I used to wear a cowboy hat and boots to work.  I'm a software engineer, so this was an office job, 4th floor of a nice building at the time.  It was a statement towards the style of development, sort of a mix of mocking and embracing "Cowboy Coding".

"Cowboy Dan" is one of my favorite Modest Mouse songs

Thanks for your feedback!

Thanks CowBoyDan (are you still a major player in the cowboy scene?). I will look into the horizontal input

Thanks for the feedback The car controls are something I am really struggling with. Part of the problem is that every player has a different preference for car controls. Right now I have the "inertia factor" on the cars turned up pretty high. This causes them to change direction more slowly. I will try turning it down.

Thanks!
Shawn

It is a nice start, especially for your first 3d game I think it could be much creepier if you work on the textures, models, and atmosphere.

For example, the texture on the big white tank is very generic. Why not make it an old, beat up tank with lots of rust and dents? Maybe even some scary graffiti scratched into the paint. The trees look very generic right now. Twisty, half dead trees might be scarier. And it doesn't look like you have used fog. If not, try it. And maybe add some creepy stuff to the environment, like an animal skull or a bloody shoe or something.

Keep up the good work!

I've been working hard on this game for the past few months. I've added new tracks, a new car, new GUI, and tweaked the car handling greatly so that driving is a bit more challenging and fun. On the dirt track (called "Dust Bowl") it is possible to slide and counter-steer the car (drifting). I've also polished the graphics quite a bit. I still plan to add more cars, tracks, and customizations.

New Car:


Dust Bowl Track:


I am going to put the game on Steam Greenlight soon. Pending your feedback, the main thing on my "To Do List" before submitting to Greenlight is to make the final logo, splash screen art, and a nicer looking login screen.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

Link to game: http://smashdagas.com

Thanks,
Shawn

Thanks for the info. It is strange because BigPoint has had some great press in the gaming and internet industry blogs. Apparently they have tons of registered players, lots of investment money, and 800 employees in offices all over the world. But then, their developer success stories are kind of unimpressive. The first success story on their site has the following developer quote:

"we still hadn’t invested any money into any marketing, but we were still able to record over 2,000 new accounts in just a week-and-a-half. A large number of these accounts came through Bigpoint."

While 2000 new accounts is nice, it concerns me that this is the first (best?) success story from a site that boasts 150 million gamers. It just doesn't add up.

Does anybody have experience putting a game on BigPoint? On their website they say they have 150 million gamers, but I never hear much about them here in the US. I am interested in putting my game on their site, but integrating their API would be a lot of work.

Thanks! That is very helpful

I just took it for a spin. Really beautiful graphics. Unfortunately my laptop was not able to play it smoothly. Since it didn't play smoothly I can't really comment on the controls. The "Settings" button does not appear to be working so I could not turn down the graphics quality.

This is my system:
AMD Phenom II N850 Triple-Core Processor, 2200Mhz, 3 Cores
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250
4Gb Ram

Also, the half Gigabyte download size is probably causing a lack of feedback because people don't want to take the time to download it. Is there any way to make a scaled down version for getting feedback on forums like this?

playing the game, it seems far from Steam quality. it doesn't really feel deep, mechanically speaking. feels (and looks) more like a game I'd play for a couple of minutes on a flash portal or something. there's just no reason to play this over something like trackmania nations or whatever.

Thanks for the feedback, allen! It stings a bit, but this is exactly what I need to know to improve the game.

I do not understand what you mean by "it doesn't really feel deep, mechanically". Except for the number of cars and tracks (which I plan to add to prior to launch), I believe it is similar to TrackMania in game mechanics. There is multiplayer, time trials, and AI bot cars to race. I'm not sure what else to add to make it deeper. Or did I completely miss your point?

Thanks!
Shawn

I've adjusted the physics a bit.. not sure if it is enough yet. I'm also redesigning the GUI. I've received a lot of comments that the GUI is "jumbled".

So here is my proposed new GUI (the icons will have tooltips):


And here is the current/old one for reference:


Better? About the same? Got any better ideas?

Thanks!
Shawn

Also how do I get decals like in your screenshots?

On the "Pimp" screen, press the "Paint" button at the top (which is the on by default when you enter the Pimp screen). Then there are orange scroll arrow keys, also at the top, to select different graphics packages. Good feedback.. I had no idea that was hard to find!

Thanks a ton for the other feedback, too! Very helpful

No, increasing the gravity is not the right approach to this. It's not just downward motion which is sluggish, it's everything. And I don't mean framerate (which was fine for me), I mean the object behaviour.

I'm not saying that you definitely have the scales wrong, but that's exactly what it looks like. It's worth considering scaling everything down by x0.5 or even x0.25 to address this.

I will take another look. I am definitely aware that scaling affects physics in Unity and I made sure that 1 unit = 1 meter in my game. That didn't seem to be enough so I cranked up the gravity, too. I will look into scaling down the whole scene.. it is complicated because I will need to adjust a bunch of stuff in the car physics scripts. I had believed that gravity was the main thing that was thrown off by scaling, but maybe there are many more things affected than I am aware of.

Thanks!
Shawn

The thing that stood out the most that bugged me though was that the physics still felt a little wonky in the freestyle area even knowing they were intended to be for doing tricks and stuff.

For instance, if I go up an incline that takes me vertical, I expect to sort of land pretty smoothly back on that same vertical, except maybe over a little ways. Instead, my car keeps flipping backwards, and I am no longer over the vertical, but end up "backing up" mid air and just crash land - almost upside down! It's hard to explain with words (or perhaps it's just me). I hope that made sense.

I think this may be due to another undocumented feature, the in-air acrobatics controls. If you have the gas pedal key pressed while you are in air it will cause the car to pitch over backwards. Do you think that is what was happening to you?

Sounds a bit like Burnout Paradise
Any chance of adding their marked man game mode but making it so the NPCs work in multiplayer? That is the only thing I wanted out of that game

Yes, it does have a sandbox element similar to Burnout Paradise. I'd love to add some games like Marked Man, but that will probably be awhile. This game has taken me twice as long as I had expected to get it to this point 

I've added a brief tutorial screen after you click the drive button. It explains the Freestyle Hangout concept and how multiplayer race wagering works. I definitely plan to add a more complete tutorial, but hopefully this will ease some of the confusion regarding what this game is supposed to be.

Thanks for the feedback

The "weird stunt sandbox" is what I am calling the "Multiplayer Freestyle Hangout". It is supposed to be like a skateboard park for cars in which players can chat, show-off, and challenge each other to races. So it also serves as the multiplayer race lobby.

There is actually an entire racing element to the game that is not obvious without a tutorial. If you click on the checkered flag icon in the icon bar once in the Freestyle Hangout Park, you can race on race tracks. Racing can be against the clock, against AI cars, or against other players in real-time multiplayer mode. But I did not realize this feature was not obvious, so that is great feedback!

I also hadn't realized that the physics felt like slow-mo. I am certain the scale is correct because this was a major problem I thought I worked out a few months ago. It felt to me like I was driving on the moon, so I increased gravity from -9.81 m/s*s to - 16 m/s*s. But I guess that wasn't enough, so I will revisit it.

Thanks again!
Shawn

[- more cars- more customizations- more tracks]

Hi,

I've been working on my 3d multiplayer racing game for the past 9 months, and I think I am close to finished. All functionality and artwork is complete except for a few loose ends, and I need to add more content (cars, tracks, customizations).

To Do:
- splash screen art
- tutorial and help screen
- music
- achievements (trophies)
- more cars
- more customizations
- more tracks


I am initially targeting web browsers with the Unity webplayer plugin, but I also intend to submit a standalone build to Steam. So my main question: Is this game Steam quality? If not, what do I need to work on?

Link: Smash Da Gas!









Please feel free to be brutally honest! I can take it and I really have no clear perspective on this game at this point.

Thanks a ton!
Shawn

Hi,

My name is Shawn and I am making a 3d multiplayer racing game in Unity. I've been working on it for about 9 months. I think I am almost done...

Best,
Shawn