Atari STE 50fps racer - WIP 8 June

A KZbin update for those that don't follow me on Twitter.
- Track now has 3 checkpoints that add time to the counter.
- Digital sound effects being added alongside digital engine sound (thanks Junosix & Masteries!)
- Difficulty increases as race progresses.
Hopefully coming soon: stars at night! 🌙🌃

[@paulstevens9409]

Imagine this out in late 80s on STE, stunning.

[@gridleaderretro]

Could have changed the course of history!

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Completely Amazing work! Making the STE look a little like a Falcon!

[@gridleaderretro]

Thanks! Definitely "a little like" a Falcon!

[@FedericoBustamanteGamboa]

Fantastic! Incredible speed sense!

[@gridleaderretro]

Thank you Frederico!

[@AtariCrypt]

I can’t stop watching!!!! ❤❤❤

[@gridleaderretro]

I hope the eventual finished product will be as addictive as this video :)

[@AtariCrypt]

@@gridleaderretro I wouldn’t worry 😊

[@noelsaw]

Stunning!

[@gridleaderretro]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@svensvlinken7583]

Awesome work, taking great advantage of the STE👌🏼

[@gridleaderretro]

Thank you! I take pride in the fact that it would be difficult to get this to run at even 25fps on a standard STFM :) Please see the updated video at kzbin.info/www/bejne/gpjEooOdns-nmM0

[@ataribeerpong]

Very smooth looks great!

[@gridleaderretro]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@tompaton5050]

This is awesome! Love it. I will make one polite enquiry, as a non-coding lamer. The sprite you have for the main car when turning left or right, which shows you the side of the car at an angle, looks good at low speeds but when at high speed it doesn't look as natural. Could you substitute it with a turning sprite that doesn't have as much of an angle (like, say, the Lotus sprite) above X speed? I know it costs memory but hopefully wouldn't affect framerate as you're not adding more frames per turning action

[@gridleaderretro]

Thanks for the feedback. I do plan to have more frames for the main player car and should hopefully be able to refine things a bit in this area.

[@gryz0r]

​@@gridleaderretroI noticed that too. Somehow the sprite looks pasted on the track. I was thinking maybe add some burning rubber smoke?

[@timediavideo]

Absolutely STUNNING!

[@gridleaderretro]

Thank you so much!

[@pavelpuchala5924]

OMG!!! 👍👍👍👌💪💣🙏

[@TPau65]

Oh wow, looks (and sounds) absolutly amazing! Never heard about this project before. 😲

[@gridleaderretro]

Thank you! I've only been working on intermittently for just over 3 months. I tend to post more regularly on my Twitter account at @RetroRacing if you want to follow development.

[@Gunstick]

@@gridleaderretro that's probably the reason. Everyone left twitter. I saw it on facebook.

[@gridleaderretro]

@@Gunstick Yeah, the ST scene seems a lot more active on Facebook for sure!

[@granlund23]

Very impressive! Great work!

[@gridleaderretro]

Thank you Anders!

[@soviet9922]

this look great

[@lucian2701]

No idea how I missed this on atari forum.. Looks awesome dude!

[@gridleaderretro]

There seems to be a total lack of interest out there on the forums - no idea what's going on. Glad you've found it and you like it anyway!

[@lucian2701]

@@gridleaderretro mate, it looks incredible! You really are the racing game king on the ST, and kudos to you for that. tbf to atari forum, it's just not that busy in the scheme of things (I guess us ST'ers are outnumbered by some considerable amount by that other 16 bit thing) but know that your hard work is appreciated and I'll be bumping the thread shortly.

[@lambrettadave7]

You have done a good job on speed and scaling too. Well-done

[@gridleaderretro]

Thank you!

[@philsan69]

Keep up the good work!

[@gridleaderretro]

Thanks, will do!

[@inceptional]

Looking very solid. If I could offer one piece of constructive suggestion, it would be to add more transition frames from the facing forward to full turning, and not to get to the full turn frame until the player has held in the turn direction for a while and/or they're going round a tight conrner that would require such steep turning. Otherwise, have the car just generally just facing forward and going to a smaller angle for simply steering in and out around cars and shallow turns. Hope that makes sense and you find it useful. Keep up the great work.

[@gridleaderretro]

Thank you. I'm looking into this at the moment - just need to get somebody on board to draw the intermediate sprites!

[@chrisholland5138]

This is really coming on. It needs a proper name now.

[@gridleaderretro]

Cheers Chris. I have a name in mind, but I'm also open to suggestions!

[@chrisholland5138]

@@gridleaderretro With the night driving, 'Le Mans Super Speed Challenge.' Or something.

[@tjlazer71]

You should make where the player can choose from different cars! Would be cool. Like Nissan GT-R. Supra, Porsche, Corvette. etc

[@gridleaderretro]

That would be cool. Right now though, I'm trying to keep the feature test as minimal as possible so that I can actually finish this game and get it released within a sensible timeframe!

[@mortenera2294]

Wow, this is amazing! Is it just me or these are the same sound effects from Lotus 1? lol

[@gridleaderretro]

Thank you! Yes, they're sounds ripped from Lotus 1 currently acting as placeholders - mostly because we ripped the sounds from the Amiga version of Lotus 1 for use in my previous project Lotus STE.

[@JMDAmigaMusic]

Can i suggest the engine noise from Jaguar XJ220? Would be more racing-like (at least for me)

[@gridleaderretro]

Thanks for the suggestion. If somebody can rip the engine sound from XJ220, I could have a go at integrating it!

[@nekononiaow]

This seems to be progressing pretty nicely! Good work! The road movement are still too artificial to my eyes but that's probably low priority over getting the gameplay to work well (although this should have an influence on said gameplay). Maybe you can "borrow" the ones from Lotus? 😉 In any case, keep up the great work! 👍

[@gridleaderretro]

Thanks for your comments! One of the reasons this is able to run at 50fps (where other ST racing games typically run at 10-22fps) is because the maths that generate the road movement and curvature have been stripped back and simplified as far as possible, in order to consume as little CPU time as possible. It would of course be possible to put in road movement that appears more correct (e.g. something similar to Lotus), but then I'd likely need to make sacrifices elsewhere - most probably reducing the framerate to 25fps. Once I do that, there would be little to differentiate this game from the dozens of ST games already out there!

[@nekononiaow]

​@@gridleaderretro This makes sense. Although I think it will ultimately be possible to have proper road perspective at 50fps it is 100% reasonable to not make this a priority. The rest of the game, i.e., smoothness, gameplay, driving controls, is much more important at this stage.

[@Mark-pr7ug]

Very, very impressive! Reminds me of Burning Rubber for the Amstrad 8bit - only, far superior. Maybe a full fledged game should be made based around the amstrad racer?

[@gridleaderretro]

Thanks Mark. I have no plans to make a commercial-style game with loads of bells and whistles - not enough hours in the day! It's going to be a stripped-to-the-bone arcade racer in an early 80's style - basically complete as many laps as possible before time runs out. I'll be releasing the code once complete so happy for somebody else to evolve it into something more ambitious.

[@stephenstrowes7569]

i love this! is the code out there, or, not yet?

[@gridleaderretro]

Hi Stephen. The (rather messy in places) code will be made available following the initial release of the game.