Grand Prix GPU

After three, nearly four, days of development, we (TerraVision that is) proudly present our first Unity-project: Grand Prix GPU (GPGPU - sorry for the somewhat geeky title).
As we've never used Unity before, we decided to develop this small game to get some experience and see how it performed. So far, we're quite happy

The game is a single-/multiplayer (split-screen) racing-game, taking place on an old graphics card. Using one of the micro controllers, your job is to get through the track marked by blinking lights as fast as possible. We tried to stick to a minimum of fancy features, bling and sneaking killer-capacitors, as we had limited time available.
Still, any suggestions for improvement are appreciated!

Also - we challenge all of you to beat the highscore!

Enjoy!

 

Firefox crashed when loading the game

 

Hmmm.. Strange indeed! But I assume you got FireFox 3? Supposedly Unity and FF3 doesn`t work very well together at the moment, but hopefully this will be fixed with the next Unity-update?

 

Works fine with Safari. Clever little game!

 

Nice theme. Somehow i find the hardest part of this game to be the counter clockwise driving.

 

NICCCEEEE...more levels would be cool..

 

Thanks for your response!

When it comes to controlling the micro controller, I agree that it takes some focus to avoid going left when you should go right. We've also tried using a follow-camera, which makes it a bit more easy to control. Maybe we should consider putting it back in, or have it as an option.
I'll forward the request for more levels to our dedicated modeller, brokenpoly.. He's already sacrificed one graphics card for this game, so I'm pretty sure he would be happy if anyone could provide him with outdated and intersting-looking HW (modern graphics cards seems to hide all the fun stuff beneath a enormous heatsinks..)

Btw, - "Rob" captured the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place on the highscore.. Congrats Rob!

 

Excellent game! Now ... I must get my name on the high score table, but it's going to take some practice

Nice work. Ran really well in Safari ... no lag, nuttin' but goodness!

Congrats on a great little game.

 

Wow, really cool first game guys !

 

I love this kind of stuff.

 

I find the controls rather difficult.. The camera angle is driving me nuts. A behind-the-bot(car,racer,microchip,thingy) camera would be much easier to control. The fact that the big capacitors hide the bot from sight is very annoying, I keep flipping over because I can't see myself. Nice effects and very well-polished menu.

 

Super Off-Road used this camera angle, and it is probably my favorite racing game ever. However, the arcade version was the best one, as it actually used a steering wheel. Without having that available, the first thing you guys can do to improve the control is to separate the forward/reverse buttons from the steering buttons. Having to do all of that with one hand overcomplicates things. You can keep what you have, for people who only have one hand, but add separate gas and brake buttons somewhere else on the keyboard for the rest of us.

Nice job, though!

 

While I don't find the controls difficult, I agree with the rest of this post. Upon going only "forward" (no turning) after crashing and respawning at the big capacitors, the chip hits something and crashes/flips/whatever, all out of view. Maybe make the obstacles semi-transparent when the chip is out of sight?

 

That's cool! Good fun, great work!

 

Thanks for all your feedback! It's a good idea to separate the controls (for all of us who are lucky enough to have two hands available). Still, it should probably be optional - otherwise it would mean 4 hands operating one keyboard in the two-player-split-screen-mode (we're not against intimacy, but it should be - optional )

Can't promise the 2nd version will be out today (as half the team is on holiday), but it will be out soon! Maybe we'll even add the fancy you-crashed-into-an-important-chip-and-messed-up-your-graphics-card-shader-effect

Have to say that Unity really is a pleasure to work with. We've been using a heavily customized version of Torque for a couple of years, but I cannot see us going back there for a while! Not to mention the side-effect that everybody now also have a bling-bling-Mac on their desktop! 8)

 

At first I didn`t like the "hidden" crash-thingy behind the capacitors either. I wanted some of the obstacles to be semi-transparent, but as I went on a little holiday before the project was done, I didn`t really have much to say Now, thought, I think it was the right decision not to make the obstacles semi-transparent. It makes the game a little harder and you really have to be focused in that little area. Still, I understand that it can be a little frustrating and I promise the next level will be a bit less frustrating

Thanks again for all the comments guys! This forum r0xx0r!

 

putting in a follow cam would make it a bit easier and better show off your beautiful scenery - though i think it would also give the game quite a different feel.

very nice - superb polish all around ; )

i happily wasted many quarters on that game - i loved how you could just take the wheel whip it to smoothly go around corners.

 

You're not kidding. When I realized that you couldn't do that with a real car, I experienced a tidal wave of disappointment.