Annnnnnnnd.... the game is done! Just doing final testing to hunt down any bugs and balance the scoring system. I will hopefully hand it off to the publisher on Monday! I was hoping to have it done last week but I got a dose of manflu and ended up on the couch binging on Attack on Titan. lol. Also, been playing too much Battle Riders. AWESOME GAME!
Not sure about the pricing, need to work that out with the publisher. Somewhere between 1-5 bucks, though. Haha. But yup, will have GC leaderboards and a load of achievements. I haven't implemented them yet, as I need to work with the publisher (access their GC account etc) but other than that, it's done
I'm also a fan of the first NFS, specially of its collision engine (never seen in any other game, as much as they tried). Looking forward to seeing how Oversteer performs on a 4S
Woohoo! The Drive was featured on App Spy, check out the video preview here: http://tinyurl.com/q7qfgdj So stoked
game looks great... i'd suggest just a few things, one -- allow the controls to be hidden, it looks a bit too cluttered, or maybe be able to change the opacity of them? Also, not sure how many cars you plan to add, but really -- pack as many cars as you can into it, and allow you to modify them -- ride height, wheels, paint, etc. Gotta personalize the cars you know!?? Seems like you have some great cars in there, like the WRX, AE86, Vette, Diablo... maybe a few others like a R34 GTR, S2000, NSX, Silvia, etc. Does it change from day to night at all, night driving with headlights would be a great addition as well. Also, engine noise, hopefully that is slightly different depending on the vehicle / whether its turbo or supercharged... the "devil" is in the details! You are definitely on to something, hope you put the time in to make this one of the great IOS racing games! Keep it up!
Hi, Thanks for your input. As for the modifying cars, it's not that type of game. I wanted to recreate the retro experience of games such as Need For Speed and Test Drive and to be honest, I'm not a fan of "tuning" cars, in real life or in games. I understand there is a market for that sort of thing but it's not what I'm trying to go for and it's well and truly covered, anyway. To this day I find The Need For Speed on 3DO a much more enjoyable, engaging driving experience than any other racer I've ever played. I have a 3DO pretty much just to play that game! Haha. As for the amount of cars, this is the first instalment of the game. There will be more cars and tracks added in future versions. I'm splitting it up like that because I'm a one-man dev team and I simply don't have the time to make a game on the scale of Real Racing... also, "feature creep" stops games being released! I have been working full time on this for the last ten months and it's near completion (to the original GDD specs) and I'm out of money. I've done what I originally intended and I think releasing it in small doses at a lower price point is a fair way to do it There is also a MASSIVE risk in releasing iOS games. Making a profit is almost impossible, so by building the game in smaller "episodes", if it crashes and burns (excuse the pun), I'm better off and can try something else. Eventually the roster of cars and tracks will be much larger but I'm not trying to be the new Gran Turismo or Real Racing 3. It's all about jumping in a car, beating the best times and trying to make it to the end of the course and hopefully earn a trophy! I appreciate people want more and more these days, but there's only so much that is physically possible and/or financially available, especially when you literally have ZERO budget. But hey, one day I might have the resources to make an EPIC version of The Drive! In saying all of the above, The Drive was a massive learning curve for me. Knowing what I know now, I could achieve the same results a lot more quickly but it's still a time-consuming project and I won't be tackling anything remotely this big again on my own if it's not at least a moderate success. I gotta eat! Haha. Oh and as for the environment and car sounds, yup, each car has a totally different engine note and each stage progresses through the day. No night time driving in this version though, I'm afraid, just sunset. I might add night time driving in a future version but I use the free version of Unity so optimising can be tough without the profiling tools that come with Unity Pro and realtime lighting is VERY CPU intensive. Add to that the fact that I'm not the world's greatest coder and, well, just not happening in this game. I definitely want to add it at some point though and I have done some tests. Cheers! Karl.
