Please help me with the of my game (two basics)

[Leander]

I want to create a party-game (hotseat) like Micro Machines without a scrolling screen. Up to four players drive a certain number of laps to win. There are also weapons and other powerups.

I have two basic questions - can't start the creation process with knowing the answers. Please help.

1) The basic control is up, down, left, right. When I select a gamepad the car accelerates with up, brakes with down. I want to change this.

Therefore, I need a race car-movement like the default one with the difference that the player should accelerate with button 1 and brake with button 2. When up and down are pressed NOTHING should happen. How can you get this up and down-thing out of the race car-movement? Did someone create such a game with buttons as "pedals"?

2) When I drive the car the movement is a bit jerky. It doesn't drive smoothly but has slight jumps in it. The framerate was 50. I changed it to 100 and it ran more smoothly. What framerate is recommended? This small stuttering is terrible. It's not that visible but you can still see that the car doesn't run smoothly. How many frames are supported by MF2? To which number can I set the FPS-field?

It doesn't matter if the game cannot be run on old computers. It should run on my PC - PIV, 3.2 ghz, 1 GB ram, ATI Radeon 128 MB.
It doesn't have to be compatible with 512 ram / 2 ghz / etc.-computers.

[Leander]

Anyone?

[Random]

Weeeell..
The solution for both problems is to create a custom racecar movement. To get the desired result faster, there's an extension called "Advanced Racecar Object 2". For 1) you can use whatever keys to control it that you want and for 2) it should be smoother too.
I recommend a FPS rate of 100 if you can afford it, else go with 70 or 50 (which feels a bit old). Going higher than 100 is not quite recommendable in my opinion, as your framerate can become instable. But technically there is no limit to it. But if it can't go fast enough, because of all the things happening on screen it will.. well.. go slower.

[Benicle]

Err I wouldn't go higher than 60 unless your using Vsync... 100 seems fairly excessive...

[Leander]

Thanks for your replies. Where can I get this racecar object? I already have many objects but not this one.

[Random]

You should not go higher than 60 IF you use Vsync. Because then the game might not be able to keep up.

It's made by LIJI.. try the Extension Updater or somesuch.

[Leander]

On one extension page I found only v1.0.
And the main page is down. Error 404.

Could somebody please mail me advanced race car object 2.0? My address is leander.leitner AT gmx DOT at

[Random]

Easy. Use the Extension Updater that you can see in the link bar to the right.

Or use this link to it:
http://www.clickteam.com/eng/downloads/updater.zip

[Leander]

Wow, thank you! I already had the MMF addon-manager but not this one. Found race car 2.0 and updated all my other extensions.
Great, thanks.

How do I use this object? It is not selectable in the drop-down menu of the movement types. I have a car, can select static, 8 directions, race car, pinball movement etc. but not this custom race car movement. How is it used?

[Random]

Okay you would set your car's movement to static. Then add the race car 2 object somewhere in your scene (it will be invisible later).

Create an event "Start of frame" and do all the settings actions of the extension. Especially "Select car object", where you would specify which object to use as the car.

If you set the speed and acceleration, the car will already be moving at the beginning. For testing, do that. Don't specify deceleration right now.

Create a new event: Always
Here you would run the "Step forward" action. This means, the car will advance one time every frame.

Create two new events: Repeat while "Left Arrow" / "Right Arrow" is pressed
Here you would do the actions turn left and turn right.

Another event: Always
This is for your car object. From the scale / angle submenu, select the action "Set Angle" and set it to
angle( "Advanced Race Car Object 2" )
This will get the angle of the car from the extension and apply it to your car.

Now you have a car that you can steer with left and right. I think this should get you started. Enjoy

EDIT: The explanation for the steps isn't exactly correct. Step forward is actually what you would do when the player accelerates.