elegant sounds great :)

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 21 Jul 2011, 17:47
by Tranberry
Yeah.
Before I do all the boring work fo splitting stuff, here is the kind of title screen I would like to see for Bandit Racer.


Image

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 21 Jul 2011, 18:09
by domasx2
Looks very cool.
How would it scale to higher resolutions?
What is the font, is it available to use in truetype format, so I can render text dynamically?
Also, some slight animation could be done, like buttons sliding into place from the edge of the screen at the start?

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 21 Jul 2011, 18:27
by Tranberry
Everything is made by vector-shapes so it should scale well. The font is one I found searching for free and open source fonts so it should be available in any format you like (sitting with another computer as of now, so I cant check).

Are you going to make the game in multiple resolutions?

Animations in JS or any other language is not my strength, I can do the shapes/images and such but that's about it.

You don't hang in #freegamer @ freenode by any chance? or #OpenGameArt?

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 21 Jul 2011, 18:45
by domasx2
The game already works with multiple resolutions, there are links below the game window to pop it out in a higher resolution.
So far I'm not scaling the UI in any way, just leaving it at the top left corner, which isn't very pretty.
What I have in mind for higher resolutions is scaling the layout, but leaving image scale (widths, heights in pixels) otherwise unchanged, except for special cases (buttons could become longer, sticking to the right side of the screen).

I'd do the animation and any other programming required myself, just checking if it sounds like a good idea :)

I don't use IRC, it wrecks my productivity too badly :/ But I have skype and gtalk for text chat if you want.

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 24 Jul 2011, 19:08
by domasx2
Created a new track using Tranberry's race track tiles, the Tranberry Raceway :P

Also: basic sound effects! At http://www.banditracer.eu/game/play.php?w=800&h=600&sound=true
Browser support for HTML5 audio is crap. Impossible to get engine sounds to loop perfectly, some sounds are delayed, stability issues.
Due to these problems sound is turned off on the default version. I hope browsers get their act together soon, would hate to have to fall back on flash.

Really need to focus on improving UI and building the garage interface now.

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 25 Jul 2011, 14:57
by qubodup
There is some flash already (flashblock allows me to unblock something) - what is it used for?

Neat new track, neat name too :) only needs a nice sand texture now.

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 25 Jul 2011, 15:15
by domasx2
There is a flash fallback for websockets - so far only chrome fully supports them natively. It's not required for single player, and I'd very much like to keep single player 3d party browser extension free.

I have someone working on nice original textures and tiles :)

Re: Bandit Racer, a html5 combat racing game

PostPosted: 09 Aug 2011, 00:26
by domasx2
Major update:

First, graphics. It's now pwetty! Cool new UI design by Tranberry, new in-game graphics with Tranberry's newest track pieces, track texturing & background textures by DovilÄ—. Old tracks ditched, 3 new tracks made to utilize new assets.

Second: In-game track editor! Recommended to use at higher-than-game-default resolutions. Help text coming soon ;) In the mean time: stuff is rotated with mouse wheel, example track is available to examine. Track submissions are very welcome, if it's nice it will be included in the game.

Also, bots nerfed seriously, general top speed reduction for all cars, other random balance tweaks to make it easier for the player.

After I get multiplayer back up and running, garage interface with car customization is next in line for development