(Historic Post: April 21th 2007)

For those following the RacerX project I’m just updating you on the progress that has not been achieved lately, I’ve been busy with those interviews.  I have started working on some networking in the project.  And I believe I have support for sending UDP packets safely.  (Sorry for those non-techies reading).  But it simply means I can send information faster and safer over the network.  The project already saw its first over the internet tests, and it seems it has worked; so the light is green for continuing the multiplayer support!  Woohoo!  Okay, hopefully I’ll be able to work on it tomorrow and Monday and get the multiplayer lobby going.  Basically this will allow each player to setup their car, the host will be able to choose a track, and the other players will click accept or ready when they are ready to race.  When all the players are ready to race the host will be able to click race.  (I am not allowing the project to go into a Racing mode yet), just chatting in the lobby for now.  I guess I will keep you updated later during “RacerX Update 5” so stay tuned.  Other plans for the near future of the project include: Adding the Car Shop, and ability to choose a track in the Race Setup.  (Choosing the track requires a little more work on the Level Editor).  Sorry, no screenshots at this time, nothing viewable has been changed : (

(Historic Post: April 14th 2007)

Well its been a while since I have been working on my project.  But I have some surprises for everyone who is interested.  TREES!  Wow, the possibility of making the world feel more three-dimensional.  Currently the car cannot collide with the trees so instead you fly right through them but the visual effect was worth the effort.  Since the trees are transparent they need to be drawn to the screen in a special way.  Basically needing to be drawn last and in a special order from farthest away from the camera to the nearest.  So I needed to write a function to sort the list of trees.  I decided to use MergeSort since it is faster then QuickSort on the worst case, and uses less memory.  Though this proved troublesome.  Miguel De La Cruz helped me for the last couple of hours debugging the code, reading it carefully and finally I found that I wasn’t adding the trees to the end of the list; instead I was adding them to the beginning of the list…  So that was the bug for the day and trees are now on the screen.  I plan to work a little more on the interface and possibly networking or physics code shortly.

(Historic Post: April 11th 2007)

Well I updated some screenshots of the RacerX project.  I now have acouple of in game shots.  The first one the car just started moving across the finish line and the second one the car is drifting around the corner.  Of course these screen shots don’t show the full effect of the car moving but I wanted everyone to know.  There is also a screenshot of the current RaceSetup page.  Obviously using place-holder art for temporary purposes but the functionality all works.  From the top to the bottom you will be able to select you engine, tires, suspension, weapon, battery and generator for your car.  Soon I will make it show the actual parts and with a little more code the ability to use only parts that are unlocked should be implemented.  The next thing I am working on is the ability to add trees to the level and then walls.  Both of these items will not be collidable at first but the effect of them in the game will make more immersive.

(Historic Post: April 7th 2007)

Well, I am still working on the little racing project.  I am hoping to get the menus to a semi complete state by the end of this weekend.  Semi-complete is meaning that they are full functional but with graphics that will be changed when an artist joins the project.  I am putting a picture of the current Main Menu screen.  And will keep up to date on the progress of this project.

(Historic Post: April 3rd 2007)

Still working on the RacerX project.  It is coming out decent, I have the level editor up to the point of changing tiles, saving, and loading files.  I have been working on the car a little bit and even the design document for the game to give it a direction as I may have a few friends join me in the coding in about a week or so, still undecided.  Also I am undecided whether I should make the project network-able or not, and I realize that this should be planned as early as possible.  I hope to have the car moving within a week, and then it will be time to work on the track some more so that some Artificial Intelligent drivers can race around the track.  Competition!  Yay, isn’t that the whole point of a small combat/racing game in the end?  I will post an update and possibly a download-able version of the game when I get the AI cars moving and the player car running as well.  (No that doesn’t qualify as a complete project either).  Please note: I am a
programmer, not an artist.  If any artist people are reading this, please don’t hesitate to offer help on the project if you want to.