Coding PSEUDO Racing games

[sigh]

This may be useful to someone interested in creating a racing game..


Lou's Pseudo 3d Page


Also - here is an example, but it's written in javascript and not C so I'm not to sure how useful that will be, but if you click on the picture with the outrun car,
you can use the arrow keys to show how the effect works.


http://codeincomplete.com/posts/2012/6/23/javascript_racer_v1_straight/

[robcfg]

It's very nicely done!


It may be a good reference for this kind of games indeed.


Thanks for sharing!

[fgbrain]

this WIP is based on Lou's page

[TFM]

Reminds me about a Prototype of Burnin Rubber. 

[sigh]

Do the Martech games use the same technique or is it something different? I've always wondered how they got their pseudo speed incredibly smooth.





Despite the small playing area and lack of hills, there still must be something else going on here.

[TFM]

They got no up and down, screen is smaller.

[sigh]

Despite the small playing area and lack of hills, there still must be something else going on here.

They got no up and down, screen is smaller.

I still wonder if they are doing something else to get that speed. I had a look at the Amiga version of Nigel Mansell and the speed and smoothness is no different from the CPC's.

With Supercycle, the screen is a lot bigger and has the same speed (apart from the weird "road reversing" thing/bug that happens when you go top speed), so I guess that programming hills and dips must be incredibly processor intensive.

[TFM]

It all depends who much data the code has to put in the video memory. If there is no up down movement, the code needs to redraw only few scan lines. That can be done quick and easy. 

[ervin]

Indeed, Super Cycle is a very well programmed game.
It's very fast and smooth.

However, it only has a small playing area.
Almost half the screen is taken up by the instrument panel, which doesn't need much updating every frame.

Also, the road goes into curves nicely, but when coming out of curves, the game just reverses the curving procedure.
It doesn't come out of curves correctly. Have a look at Chase HQ on the CPC to see a game coming out of curves correctly.


Nonetheless, Super Cycle is a fine game.

[AMSDOS]

However, it only has a small playing area.

I think Masteronic's Formula 1 Simulator started all that small playing area. It's a wonder how during the 80s nobody went into business building Tables to house Amstrad Monitors (or maybe they did, but didn't last).

[sigh]

Indeed, Super Cycle is a very well programmed game.
It's very fast and smooth.

However, it only has a small playing area.
Almost half the screen is taken up by the instrument panel, which doesn't need much updating every frame.

Also, the road goes into curves nicely, but when coming out of curves, the game just reverses the curving procedure.
It doesn't come out of curves correctly. Have a look at Chase HQ on the CPC to see a game coming out of curves correctly.


Nonetheless, Super Cycle is a fine game.

I'll need to have a look at supercycle again. The Nigel Mansell game looks like it goes in and out of curves nicely.
I wonder if you were to add dips and hills in that small playing area, if the speed would be kept....

[ervin]

Hmmm... interesting.

Martech's Nigel Mansell game appears to have a road routine closer to what is described on Lou's Pseudo 3D Page.
Though Super Cycle came out around 2 years earlier, so DJL would have improved their techniques and knowledge between the 2 games.

Anyway, Nigel Mansell is more of a sim, so it's appropriate for it to have a better road routine.

[sigh]

Hmmm... interesting.

Martech's Nigel Mansell game appears to have a road routine closer to what is described on Lou's Pseudo 3D Page.
Though Super Cycle came out around 2 years earlier, so DJL would have improved their techniques and knowledge between the 2 games.

I see.

According to that page, his/her procedure for creating hills after numerous experiments takes very little calculations.
I haven't fully read Lou's coding techniques for curves, but at I guess, it must be extremely similar to the way that the hills are coded if there is so little extra work for the cpu.



I need to read the rest of Lou's Psseudo's, but I was hoping that there would be an analysis of how they managed to achieve the tilting screen on Powerdrift which is missing from the home ports (barring the Saturn and Dreamcast), though it's probably more hardware based.