T4XI

[kevglass]

Something new, something fun?

Webstart:

http://games.cokeandcode.com/4k/city4k/city4k.jnlp

Jar:

http://games.cokeandcode.com/4k/city4k/city4k.jar

To Run:

java -cp city4k.jar R

Or for the screenshot inclined:

http://games.cokeandcode.com/4k/city4k/screenshot.gif

I'd be interested in feedback about performance on different platforms.. cause I think it'll blow on Linux and MacOS... also on controls.. too sensitive? Alternatives?

If anyone has the time to test it'd be appreciated..

EDIT: Forget to mention inspiration for this one was GTA1 and Late4k.

Kev

[Virum]

Quick test on my part, and I think the collision detection is a bit harsh, I kept getting stuck and it was frustrating.  Perhaps I suck?

[jbanes]

Can I ask you a question? When do you sleep? I mean, this makes like five or so 4k games you've done?! That's just crazy! :-)

I'd be interested in feedback about performance on different platforms.. cause I think it'll blow on Linux and MacOS... also on controls.. too sensitive? Alternatives?

The performance on OS X is great! The controls, however, are so-so. I think all you need to do is slow the rate of turning and acceleration a smidge. This would help the player better control his vehicle (I think).

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[nlmueng]

Liked it, would be nice if you would bounce off the side when you hit it, ran really well.  The controls seemed fine to me

[oNyx]

OMG!

The graphics are awesome

I suggest to make the street ~50% wider (scale doesn't really matter in games).

[Mojomonkey]

Wow, amazing! Lots of fun. As said earlier sticking to the walls is a bit frustrating. But really impressive. However, the cars are driving on the WRONG side of the road!!!!

[mlk]

Ace  
Yeah, bounce of wall, rather than just stop dead, and go out and leave the javac in peace for a bit

[jojoh]

Cool! Really alot like the early GTA, with the top down 3D-ish look. Performance quite OK on a 800MHz PC. But ctrls taking away some of the fun. I keept driving like a drunk from house on one side of the road into the house on the other side. Yes, make roads wider and maybe even more lanes at places if you can cram that in. Yep, cars are on the wrong side of road, but you can drive straight through them so I guess that is OK Agree with suggestions from JBanes and oNyx.

Can I ask you a question? When do you sleep?

I guess he is doing 4K games cause he can't sleep. I have though found out that doing 4K games makes it harder to sleep. Same thing as when I was coding games in Assembler some few 100 years ago. Must be some strange connection between the two.

Anyway, really impressive!

[Malohkan]

Wow, he does it again

Perhaps if you made the turn speed slower as your velocity increases that'll solve the turning problem.

[Vorax]

4K.....Holy crap!

Amazing.

I had no problems with the controls, but I probably played way to much of the old GTA, Crazy Taxi and the Simpsons.

Great job.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[kevglass]

Thanks for the all the nice feedback! Good call on roads and bouncing.. I'll see if I can fit it in. I've not actually optimised for space yet and I still have 100 bytes spare.. woot!

I feel like I better defend myself.. 4k games really have inspired me but they really arn't taking up much time. I generally get a couple of hours a night (based on the fact I don't sleep much). This one for instance has been the product of the last 3 days (so around 6-9 hours dev time). My week so far has consisted of Cinema - Incredibles (Monday), Tai Chi (Tuesday), Home made Pizza by Me (Wednesday) and well nothing yesterday apart from evil traffic. Plus of course weekends are full of time to develop little games

The point being I'm really not spending much time on these games.. not like for instance when I was writing Mini Adventure - spending 4-5 hours a night and most of each weekend

Obsessed yes, addicted no

That said, 4k games are fantastic! I'm looking forward to seeing more entries from the folks that have them under wraps at the moment.

Changes should be up tonight.. I've got another to start work on now tho

Kev

[Abuse]

under wraps at the moment.

more like "havn't even started yet"

Your gonna have to slow down Kev, your stealing all the good ideas

[krypto]

The point being I'm really not spending much time on these games.. not like for instance when I was writing Mini Adventure - spending 4-5 hours a night and most of each weekend

Kev

Well Gee... Look what I get to look forward to  

[kevglass]

Your gonna have to slow down Kev, your stealing all the good ideas

Ooops.. sorry.. I've got another 3 I think I'd like to do then I'm probably done..

Just uploaded a new version with a bit of give in the collision with walls.

Note: You slow down if you hit walls, you lose money if you hit other cars.

Kev

[kevglass]

Oh, and for the record, I'm from the UK, so they're driving on the RIGHT side of the road. i.e. the Left

Kev

[jbanes]

Oh, and for the record, I'm from the UK, so they're driving on the RIGHT side of the road. i.e. the Left

Lemme see here, the inventors of the internal combustion engine (the Germans) drive on the right, the country that popularized automobiles and still has the largest number of any nation (the U.S.) drives on the right, and about 3/4 of the entire world drives on the right (see: Wikipedia) A quick check reveals that almost all countries that drive on the left were former British colonies! Not only that, but Britain was late in adopting automobiles because of a law that required a man on foot, with a red flag to precede the automobile!

With that in mind, I'd say it's you blokes who are screwed up, and the rest of the world does it RIGHT! And don't give me any nonsense about needing your sword hand for defense! ;-)

[erikd]

Wow, this looks like a clear winner if you fix the gameplay a bit.
Controls are perfect for me, but it's all too easy. After a while I just quit out of boredom.
For example it's just no problem at all if you keep hitting cars. You just drive through them and maybe loose 1$, but so what? You will gain 100s of $ if you get to the next point.
It would be better if you hit a car, you will spin and bounce away out of control until you stop and losing way more money (and time!).
Maybe also an idea is to raise the number of cars as you progress and thus making the game more difficult as you go.
But other than that, it's really amazing how you could cram all this into 4k!  

[Dosenbier]

Just amazing you did this under 4k !!!  

[KONI]

Really great game. I'd prefer a bit more speed, larger roads => more action. You could zoom out with increasing speed (GTA anyone).

Although, could you please explain how you did that 3D Thing with the houses ?

[kevglass]

Thanks for the wonderful feedback.. I'll try and modify the gameplay.. I was think about this (re: ericd) :

a) When you hit another car you bounce off backwards. (maybe a bit slower to prevent it gettng really annoying)
b) Increase cars on the road as time goes on (thought this could be a performance hit, the game logic is very expensive)
c) Make the time for taxi runs get harder and harder (less and less even).

I might have to do some optimising for size pretty soon, but I've just started work on the next creation.

Wow, this looks like a clear winner if you fix the gameplay a bit.  

I don't think thats really true, although nice of you to say. Its the wonderful thing about games, they're totally subjective

Although, could you please explain how you did that 3D Thing with the houses ?

The source for all my 4k games so far will be available soon. However, the "3D thing" is mind blowingly simple when it comes down to it.

The bottom of the buildings are a standard 30x30 grid. So you've got those 4 points really easy. With the top you offset by some amount for each corner normally. That would give you straight buildings. So maybe you bring the top out 10 pixes all round the 30x30. You then add to this the amount of the point is away from the center (i.e. the players car) multiplied by some scalar (in my case the height of the building). And Voila!

Working out which side of the building to draw is really easy. If the polygon you'd draw for the side appears under the top of the building - don't draw it.

Its all a bit a sham really. I quite fancy doing an OpenGL version of this that would look remarkably like GTA1 but do something a bit different with the game play.

Kev

[kevglass]

New version up with the above. Banging into other cars seems to slow the game down alot...

Maybe the car should get faster as time goes on aswell/instead?

Off for shower to sort out this hangover :/

Kev

[jojoh]

Yeee! Either I was really drunk when I tried it last time, or the handling has improved a lot! Possibly both...  Only think was that I almost managed to get completley stuck in an intersection, forgetting to drive on the left side. (Please give us a chance to drive on right side ) then had one car on each side of me driving into me, and I just coudn't get away for about 10 sec. One computer car drove straight through the pileup.    Only happened once though, so for a 4K game, I'm not even sure if it is worth bothering with fixing it.  

Screenshot looks a bit funky on your site.

Really like the improvements.

[kevglass]

Cheers.. the screenshot is screwed cause the auto-thumbnail creation.. I'll take a look now..

Kev

[Malohkan]

So where do I go to by a faster car?  A bigger car that could ram others out of the way might be nice too  Or a body shop where I could get my car painted a new color.  Both would cost money of course.

Then of course you could go for some more interesting objectives

[kevglass]

All of that will be available of course in the full version priced around 19.99 and out towards the end of the year... or, you could just go get a free copy of GTA1 (I believe they're giving it away now).

I might well do a GTAJava.. but it'd have to be in pure Java2D otherwise the challenge wouldn't be there.

Kev

[oNyx]

>you could just go get a free copy of GTA1 (I believe they're
>giving it away now).

They are giving GTA1 and GTA2 away for free.

http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/

[KONI]

Is there a working link for this ?

[kevglass]

I take it you still can't see games.cokeandcode.com. I've checked the records and it could be a 1000 hours until you can..

Assuming you mean to play T4XI:

http://www.cokeandcode.com/games/4k/city4k/city4k.jnlp

Kev

[jojoh]

I might well do a GTAJava.. but it'd have to be in pure Java2D otherwise the challenge wouldn't be there.

Kev

Doin GTAJava in 3D wouldn't be any challenge? Hmmm... Then you might toss in some weapons, planes, missions and over the shoulder view, just for the challenge! You would make some serious $$$ from it  
I am sure you'd find som ppl willing to play it!

[kevglass]

I kinda meant GTA1 and that the graphics wouldn't be a challenge. I've no expectation that I'd ever finish anything so what would be the point?

Kev