I’m really liking this concept! Just as a thought about the jumping… I noticed that there is a meter for the firing. What would you think about doing the same for the jump? I think it might really add to the “fun” factor quite a bit. Also, if it’s possible, you might consider adding a slight dip in the vehicle movement just before it launches. This might give a little different impression to the feel of the movement.
Maybe there should be an AI turret in each of the maps to make it challenging. And a truck class which is slower but a lot stronger.
Thanks! I like these ideas. I’ve thought a bit about incorporating some kind of jump strength, and I think that’s going to make it in, at least for a test build. It just seems like it will be fun, especially if the minimum jump is still high enough to be useful (so you can depend on it in a hurry when you need to). Right now, you flip by holding down jump longer, but I need to come up with a better system for letting you perform acrobatics anyway.
I like that idea, I’m thinking that I will get experiment with some automated weaponry, even if it’s just something near each team’s base that they can rely on for a bit more defense. At the moment your team needs pretty active defenders, which is nice because it leads to a lot of out and out chasing, but can be painful if your group isn’t on top of things. I do have some different truck classes in there but they primarily feature different movement abilities. I will be adding more (but very similar and balanced projectile weapons), but I’m hesitant to introduce anything that can’t be destroyed in one shot, since I love that.
I had to take a bit of a break to work on other stuff: you guys know, you get hungry, need food, food costs money, need money, look at screen and wiggle fingers for a month or two, money arrives, food arrives, and here we are. I’m releasing another alpha / dev / has-bugs-and-is-not-yet-something-I’m-super-proud-of release today.
If you want to play
I’ve posted mac, linux, and win64 client builds and linux and win64 server builds on the game’s (still terrible) site. I host a dedicated server which you can access through the lobby of the client build. Download whatever you want, play as much as you want, let me know if you want to join our weekly games.
Download Playable builds: www.kingofkalimpong.com](http://www.kingofkalimpong.com)
If you want to hear me ramble about stuff
Then you made it. I had a lot of fun working on this release, mostly because it meant incorporating a redesigned vehicle mesh that my brother Mike created. It looks like this:
I’ve changed the vehicle movement properties a lot. These new vehicles have a higher top speed and higher acceleration. I think the steering is way more fun now too - the e-brake is now an axis value so you can use it to do a quick change of direction, make a tight corner, or do a full 180 to face your pursuer.
I also started messing with the vehicle movement replication. I decided to give client-side prediction and correction with physics a go. I’m able to detect when the server disagrees with a recent move of the client’s, and to identify that move on the client, but rewinding and replaying in a way that feels good has proven elusive so far.
To keep things simple, this build is client authoritative. I love that my ping no longer affects my driving experience. I want to start testing some of the other changes affected by client-side prediction, like accelerating projectiles fired by simulated proxies in order to account for your simulation’s predicted position. I’ll soon get back to messing with the replay, and I want to find a nice way to incorporate the different networking models into the engine such that I can share this code back to the rest of the community. It just might not make sense as a boolean switch though given that enabling clientside prediction for your pawn impacts how other networked actors should behave, but perhaps that’s to be expected for any developer working on a networked multiplayer game.
Without server-authoritative move replay I expect this implementation to be at odds with UE4’s The Server Is The Man protocol, but on the other hand, trying to control full physics vehicles in addition to managing latency is a very bad-feeling experience with a real world ping. I think if replay doesn’t work out then there are other creative, game-specific ways to allow the server to still be the authority while mostly giving clients full control over their pawn’s movement.
Another fun part of this build was taking the Mr. President game mode (most similar to a common VIP mode) and applying it to the slightly redesigned City map, which is usually used for FFA. It’s cool to see which modes and maps can be mixed together, but in hindsight it makes sense that modes like FFA and Mr. President feel like they belong to asymmetric maps, environments where it might be difficult to balance any mode that requires a “home base” for each team.
Ramble complete!
Downloading this now, looks like a blast. I havent played it yet, but people are talking about automated weapons - I don’t think that’s a good idea. Sounds to me like what you want are auotmated DEFENSES - IE: temporary walls/forcefields/repulsion fields … things that massively affect your driving/shooting/aiming over things that are simply popping cannon blasts at you randomly. Defenses that are overcome with skill in the heat of the moment 
Yeah, I’m definitely into skill over random. Right now I have a couple of pseudo-environmental elements in there (players can knock trees over and falling trees hurt), but they’re infrequent enough that their randomness doesn’t really impact the gameplay. I like behaviors that are consistent with the look and feel of the game, but that reward skill. I will try some of this stuff out and playtest it to see if it works.
Thanks for downloading. This is the first build for this release and I’ve changed a lot since the last one, so it’s quite buggy!
Looking good. I’m downloading now too. I might be able to convince my gaming buddies to give it a try as well. Looking forward to an insane party!!
Best game i’ve ever seen. I love it!
Nice little game.
So many different maps and every map i join, i am alone, or is it my firewall?
You should post this game on some freeware sites, when you want more playerbase.
Oh man, this is . What I love most is if YOU get hit by a giant rock out of nowhere. Its hilarious and, sometimes, unexpected. 
Art style is also looking nice and crisp. I like the desaturated, toy like colours. I think you should start thinking about putting this on Steam Greenlight, if you want to get more exposure for your game :). I’m going to drop you a follow on twitter!
I can honestly see a lot of love went into this project. Time too… Keep up the great work man.
Thank you! I hope you guys have fun. Hoping I can fix a bunch of the bugs I found in Friday’s playtest before you guys get in there!
Thank you so much, that means a ton to me. I’m glad you like it!
Thanks! I’m sure the server is just empty, some friends and I get together to play every week. I think I’ll have my server text me when someone joins so I can jump in there and play. Also, good idea, I will definitely be doing my best to spread the word when the time comes.
Thank you! I love that you love getting surprised by a huge rock, that’s one of my favorite moments too. That’s the first thing that happened to me in a playtest session the other day - someone dropped a huge boulder off of a building as I unsuspectingly drove in its path.
I’m glad you like the aesthetic. My brother and I are going for something specific, and while we’re not there yet, I feel like the vehicle model and those evergreen trees in the City map are a huge step in the right direction. I will definitely be preparing for Steam soon, I just want to get the network performance to a place that I feel good about, tighten up some game feel elements that are annoying me here and there, and then start getting into a rhythm with the art work and level design. Thanks again for the kind words, I really appreciate them.
I did a playtest on Friday and have been somewhat bummed out about it since, mostly because of the performance over the network. I took some time off, and really just came back here today to write my thoughts about what I would have to do next and some of the different approaches I am considering, thinking out loud, that sort of thing.
I can’t express how great it was to see a bunch of positive posts from you guys about the game. Really turned my mood completely around. Thank you all so much. I hope you enjoy trying the game out, and that the weird bugs and rough game feel I so enthusiastically introduced in the last week or so doesn’t deter you from future builds!
Thanks again.
Do you plan to launch it for free forever?
It is really nice, i like the lowpolystyle, you should keep it.
That will run on lowspec too, thats cool.
But when you get a playerbase, you have to pay for networking infrastructure and that means you need to generate some money with that.
When you put it on steam, it would give you many consumers and networking stuff would be no big problem.
Make a monthly contest with a wincode of a 10€ paysafecard or similar amazon voucher and you get fat quick, when you update your nice project regular.
It is never to early to start advertising.
A couple of us out of our little group went in and trolled around for a bit. It was fun with just the two of us, but would be with more! Things for the most part seemed to work well. There were times when the outcome didn’t seem right, but I’m guessing that has something to do with network prediction and all that. The only things that seemed odd to me were. 1. On the city map the tallest elevator didn’t seem to want to work for me. The car would hover over the platform and would be inoperable until the elevator started to move and the car would be thrown off. 2. Are the rocks supposed to get larger as they move through the air? It’s kinda cool, but strange. But, like others have said, keep up the good work! This is sure to be a hit!
Don’t worry too much dude. Though, I know the feeling you’re having, you put yourself in a vulnerable position when you put something you love online for others to judge. Worst case scenario, you get some feedback! General consensus appears to be very positive :). I think this could be a really fun little LAN party game too xD.
I get a crash on start with 0.8.6 on Win8 x64.
Thanks! I am planning to release it for free, and to run several dedicated servers as well (I got into kubernetes lately and am really liking the gcloud infrastructure). I will have monthly network costs that will scale with the player base, but I want everyone to be able to play. I despise Pay-To-Win games, so I may entertain offering some visual/audio content for purchase (rims, radio stations, etc), items that don’t impact gameplay at all. Alternatively, I really like your tournament idea, where players can pay to enter, win prizes, and in doing so entrants help cover the infrastructure costs.
Thanks for checking it out! Regarding the outcomes, do you remember exactly what felt weird? Did you lose head on collisions with other vehicles that you thought you should have won? Since I changed the network architecture I overlooked changes I need to make to that experience. Did you notice issues with the projectile impacts and collisions? There’s some prediction in place for those but since they’re so big and simulated everywhere there’s plenty of opportunity for strangeness. If you can recall any of the details that would be super helpful!
- That elevator bug is annoying, to say the least; something I introduced through a client-side movement experiment. If I’m able to successfully implement physics replay it will go away.
- They are supposed to scale up in flight, but I haven’t committed to exactly how I want to do it yet. My initial idea was that in order to help you out when making a really long range shot, your boulder would scale up to create a larger impact area, so you could be less accurate at a distance. I may only allow boulders to scale up if they’re fired at a certain angle, so looping shots scale but straight shots don’t - something like that.
Thanks again for playing, for the feedback, and the kind words!
Thanks! It’s great to get the feedback - it’s invaluable - it’s just a bit painful too. Sounds like you know
DANG. I’m on roughly the same configuration; do you see anything interesting when you run the build from the command line with -log? I’m traveling (just got married!) but I’m planning to release a better build when I’m back home. By the way, I saw your tweets about multiple physics scenes and I’m going to give that a go, that’s a clever idea. I’ll pop back into IRC when I’m back to civilization to pester you a bit more about that.
Happy marriage, gratulation from here. 
Here’s a 1 minute video of some footage from yesterday’s networked multiplayer test. I’ve been working to get a decent build together for IndieCade this weekend. Most of the changes concern the networked physics implementation but I was able to sneak in some game feel tuning too.
This looks really fun! Definitely need to try this out.
Keep it up 