go-kart model

[zaphod]

That video made me wish there was a demolition derby game mode.

looks more fun everyday!

I think there will be lots of fun modes in addition to vanilla racing, we are putting all the gameplay rules in lua which we are considering opening up inside the map format for people to customize, so I think we could have battle modes, demolition derby, soccer with a big physics ball, etc.

i don't know if it's the camera of the video, but imo the characters are way too small on the screen

on the still images below the video it looks quite nice, but on the video it looks soooo tiny ~~

if that should be player view i'd like to ask if you tried scaling the characters up to like 125-150% and see how it looks, cause i don't like how all the nice character and car detail plops away with tiny tiny view scale

i don't know and on top of that, the racetracks look rather empty with the characters being that small.

it's definately something i would like to have some kind of comparison for, to get a better idea of how it would look like

i think you take away a lot of the charme with showing the characters, you can customize so nice, at such a size :/

I know what you are talking about Acumen, the farther away you get from the karts the tinier they look, it's a real challenge finding the right balance between track size and kart size, many times what looks pleasing visually turns out to be way to small when you actually try and drive on it. We will be adjusting the camera and track sizes as we get more comfortable with playing the game ans seeing what works and what doesn't.

I think you are right that we could move the camera a bit closer to the backs of the karts to be closer to something like this: http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/4211/image1gn9.jpg

if you look at other screenshots from kart games though you can see similar sizes and the karts start to look tiny really fast as they get farther away:

http://wiimedia.ign.com/wii/image/artic ... 551680.jpg

http://wiimedia.ign.com/wii/image/artic ... 557711.jpg

http://wiimedia.ign.com/wii/image/artic ... 554711.jpg

I'm sure it's something we will have to tweak a few times over.

[Acumen]

definately a tough problem. but like for example (i just happen to have that frame previewed on the vimeo thingie). it's 1.24 mins in the video and the camera is rather close to the players, but still they are rather small, imo.

but i just wanted to point it out, but since you guys seem to have everything laid out i'm sure, you'll test it and tweak it until you are satisfied. and i mean, in the end, scaling a car model up/down shouldn't be too much of a problem really, i guess

but overall it's awesome to watch the progress of this thread

i just saved some images you showed in my own racing mod project as reference, and it's quite impressing to see how the quality of the stuff you produced has improved. im really excited in the end, for your further progress *demo*hint*demo*

edit: haha, oh well, that's why i'm no programmer i'd take the most complicated and unefficient way, that could exist ^^

[zaphod]

Thanks Acu!

I think instead of scaling all the karts and players, to change the scale we would just shrink the tracks ( if we wanted the karts to appear bigger )

[Cybbe]

I found it one of the charming points that they were so small. Really cute

[Ginger Lord]

Could always let the player decide on the camera zoom, close, medium, far.

[dux]

First person?

[zaphod]

put together some screenshots:

also, I have done a couple of wallpaper renders for a few of the characters we have so far:

4:3 resoultions:

1024x768,1280x800,1600x1200

widescreen:

1280x800,1440x900,1680x1050,1920x1200,2560x1600

4:3 resoultions:

1024x768,1280x800,1600x1200

widescreen:

1280x800,1440x900,1680x1050,1920x1200,2560x1600

4:3 resoultions:

1024x768,1280x800,1600x1200

widescreen:

1280x800,1440x900,1680x1050,1920x1200,2560x1600

I was thinking about using the wallpapers as main menu backgrounds, similar to what tf2 does - thoughts? Could randomly switch them out or allow people to pick thier favorite (following the customization theme) OOOOOH or the coolest I think would be to have the background without the kart and rider and render the kart and rider in 3d, so your little customized guy is there to greet you when you log in like in WoW. And you could still pick the background.

*new awesome main menu plan*

so I just copied and pasted my main menu idea to brian and he naturally took it to the next level. So if we are going to be totally awesome and have time to do this here is the main menu plan: "background like I was talking about, with your character standing next to your kart - and they will have idle animations and do funny things if you sit there too long. Also, we will blend the animations so that they are always looking at your cursor as you move it around, and if you move it onto their face / body they will freak out and swat at it.

[Bic-B@ll]

thats abut as good as it gets for the background. for the promo posters you should pose them with one leg on the side of their car and have a separate pic of winners stand thing with a first second third place with all three standing there to show them all off at once..

[Thrik]

I haven't much in particular to contribute to this thread, but what you've done is spectacular.

[zaphod]

thats abut as good as it gets for the background. for the promo posters you should pose them with one leg on the side of their car and have a separate pic of winners stand thing with a first second third place with all three standing there to show them all off at once..

that sounds like an awesome render to make once we have a signifigant number of characters, a whole shot of a bunch of them together at once - something you could study for a while picking out all the unique things everyone is sporting.

Thanks Thrik!

[Bic-B@ll]

you already have 3 characters and its some kind of standard to have a 1-2-3 platform

[zaphod]

you already have 3 characters and its some kind of standard to have a 1-2-3 platform

ahh, I see what you mean now

[zaphod]

been working on an informational site to go up on myzerogear.com

like this bic? ;p

[Meotwister]

I like it, the dude on the left though I think I'd rather see as the round headed character. Just so you can see 3 of the types and not have two of the same.

[Bic-B@ll]

no, not like that, like this