Sackboy Rally Racing Championship (1-4 players, versus level))

I just finished my first LBP2 level, a top down rally racer.

My objective was to create and arcade rally racer which felt a bit like the true rally games where the car is harder to control and slides while turning on offroad terrain.
I placed the level in a outback/desert environment and worked heavily on the cars by trying to add as many features as possible. In order:

- Tweaked handling to make the car feel harder to control like a rally car,
- Powerslide on turns by pressing circle(accelerate) and x(brake) while turning,
- A rechargeable boost activated with R2 and circle,
- A jump activated by R1 which can be used to to jump over obstacles, reach one of the three shortcuts in the level or hop over the opponents.

Pictures:
http://i9.lbp.me/img/ft/ef935df79a89...61e4b059a4.jpg

http://i2.lbp.me/img/ft/3124be16f407...4ff1c7eb1f.jpg

http://i4.lbp.me/img/ft/014f9b5ca877...44f83f8d69.jpg

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My need of feedback is driven by the fact that i fear that the level may be too hard for the other players. Having created the level i can handle the car perfectly so i can't really imagine if the other people could have major problems.

Update 1 (20/2): Modified the handling of the cars: Increased the turning speed, tweaked the sliding effect and used the material tweaker to make the cars bump and slide when hitting walls and obstacles.

Update 2 (26/2): Improved the overall look of the level with several decorations and Sackbots acting as spectators on the track.

Update 3 (02/03): Maxed out the thermo while adding more decorations and sackbots. The current version of the level is the final one unless something unexpected happens. Thanks everybody for the feedback :).

The only thing i ask is to actually try to learn the controls and try to get used to the car before making a full judgements, especially because i fear that simplifying the handling too much may ruin my level.

Please notice that the race starts when all the players are near the starting line.

Of course i'm willingly to return feedback to whoever wants, just notice that i get to play LBP2 3-4 days a week because of my job:(:( but i'll return the feedback as soon as possible.

Thanks in advance.

http://lbp.me/v/xq--dx

Hi, In my frustrating efforts to make a top down racing map of my own, I've been trying out other users' levels to see how their vehicles handled. No offense intended, but I had a heck of a time attempting to drive your vehicles. Lol. I got stuck in every wall on every bend. It's probably more due to my nubbiness than your vehicles.

It is really nice that you added a lot more in the way of different control to your cars. I'll give it another shot when I'm feeling more dexterous :)

Cheers,
Robin

Thanks for trying it.
Since most people seems to have quite some trouble at handling the car i'll tweak it and try to make make it easier, by changing the rotation speed and maybe changing a bit the sliding effect. Thanks again.

I played your level yesterday and overall I think it's nicely done. I like the canyon-look of the track with all it's bridges and stuff.

But I also had my problems with the steering. In my opinion the radius of some curves is too small - you can't drive through them without getting stuck in the wall.
When driving backwards the car seems to turn in the wrong direction. Maybe you can inverse the rotation when driving backwards for a more realistic car feeling?

Overall I think you're on a good way and your level has a lot of potential if you work on the handling of the cars. I will for sure give it another try after an update...

Please play my level in return and leave some feedback. Thank You!
Freaky Bounce pad Frenzy

Greetings from Germany
Tobi

Queued it up, will check it out tonight :)

Check out the level in my sig for F4F if ya get the chance!

Just checked it out there. I liked the scenery and sound effects, but the gameplay does need a lot of tweaking - I kept getting stuck in scenery for one. I know this is partly because my driving sucked lol, but also because the vehicle itself seems very 'sticky', whilst in top-down racers like this the cars usually bounce off the walls. That was my main problem with it, as it slowed the whole speed down. Also I'd recommend including the odd arrow sticker/symbol, particularly after shortcuts, just as a reminder to go the right way!

Overall it wasn't bad, but if I were you I'd redo the car physics and such from scratch to make them more manouevrable :)

Thanks for the feedback i have already returned it to both of you.

Regarding the specific complaints i received:

The actual turning direction of the car is currently done in a realistic way: if you press left the car turns to ITS left, rather than the player's left. An arcade system would be very troublesome because of the transition between the two differents directions, and that's not something i'd like to have in my level.
A bumping system is something i was already developing but it's kinda glitchy because it's impossible to 100% predict how the players are going to bump into the walls. I will introduce it only if it works perfectly.

Apart from that i'm updating my level and an update should be live soon, please keep the feedback coming, i'd like for some racing fan to try my level.

Queued and could you F4F with mine? http://www.lbpcentral.com/forums/sho...t=taxi+company

Regarding the 'stickiness' problem people are talking about have you tried applying a material tweaker to the barriers and/or the car and turning up the bounciness factor?? I did it with mine and it improved gameplay alot since i kept sticking into the walls. Anyway Ill play this and give you feedback this evening

The jumping feature is great and I liked being able to boost, which I don't see in other levels like this. X to accelerate and O to brake would feel more natural to me but otherwise I thought this was a charming racer and I've hearted it to try it with some friends. :)

Appreciate some feedback on my level 'Dark Heart of the Wood'

I am going to echo what has already been said. I ran into a lot of walls. The controls for reverse were opposite of what i expected. I like the visuals. To improve it maybe have wider turns for the first minute of the race.

Played it and gave it a Yay as it has a lot of potential and I'll heart it with a few changes too!
Here are some of my suggestions::
-Put a material tweaker on the vehicle and some of the scenery and set the bounciness to high and friction to low to prevent the vehicle getting stuck in corners or dragged into the wall when it gets too close
-I dunno if you have an acceleration simulator type thing (where you attach a timer on up/down setting to the mover) but if you do make it longer so when you let go of the accelerate button you don't come to a complete stop
-Show the recharge timer for the boost somewhere
-Change the order of the controls (I'd use R1 to accelerate, L1 to Brake, O to boost and X to jump as it's similar to other games and easy to get used to)
-I liked the track but you should decorate it more with crowds and banners (put sackbots in controllinators for the top-down look and make a crowd out of them)
-Place an impact sensor on the vehicle attached to a crashing sound effect for a more realistic impact noise

These are just some suggestions if you want to use them. I was planning on making a rally level too so had ideas in mind about for one! I like the skidding/drifting controls too they work great and the track was well laid out too

Thanks for the awesome feedback everybody i will check your levels as soon as i can and return feedback.
And thanks a lot Tanuki for hearting.
Regarding the awesome feedback given to me by Dangerlove, i haven't played much with the material tweaker because i was trying to replicate a bumping effect in a different way, but if my method doesn't work i can follow your great suggestion. I'll check your level closely to see how your effect is.
The level itself is dangerously close to 100% thermo so i don't know how much i can change the overall look but i'll try to improve that as well.
The boost actually has a on screen-timer: if you check the cars you can see a small red bar below them. That's the boost and it's available when the bar is full.
Finally about the controls i guess i'll have to change them, even though maybe i'll wait a bit more feedback to know which layout is the best.

I made a first update to my level:

I tweaked the car to make it easier to control so hopefully people won't have too much trouble navigating the level even though i'm ready to change it back if the feedback goes in that direction, i changed one of the vehicles which was being glitchy and i've also added some arrows on the level to warn the player of the curves ahead.

Hopefully i'll be able to work more on the level and update again this weekend, and also return some feedback.

I returned Feedback to everybody in the topic, and i'm ready to do more feedback exchange if people want :)
So please keep the feedback coming :p .

I just re-updated my level with a final tweak to the cars: now they bump a little when hitting the walls and they slide when in contact to a surface, hopefully now everybody should be able to play through the level without any trouble :).

Played the level, now for the review:

It's pretty good. Don't really have much to say, other than the track would be nice with a few more decorations. XD

Thanks for the review :p.

Regarding the look of the level, i actually already filled the thermo:boo:... To make a rally stage of decent length i had to use nearly the entire space. Still i'll try to change something if i can :) .

Hi Vergil

Thanks for the feedback on my level. Have just played yours, and I have to say it's a really nice little racer. I love the detail that's gone into making 4 different looking cars, and the terrain looks great. I do have the same feedback as most though, I found the control over the cars really difficult - I got stuck before I'd even gone out the start post, and kept trying to do a little three point turn but it kept spinning me around. I'm not sure how that would be fixed. There is also what looks like a sneaky short cut at one point, where you have to do a jump. I thought this was a great idea, but I got stuck there too!

Overall, really nice level. If there is a way to tweak the control of the vehicle I think that'll improve it massively.

Good luck!

I Liked the level but I have to agree with the control issue. X should be accelerate and O or Square should be brake.

The stickiness is an issue your already aware of.

Other than that great level. Some score pointers would be good though. Some bubbles(Or equivalent)

Good job.