The Daily Click

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Dog Racing Game (prototype)

Author:

Fifth

Submitted:

4th December, 2012

Favourites:

Genre:

Racing

Downloads:

480

Rated:

5th Place

(4.89 / 5)

This is my entry for the TIGSource Sports competition, made using the Mode 7 EX Object. It was supposed to be a game where you bred and raced dogs, but due to poor time management it had to be reduced to little more than the racing game prototype you see here. You can pick one of three tracks and race a few laps, and that's about it.

As such, it is very rudimentary and poorly balanced, so sorry about that. At the very least it can serve as an example of the Mode 7 EX Object in action.

Review This Download

http://www.l-ames.com/logan/dog-racing.zip (6.56 mb )

Posted by lembi2001

4th December, 2012

Looks impressive, not downloaded it yet but kudos man

Posted by alastair john jack

4th December, 2012

pretty cool 3d animals, pity they can't go behind the mode 7 walls though. Do you think the shadows should have a lower opacity?

Posted by Fifth

4th December, 2012

It's one of the drawbacks of the object, I'm afraid. Since the entire Mode 7 Object is just one single object, there's no way for sprites to be partially occluded by the terrain. It also doesn't account for terrain occlusion in its built-in "is object visible?" test.
Maybe some sort of custom check could be made, but it might end up complicated.
Additionally, the heightmap walls can't be displayed above the horizon line, which is the object's upper boundary. So you either have to make flat levels, or else place the camera really high up.

Are the shadows really too dark? I never considered it.

Posted by Marco Medina

5th December, 2012

Rated :

Oh, this is impressive, I never thought that something like this could be done with the Mode 7 Extensión.

How did you program dog's 3D structute into the game?
Comment edited by Marco Medina on 12/5/2012

Posted by Fifth

5th December, 2012

Thanks!
The 3D dogs are completely faked. Each dog is made of 30 different objects which are positioned in space, and scaled and rotated appropriately. The result is convincing enough fake 3D.
I hope.

Posted by AndyUK

5th December, 2012

Rated :

I always thought there was potential for a good Mode 7 game using that object. This pretty much confirms it and then some!
A racing game would be the obvious choice but you could even get away with a large open overworld map for an RPG or even a first person shooter.

Shame it's such a slow object if you use the height map feature...

Are you planning to do some more Mode 7 stuff?

Posted by Fifth

5th December, 2012

I don't know why the object hasn't seen more use. It was surprisingly easy to use, and is several years old at this point.

I know it must have a lot more uses. An overworld map would probably be a perfect fit. But it has its share of shortcomings to contend with. For example, it fares worse when it uses a larger source image, but, as it only deals in whole pixels when it comes to position, a smaller image ends up with really jagged movement. I figure some sort of dynamic map loading system would probably help...

Even so, something like a FPS might not work well, as the walls would only be able to be as high as the horizon, and you'd be able to see all your enemies through it.

But I do intend to keep playing with the object. It is pretty neat.

Posted by Hayo

5th December, 2012

Rated :

This is a work of art, I really love the dog animations!

Posted by Hill Gigas

6th December, 2012

Rated :

I think it's brilliant.

Posted by Fanotherpg

6th December, 2012

Rated :

Great job Fifth!

Posted by Fifth

8th December, 2012

Oh wow, thanks guys!
It really means a lot!

Posted by UrbanMonk

10th December, 2012

Rated :

This is very awesome as a technical demonstration! The Dogs are so cute!

Posted by Jake G

11th December, 2012

I've just come back from holidays and suddenly TDC is very active

I LOVE DOGS! And this looks great! I will need to get this when I have a chance!

Posted by Disthron

11th December, 2012

Haven't downloaded this yet, but about your comment asking why people don't us it more. I'd say it's because of sprite mapping.

It's a complete pain in the ass. It dose a couple of things within the extension but the rest relies on the author knowing trigonometry. Witch most people don't. Also the examples are not that easy to figure out how.

Contrast that with how the ray casting extension handles sprites. Now that's a peace of cake.

I wish someone would make a new Mode7 extension, one that was more user friendly. Since I really like the effect.

Posted by Fifth

11th December, 2012

I dunno, the Mode 7 Object took care of pretty much all the sprite mapping. It gives you the X and Y screen position and even scale based on an X Y and Z position relative to the Mode 7 Object. I'm not sure what else you could need from it.

Posted by Jenswa

11th December, 2012

Can we have on with cats?

LOL, great job!

Posted by Hagar

15th December, 2012

This is great

Posted by Marko

16th December, 2012

Rated :

Technically wonderful, love the animations and the racing is as good as could be expected possible - nice!

Posted by MeadowHare

17th December, 2012

Rated :

Truly Truly amazing. I'd love to hear how you managed to push through all the math needed to animated each part of the dogs...

This is without a doubt one of the most technically impressive things I've ever seen done manually like that.

Great Work!

Posted by Fish20

28th February, 2013