Turning a mod into a game Pt. 1...
by Marcus Mackey · in General Discussion · 06/22/2006 (2:35 pm) · 1 replies
Hi all,
I'm a staff member and admin over at http://www.slingindirt.com. We're basically a mod community for the game NASCAR Heat, being centered around short track dirt oval racing in the U.S. Over the years, the various members (also in the past affiliated with Dirtwizard.com, who we're still friends with the owner) have made various updates to our mods... starting off with the Southern All-Stars mod for NASCAR Heat, as well as the current SLM (Super Late Model) mod for NASCAR Heat/Heat Essentials that is currently available over on Slingindirt.com. A few of us have looked into moving away from NASCAR Heat into other options... and one of which was the Torque Game Engine. The upsides are numerous to Torque over the various competitors (and being that I'm a PowerPC Mac user... I'd love to see the future be cross-platform, most mod options are Windows-only)... in the greater flexibility Torque would bring to us over tweaking any existing game engine. The downsides are also numerous, as we have no one that is a programmer nor is savvy in that realm. For many of us... learning C++ (or even the "C-like scripting language") would be like learning Swahili. Pretty daunting and way over our heads.
So after looking at the various sections over here... I figured I'd make a post in here, as it's far more than a "game idea" as much of the modeling has already been done thus far. We're currently also considering rFactor by Image Space Incorporated, which would basically be a more familiar path to those of us in the community, as it's basically a more extendable and feature-rich alternative to NASCAR Heat that provides us with a lot of the same know-how but has a more modern graphics engine and a far more extensive physics engine that is geared toward the faster CPU power today's PC's have. While this is obviously something that entices us, based on our knowledgebase... the reality is that having the greater flexibility to put behind something like Torque would perhaps be better to all and give us outlets to work with someone and implement features that are beyond the scope of existing game engines which obviously are traditionally geared towards one facet (their primary focus upon shipping, whatever racing genre that might be) and provide hurdles and restrictions that we'd love to leave in the past.
I guess the real reason behind this posting is to see if any of ya'll wouldn't mind taking a look at what we've done to date. There's a neutered release of NASCAR Heat that was okayed by Monster Games Inc. (developers behind NASCAR Heat) that's referred to as Heat Essentials that basically contains the base engine minus the original cars or tracks from the original game, that is available over on http://www.themodsquad.uni.cc/ in their downloads as a free download. Downloading it along with the Mod Squad's Mod Launcher application (highly recommended), and then picking up a copy of the SLM mod (models by EVR_Z a/k/a SOLO Graphix) from Slingindirt.com as well as some of the tracks from Slingin, Dirtwizard.com, and http://www.drt-editing.com/ might give you a better feel as to what we're looking for, and see if you're intrigued over what we've got for the foundation currently.
Cont'd...
I'm a staff member and admin over at http://www.slingindirt.com. We're basically a mod community for the game NASCAR Heat, being centered around short track dirt oval racing in the U.S. Over the years, the various members (also in the past affiliated with Dirtwizard.com, who we're still friends with the owner) have made various updates to our mods... starting off with the Southern All-Stars mod for NASCAR Heat, as well as the current SLM (Super Late Model) mod for NASCAR Heat/Heat Essentials that is currently available over on Slingindirt.com. A few of us have looked into moving away from NASCAR Heat into other options... and one of which was the Torque Game Engine. The upsides are numerous to Torque over the various competitors (and being that I'm a PowerPC Mac user... I'd love to see the future be cross-platform, most mod options are Windows-only)... in the greater flexibility Torque would bring to us over tweaking any existing game engine. The downsides are also numerous, as we have no one that is a programmer nor is savvy in that realm. For many of us... learning C++ (or even the "C-like scripting language") would be like learning Swahili. Pretty daunting and way over our heads.
So after looking at the various sections over here... I figured I'd make a post in here, as it's far more than a "game idea" as much of the modeling has already been done thus far. We're currently also considering rFactor by Image Space Incorporated, which would basically be a more familiar path to those of us in the community, as it's basically a more extendable and feature-rich alternative to NASCAR Heat that provides us with a lot of the same know-how but has a more modern graphics engine and a far more extensive physics engine that is geared toward the faster CPU power today's PC's have. While this is obviously something that entices us, based on our knowledgebase... the reality is that having the greater flexibility to put behind something like Torque would perhaps be better to all and give us outlets to work with someone and implement features that are beyond the scope of existing game engines which obviously are traditionally geared towards one facet (their primary focus upon shipping, whatever racing genre that might be) and provide hurdles and restrictions that we'd love to leave in the past.
I guess the real reason behind this posting is to see if any of ya'll wouldn't mind taking a look at what we've done to date. There's a neutered release of NASCAR Heat that was okayed by Monster Games Inc. (developers behind NASCAR Heat) that's referred to as Heat Essentials that basically contains the base engine minus the original cars or tracks from the original game, that is available over on http://www.themodsquad.uni.cc/ in their downloads as a free download. Downloading it along with the Mod Squad's Mod Launcher application (highly recommended), and then picking up a copy of the SLM mod (models by EVR_Z a/k/a SOLO Graphix) from Slingindirt.com as well as some of the tracks from Slingin, Dirtwizard.com, and http://www.drt-editing.com/ might give you a better feel as to what we're looking for, and see if you're intrigued over what we've got for the foundation currently.
Cont'd...
Marcus Mackey
A full-on high quality release with good online *and offline* AI, along with the ability to provide different user levels for anything from novice to pro, that allowed for realistic physics (good sources of research would be any racing event shown on Speed Channel that runs these types of cars... The Lucas Oil Series and World of Outlaw LM's being 2 of them) is in the utmost of what I believe the short track dirt oval online racing community is wanting. I believe our good friends over at http://www.dirtwizard.net/ would also be highly interested in this, as their primary reason for sticking with Ratbag Games Dirt Track Racing 2 is more the drivability and offline AI concerns, something that is tough to overcome in a mod that's based around an asphalt engine while trying to 1) create realistic car behaviors (cars hiking up, carrying the left front on occasion, broad-sliding, 3-wheel braking, etc.), and 2) provide the type of on-track action that is synonymous with realistic dirt track racing, and 3) doing so with car models that are far more realistic and true to the full-scale cars many of us witness at our weekly short tracks on a regular basis. We're not wanting a generic "game" in as much as we want a "simulation" of the real thing, but we also understand that there's a large userbase that the current Heat game will find as undrivable, and largely because there's too many sacrifices in moding. Helping someone give our cars "life" in the end... might be exactly what the Dr. ordered.
If you find the above interesting, feel free to sign up at both http://www.slingindirt.com (and http://www.dirtwizard.net for that matter, as they might have other inputs to feed in that bring more of a head to it all) and you can try to gleen more from us all, obtain feedback, and see if there's an outlet that suits your fancy. I can't promise you that we'll sign on the dotted line, that depends on how amicable things can come to from the discussions... but I can guarantee that the Slingin and DirtWizard staffs and members will hear you out in-full and provide you with any and all necessary inputs to see if this is the best outlet for us going forward.
Sincerely,
Marcus Mackey
http://www.slingindirt.com
a/k/a L34RN25W1M & IVIIVI4ck3y27 on Slingin and Dw.net/Dw.net