New 2.5D "Pseudo 3D" Racing Game Engine

Hey guys and girls, here's an early WIP vid of my current project. I've always loved these kind of games, so figured I'd make one

No hills yet, only one roadside object and I haven't implemented the corner forces on the car. Getting there, though!

Any and all questions welcome.

 

Brilliant. Brings back memories when playing outrun. How did you do the the bended road effect? Shaders?

 

Nice, how do you do the curve track, do you used wrap shader to bend the track?

 

Hey guys, nope, not shaders... wouldn't know where to start with that! I basically did it the same way as it was done on the old consoles, shifting each line of pixels... but instead of a line of pixels, I use a custom 2 poly plane. So there are 100 planes making up the road that I shift about to give the effect of the curve.

There is a combination of shifting the planes back into 3D space and adjusting their scale to give the depth effect... probably much better ways of doing it, but it works.

As for the movement, I just used one road texture and gave each segment only 100th of the texture visible, so the whole texture is spread across the 100 quads. Then I adjust the texture offset to make it look like the road is scrolling. That's why I had to put the farther away quads back along the Z axis, or the lines on the road would be the same width, losing that depth.

As I said, probably better ways to do it... I couldn't figure out how to make the roadside objects work properly because of how I set the road up, so I just interpolate them between waypoints. It seems to work, though. I get around 200fps on my barebones Mac Mini and it runs smooth as silk on iPad. I haven't tested on iPod Touch or iPhone, yet... may need dual core processor.

I chose to do it this way as all the other 2.5D games use spline systems (which I have no idea how to do in Unity) and don't quite manage to capture the same feel as the original games...

 

Am now doing this game as an homage to C64, rather than an NES type game... check out the new gfx Have authentic SID chiptunes for the ingame music, too.

 

Here's a new vid. Things are progressing nicely

 

Hey, your work is awesome!

I need a little help, I want to get this effect in my own Unity game. I just started on Unity scripting, so I'm still learning. But how would I begin to go about getting this effect? I'm not asking for hand holding just a push in the right direction. I am guessing I'd need to do it with C-Sharp?

 

Wondering if you would be able to make a tutorial of this? Currently studying the techniques on this and would like a little more enlightenment on the work flow and approach to this through video tutorial format? I'm currently trying to fake this via rendering 6 frame sequences of road turns and bends and what not.

 

Awesome!!! Love it :3

 

this looks very cool and nostalgic. But I don't understand why even use Unity at this point

 

Good job!!

Scaling for straight road is clear, but how did you do for turn? I think that you didn't apply only scaling but a warping/distorting transformations too, am I wrong?
Did you use pre-calculated sprite for straight roads and turns ?

 

Hi! Sorry guys, I haven't been receiving notifications on this thread!

Basically it's just a bunch of quads that I shift left and right (simply by increasing the X offset slightly from quad below's X offset) to get the corners working.

For the forward movement I just split a single texture over the 100 quads and scroll it. The quads are also "stepped" into the background to give the 3D effect.

It's not an efficient way of doing it, but it works and gives a more retro look than manipulating vertices on a plane, as I'm guessing they did in Final Freeway and the like.

I hope this helps!

As for "why use Unity?" Well, why not? It's the tool I use for all my game dev

 

There's no scaling going on at all, other than with the roadside objects

 

Web player?

 

Looks cool. Would like a webplayer too.

 

No web version, sorry. The last time I released a game online, within a day it sprung up on a bazillion different sites under someone else's name (various people, actually), despite my logo/splash screen still being at the head of the game. Haha. Learnt that lesson!

EDIT: In saying that, this is a really short demo, not a full game (yet), so I guess I could...

 

Most people here are good people. Use dropbox, not a game site. Should help.

 

To make easier you made something like that ?

 

Yup, exactly.

I've actually been looking deeper into this, as I didn't do it a very good way.

I'm going to make a version of my game Project Downforce for Sega Genesis and I was alerted to this site.

http://www.extentofthejam.com/pseudo/#sprites

Wish I'd found it earlier as it explains really well how to do it the "traditional" way.

Another way would be to simply texture a plane and shift the verts left and right in sequence but you wouldn't get the pixelised road edges.

 

Okay, here's how it looks in my Unity project, if that helps. The road segments are generated at runtime. It looks like I didn't actually stack them, not height wise, I just raised the camera.

 

Wow, that's interesting.
May you post some screenshots of the curve scene ?

Thanks

 

This is really awesome! And from those editor shots, it looks like you came across the same method that I ended up using when I tried the 2.5D racer thing last year (in XNA): http://bit.ly/1DfkFmu

I tried doing the math to draw the track fully in 2D to start with (based on Lou's Pseudo 3D page) and then gave up and used actual 3D like you Except I wasn't brave enough to attempt generation, so I made an editor and ended up going for something more like Power Drift than outrun.

Cool to see it being done in Unity, will be following your progress with interest!

 

Haha, I'm actually gonna try attempt it on Mega Drive now. No doubt I'll finish a game using it in Unity at SOME stage. lol.

 

Did you copy this from Rad Racer? They will probably be a little upset...

 

hehe brilliant loon

ah.... the old outrun and chaseHQ days... keep it up, lookin sweet

 

Excuse me,
Do you move the camera or the quads to simulate the speed effect?
May I see other screenshots of your scene ?

Thanks
Bye
Fred

 

This is rad! Great music too.

illuzion987, All I can think of while watching your video is Strongbad! Oh memories...

 

would you release the unity project publicly or sell on the asset store?
I wanna make an outrun type game but do not wish to program the stuff u already figured out.
I'd drop a few bucks on it if you sell it.