I played the game twice today, the first time the zooming was tied into the speed of my car which I must say was not helping me with the lap times. The second time I played, you must have made another change to the game as the zooming was no longer tied to the my car speed, as I could freely zoom in and out to a level I felt comfortable with. Also I noticed the boost key has changed. I was having problems with the spacebar locking up the input before, so I like the change to the ctrl key.

I was getting worried that Cam's 1:59:94, a mere 0:0:01s faster than mine previous, was unbeatable. Thankfully my dominance has been restored with a 1:59:73. I wonder if a sub 1:59 is possible?

Stephen

I've been away for a few days, but don't worry I beat all your times again :-) My level 7 time broke the 2min barrier. *runs into kitchen for the some ice to jam fingers in*

I don't quite understand the level system, what's stopping me from recording a sub 2min time at level 1?

Keeping with your configuration of 8 top laps per level and 7 levels, I would have implemented levels by keeping the data of the top 56 laps. The player would start their first race in the level 7 bracket against cars 49-56. Their recorded time for that race would slot into the overall 56 best laps (if the times good enough) and their next race would be against the bracket of 8 times that their last time slotted into. i.e I recorded a 2:02 in my first race, so the next race I should have is say in level 6 against cars 9-16.

But anyway its still a great game, as is proof by my repeated returns to reclaim top honours.

Just got fastest driver, a 2:01 flat, yes I beat you again Sicko!

Yeah a varying skill levels would help people, otherwise as the times of the top 8 get quicker and quicker it will seem more impossible to new players. And for competition sack I'll drop a few hints on getting fast laps:

1) Probably the most important thing is to drive in a straight line for as long as possible. Making small twitches and corrections where you should be driving straight actually slows down your car quite a lot (i'd say more than is realistic).

2) Now im not sure if this actually helps as I don't think it was used for any of the current top 8 times, but if you use boost around corners you actually gain grip. That means if your angle of entry into a corner is not good you can correct without penalty by using a little boost. But as I said this ultimately wanted help getting fast times as boost is best to be used in conjunction with the point (1)  i.e. straight line speed plus boost is very, very fast.

Yeah.... *dusts imaginary fluff off shoulders*....I found some "unusual" physics. Are you going to use this forum as your main medium of communication regarding this game? I noticed you also have a blog but it seems inactive. I love this style of game and had actually started making something similar myself a couple of years ago. Unfortunately i'm too much of a perfectionists and can't managed to actually finish anything.  Have you ever played or heard of a game call Slicks 'n Slides? I wasted many hours when I was younger playing that with my brother and friends (up to four players at the same keyboard). For its time that game was awesome.

PS. I'm might have another go of your game now and see if I can beat my own best time :-) I reckon something in the 2:01's is possible!

<edit>hehe did it</edit>

Wow, I didn't realise the bra boys had a website :-)

...and your hosting a Java game off it, nice!

BTW, the game is pretty good. Id like to see a ghost car of my (i.e. the players) best lap. It could be coloured slightly differently to the other ghost cars.

Doesn't run for me. What are these strange files with extensions like .bat and .dll?

Thanks everyone. keldon85's solution of adding a 6 to my google query is the simplest and best. (Don't know why I didn't think of that  )

Happy API searching everyone!

....now 'google java 6 bufferedimage' .......sweet

I'm looking for a site that I can search the latest Java API with. I
would have thought this is provided by Sun, but I can't seem to
find it.

I usually just google for what I want i.e. 'java polygon' to find the
java.awt.Polygon API page. But this seems to mostly bring back
pages in the 1.4.* version of the API, as I guess its the most linked
to on the web.

If I just wanted to find stuff in the javase 6 API, whats the best way
of doing that?

Thanks,
Stephen

Interesting game. Unfortunately I found it impossible to play on my MacBook. (Using the touchpad)

Your not getting 500 frames a second. Your rendering loop is just cycling around at 500 times a second. Anything above the refresh rate of your monitor is just pointless.

What the...a year before you migrate to 1.5!

YOu realise 1.6 is the current version, and has been for some time.

I don't even think i have anything less than 1.6 installed on my system.

Congratulations!

I think you need to add some of  "punch" movement though. As the rallies are long and boring, due to the trajectory of the ball being so predictable. (i.e. is basically just bouncing around 4 walls)

Just played my first Wii (friends) last night, how awesome!

I don't know what these numbers your posting are though. :-)

Yay! No more jogl or lwjgl.

I'd like to participate, but my fear is I won't be
able to create anything I'd be happy with in 4k.

I almost entered for the first time last year, but
my laptop had a coming together with my g/f's
glass of water and sadly all my 4K code went
down with it :-(

I thought at the time "oh well, this gives me a
whole year to improve on my game after starting
from scratch". But after averaging two hours a
week on the thing for ten months, all I've got to
show for it is a random racing track generator.

Its sits at around 20K, and its not even an
interactive playable game yet. To fit into 4K i'd
have to throw out all the nice SimplexNoise and
Catmull-Rom Spline code. But by then it wouldn't
be able to generate random racing tracks
anymore.

Oh the pain!

Webstart?

OI moogie! Wheres your entry?

I don't see it on the games list.

Unfortunately my time management skills or lack of, got the better of me for this contest.
All is not lost though, it just means i've now got a whole year to perfect my inaugural entry!

Hope the same hasn't happened to yours. I'm very interested in seeing the finished product.

---
Stephen

Holy mother of a goat!

That is beautiful.

I'd need to start now for the 2007 contest to achieve that!

Haha thats getting to fun to play.

I like how the cars shy away from you if your infront of them. I spent the entire lap just racing ahead then stopping and watching them avoid me at all costs :-) Then speeding up and repeating it all over again.

Could they drive a little faster?

Looking good though. Oh and whats the deal with the tiling...is the map essentially infinite in all directions? And also I noticed some weird effect on the left of the screen when driving to the right, sort of like a swirly pattern thing going on, but only when driving at top speed.

Ok moogie, don't know if your still checking this thread but anyway...

I've progressed some on my racer:

http://stephencarmody.wikispaces.com/Racer4k

How are you going with yours?

No there is no limit on memory.

I render something like a 3000 x 3000 map scale to the current zoom.

Lucky bastard!

Ok it still doesn't work properly, but I had a small break through with the panning code tonight.

So as I said I'd do, i've updated it at http://stephencarmody.wikispaces.com/Racer4k

Don't laugh. In my mind it will all make sense in the end.

Oh yeah and the way in which that wiki returns the jnlp, it doesn't report an updated codebase. So either clear your webstart cache or just run the jar from the download link.

It sounds like you get a lot more time than me to work on your game.

I've tried harder the last few days, but I still don't seem to be getting anywhere.

The view panning is becoming a real headache.

I'll have another go tonight and post an update, no matter if its working or not.

Cool, I gave it a try.

They seems to stick rather closely together though.

Would be good if each opponent had a slightly different driving ability.

That way they'd string out more, led by the best AI, followed by second and so on...

But hey I'm not going to even have opponents so your doing better than me already.

OMG!!!!!!!!!

Your from Australia!

I thought i recognised the name moogie. When you said your still at work, I though oh ok similar timezones to me. Peter posted his buggy game not 4 or so days ago. He sits like across from me at work. I remembered someone answer south australia to his anyone from australia question.

Ok this is officially freaky now.

Shit!!!!!!!! I'm competing with a similar game to someone else in australia on a little know international java games comp.

I'm going to kick your butt!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG! Nice one moogie.

This game is almost exactly like what i've been working on.

Though I started with the physics first and your car looks a lot better than mine.

A very old (i.e. 5+ weeks ago) version is avaliable at http://stephencarmody.wikispaces.com/Racer4k

I'm very interested to see where both our games end up.

As your've mentioned, your current control setup is only for development. You'll find when the physics are in, using one hand to accelerate, brake and turn is a little too hard.

Now i'm cursing myself I didn't pull my finger out early and actually post something before you.

What you see posted on my wiki is very out of date now, since that version i've been completely redoing to graphics. My screen now pans and zooms in and out a little depending on the speed of the car.

Good luck on trying to get opponents implemented. I gave up early on that.

Anyway, now I've got some extremely close competition to bet. Goodluck!

Holy Shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This looks pretty damn impressive.

Well done Peter.

I'm very interested in both topics.

Unfortunately the java games factory site
is buggy and i'm unable to login, create
an account or retrieve an existing account
password.

So i'm commenting on this thread instead.

Thanks,
Stephen

Slicks 'n Slides

I wasted many an hour, in my youth, playing that top-down car racing game with my brother. Best of all it was freeware.

I think you're all so f**ken stupid!

fire_ant16 starts a thread called "the worst games you've seen". Which I thought would be interesting to read. But instead I find everyone bitching, like little girls, about fire_ant16's tastes in games.

If we wanted to read what you all thought about fire_ant's tastes I'd have looked for a thread called "let's bitch about fire_ant16".

For the record, the worst game i've ever seen (look at me, i'm staying on topic!), is Doom3. Running around in dark coridors was new like over 10 years ago. Now its just flat out boring.