Super Better Racing Drive GT!

[+KaeruYojimbo]

After playing around with batari basic off and on for a little while now, I've finally got something I think has some potential. It's pretty early on, but the pieces are starting to fall into place. Super Better Racing Drive GT! (it seems like all the good names for racing games are already taken, so I went with absurd) was inspired by Monaco GP, which was one of my favorite arcade games as a kid. Hold down the fire button to accelerate. Left and right to steer. It still has a long way to go, but I thought I'd throw it up here and see what people think.

 

 

2600GT.bas

2600GT.bas.bin

[classiccollector]

I like it, I like the concept. Just in case you didn't know yet, but if you stay all the way to the left it seems you never die (In Stella anyways). I hope you continue working on it, Great job.

[+Atarius Maximus]

It's a great start! I love driving games and it reminds me of a few of my first efforts at making one many years ago. Take a look at the source for my first game, Road Blaster from 2006, and a later attempt, Turbo from 2007, for some ideas. Based on those old games and playing your demo, here's some suggestions...

 

I like the audio, the engine sound is spot on.

 

I'd use fractional math to adjust the speed of the car, you'll see that in my Road Blaster source and you can read more about it on RT's page here.

 

I like the scrolling houses on the sides of the road, it helps with the illusion of speed.

 

I'd have the car always moving, and have pushing up or down increase/decrease your speed. If you don't want to do that, I'd have the red car keep moving down the screen even when your car stops.

 

I'd incorporate some kind of damage to your car. In my old Road Blaster game, your car would change color as it took damage and you'd eventually crash. I occassionally included a powerup to restore health in Road Blaster, and in Turbo I added a pit stop to repair your car but you'd lose points the longer you were remained in the pit stop.

 

I'd increase the difficulty by adding more cars or using NUSIZ to add more cars with the same single sprite.

 

I'd add some animation to the car sprites, make it look like the tires are spinning.

 

I'd randomly change the oncoming car sprite for some variety and maybe change the movement of the oncoming car as you get farther into the game to increase the challenge

.

A gas gauge would be a nice addition, and I incorpoated that into my pit stop in Turbo. You could use a HUD to display your gas gauge and remaining lives. Take a look at RT's website for an explanation.

 

[+KaeruYojimbo]

Thanks for the kind words. Here's the latest version. There's now a 90 (well, 88) second timer. Once that reaches 0, the game switches to limited lives with a bonus life every 2000 points. Up and down now shift between high and low gear, but the only real effect on gameplay right now is that you must be in low gear to start from a complete stop.

 

Currently I'm trying to make the puddle and other car more reappear more randomly. Once I have that to my liking I'll add another car. After that I want to make the player's speed actually affect the other objects in the game (the player car stays in the same place, but at higher speeds, other objects move down the screen faster). I'll look into fractional math and check out Road Blasters when I have some more time. After that I'll work on animating sprites and adding different road conditions (ice, bridge, tunnel).

 

The plan is to keep this a pretty faithful translation of Monaco GP. I have some ideas for an original driving game that I've started also, but I want to finish this first.

2600GT.bas

2600GT.bas.bin

[+Atarius Maximus]

Huge Improvement! I like it. There are probably better examples out there than Road Blaster, that was probably one of the first ~20 games ever posted with bB and certainly not one of the best. Another suggestion after playing your latest version is the placement of the car vs. the water puddles. It's extremely difficult to avoid them. I'd consider having the car move down the screen when you're going slower, and move up when you're going faster. Again, just a suggestion. Or have the car farther down the screen all the time.