FreeGameDev

So on master there is now the first hovercraft.
To test use normal sim and pick car V1.
Is very fast. And doesn't care about terrain bumps. So rally tracks are very easy with it.
But, it goes crazy in pipes, totally undrivable, and stunts mostly too, cars are better. Not sure if I can fix that.
Preview:
http://imgur.com/2k8vqcG

Hmm, I was hoping for a real hovercraft, not such a futuristic glider.

I think there would be great potential in a realistic hovercraft racing game; going along narrow rivers and short stretches of land etc.

But this is kind of cool too.

Aah. Heh. Well I'm really afraid what would physics say to real hover, i.e. would need contact on bottom all the time but no damage or sudden jumps from collision impact from just bottom.
But, there aren't even any models for those on blendswap.
There is one luxury futuristic hover http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/22349
and rest is in our car to do list viewtopic.php?f=80&t=5593 at end of 1st post list.
This one is V1, done: http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/66541

How about new scenery for spaceships, gliders, hovercraft - space?

No. We already got Unidentified X, Mars R and Crystals Y sceneries that are outside earth, and have some ground.
Also, you can drive anything anywhere if you want, and I like it so.
But yeah, probably someday I'll make a special track for hovers only.

I was testing V1 in the track X3-Cloud. Awesome!
Some bugs in track X3-Cloud with mushrooms.

Cool.
Yeah I know, nothing I can do about it atm. Also happens on some jungle trees on J10. Will try after Ogre 2.0 and HW instancing.

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/74576

Seems also cool.

As a thought... how about splitting the entire game into a proper realistic rally mode and a futuristic racer ala wipe-out (with all those pipes and jumps etc.)?
That might also be an interesting start for abstracting the game-code a somewhat more to allow also for other "mods" to be created more easily. In the end there would be a base FOSS racing engine and a "Rally", a "Wipeout" and a "Street-racer" etc. mod for it, instead of the current wild mix.

Right, cool model, I've also seen it.
Well. Mods. Nope. I'm not in the mood of spending weeks throwing around parts of code, most of time having non-compiling versions, just to have that. Quite annoying.
I'll have that anyway when we move to Ogre 2.0 someday, but that'll be definitely worth it.
And yeah we have C++, full code, you can change anything in it. Why would we need a layer above it, just to have mods, where if you need sth, you'd have to add it in C++ anyway, since mods are always quite limited right?
I don't have the force to do that too If there were 3 programmers, I guess one could do it.

So, (hovering) spaceships (i.e. not hovercrafts with fans) are nearly done.
Well just 1 now, V1. But more are on their way, I can't wait to open the package and get a ride .
They have params in .car so can be edited/tweaked just like cars. And will have various params, ie. some will be fast some more steerable etc.
Still, I can't figure out the hell happening in pipes, so most likely will not be possible.
They don't care about terrain surface at all, so fly same way on snow or deserts.
They are really easy to fly, and meant mostly for the rally tracks, if you find cars to hard or just want to try sth else for fun.

Now we have 3 spaceships. I think it's a good selection. V1,V2,V3 in cars list.
Slightly different simulation parameters. There aren't that many, so all should be easy.

For some reason, the gear always shows “N” when using one of these but I can still “drive”. Maybe just hide the gear display altogether in this case?

It's needed for R (reverse) since it inverses steering (left-right when in R).
But sometimes gets stuck.

Sounds legit.

Little tip: backwards speed of spaceships doesn't seem to be limited, thus you can go very fast.

Was a bad bug. Should be fixed now.
Also gearbox for spaceships now not needed at all. Probably should hide.

Hovercrafts are interesting. It already works pretty fine, but I still think the physics need more tweaking.

They can too easily avoid crashes. Did you try to fly up a steep hill, even 80°? Easy, if you are good enough, the hovercraft happily rotates to that steep slope. You can easily test this on tracks with a lot of “banks”, for example S8-SlopeCity. This should not be possible at all, I think.

At start, they often slide a bit to the side since the starting point is not 100% flat.

The hovering itself could be improved. When falling with great speed towards the ground, the hovercraft almost always catches the fall perfectly. I think this is too powerful.
I suggest that this behaviour gets nerfed a bit. Normally the hovercraft shall just hover at a more or less constant height. Let’s call this the “hovering height”. The hovercraft tries to keep this distance over the ground, but it should not always suceed. This is done by rising up a bit (until the hovering height is reached) when the hovercraft is below the hovering height.
When it falls from a certain height and is about to reach the ground, the hover can attempt to “catch” this fall, but not perfectly anymore. The hovercraft shall “break trough” the hovering height a bit, depending on the fall speed. If it was just a small bumb, the effect is so slightly you won’t notice it. If however the hovercraft has a great vertical velocity, it the effect becomes more noticable. At very large falling velocities, the hovercraft may hit the ground before it can manage to “catch” the fall.
Why do I suggest this? Balance. It motivates the player to stay close to the ground instead of falling safely from absurd heights. This makes hovercrafts more challenging.
Maybe, just maybe this feature is only for “Normal” mode, not for “Easy” mode.

Two small last suggestions: Rename “car” to “vehicle” throughout the game, since “car” is not accurate anymore. And actually call the hovercrafts “hovercrafts” in the game. “Spaceship” doesn’t make sense, since the game is never in outer space, it is always on the surface of some planet so far. =)

Right. I agree. Good remarks.
Generally spaceship's anti gravity/hovering is extremely strong. In normal sim mode should be more faulty and possible to damage by landing too fast, would also make gameplay more challenging.
About the pitch align for spaceships: it was intended, I wanted them to be drivable in pipes, sadly they still they can't.
But I really want to release 2.4 ASAP, I'm leaving this for next ver. Tweaking always consumes (unpredictably) lots of time.
Ugh, true, renaming car to vehicle should happen. But wow in how many places we already have car.
No, I think spaceship is a good name. We can have hovercrafts in future (those real ones with big fans). After all those are spaceship models so I'm saying in descr. of V1 it's a spaceship converted as hovercraft for racing.

Hey, it can fly: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/823 ... 29.16.webm

Use flipping (no need to boost), steer in opposite direction a bit.

Yeah it's fun. We decided to keep it.
To take off ground, e.g. press Q and Up and Right (not full, just tap a bit). Same for other direction (F, Left).
It's very easy with V3. Others are difficult, need boost at start.
Also other thing is you can steer faster if you flip. E.g. pres Up, Right and W. Too much can hit bottom with wing.