Idea Racing game concept using 360 degrees motion control photography (not photogrammetry)

W

Walky

Guest
During the last couple of days I've been working on and off on a quick prototype of a racing game.
I've wanted to make 360 degrees sprites using motion control for some time now (this is pretty much the reason I made this), and it turned out better than expected so I might as well keep working on it:


Want to try it out? (Windows only)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g5jAaMxFtkQGSRpd27JetFNx_mqbB0iY/view?usp=sharing


A few things I'd like to do with a non-proto version, regarding the car:


- 2 degrees rotation. The current prototype uses 4 degrees, which is a very stupid number to use since neither 90 nor 270 can be divided by it, but at least this resulted in "only" 90 sprite images to alpha/cleanup. Looking at the 4 degrees results, I think adding in-betweens would look just about right.

- Use a bigger model car with steerable wheels, photograph left/right steering states and do this independently from the chassis. This would most likely need a special mounting rig so everything fits at the end. Also, an additional capture set of a black shadow cutout, to be drawn with a lower opacity.

- Optional: Separate the windshield/windows from the chassis sprite. This would make chassis color blending very straightforward.
 
T

Taddio

Guest
Nice idea, but seems like a lot of work!
So you'll use 180 sprites, with each their own angle, right? This has a lot of potential, visually!
You could even go as far as go with a 3d car model and extract sprites with all-rround camera position, you could get neat shadows, lightning and stuff!
 
It's a cool idea, the video looked pretty good except obviously the track looked heaps flat. I noticed some light reflection on the windscreen which made the effect even better too.
 
W

Walky

Guest
Nice idea, but seems like a lot of work!
So you'll use 180 sprites, with each their own angle, right? This has a lot of potential, visually!
You could even go as far as go with a 3d car model and extract sprites with all-rround camera position, you could get neat shadows, lightning and stuff!
Exactly, 180 sprites for a full 360 capture. I have a thing for stop motion so I don't think I would ever to this with 3D, though (except perhaps for voxel stuff).

It's a cool idea, the video looked pretty good except obviously the track looked heaps flat. I noticed some light reflection on the windscreen which made the effect even better too.
Yeah, the racetrack is just a placeholder I found on Google. If this idea goes somewhere I'm divided between using tiles for track building or using my own photographed tabletop track models (and add obstacles on top in any of these cases).


On another topic:
What's your opinion regarding how to approach top-down racing games?
Custom physics, built-in physics, vectors?

I'd like to know your opinions in things like collisions with track boundaries and the car's behavior depending on the collision angle and car orientation (i.e. stop, slow down, etc).

I've been avoiding the built-in physics engine, but perhaps its use here may be justified? (it's not using it in its current state).
 
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I

immortalx

Guest
That's a very interesting project! Out of curiosity, would it be possible to get away with a quarter of the images by flipping and rotating, or am i not thinking straight? Sure, the reflections and shadows would be off, but at this scale it might not be that noticeable.
Anyways, I'll be watching this and kudos for your idea!
 
As someone who loves and focuses solely on 3D....I love the use of rotated sprites! It takes me back to the days of R.C. PRO AM where knowing which sprite direction to have the car facing when coming out of a corner slide was the most satisfying part of the game.
 
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