Synnah

[RELEASED] Tactical Gamer Chair

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This title stood out to me this year, and gave me an idea for a kind of physics racing game where you sit on a gamer chair and slide down a hill, collecting cans of Mountain Dew (for a boost) and Doritos (for points). Tactics don't really come into it, but whatever. Here's what I've managed today:

 

s1a1ONy.gif

 

As ever, I'm using UE4. The main thing I'm going to have to work out this time is how to have physics-based movement that isn't a total disaster; you can't really tell from the GIF, but the ramps are really flaky. If you're not going fast enough the chair will tip over as soon as it hits them (Something about moving from one piece of collision to another messes with the physics), and even if you are going fast enough there's no guarantee you'll land okay. I'm going to have to look up some vehicle example projects and get some ideas about how to constrain the physics so they behave in a way that makes the game playable.

 

EDIT:

 

v1.0 is out now!

 

0tKkpSB.gif

 

v1.1 is out now!

 

geoylRo.gif

 

DOWNLOAD IT HERE!

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Gamers in race car like gaming chairs collecting Mt. Dew reminds me of a time when we had all sorts of branded video games and it sounds great. Sorry I can't help with the physics in UE4. I hope you get it figured out.

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I have thought about having tricks! I could do some basic animations for the gamer in the chair (when I've made them) doing different poses, and then have them flopping all over the place with physics blends. I did also think about having grind rails, but why am I even saying that there's no way I'll be able to make grind rails

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6 hours ago, ke51n said:

Will this be horse bag compatible?

 

"Nintendo says their inflatable seat can be used to simulate riding other animals. The patent lists “bulls, camels, elephants, burros, dolphins, whales” and imaginary creatures such as “dragons, griffons, unicorns, giant eagles” as possible mounts. Nintendo also suggests the seat can be used for vehicles too like “hang gliders or other aircraft, a magic carpet, a motorcycle, a jet-ski, a land or sea exploration vehicles."

http://www.siliconera.com/2009/08/10/nintendos-patented-horseback-riding-controller/

 

No gamer chairs directly mentioned but I think they can count as land exploration vehicles.

Hmmm, the horsebag is a pretty simple shape, so maybe it could be a bonus/secret vehicle in the game!

 

Oh, this year is also Horsebag's ten year anniversary! (that article is from August 10, 2009) Hip hip hooray, long live the unfulfilled dream of our beloved Horsebag.

 

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This looks fantastic! I Imagine a little gamer-dot-gobbler sitting in that chair....

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The good news is that Epic seem to have finally fixed whatever issue it was that was stopping skeletal meshes that I exported from Blender from working with the physics system, so now I can finally have a fully ragdolling Dot Gobbler. I may include him as a secret character, if I have time (along with a secret rideable horsebag).

 

Stretch goals, though.

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So I'm making progress with this, but not a lot of progress. Work's been busy and I'm not feeling particularly energetic. However, here's where I'm at at the moment:

 

JOxtMWT.gif

 

I put some placeholder buildings on the sides of the road to make it clear that you're sliding down a hill. I also modelled and rigged the gamer; I didn't feel like spending ages painting vertex weights, so I just made it an abstract dummy. Setting up the physics asset in UE4, while it's now possible, is still flaky, so it took longer than I'd have liked. Also, sitting a character on top of the chair meant that it would no longer slide downhill, so I abandoned the entirely physics-driven movement. What I've got at the moment is super simple; it just moves the chair forward along whatever surface is underneath it, so it can (sort of) deal with the ramps, until it goes over the end of them and the chair just snaps down to the road, causing the physics to freak out. I need to write some basic collision handling (You can just pass through the buildings at the moment), and then deal with ramps properly. I'm thinking I'll do something like set a flag whenever you're on a ramp, and whenever you're no longer on a ramp give you an arc based on how fast you were moving. Oh, that's another thing, there's no acceleration at the moment. Need to add that.

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Oh yeah, this looks great! Physics weirdness is always funny too, so in the end you can always call it a feature :D

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uX2csKq.gif

 

I'm still working on this, but it's kind of slow going. It seems unlikely that I'm going to have anything playable ready for the showcase weekend. Good news is that collisions and ramps are now working. You can also just about see a can of Mt. Dew in that GIF; I need to make that give you a speed boost, and then add Doritos as collectables. Oh, and maybe have a jostle meter so that the gamer falls off the chair if you collide too much. We'll see how much I can get done!

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Oh hey, I just finished this! I mean, I say 'finished', it's basically playable, but it's a bit messy. Nick just played it on the stream though, and it went down well, so I'm calling that a win.

 

0tKkpSB.gif

(Don't tell anyone the opponents have no AI, they just go in a straight line)

 

Download it here: https://giraffecat.itch.io/tactical-gamer-chair

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This is very fun! The crash test dummy look of the characters works really well for me.

 

(The fact that the opponents don't do anything makes losing much more brutal.)

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I've been chipping away at v1.1 over the past week; it's been pretty slow going, but I've uploaded a new build now. There were two main things I wanted to get in, the first being fixes for the various restart bugs; Nick encountered one of these when he played the game on the stream, but there were at least two more that were revealed as I tried to fix that one. One of them is definitely* fixed, but the other two still happen, just much less frequently than before.

 

The second thing I wanted to get in was...

 

geoylRo.gif

 

... this guy.

 

Part of me was tempted to also add "Veggie" Panino and a Business Guy (I guess ridiculous physics characters are my Wizard Jam jam?), and now that I've laid the groundwork with Dot Gobbler it wouldn't be too hard, but I kind of just wanted to get this out. I'm not sure that I'll go back to developing it now either; I mean, it's funny, but it's not a very good game, and it would take quite a lot of effort to make it good (I'd have to model a horsebag for one thing...).

 

So yeah, check it out here: https://giraffecat.itch.io/tactical-gamer-chair

 

* don't hold me to this

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On 2/16/2019 at 10:22 AM, Synnah said:

it's funny, but it's not a very good game

 

I almost agree with this - it is funny (and it's really nicely presented too - cute graphics and amusing audio), and there's not much game there - but I think with some more motivation for physics madness this could definitely be a lot of fun. Perhaps make it more like an actual office chair race - a lot harder to change direction so you end up careening off stuff - and encourage the player to destroy their opponents by pushing them into brick walls, that kind of thing.

 

Enjoyed my short time with it!

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