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[Katsew]

"Orbital" is my entry for the Experimental Gameplay Project theme "High Velocity"



Brief blurb and PC, Mac and webplayer builds are at this URL: http://www.nekozilla.com/egp/may2010/

There's no texturing, but the orbital itself is quite a complicated polygon and there's a glow shader. Not sure what that means requirements wise, but it runs on my 2 year old Macbook.

I only started working on it 3 days ago and it's not as polished as I'd like, but since it's June tomorrow I'm posting what I've got

I tried to combine elements of things that make me think of high velocity, most obviously Tron (lightcycles) and FZero (racing round a tube). The whole thing is procedurally generated and there's quite a lot of scope for dynamically changing the orbital as you race around it. At the moment you can rebuild it by clicking a button, but my original plan (not implemented for lack of time) was to have it deform and twist behind you so you never race over the same track twice.

I'd be interested to hear what other people think of the look and the gameplay. Do you think there's any potential in the concept or should I shelve it and start something new?

I'm aware that it probably isn't much fun to play at the moment... The controls in particular could do with some work. The car pretty much steers itself as it follows the same beziers that were used to generate the track. I really wanted to have multi-directional physics but went for the simple tracking option to get it playable by the deadline.

[Perrin]

This is definitely interesting, liked the visual style. However I found that you seem to have made the collision detection on your ship/thing so generous that I never really had to worry about hitting anything. In fact I found if I didn't press anything it would run around in loops happily without touching anything.

Also I kind of expected it to pick up speed as I progressed.

[NiallM]

Yeah, the visuals are great.  It felt a bit slow for a game developed for a "High Velocity" theme though.  There's not much challenge as it is.

I do think there's a lot of potential.  I'd love to see it expanded into a kind of lightcycles-on-a-tube racer, where you're constantly jostling with another player (or multiple other players), trying to force them into an obstacle.

[Katsew]

It does eventually get faster, but it's probably a bit too subtle. I've uploaded a new version that doubles the initial speed.

I was worried that if it started out too fast people would crash straight away and get confused, but from the sounds of things it's the opposite problem and it's too hard to crash The collision code should be pretty accurate, but since you're controlling a 2 dimensional thing you can get away just barely sliding by the blocks.

I really like the idea of a multiplayer version too. I'll see if I can figure out the gravity thing now that the pressure is off so that I can make it into a proper racer.

[NiallM]

It does eventually get faster, but it's probably a bit too subtle. I've uploaded a new version that doubles the initial speed.

Yeah, that feels a lot better

I really like the idea of a multiplayer version too. I'll see if I can figure out the gravity thing now that the pressure is off so that I can make it into a proper racer.

Good luck!  With a bit more work I think it could be a really nice little racer.