Interesting article on 2.5D racers (Outrun, Road Rash,Super Hang on etc)

[pzazz]

Found this article which explains how those classic arcade racers were made (Outrun, Super Hang on etc...)
The writer goes into detail about how to make curves, hills, camera views and objects/vehicles. Really interesting. There's a few separate articles and a really nice java online example. It's not coded in MMF but perhaps the principles could be carried over. I wonder if anyone has the chops to even attempt something like this? Could be really cool.

Article:
http://codeincomplete.com/posts/2012...ascript_racer/

Example:
http://codeincomplete.com/projects/racer/v4.final.html

[happygreenfrog]

This is cool. However it seems to involve a whole lot of gibberish machine language which can be difficult for somebody so graphically minded. It sounds cool if there was a way for Clickteam to do this without having to get into the source code. For some reason people want to analyse the raw machine language used here, when perhaps it's redundant and simply TMI. Even so, this makes a cool racing game but has limited applications only to a game of that genre which I am sure works for some people.

It doesn't involve machine language. The source code involves java, though. This is machine language, which I found here (scroll down to the "Assembly Language (for 32-bit Windows)" part):

.386
.MODEL FLAT, STDCALL
INCLUDELIB USER32.LIB
MessageBoxA PROTO :DWORD, :DWORD, :DWORD, :DWORD
INCLUDELIB KERNEL32.LIB
ExitProcess PROTO :DWORD
.CODE
Heading DB "Ian's Message Box", 0
Text DB "Hello, World", 0
Main:
INVOKE MessageBoxA, 0, OFFSET Text, OFFSET Heading, 0
INVOKE ExitProcess, 0
END Main

See the difference?

[MuddyMole]

It really wouldn't be cool.
I'm a big fan of old skool 2D video games - I love the pixel art graphics, the cheesy music and most of all, the emphasis on simple and fun gameplay - but these old fashioned "3D" games just suck.
While many old 2D games retain much of their original charm and are still great fun to play, old 3D games just look primitive and crappy, and they can no longer compete on gameplay either. It doesn't matter if it's a racer like this, or a shooter like Wolfenstein 3D - they're simply not good games by modern standards.

EDIT: Oh, and the language is Javascript, which is not related to either Java or Assembler, and which is probably the easiest and most intuitive language around (I learned it in about a week).

[happygreenfrog]

The article itself doesn't mention java, if I remember correctly. Just the math. The source code is the only thing that is actually java.

[arsdigita]

Appreciated the links to these, I love the old school 'roads'.

I spent a bit of time considering how I could convert this to a MMF friendly system, would love to have it as an option for mobile.

No idea how efficient a robust version would be in MMF but the speed they could achieve on a very weak machine like the Sega Master System was impressive (Hang On, Outrun).

If I have any breaktrhoughs, Ill post them up here.