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I just wanted to ask: Is it possible to make a racing game in the OHRRPGCE?
one like Super Mario Kart or F-Zero
Ohr racing game?
Sat Mar 21, 2015 7:38 am 
Sat Mar 21, 2015 7:55 am
*Kart
And to answer your question... well, probably. Making it actually *look* like Mario Kart or F-Zero or any other game along those lines would probably be near impossible, but making a racing game of some sort should be doable (with a lot of scripting); it'd just have a Zelda/RPG-style "top-down" perspective with walkabout-sized vehicles rather than looking like most of the racing games out there. I think there were at least a few top-down racing games back in the NES days (can't recall any names off the top of my head, but I know I've seen screenshots at some point), so maybe look into those for reference.
Multiplayer similar to those games, though, I don't really see happening... unless somebody manages to figure out how to script a split-screen with two separate cameras following two different NPCs somehow. I know people have pulled off two-player games with the OHR, but they're generally games where you only need one screen's worth of map, and I don't think a racing game would work well with 16x10 tile maps for entire courses.
FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]
And to answer your question... well, probably. Making it actually *look* like Mario Kart or F-Zero or any other game along those lines would probably be near impossible, but making a racing game of some sort should be doable (with a lot of scripting); it'd just have a Zelda/RPG-style "top-down" perspective with walkabout-sized vehicles rather than looking like most of the racing games out there. I think there were at least a few top-down racing games back in the NES days (can't recall any names off the top of my head, but I know I've seen screenshots at some point), so maybe look into those for reference.
Multiplayer similar to those games, though, I don't really see happening... unless somebody manages to figure out how to script a split-screen with two separate cameras following two different NPCs somehow. I know people have pulled off two-player games with the OHR, but they're generally games where you only need one screen's worth of map, and I don't think a racing game would work well with 16x10 tile maps for entire courses.
FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]
Sat Mar 21, 2015 3:35 pm
Here is what I suggest as a way to do this with as little coding as I can think of:
I figure you could make a simple/crude race game in which the race track face northward the entire time with small curves and obstacles to challenge the player as their car moves upwards.
You could script this such that the player starts at the bottom of a larger map and has to follow the track all the way to the top of the map.
Once the race countdown starts the race you could have a script that automatically moves the car northward at a set speed (lets say speed = 5). All the car sprites will be drawn to look like they're facing northward no matter which direction the character moves the car. Since the car is scripted to always be moving upward constantly, the player will only really have control of left and right movement to dodge things and follow the track. (You may have to use the diagonal-movement script to pull this off.)
For interacting objects in the game I would have: grass, walls and speed boosters. These would work using an each-step script which check each step whether you are stepping on a certain zone:
-Zone 1 can be grass, if you step on grass your player speed is reduced to 4 while you are still stepping on it, thus slowing you down a bit. (Many zones like this can be made with different speed reduction for example: heavy grass, gravel... etc)
-Zone 2 can be walls, if you step on a wall you crash and the race is done, you lose.
-Zone 3 can be the speed booster, stepping on this increases your speed to 10. You will likely have to have another zone later down the track to lower your speed back to 5, set up in a line so the player can't go at this speed forever.
For enemy racers things can get tricky in terms of coding. The best way to handle racers may be to have their route pre-determined to give the illusion of competition. In this case the player is actually just trying to avoid obstacles and hit boosters to get to the end of the track before the NPCs do. This could actually be fun because it could allow the player to block the pre-determined path of the enemy racer and thus force them in to an obstacle (where a scripted crash could occur). Rethinking this perhaps it is actually best if the player speed is initially set to 4, while all enemy racers are set to 5 so that little interference can occur. The best way that I am aware of for making NPCs follow a predetermined path is using a timer that cycles through movement phases. For example: when the timer runs out a variable =1 thus it triggers the NPC to move left then retriggers the timer, then when the timer runs out again the variable is now = 2 so the NPC keeps going straight, and so on and so on... Hopefully you can understand what I mean. It's the same script I use to make all the guards on my map walk in predetermined patrol patterns. Or perhaps don't have other racers, just have the player race against a countdown clock which could be good because you could make zones/objects that you can collect to temporarily stop the timer or add time...
Finally an optional script, you may realize that since the camera follows the player such that they are in the centre of the screen that the player has no time to react to objects moving in to view. This may require a script to offset the camera such that it doesn't focus on the player in the center of the screen but instead is foccused a few tiles above the character to allow room for the player to see what's going on.
All in all this is an okay example. I think all of what I suggested should work. Still it does seem like an involving project to take on. I'm sure others can suggest simpler ways to pull off a racing game. Doing something with slices and collision detection would probably prove to be simpler but requires a strong understanding of switching everything to slice-based movement. Actually now that I think of it there is some fairly simple stuff that may be doable with setting slice velocity on-keypress... Anyways that's all I will say for now.
⊕ P E R S O N A L M U S I C: https://open.spotify.com/album/6fEo3fCm5C3XhtFRflfANr
⍠ C O L L A B M U S I C: https://dustpuppets.bandcamp.com/releases
I figure you could make a simple/crude race game in which the race track face northward the entire time with small curves and obstacles to challenge the player as their car moves upwards.
You could script this such that the player starts at the bottom of a larger map and has to follow the track all the way to the top of the map.
Once the race countdown starts the race you could have a script that automatically moves the car northward at a set speed (lets say speed = 5). All the car sprites will be drawn to look like they're facing northward no matter which direction the character moves the car. Since the car is scripted to always be moving upward constantly, the player will only really have control of left and right movement to dodge things and follow the track. (You may have to use the diagonal-movement script to pull this off.)
For interacting objects in the game I would have: grass, walls and speed boosters. These would work using an each-step script which check each step whether you are stepping on a certain zone:
-Zone 1 can be grass, if you step on grass your player speed is reduced to 4 while you are still stepping on it, thus slowing you down a bit. (Many zones like this can be made with different speed reduction for example: heavy grass, gravel... etc)
-Zone 2 can be walls, if you step on a wall you crash and the race is done, you lose.
-Zone 3 can be the speed booster, stepping on this increases your speed to 10. You will likely have to have another zone later down the track to lower your speed back to 5, set up in a line so the player can't go at this speed forever.
For enemy racers things can get tricky in terms of coding. The best way to handle racers may be to have their route pre-determined to give the illusion of competition. In this case the player is actually just trying to avoid obstacles and hit boosters to get to the end of the track before the NPCs do. This could actually be fun because it could allow the player to block the pre-determined path of the enemy racer and thus force them in to an obstacle (where a scripted crash could occur). Rethinking this perhaps it is actually best if the player speed is initially set to 4, while all enemy racers are set to 5 so that little interference can occur. The best way that I am aware of for making NPCs follow a predetermined path is using a timer that cycles through movement phases. For example: when the timer runs out a variable =1 thus it triggers the NPC to move left then retriggers the timer, then when the timer runs out again the variable is now = 2 so the NPC keeps going straight, and so on and so on... Hopefully you can understand what I mean. It's the same script I use to make all the guards on my map walk in predetermined patrol patterns. Or perhaps don't have other racers, just have the player race against a countdown clock which could be good because you could make zones/objects that you can collect to temporarily stop the timer or add time...
Finally an optional script, you may realize that since the camera follows the player such that they are in the centre of the screen that the player has no time to react to objects moving in to view. This may require a script to offset the camera such that it doesn't focus on the player in the center of the screen but instead is foccused a few tiles above the character to allow room for the player to see what's going on.
All in all this is an okay example. I think all of what I suggested should work. Still it does seem like an involving project to take on. I'm sure others can suggest simpler ways to pull off a racing game. Doing something with slices and collision detection would probably prove to be simpler but requires a strong understanding of switching everything to slice-based movement. Actually now that I think of it there is some fairly simple stuff that may be doable with setting slice velocity on-keypress... Anyways that's all I will say for now.
⊕ P E R S O N A L M U S I C: https://open.spotify.com/album/6fEo3fCm5C3XhtFRflfANr
⍠ C O L L A B M U S I C: https://dustpuppets.bandcamp.com/releases
Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:23 pm
Mario Cart and F-Zero both took advantage of an SNES Display setting called MODE SEVEN. The Graphical Processing Unit of the SNES allowed for a lot of cool effects where it could scale or rotate a bitmap around, with Mode 7 being essentially the pinnacle of the scale/rotation abilities to emulate a 3D Environment.
Long story short, we don't (yet?) have the ability to scale or rotate sprites. Even when we do, there would theoretically be some maths and legwork involved in emulating the Mode Seven display, or theoretically it might still be impossible to properly emulate. We don't even have floating points for cryin out loud.
Like others have said, that doesn't preclude racing games! Racing games existed long before Mode Seven, things like Pole Position. Now I'm curious how the hell Pole Position did it, and something like that might be emulatable! Rectangle slices of varying widths and lengths and maths and... (though Wikipedia tells me it also used Sprite-Scaling so that might be out)
That's crazy talk. Don't listen to me. One of my favorite games at the arcade as a kid was Super Off-Road! and something like that would be way closer to the realms of possibility (Though Racer AI could presumably still be a sticky spot... but then again I remember the AI getting stuck in corners all the time so maybe it was a problem to them too... or maybe I was the one getting stuck... don't listen to me)
I guess my ultimate point (and sheamKennedy's advice is great, you could make a hell of a game the way he's telling you to do it) is that you shouldn't get tunnel-vision. There's lots of ways to make a racing game, don't focus in on just that one. If a racing game is what you want, there's plenty of ways to do it. Some might even argue Pac-Man is a racing game, or at least a bumper cars game![/url]
Long story short, we don't (yet?) have the ability to scale or rotate sprites. Even when we do, there would theoretically be some maths and legwork involved in emulating the Mode Seven display, or theoretically it might still be impossible to properly emulate. We don't even have floating points for cryin out loud.
Like others have said, that doesn't preclude racing games! Racing games existed long before Mode Seven, things like Pole Position. Now I'm curious how the hell Pole Position did it, and something like that might be emulatable! Rectangle slices of varying widths and lengths and maths and... (though Wikipedia tells me it also used Sprite-Scaling so that might be out)
That's crazy talk. Don't listen to me. One of my favorite games at the arcade as a kid was Super Off-Road! and something like that would be way closer to the realms of possibility (Though Racer AI could presumably still be a sticky spot... but then again I remember the AI getting stuck in corners all the time so maybe it was a problem to them too... or maybe I was the one getting stuck... don't listen to me)
I guess my ultimate point (and sheamKennedy's advice is great, you could make a hell of a game the way he's telling you to do it) is that you shouldn't get tunnel-vision. There's lots of ways to make a racing game, don't focus in on just that one. If a racing game is what you want, there's plenty of ways to do it. Some might even argue Pac-Man is a racing game, or at least a bumper cars game![/url]
Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:47 pm
Actually, we already have some crude scaling (Shrink dissolve effect) but yes, rotation is still a long way off.
Sat Mar 21, 2015 6:00 pm
Bob the Hamster wrote:
Actually, we already have some crude scaling (Shrink dissolve effect) but yes, rotation is still a long way off.
Oooh! I forgot about that! I'm getting bad ideas now.
Sat Mar 21, 2015 9:01 pm
Racing games that you'd be better off making with the OHR.
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OR you could just use another engine....
OR you could just use another engine....
Sat Mar 21, 2015 9:44 pm
Make a Rally X clone.
Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition
Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition
Sun Mar 22, 2015 4:43 pm
Spoonweaver wrote:
Racing games that you'd be better off making with the OHR.
[i]
[i]
Please make Excitebike OHR.
Excitebohrke.
Ohrxcitebike.
Ohrxcohrtebohrke.
Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks
Sun Mar 22, 2015 10:44 pm
You forgot the classic DONKEY.BAS! Now there's a racing game suitable for the original 4.77MHz IBM PC or PC-wannabes such as the OHRRPGCE entertainment system.
Sun Mar 22, 2015 11:08 pm
How did I manage to be a QuickBasic programmer for so many years, without ever actually executing the DONKEY.BAS that had been on my hard drive all that time...
I think back in 1992 I must have taken one look at the filename, and made the mental connection of DONKEY = "Donkey Kong" = GORILLA and assumed that it was just a renamed copy of GORILLA.BAS and said to myself "Already seen it, don't need to bother!"
I think back in 1992 I must have taken one look at the filename, and made the mental connection of DONKEY = "Donkey Kong" = GORILLA and assumed that it was just a renamed copy of GORILLA.BAS and said to myself "Already seen it, don't need to bother!"
Mon Mar 23, 2015 2:15 am
So what I'm hearing is that we should form a committee for the immediate production of as many racing games as possible.
Mon Mar 23, 2015 2:27 am
Gizmog wrote:
So what I'm hearing is that we should form a committee for the immediate production of as many racing games as possible.
I will paypal $10 to the winner of Giz's racing game contest!
Mon Mar 23, 2015 3:47 am
Can said contest have an end date that is fairly late? I would like to attempt making a racing game but I figure that schools going to be hectic for about 2.5 more weeks...
⊕ P E R S O N A L M U S I C: https://open.spotify.com/album/6fEo3fCm5C3XhtFRflfANr
⍠ C O L L A B M U S I C: https://dustpuppets.bandcamp.com/releases
⊕ P E R S O N A L M U S I C: https://open.spotify.com/album/6fEo3fCm5C3XhtFRflfANr
⍠ C O L L A B M U S I C: https://dustpuppets.bandcamp.com/releases
Mon Mar 23, 2015 5:30 pm
Now that you guys said racing...
http://i.imgur.com/z9YYFNz.jpg
Just a Paint Sketch.
The [.] Icon is the Lane Changing speed, it defines how fast you change from one lane to the other.
The [ |] Icon is your Top Speed, it defines how fast you can go.
The [=] Icon is your Acceleration, it defines how fast you go from still to your Top Speed
The boxes are Power Ups, they boost your attributes when you pick them. and they are identified by their attribute icon.
The score is raised each time you past a opponent and each time you cross the line and is dependent on your current position. Values are to be defined.
"I can't buy food with glory"
http://i.imgur.com/z9YYFNz.jpg
Just a Paint Sketch.
The [.] Icon is the Lane Changing speed, it defines how fast you change from one lane to the other.
The [ |] Icon is your Top Speed, it defines how fast you can go.
The [=] Icon is your Acceleration, it defines how fast you go from still to your Top Speed
The boxes are Power Ups, they boost your attributes when you pick them. and they are identified by their attribute icon.
The score is raised each time you past a opponent and each time you cross the line and is dependent on your current position. Values are to be defined.
"I can't buy food with glory"