nik612, check the 'about me' section of Glenn's website, then you'll know who he really is Btw, Glenn.. looking forward for ur title. Congratz on the progress u've made uptil now; looks awesum!
Muliplayer: Maybe, this kind of depends on how much time is left which in turn depends on exactly how it gets released. Weapons: No, I believe that Racing and shooting do not mix well unless the driving element is very easy. Obstacles: Totally tied in with the above point. The entire concept hinges on the idea that you are driving a vehicle that flies in Ground effect/ This means that unless it's falling, it flies at an altitude of a few metres. The game is basically point to point (or checkpoint to checkpoint) racing. It's all about picking your own route and taking short-cuts but there is a risk of crashing when the craft bottoms out. The crash visuals are pretty lame at the moment so they were edited out of the movie. There are many turns that have to be taken wide to avoid crashing on the steeper slope at the inside of the turn. There are places where the player can ignore the prescribed path and risk bottoming out swerving between small islands and cutting across sandbanks. Crashes will feature in the next vid. As will AI oponents and a less stupid soundtrack...
The tracks are really quick to create. I've spent months making the game also run on Windows and then building the world and track editors into that version. This time investment has really paid off. The five tracks that feature in the video took half an hour or so each to makee. We could create a lot of levels very quickly, the trick is going to be to make them different from each other. A few more features will be added before I'm happy we can make even 20 unique tracks. There are a few pics of the Windows/Editor version here: Ground Effect Dev page
Lovely looking game, Amazing graphics, and the use of some of my favorite vehicles. Any chance there could be a bonus vehicle such as the "Lun" Class Ekranoplane?
There will be other craft. The tracks can twist pretty quickly, to the point where we already have places where you have to slow to a crawl to make it. These will probably be few and far between. It's also possible to adjust the track banking. Flattening the track makes sharp corners very challenging... I should probably point out that this isn't going to be a realistic WIG/Ekranoplan sim. I just like the gameplay implications of the cushion-of-air flight model and thought it'd be cool to use Ekranoplans rather than going down the standard sci-fi hover racer route. That said, it had occured that it'd cool to have huge 'Caspian Sea monster' style craft as moving background on a few levels.
Yeah, I could tell from the video it ain't the X-Plane of the Ground Effect world , Perhaps you could even have a scaled down model of the Caspian Sea Monster as an unlockable?
Game looks great, but I noticed a lot of framerate chugging. Will this be evident in the final version as well? What fps does the game run in standard? Also, in the beginning of the level, before the large jump, the 'vehicle' went through the rock wall, will there be collision detection in the final version?
The big stalls are to do with my iPhone's mail setup. Once it's finished syncing in the background it gets a pretty solid 30 FPS I guess I should have waited for this to stop for the video. In the long run i'll look into stopping it happening altogether. The collision on the craft should be working. Where did you see it fail?, I can believe you saw the camera go through a wall but that's a different thing and not even remotely finished.
