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[Earthling]

I've never played any 90s arcade racers, but I'm definitely looking forward to this.

[jeandenishaas]

Looks really appealing! I'm already sold on it.

[jonkk]

Thanks! I'm counting on you all to try out the playable alpha I'll put out soon. Sooooooon. Very soooon...  

Put up a quick devlog at devlog.tinytires.com

[redplanet]

I absolutely loved playing Micro Machines in the 90's (#2: Turbo Tournament on the Mega Drive... the wasted hours on that!). This looks like it could be good fun! Plenty of locations for courses and so many obstacles to put in the game.

There was also a game called Ignition on the PC in the late 90's that was sort of similar (in that the birds-eye view made the vehicles look 'micro') - I think there may have been an option in that to have a lower view, not quite directly behind the vehicle itself but hovered above it. Anyway, it might give you some ideas - plenty of image results if you google 'ignition pc game'.

[jonkk]

Oh, yay! Youtube finally rolled out 60fps uploading. So here is the alpha footage reuploaded with silky smooth 60 frames per second

[oodavid]

Niiice video man! 60fps looks awesome

[knifeySpoonie]

Looking really nice man, love the whole vibe, and the little touches like the pencil shavings appearing when you hit the sharpener..

One thing I'm less keen on is the way the cars appear on the track, It feels like they're floating a little and not "glued" to the road.. If that makes sense, when they turn they sort of tilt from the middle which to me looks a bit funny and makes them feel a little disconnected from the world they sit in. I'm assuming this was a stylistic choice to emphasise the 3d feel? but It makes it feel a little loose when I watch the video, whilst I actually expcet the game to be super tight

[jonkk]

Looking really nice man, love the whole vibe, and the little touches like the pencil shavings appearing when you hit the sharpener..

One thing I'm less keen on is the way the cars appear on the track, It feels like they're floating a little and not "glued" to the road.. If that makes sense, when they turn they sort of tilt from the middle which to me looks a bit funny and makes them feel a little disconnected from the world they sit in. I'm assuming this was a stylistic choice to emphasise the 3d feel? but It makes it feel a little loose when I watch the video, whilst I actually expcet the game to be super tight

Thanks for the feedback! It wasn't so much to emphasise the 3d, but more just trying to emulate the look of the sideways forces pushing the chassis of the cars a little when they're turning. Maybe I'll tone the effect down a bit. I still need to put a bit of ambient occlusion underneath the cars, to make them feel more grounded, maybe that'll help make it more clear that the tires are actually still touching the ground when the chassis tilts.

I actually never gave it much thought, because when I implemented the effect it looked so good when looking at it from a ground perspective, but you're totally right it does make them look a bit floaty from the top-down view. It'll look ace in the replays, though...... 

[godDLL]

Hey, could you please post an "UPDATE: project status, what's next"
for the benefit of folks that visit here.

[jonkk]

Update!

I finally started working on this again. Made some new assets, updated some track code and am glad to be back working on Tiny Tires, finally.

Here's a little video with the more snazzy-lookin' track visuals.





I also finally went and modelled the underside of the car, but actually ended up remodeling the whole car. Here's the updated chassis in-game:



I discovered Substance Painter, which means my workflow for making textures and baking the normals has gotten much easier. It's a lot of fun, although there's a lot of new things I'm learning.

As for behind-the-scenes stuff. Did a lot of updates to the spline that controls the track mesh. First off, I finally realised that I should be using arcs to make the turns more circular instead of trying to approximate a circle with a spline..



And I made it so I can easily align anything to the track spline.