Re: Tux Racer 0.10 Released

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

Jasmin Patry wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 28 Feb 2000, Steve Baker wrote:
> 
> > Jasmin Patry wrote:
> > >
> > > Version 0.10 of Tux Racer, an OpenGL-based racing game featuring Tux the
> > > Linux Penguin, has been released. This is the first public release of
> > > Tux Racer, and I'm looking for feedback and help from developers and
> > > course designers.
> >
> > What specific help do you need?
> 
> There's a list of things on the web page that I'd like to add to the
> game; I haven't started work on any of those yet, and I could use
> advice/opinions/code for any of them.  (I'm also hoping to expand the
> number of Tux Racer developers beyond its current value of one, as I
> have too many things going on right now to devote as much time as I'd
> like to Tux Racer...)
> 
> I also need help for course designers.  I've placed some notes on this
> are in the README.

I hate to say it - but your experiences mirror my own *precisely*.

(I'm the author and *sole* developer of Tux the Penguin - A Quest for
Herring BTW)...

After being out on the web for close to two years - I'm still the only
developer - and I'm still begging for more level designers....oh - and
good luck finding someone to make some music for you!

   :-(

> > One thing though - Penguins slide downhill on their stomachs -
> > head-first.  (That's what Tux does when sliding in my game)
> 
> Hmm.  You're right, of course.  I'll try that to see how it looks.
> 
> However, Tux isn't just *any* penguin -- he's rather chubbier than most,
> for one thing.  Perhaps he's gotten such a full stomach from eating
> herring that he'd rather just recline a bit... :-)

You can steal my tummy-sliding Tux model if you want. Dunno if I
can convert it to whatever format you need - but I'm sure we can
figure something out.  I had him 'flatten out' a bit and bulge
quite a bit outwards.  Imagine placing a water-balloon gently onto
a flat surface.  It looks pretty good IMHO - but I don't yet have
an animation sequence to get him from standing up to lying down - or
vice versa.

The biggest problem I had was in having his beak stick out forwards and
still leave space on his face for those big eyes...the modelling was
tricky - but I think it works.

(Have you tried my game yet?  I have short sliding-on-ice sequences,
but without the rather nice physics model you seem to have - my model
feels a lot more 'slippery' than yours does - that makes for MUCH less
control though - and I'm guessing you need that control to make the
game playable.)

It seems like we could join forces here!

When I first wrote Tux (before I released it onto the Web), I had
a program that built slides on-the-fly as you slid down them. I'd
planned to use this to transport you between the levels of the game
but somehow it didn't seem to buy me very much and it never made it
into the released game.

I built randomly curving tubes with elliptical cross-sections and
missing segments.  The result was a lot like a bob-sled course...but
nothing like as nice as your courses - and with no decent physics.

> There are other considerations (these might even include the ones that
> led me to choose the foot-first orientation): Tux does quite a bit of
> bumping and banging into things in this game, and if it was me I'd want
> to do that feet first.

A bigger incentive NOT to hit trees!  In my game, when Tux gets hit
especially badly, little tiny penguins spin around his head...pretty
funny!

> Also, the third camera position (hit '3'), which
> places the camera at Tux's eyes, looks more interesting this way (you
> can see his stomach and feet).

I didn't get that far.

This is getting a bit detailed for this mailing list - perhaps I should
subscribe to your developer's list. (Not that I have the time to be
a developer - I've enough problems with my own game!)

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
sjbaker1@airmail.net (home)  http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker
sjbaker@hti.com      (work)



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