For the period of 3 years we have done a lot of work in our way from BGE to Unity3d. This section tells you about most important steps and demonstrates you our past products.
SAAB 91. Virtual Race
SKIDRULES. SAAB 91 Virtual Race is Blender Game Engine based standalone game made in collaboration with SAAB 91 P&S group. The latest game version (alpha 4) was released in December 2010. The Internet championship is the main feature of a project. Specially for this task we implement the connection mechanism between software and web-site. The player’s result goes to score table.
Technically it is the version of “Skidrules. XZENA Series” with another models and design and altered car setup. The game includes: “Hit the Hot Lap” – the race for the site’s score table; “Training race” – race with “AI” opponents and “Replay” – demonstration of the player’s last training race. The game includes additional mechanisms such as “replay record” and the possibility to organize Championship Final Race, but they are hidden. This is our last BGE based game project. We froze all the work using BGE and the further development will be based on Unity3d.
Skidrules.XZENA Series
SKIDRULES. XZENA Series is the predictor of SAAB-91VR. Technically the same game except of car models, car setup and menu design. XZENA based on main principle “Silhouettes vs Supercars”. All the cars in the game have equal dimentions and caracteristics in spite of different outlook. XZENA became one on the most important stages of our development. Here we form the general idea of our way: Internet championship with equal rights for all the racers – all the cars should use equal physic characteristcs and different outlook. The main feature of the project is dynamical friction – that’s why the game is very interesting in case of car behavior. Realistic oversteer helps to handle the car at curves. The speed is real and corresponds to path and time. This game is the revolution for us in case of racing tracks. The game’s locations are formed in the moment of the scene starts. This allows to have unlimited track configuration. We just draw plan of the track in CAD program that forms the log-file of specific form to be read by game software.
Skidrules 2.01
This software was the attempt to create the full game: 14 tracks, the scenario, number of cars with tuning opportunity and game missions. Unfortunately we overrated the engine’s possibility… and the game became too heavy. But it was important experience for us. First time we implemented detailed track and car models to have acceptable graphics level. And much more important we designed the “scenario mechanism” that we use in our latest products. Special “scenario log-files” managed the selection of game missions. It’s quiet easy to create mission scenarios altering data in these files. It’s impossible to download and test this version now. We froze the project to be revived on the Unity3d engine base, that will allow us to implement all we planned.
Distrakt. New Engine
DiStrakt. New Engine is the interim version between first and second releases aimed to demonstrate graphic possibilities of BGE 2.49 (previous versions were 2.47 based). First of all we should mark GLSL materials, lights, shadows and filters. This software hasn’t game logic or outstanding car behaviour. But it was serious step towards modern graphic requirements. For the first time we implement new materials with multiple textures – decal, reflective an bump instead of texture face ones. The new much more detailed track with a lot of alpha objects and “scripted” trees was created as well as the new car (you could see it on the screenshot – “Kobalt-Rhetra Strimer”) of our own design.
Skidrules. Champ version 1.02
SKIDRULES. Champ Version was the first attempt to realize the Internet championship. It’s the cut of original game aimed to single races within the common championship. The game was released in the end of 2009 and the first event took place. The software was interesting because of “Translation mode”. After the racing event was over anyone could download and see “Translation” (replay of the best 20 players’ runs)
Skidrules. Version 1.01
SKIDRULES 1.01 was the successor of DiStrakt. The game uses the same trucks and almost the same logic. The main idea was different. Now the game was constructed around the Person Principle. In the beginning of the game you don’t choose the car but the Person. Each person has it’s own car (real persons and real cars belonging to them). There was tuning system and racing with AI opponents – driven by checkpoints. Quite compact and simple game with photo textures/face texture materials. It was interesting mainly for certain car owners.
DISTRAKT
DISTRAKT is our first product. It was released in the end of 2008 as Distrakt 1.01 – the part of full game. 3 tracks of 14, 30 cars of 100. All the cars and tracks are of our own design. Allthe photos for textures were made by us too. Perhaps there were 2 most interesting ideas – car market and the game scenario. Market is the place where the player could buy cars with random cost and damage to repair them and sale back earning the money for more speedy cars. The scenario should be supplied by home video movies made by us. There should be 1 clip before each track/stage. It was quite enough fun to work on this project – It was unlimited fly of mind.
