Calling all Graphic Designers!

[TGHC]

Nothing like a bit of bumping and boring

[Arexack_Heretic]

hey! hey!

This really took off.

So... what are the white cubes I see hanging around the track?

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maybe have a few NPC camera drones.
(immobile, but tracking closest racer... untill passed a treshold range, then look for new target.)

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Those rings seem awfully close together...

you may want to space them out a bit.

...and have tiny (destructable) objects with flashers lay out the direction of the course instead of all rings.

(for clarity; usually one has little time to look at the ASC to find the next ring)
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I'll not contribute right now....gotta write up a paper again ... but rest asured I will in future contribute again.

I'll give Murgh a nudge, maybe he'll return from exile for this.

[LittleBear]

Thanks A_H! At first I did have the rings spaced out a lot, but it was no fun to play! The ship with the fastest top speed always wins as its just a drag race in a straight line to the next ring with no cornering. The Rings are 1 km apart, so flying through (and you must pass every ring!) means you constantley have to reset your line and the rings whizzing past you really gives an impression of speed. It feels like being on a roller coster to play and you need nerves of steel to hit the injectors. Having the rings close together like this also means a good piolt can beat a bad piolt in a faster ship, as many turns can only be taken by hitting the breaks. Still have the AIing to do, so it'll be a week or two before a test version is posted, but be cool to include some of your racers, as well as Murgh's Boyracers and Dragsters in the final version. I haven't used the space compase for the rings, as you can visually see the next one. Its more like being in an enclosed tunnel, but you can pass NPCs easy enough by hitting the injectors at the right time or by taking the best line.

Afraid the cubes are just the fact that my awful graphics card cannot render the new Nebula effects in 1.69.1 properly!!! But I am gonna add some Racing Police who fly round the outside of the track and attack "cheats" who fire on the unarmed racers.

[Arexack_Heretic]

Nice!



I really think team boyracer need to have boyracers in it's fleet.
Though that may be another racing class, ultralight, as boyracers are more like dirtbikes...expensive ones.


I'd like to see billboards doing:

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In sharp corners. (To the right obviously)

[LittleBear]

Like the class idea. Could increment a variable everytime the player wins a race. At first he only competes against the Doc's Kraits, Sidewinders and Mamba's but a certain number of wins promots to boy racers, then the Dragsters.

[Arexack_Heretic]

It's more the type of ship-specs allowed in a race. Than the level of opponent quality.

It's a good idea though for more extended racing rallies, cups, etc involving more than one race.

You could implement such system, slowly increasing the NPC ships' basic speed, the odds of NPC's using injectors or having superior shields to ram you with etc. improving NPC ship handling might be a bit out of reach.

classes:
some races are pan-galactic, others a lap around the sun, while yet others are the twitch action of the loop-de-loop races.

Another class is the destruction derby, where weapons are allowed (only low yield missiles though). These are commonly held inside dense asteroid clusters, hence the nicknames dodger-derby or rock-ramming-race. Contestants that leave the arena are discualified and points are tallied according to last breathing and number of kills.

Usually only certain shiptypes are allowed in a race. Though you may try doing a loop-de-loop race in a Python, if the rules allow it, fitting throught the rings may be a big (mortal) challenge.

[LittleBear]

Do like these ideas, but for this OXP I'm gonna go for the Track Race type (cos I've already done the track. ). However, the AI for the Track Race, could easily be modded for across system races or races that involve flying though asteroid belts, so it should be faily easy to pick up on the Wacky Racers OXP to add new types of races in the future. If sombody wanted to use the same variable as the wacky racers, then the player would have to qualify for the Loop-the-loop or inter system racers by winning a certain number of Track Races first.

I guess this OXP will be like the Dodge Derbies refered to on the Wiki Racers Page:-

"Dodge derbies: High-risk close-quarter maneuvering and high-G turns in a packed heat with "relaxed rules", often arranged in asteroid belts. It is not uncommon that only one third of the starting lineup survive the race."

Except the hazards are provided by the rings themselves (and the NPC racers). The AI I have in mind should work, but if a faster racer is comming up behind you (or another NPC) and the ship ahead is on the racing line, I think the AI I have planned will mean he's likley to ram you out of the way! Probabley won't kill either ship, but the impact is quite likley to send you spinning off the course (and maybe into a ring). Allthough outright lasering is against the rules (if spotted!), all other contact is fair enough.

[Arexack_Heretic]

kay.

I had a small project running a time back.
a fairly large asteroid belt around a small moon, packed with hermits and rogue hermits plus pirates.
It had 8 racing rings placed at the 8 'directions' of the belt.

a cross between Derby and the ring track.

I stopped working on it unfortunately... in favour of unsolvable challenges.

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I was thinking of adding a series of rings or halfrings (pitts) that would add some fuel to the playership when 'contacted'.

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Another idea to make things more interesting would be to add bonus target buoys. (+1 kill and a nice bounty)

[Captain Hesperus]

I'd like to see billboards doing:

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In sharp corners. (To the right obviously)

Maybe even implementing Ahruman's animated shader code for that flashing arrow effect.

I originally put the idea of having adapted BoyRacers with camera rigs attached so that they race around the outsides of the rings, recording the action through chase view cameras. You might even have team sponsored camera-ships that watch only their own team's ships (for those exclusive Pay-Per-View subscriptions).

And I'd still like to see 'Support Ships'. Annies and so forth in team colours as transports and mobile control centres/pit crew areas.

Captain Hesperus

[LittleBear]

Its all doable Cap and fairly easy to code. I'd really like to add some of Murgh's hognoses in the center part of the course, (ie not the bit the racers go round, the sort of inner circle) towing broken down racers back to the pits (ie the rock hermit - hopfuly someone will vol to repaint it!). Easy to do with a few entries in ship data. Only problem is the number of objects being spawned. The game runs well (on my awful elderly PC), once the player has exited hyperspace and all objects are spawned. But it is causing a 10 sec hang on entering the system! Think this is OK gameplay wise, as I'll only add track to 3 systems in each Galaxy (so you only go there if your up for a race). But as with the Repair Yard in Assassins, the number of objects spawned is pushing Oolite! There is no noticable slowdown in play once the system is populated, but you do have to wait a bit entering the system.

[Arexack_Heretic]

how about this simple alteration of murgh's texture?



Why aren't you placing simple mockup rings in wings3D?

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-create a disc, with a center point on both sides. 
(make sure the disc is on its side and facing in the +Z direction)
(move the object untill the front centerpoint is on 0,0,0)
-add a simple object (tetragon?) of which you use one vertex to line up with the front centerpoint.  
(you could give the important vertex a distinguising colour)
-move the object so that the important vertex is at 0,0,0.
-move the object 100 along a line that goes through both centerpoints (Z-axis for now).
-select both objects, combine them. (remove the rear centerpoint)
-save the object.

-copy, move, rotate. 
-repeat untill you have the entire track. 
-note the coordinates of all centerpoints and their corresponding facing points.

[Killer Wolf]

this is looking like a cracking OXP. how about having the rings far apart....but in an asteroid field have to zip through the rings but weave your way in and out to the next one so it's not just a straight drag.

[JensAyton]

-add a simple object (tetragon?)

You mean a square? :-)

[Star Gazer]

A tetragon does not have to be a square - that is an example of a regular tetragon - it can be irregular, with four sides of wildly different lengths.
A square would probably be the easiest for this purpose!

[JensAyton]

I did in fact know that. I am, after all, a computational geometer. :-)