Homebrew working on a quick little wii racing game

[newo]

This is cool, thank you.

Maybe make either a tutorial level or make things slower in the easy mode.

I have made 2 changes to the easy mode: 1 - there is less NPC traffic. 2 - there are fewer sharp corners so the tracks are easier to drive. I think the easiest path is using a classic controller or a gamecube controller to play. The analog sticks make a world of a difference! I'm not so sure about motion controls but its there if you want to test it out.

 

[Robmead23]

This looks like a amazing piece of homebrew. I have just read through the thread and can see you have put a lot of work into it.. My wii is retired but will be giving this a go on vwii when I get chance.

Congratulations on reaching a point where you are happy to release as complete

 

[newo]

@Robmead23 thanx. you should not let your wii gather dust. I still admire the little wii box that is the wii. I pretty much always have it plugged in so every now and then I try to drop a little bit of homebrew so that people can have something new to tinker with. I hope you get some fun out of this new game. thanx for reading the thread - hopefully I was not too long winded!

The game was supposed to be finished in dec2021 but in gamedev there are lots of little things that need to be fixed and debugged. So practically 4 months later here we are.


* edit - beta 0.6 should currently be visible on the OSC

 

[newo]

interestingly many new players dont get past level one. Only the most determined will even reach level 5. Maybe they are just testing it out for a little? Maybe they just gave up because of the controls or the camera angle? Maybe the game crashed on the second stage? I cant be sure. I will just have to wait and see if any of them post a comment or @ me somewhere.

I could change the default camera angle from 4. Or put motion controls on by default. But I will have to do more blind testing to see how this affects new players. Wiimote horizontal is the most popular and simplest control style. I imagine not many people have gamecube/classic controlers, so changing the default to those would not help. Wiimote and nunchuck?

 

[Dcep1501]

@newo What about creating a “beginner” difficulty setting which could literally be a duplicate of “easy”, but much slower, no traffic and maybe only 5 tracks? That way it is a short entry point for newbs. I’m getting the hang of this game, but I’m also a huge fan of fast future racing games for over 20 years so this is my cup of tea. My two cents, anyway. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too much work.

 

[newo]

@Dcep1501 easy IS the beginner difficulty. And I have modified the easy difficulty to have less traffic, and no sharp/hard turns. But I think racing games on a whole are not for everyone (which is probably why there are so few wii homebrew racing games). And I think most of the learning curve has to do with using the wiimote horizontal in a driving game for the first time. Analog sticks are definately the best way to go based on the feedback I've gotten. So the current plan is to improve the driving when using the wiimote only by making it less "twitchy" to control.

 

[newo]

When I got up this morning a idea came to me while reading cogmind's devlog; it might be beneficial to default the game to easy mode. In that way most players would start out on the shortest, easiest tracks while they learn the controls. This way only choice left are for those who desire more than from the game rather than just giving up because "normal" was the first thing they play.

This together with the adjustments I am making to the wiimote only turning speed. Should in theory ease more people into the racing genre. Does this sound like a good plan?


* the only downside I see of the is that the easy mode leaderboards will be flooded with players who should not be playing on easy.

* edit 2 - imho the tracks on normal difficulty are better looking than the tracks on easy mode. Especially the first track which has a bend to rising straight away which is purposely aligned to the synthwave sun. I guess this will be a delayed experience, lol. Gameplay over graphics?

 

[newo]

Build 0.61

* Game now defaults to Easy mode for everyone playing it for the first time (no settings file). I mentioned the reasoning behind this in my previous post
* Added some filtering to the dpad on the wiimote so that turning is not as instant/twitchy as it was before. This should make turning more gradual for new players.
* Added a particle effect for the engine exhaust. Its not perfect.
* Changed the way the menu buttons work (fire on down rather than held)
* Track is more transparent than before.
* Underground areas are darker.
* Home button no longer exits the game.
* MP3 background music has been downsampled to 128 kbps to reduce overall download size by 50%.
* Minor fixes and Optimizations


Alot of new people are playing/testing the game now because it is on the OSC. So far this month 50 new people have played the game. Only 8 people have made it to level 10. The majority never pass level 1. Hopefully this dpad filtering will help. Anyway let me know how it goes. Have a good day.


Download: test/beta build. and post a comment with your feedback.

 

[newo]

This update is related to some recent testing feedback (from RenDev);

- "The largest issue for me was that using button controls felt really sensitive so one press of the button would make me move too far left. I had to quick tap the buttons to make small adjustments to my direction."

The dpad filter should reduce this effect by slowly increasing the turn rate the longer you hold the direction. This change only affect dpads. Analog sticks remain the same and are still the best way to play.

- "Another issue was with using the menus. In The game you are holding the 2 button to go forwards and you press plus to open the pause menu. However the pause menu checks if 2 is pressed to return you to the game so for a while I thought there was no pause feature becuase the pause screen only appeared for a frame. Same thing happens when you get a game over and still hold 2."

I changed how the accept and cancel buttons respond on the menus. This should solve this problem. The menus now trigger on "down" instead of "held".

- "One bug I found was that the cars would still follow the track but would go off of the rails and drive parelel to the sides of the track."

The NPC cars are annoying, I let them go off the road if they want to. Some players have asked to remove them entirely. But they do add challenge.

"Only other things I saw were minor culling issues with things in the distance. They would pop in and out of veiw as I got close."

My culling code is not the best but I will adjust it a little forward to try to compensate.

- "One other thing that was confusing was that I couldn’t find motion controls in the main menu. I had to activate it in the pause menu while I was in the game."

It is in the Options menu and called 'MOTION-CTRLS'. I might have too many options


Thats pretty much it so far. Please send any feedback you have either here or on twitter @NewoGame

Thanks for playing

 

[Dcep1501]

@newo Great update! Just tested out Wii motion controls and they're much more responsive. I did notice that the synthwave sun seems dimmer now. Is that just me or was it intentional? I personally think (if it is dimmer) that it really looks better more pronounced and brighter, as I feel the synth sun is a quintessential visual aspect to this game. If the sun didn’t change then ignore my comment.. lack of sleep I guess, haha! Lastly, no noticeable loss of sound quality on the songs.

 

[newo]

@Dcep1501 aw good eye, yes I am messing with the sun. I am trying to give it different colours on each stage. Could it be a random colour or should I stick with purple, red, and orange? Will correct it in the next update.

 

[Dcep1501]

@newo The sun for the most part should stay in the color scheme you have it. But if you want to change it up, here are a few variations i found on google towards the top of the page. Some variety would probably be a nice addition

 

[newo]

Good morning all.

I was supposed to drop build v0.62 last night for a final test run but I ran into a bit of a snag while playing around with the game engine. Apparently I have figured out something interesting that I can do with the track graphics. I will try not to mess with the look of the game too much but these things happen at times. I will upload the changes/new build in about 2 hours. Its gonna be worth the little bit of extra work.

 

[newo]

Build 0.7

- new track textures at race start, special sections and end of track.
- sun/moon is bigger and now has a different colour every stage
- final stages on easy/normal are now full length
- draw distance improved.
- new debug options
- track 10 is now labeled as "FINAL STAGE".
- new graphics for final track.
- "Show Signs" display option allows you to disable the blinking billboards on buildings in the background.
- changed the way the leaderboards display scores for month and year
- motion controls improved, additional testing, and deadzone added thanks to mr reaper
- other minor changes which I cant remember

Everything is complete (except variable accelaration) for version 1 release tomorow. Thanks for everyone's help in making another wii homebrew a reality.

 

[Dcep1501]

Perfect timing. Going to do some screen capturing later!

Edit: the auto-update always gets stuck and I need to download the new file from a browser each time. Will this be fixed at some point?

 

[newo]

Perfect timing. Going to do some screen capturing later!

Edit: the auto-update always gets stuck and I need to download the new file from a browser each time. Will this be fixed at some point?

Hmmm your auto update should not get stuck at all. What percentage does it get stuck at? Is your sd card full? Is it write protected? Are you playing from a harddrive? Not sure why its getting stuck.

I could bump the versions numbers to run a test. if you are up to it.

 

[newo]

Build 0.71

- Minor bug fixes to the auto update feature.

I will release a v0.8 in a few hours inorder to test if the auto update works but obviously you will have to have this installed version before hand in order to see if the problems have been fixed ( @Dcep1501 ).

 

[Dcep1501]

Mine gets stuck at random percentages. I’m using an sd card and it’s not full nor write-protected. Could just be the brand of the sd card? Not sure.

Build 0.71

- Minor bug fixes to the auto update feature.

I will release a v0.8 in a few hours inorder to test if the auto update works but obviously you will have to have this installed version before hand in order to see if the problems have been fixed.

 

[newo]

I dont think the brand should matter. I did find some bugs in the code which might have caused it. So I fixed some potential causes and cleaned up some other stuff. It could be any number of things, could be pressing the buttons during loading or even lack of gamecube ports, who knows. Its a process of elimination. Hopefully this works. I will bump the version number again as soon as you have 0.71 installed.

 

[newo]

Build 0.72

- for testing the auto update feature from 0.71. Launch the game and let it update. report back with what happens.