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[btata]

Hello Folks,

We introduce you to our work in progress prototype of Project HoverDrive.
It is a 360° Anti-Gravity Racing game. What does it mean? It means you race in tubes.

About us:
We are two developers working on this. A programmer and a game designer.
We have spent a full year of full-time development and some additional time before that working partially on it and documenting.

Features:
As we've said, this is still at an early stage of prototyping and this is why you will not see any beautiful art or graphics in our videos and Gifs.
We are currently focusing on solving the main issues of racing in a tube. Namely the camera, the hovering/magnetization behavior and the handling.


Here is a first taste of what we have achieved so far in the camera department. Any reaction to this is welcomed.
If you feel dizzy watching this, please let us know.



You can also follow the project on Twitter or Wordpress.

[btata]

5 long months since our last update, but we are still on track!

We've been hard at work improving the ship handling and simplifying the control inputs. We've achieved some encouraging results, but there is always room for improvement.

Since we're satisfied of the current state of the handling, we've shifted focus to the track design.

We are still toying around with the different possibilities, figuring out the workflow and the tools we might need. One thing is sure though, we've decided to include flat sections in our tracks.

The main focus of the game is still the tubular gameplay, but for various reasons (diversity, rhythm, visibility ...etc), introducing non tubular sections is somewhat necessary.

So with that said, we go back to our tests.




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[btata]

True to ourselves, here we are showing up after 4 months of blackout.

Things went slow during summer, but we are getting back to work. We are currently making a lot of small incremental changes to every aspect of the prototype: Camera, track visibility, controls and ship behaviour. Every aspect is reconsidered to add some layers of polish.

This means the current build is a real mess, but when all the tweaks comes together, we hope to have a more polished prototype gameplay wise.

Summer break was also an opportunity to look into the visual part of the prototype. As we've stated in the past, we are mainly focused on gameplay right now and for a reason; None of us (two people) is an artist.

Just as an indication of the current direction we are taking vehicle design wise, here is some shape research we've performed back in August. Keep in mind this is just some shape research.






You can of course express your thoughts and maybe give some guidance as well regarding this direction.

Hopefully, in our next update (let's face it, in a few months) we shall have something clean to show you.


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[Zireael]

What do the tracks look like now? Especially the first gif looked very uniform. Some ridges/bumps or even a variety in textures would go a long way...

[btata]

Currently, we are not fully focused on designing tracks since we are still tweaking the driving gameplay.
However, from a game design standpoint (as opposed to level/track design) we did some tests on visibility issues. Visibility includes both track visibility (for anticipating turns) and ways to show backgrounds in the tubular sections.

Here is some indication on what it could look like. Needless to say that no artistic touch has been put into these tests

... Some ridges/bumps or even a variety in textures would go a long way...

Yes for sure, once we start creating full playable tracks we'll make sure to have proper assets and make it is visually diverse. Variety is one of the reasons that pushed to include non-tubular sections (flat, loops, swirls, bumps, etc..) in our track design as stated in a previous post.


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[Zireael]

I like the reflections and the red highlights 

[btata]

Glad you liked it!
We still have ideas on additional visual clues to better read the turns. Only a matter of priorities right now.

Thanks for your feedback!

[btata]

Exploring track design.



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[btata]

Dirty trick in flat sections.



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[michelmohr]

Wow this looks super cool!
Personally I really enjoy the fully enclosed track a lot more than the latest gif you posted.
It reminds me too much of wipe-out and feels less original. 
I could see the tube track really working out in a 'you're racing in a junk planet's sewers' kinda way.

[btata]

Wow this looks super cool!
Personally I really enjoy the fully enclosed track a lot more than the latest gif you posted.
It reminds me too much of wipe-out and feels less original.  

Do not worry, tubes are still the main attraction here. Flats are only introduced for pacing purpose.
The whole physics and handling are built for tube racing, but we can extrapolate the driving logic to flat surfaces as shown in the latest gif.
So in that regard, even flat driving won't be too similar to WipeOut. Unfortunately the difference can't be sensed from gifs or videos, but it's there.

I could see the tube track really working out in a 'you're racing in a junk planet's sewers' kinda way.

Indeed tubes allow for crazy settings as we could watch vistas in full 360°. We hope to finalize gameplay first before tackling graphics.

[btata]

Hello people,

It has been 10 months without any sign from us.
Unfortunately, the project was on hold due to some health issues I had to deal with.

During the hiatus, I've kept an eye on the view numbers on this thread, and was surprised there was still few views registered per week.
So this is a quick post for those who still follow us.

We have resumed the work. I personally need some time to refresh my memory and pick up where I left, so it will take some time until we have any significant progress to share.

Thank you for your interest.