TIGSource Forums

Update March 23,2012:
Work in progress gameplay & replay video:

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Buried deep in the Alps of Europe and surrounded by cows, goats and sheep, my partner and I had only two options: become shepherds or do something totally unimaginable here - make a computer game.

In our mind, by waking up slow life with some loud - fuel hungry planes, things could get pretty crazy out here.




Altitude0 (A0) is an arcadish plane racing game in development for Windows PC, flying close to the ground between gates as fast as you can. It can be quite challenging to avoid trees while flying just above forests. So it’s important that you think and feel like an air race pilot, maneuvering your plane swiftly in the air, rolling and spinning to avoid obstacles.

Still a lot to add and polish, but we thought the game is quite shaping up finally (thank God!). I’d still like to improve game play and add more planes, plane add-ons, and also various game modes.

I am seeking some feedback to the following questions:

First, how long are players willing to play - race without feeling bored, 2 ~ 5 minutes? The game scene is quite big, so I am still juggling how long one race / lap should be.

Second, for controls, are people used to two hands on keyboards or gamepad these days? Since it’s a plane game, it requires both hands pressing multiple keys at the same time.
Do many PC users own gamapad and is it popular?
   
Hopefully we can make some game play video soon and a demo afterwards – also set up game website, etc. (it seems endless to get it done). In the meantime, I will try to post more screenshots as development progresses.

Feedback, comments and questions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
DareM   :coffee:

This looks like fun, and the graphics look professional to me.

@J. R. Hill: Thank you for your comment.

I hope that we can make the game fun to play.
I will post some gameplay videos soon.

Another gameplay screenshot. Since it's a plane racing game, passing quickly through gates is the main objective.
Next gate is marked with a green circle, while the one after is marked with a yellow circle.
We decided that skipping a single gate is allowed but the player gets time penalty.


Hitting trees & terrain will also be very painful.
Hopefully somebody else finds this entertaining. :)

Reminds me a lot of Plane Crazy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_Crazy_%28computer_game%29), looks promising :)

Thanks, didn't know about that game, will check it out.

Nice work on the graphics! I'm impressed!

@Pemanent: Thank you, hopefully I can create gameplay video soon to show more graphics.

@Netsu: I checked 'Plane Crazy', looks like many people were enjoying the game when it was out.

In this case I am hoping for a more open world but if a player wonders off the course, he/she gets a couple of seconds to return to driving through gates.

Although flying is arcadish we are trying to encourage precison flying, where how you handle gates and turns matters since time will be lost.

I enjoyed it too, there aren't many arcade'y plane racers out there so I'm glad you're making one :)

Those are some very impressive looking graphics I must say, and the I like that this is a game whose concept is based on what I inevitably start doing in any flying game.

I'm looking forward to more information.

Thank you guys for positive comments, hope we can deliver what we are trying to do with this game.

Speaking of which, can anybody suggest some other game titles from the past that tackled plane racing well?
Certainly there are enough air combat games but we would really like to focus more on racing - just like car racing but in the air.

Unlike car driving, plane brings another dimension (up & down, rolls, spins) and that could be quite fun.

SkyDrift (http://skydriftgame.com).

Your terrain and motion blur looks gorgeous. Is this a homebrew engine, or Construct, or..?

Thanks,
Motion blur is nothing special in terms of code but with some parameter tweaking it turned out quite nicely.

Engine is 'home made', actually terrain rendering and vegetation planting comes out of a plugin we did for 3ds max a couple of years ago. Now code is a lot faster and usable in realtime.

@Xane: Noticed that game also, looks nice.

Hello guys,
I promised Altitude0 gameplay video a while ago and here is our first creation.
It's a work in progress gameplay video, therefore a lot of features are still missing or not final - can anybody spot any shadows  ;).


As we add more features like boost, damage, crash, sound, I will show more stuff. Hopefully somebody finds it interesting.

I don't know if it's final or not, but it would have a better feel if there was some inertia to how the plane moves. For example it doesn't stop turning immediately as soon as you stop pressing a button but instead takes a while (could be as little as a split second) to stop.

The graphics look great already, this could be really fun :)

We will keep that in mind, certainly it will give plane more feeling of weight. I guess I was quite influenced by Red Bull air racing and similar small planes that are very agile.

Another small update on the progress of development. We've been working on airplane crashing, collision response and boost.
When collision happens it's time for particles everywhere.


Also we added some useful boost feature. Boost amount will be limited but partial refills will be possible by collecting items along the track.
 
Probably video shows it best.

This looks very impressive! I have to say though, the game play doesn't seem too exciting. I guess just make sure you play test and "find the fun" in the game rather than just getting bogged down by graphical polish.

You are right to point out "finding the fun" factor should be our main concern. I'm quite tired of working on graphics and these days we are focusing on gameplay most of time.
Otherwise driving against ghost replay (shared online) and online multiplayer will be the main gameplay features.

If somebody has some other ideas on how to make this racing fun (especially online) we are open for suggestions.

Looks fantastic. My only concern would be the rumbling UI in the bottom right corner, it does not make much sense to me in a third person view.

Do you happen to have a Twitter or Google+ acccount I could follow not to miss key updates ? =)

Some quick ideas:

- The low-altitude can provide many interesting risk/reward scenarios. Such as, shortcuts that require you to get really down into the trees - dodging trees or large rock outcrops to get a faster lap time would be quite rewarding! And this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM0604oWV6E  :)

- I like the rocket boosters. Perhaps have fuel floating around that you can pick up for them..maybe hidden in the trees?

- For maps, try taking inspiration from famous natural wonders such as the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Arches, etc. I would KILL to race around in the Grand Canyon, and I think you could do a great job with the graphics!

- Or, make up some super crazy exotic locations! Let me fly around in a "volcano garden" with eruptions everywhere or something. And geysirs too. Man I'm getting pretty pumped thinking about this :P

Looks really good, I'll try to keep track of your progress.

I'd be interested in a twitter account to follow, too.

Thank you guys for responses and ideas.

About following development progress. Currently I didn't setup twitter account yet but you can visit www.altitude0.com and follow devblog via RSS feed.
It is still fresh but I am trying to add new articles as new features are added.

@agersant: Rumbling UI, I get your confusion. I actually got this idea in some car racing game a while ago (unfortunately cannot remember what game it was). The idea is that a camera is trying to follow the plane and while doing it, it reacts violently to all the action around it. This is also the reason for debris/crap on the screen during collisions.
I could add some config parameter to disable this effect if it bothers players.

@stevesan: Great ideas.
- Flying low : We added average altitude meter during race (can be seen in last video) because we would like to reward players at the end of the race for low flying. Question is still what kind of reward. I am also thinking of having certain section of the track where flying low for a couple of seconds would give you extra reward during race (time, points).
- Rocket boost: We already added some collectable items that partially refill your boost.
- Maps: More different environments are sure to come, but first we will try to release playable demo. Actually adding content in this game should be easy, current scene uses digital elevation data from the internet. We'd like users eventually to be able to setup their own gates and 'pro' users even import their own terrain (could be manually photoshopped). And trees are procedurally (auto) planted.
- Flying head down: Youtube video you linked to is very scary since it's real life.
Game already has some gates that reward driving through head (currently you get 10 sec time deduction).

Here is a screenshot of that moment, although in this case plane was too low to be rewarded for head down flying.

This is really looking nice! I particularly like the custom airplane skins.

Reminds me of the Trackmania games a lot, what made them awesome is user map generating, custom terrain with custom music/physics etc, and I'm really glad many of those features you allow to edit in your game

Looks like the racing modes in Just Cause 2, where you fly the planes places in a hurry. Sounds like I would enjoy it. I also like the challenge of getting upside down, when passing the markers. Could be a real challenge but the master-able kind.

Looks promising. Even if it is arcade, it needs a bit more realistic flight physics as other said, and I would go a bit for more speed feeling.

Many thanks to everybody who took time to comment.

@Pandara_RA!: We will keep in mind that there should be enough ways for players to add their own content.

@mihai Sense of speed is something we are working really hard on these days. We learned by trial and error that in a plane racing game it is quite hard to show speed because plane is usually quite alone in the sky. So the lower you fly the faster it feels.
Until now we had motion blur and wing vapor trails.
These days I added wind speed trails and darkening of screen edges when speed is very big - kind of brings focus to the middle of the screen.


I hope these effects will be enough to bring feeling of speed.
The only other idea I can think of is to start cheating with plane maximum speed (currently speed is still realistic), or even speed up game timer (but I don't like that one - feels like real cheating).

And I will re-check flight physics, there should be more feeling of weight as you guys mentioned.

The terrain really reminds me of the Alps!


I think on the PC, flight sim enthusiasts are likely to have joysticks with several buttons. Some will have HOTAS joysticks with plenty of buttons, thumbsticks, throttle, rudder, etc. (I did, until I gave it to my brother). I didn't have a gamepad until I started hanging out with folks from tigsource...now I have an xbox 360 controller.

Since it is an arcade game, I guess it is hard to draw the line between what you want to feel realistic and what not. I know it is hard to simulate speed in a plane as you have no static, close object to refer to (like the road when you play car racing games). Hopefully your blur and blacks and other stuff like that will help a lot.

I would like to say this is a valley not far from my place, but this could get me in trouble with the locals who would start complaining about look and features missing or added during game development. So officially it's completely made up.  ;)

Certainly flight sim joystick won't help with this game, I believe game requires too much speedy movement and not that much precision. It seems that Xbox 360 controller is quite popular on PC these days so we will gladly use/support it.

P.S.: Whoever still desires to follow Altitude0 game development, we setup Twitter & FB accounts, so you are welcome to visit.

Since my last post we added multi plane support. This will be the base for multiplayer mode, ghost replays and other stuff.
We learned that plane racing is quite different from car racing since world map & airplane speeds are huge.
For that purpose we added radar to the interface. The opponents tend to come and go in the blink of an eye and radar is there to let the player know where other planes are.

(http://www.altitude0.com/shared/images/a0blog_together.jpg)

Altitude0 should eventually become an online plane racing game with multiplayer support.
Before that we are working on the first public demo. The idea for the demo is to support online high score tables and players sharing their ghost replay races so they can see how other people fly.
Multiplayer feature will be missing from the demo so that we can release something soon instead of never ending development.

We are planning to add replays, racing against pre-recorded ghost planes, airplane mods (the easiest one would be skin changing), allow players to customize racing gates.
I am wondering if you guys have some ideas on what features people would like and expect from an online racing game. Am I forgetting some obvious stuff?

What the heck?  I thought I was watching this thread.


I dunno if you've already addressed either of these things, but I'd be interested in split screen multiplayer if you plan on supporting gamepads.

Split screen is a good idea for home-style multiplayer mode. I wonder if somehow we could also use it in online mode - like 2 players on a single computer, while other players are somewhere else in the world.

Hi guys,

Some screenies…

(http://www.altitude0.com/shared/images/a0blog_multiplane1.jpg)

(http://www.altitude0.com/shared/images/a0blog_multiplane2.jpg)

(http://www.altitude0.com/shared/images/a0blog_multiplane3.jpg)

We are planning to allow up to 8 planes for the demo.  Certainly more planes make the whole racing more dynamic. We are adding some sound effects these days, otherwise just a few more things to add and fix for the demo. I will try to make another video soon to show how a whole bunch of planes race together. 

Cheers,

It still looks great =)
I was hoping for some plane customization features (pick colors and logo maybe). I think it would work well with the online aspect of the game.

I like your idea, we are trying to make it easy to modify plane skins.
Hopefully it will be fun to participate in teams and have matching plane look.

At the start we will let players modify skins with some paint program. Later on I would like to build some simple editor to make it easy to apply at least some small changes (like logos, color).

The game is progressing great. I don't remember if this was already asked but what technology are you using (engine?) and what OSes do you plan to target?
Also how long has it been in development?

Thanks,
Currently we are targeting Windows with a decent graphics card. Later we'll see.

Engine is "home grown", it grew out of different projects during years : 3ds max plugin + one failed project + another frozen one :)
If nothing else I guess code was modular enough to be updated with time.
We decided to do airplane racing last summer.

Flying racers are one of my favorite genre of game. Especially ones like what this appears to be.

Does this have true flight controls or simplified ones? I'm really hoping for true controls, as there has only been one game like that (N-Gen Racing for PSX) that I know of and it was incredible. All the simplified ones are... well, cheap feeling in comparison.

Thanks for letting me know about this game, I will check videos and reviews, it looks like many people liked it.

About controls. We decided that we want players to be able to fully control plane (roll, pitch, yaw), although this could be a challenge to beginners. So for example, pressing left only rolls the plane but it still goes forward. To go left you have to also pull plane up at the same time (hope this makes sense).

I noticed that many arcade airplane games make it very simple to turn left/right by pressing a single button, while barrel roll and similar acrobatics are cheated by pressing some special buttons.

I guess we'd like to encourage players to experience full airplane acrobatics, our world has also a lot of up & down movement (ex. climbing over the mountain).

If enough people like that, we'll see  :)

That just doubled my excitement for this game!

I read back a bit and saw that you are considering not supporting flightsim joystick controls though. I think that would be a big mistake. You should have it as an option for us diehard pilots. Personally, I can react quicker, fluidly, and more naturally with a joystick than with any button or joypad. It's like saying you can't see how anyone would use a steering wheel for a racing game :P

You should include "Arcade" controls for the 1 key left/right type scheme, and "Pilot" controls for more the full flight controls. That way you're not alienating either player type.

Personally, I would love to see a "stunt" challenge mode, where you have to perform lots of acrobatics to complete the level. Like flying through a cave, weaving in and out of city skyscrapers, etc... Not necessarily as a race, but more a series of precision flying challenges.

Thanks for your response. One question about flightsim joystick. You mentioned that you can react quickly with joystick. I found them very big and that it takes a lot more energy than just pressing gamepad buttons. I guess I have to update my tools, I've been using an old 'Wingman Extreme' joystick and it feels very heavy (hard to move).

I noticed that N-Gen racing had 2 control modes : arcadish & pro. Did pro mode controls allow any better results or was it just more realistic and therefore harder to use?

We could support simpler controls (single button to go left/right), but I don't like the idea that players with simpler controls would achieve better times than players with pro controls.

About precision flying. In the current version of Altitude0, I love flying tight through gates (knife edge) to shave off a fraction of a second here and there while making sure not to hit too many gates.
I hope many players would appreciate this aspect of the game.

I haven't used a 'Wingman Extreme', but my own setup is nice and easy. Especially with rudder foot pedals. You lose a lot of 'feel' and precision when you play with keys, as keys are either on or off. Which means that you have to perfectly time your key presses and / or tap them rapidly for precision movements.

In N-Gen, I was able to perform much tighter, low to the ground (in that game, the lower you were to the ground, the faster you went. It was a great mechanic, as it naturally rewarded skillful flying) maneuvers without crashing than my opponents who were using arcade controls. So yes, there was a distinct benefit.

I highly doubt that anyone using arcade controls would be able to perform better than full controls. Especially with your description of flying knife-edge to shave time. That generally requires more precision than arcade controls can give.

As for my challenge idea, I'm thinking more along the lines of individual short challenges. Like (forgive my lack of artistic skill):

(http://i.imgur.com/BYugI.png)

That would be one "challenge level".

I see you even like controlling rudder separately. Currently I added switch to make rudder automatic or manual but playing with keys makes rudder hard to control. I guess there are players that could appreciate manual rudder although this game is not a full blown flight sim.
And yes keys are annoying with the tapping approach, certainly gamepad helps with that.

Since Altitude0 is about flying low we will also reward low flying with better acceleration. I wonder, was N-Gen speed close to the ground better just a tiny bit or was it a big advantage?

During the race we added 2 sub-games (aka short-runs) for now: 
- 360 barrel roll; between start and end point you have to do 360 roll.
- flying very low; fly under bars that are placed in sequence within some small amount of time.
- probably we will add more short runs in the future

Otherwise thank you for taking time to even sketch the idea, I assume the plane in the sketch is climbing up and going down with a sequence of rolls between gates. Good idea I believe.

Even though its not a full blown flight sim, just having the option for rudder control is nice. :)

In N-Gen, there was a small, but noticeable difference between someone flying high and someone flying low. You weren't exactly "boosting" when you were on the deck, but that speed increase could make all the difference in the race.

Glad to hear you're adding little challenges like that! And yes, you interpreted the picture correctly. I was thinking that the square block could be a building (for example) that you go up and over. You could even give it the same "The closer you are to it, the faster you go" principle as the ground. I would have a lot of fun trying to get the best time I could on that by keeping within inches of the walls!

A quick update:
Since my last post, a lot of effort was put to present Altitude0 as a full blown game: more sound effects, menus, race replays and other basic ingredients that most racing games require.

Video:
(http://www.altitude0.com/shared/images/a0blog_yt_gameplay_replay.jpg)
YouTube video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr1ChciZsB0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr1ChciZsB0)

And garage screeny:
(http://www.altitude0.com/shared/images/a0blog_garage2.jpg)

Cheers

Looking really nice!

Just checked out the video. Graphics are looking really polished, nice job  :)

Thank you guys for your kind words.

These days we are working on the open beta demo of the game.
It will be an online game and the first version will have a small taste of it, namely achieving good race times and sharing high-scores and replays with others online.

Hope some of you guys may want to test it when it's ready.

Hi guys,
It's been a while since my last post regarding our plane racing game Altitude0.

Not out yet, but please check this teaser trailer we just put out:
(http://www.altitude0.com/shared/images/A0_press_release_news.jpg)
Youtube link:http://youtu.be/nlSnODIJELU (http://youtu.be/nlSnODIJELU)

Hi all,

I wish you all the best in 2013!

Check out our burning greeting card.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p84NglmLIFI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p84NglmLIFI)

Cheers,
DareM

This game looks great fun! Cant wait to play it
I especially like the vapor trails, those are really well done

Thanks. Closed beta testing is on currently. If you are interested, you can join by visiting our website. That is, if you don't mind unfinished features and some bugs :)

Otherwise, have a Happy 2013!

Looks very cool.  :handthumbsupL: :) :handthumbsupR:

To anybody reading this thread, what kind of music do you think would fit this game (Altitude0)?
We have almost 0 resources to pay for music and on top of that we haven't decided what style of music to use for the game. For now, our promo videos use fast paced rock music, but I am not sure we should rather use more electronic beat sounds, something to make it feel more contemporary. All I know is that it should be fast paced music score.

Any suggestions?

I plade the beta!
In terms of polish, graphics, sound, effects, etc. everything is top notch.
It might be just a matter of familiarity, but I found myself being terrible at this game.
The flight physics didn't feel natural to me, and not because I don't play many aeroplane games, I used to play MS Flight sim as a kid and consider myself somewhat of an ace in Battlefield 2 and 3, I just never got comfotable with the flight physics of Altitude0

It's hard to put my finger on why, but I think it's because of a couple of things
1. Changes are quite slow. to roll the plane over from one side to other has quite a long minimum amount of time to perform. I often found myself crashing just because the plane wouldn't respond to controls fast enough.

2. There is no momentum/weight/acceleration to the yaw/pitch/roll of the plane. In most games, as you roll the plane it's rate of roll will accelerate and when you let go of the controls the plane will still have rolling momentum, it wont stop immediately.
In contrast the physics of the aircraft in Alt0 feel much more rigid/predictable/mechanical, It might just be my personal taste but I don't dig that feel.

Anyway, if you were looking for a chunk of feedback on your flight physics, there is some.
Otherwise the game is looking great, keep up the good work!

@Jackson31: Thanks a lot for your suggestions. It means a lot coming from a beta tester. I totally get your point about topics 1 and 2. We will work on tuning the plane physics in the following days. I will let you know when the update is ready. Thanks again!

We have second Altitude0 beta version ready.
We made some adjustments and fixes to plane physics: throttle was implemented properly. Manual rudder was also added with professional controls.

This is still a closed beta version. But whoever is interested in testing, please join us on our website. Thanks.