KarBOOM is a fast-paced local multiplayer car-combat game for Windows, Linux and Mac. Knock other players out the ring, chase the flag, play kar football, and bet on how long you can survive with everyone hunting you! Play in teams or every kar for itself!
KarBOOM 0.3 Progress update 2
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KarBOOM 0.3 is just around the corner, I hope. This video is mainly to demonstrate the new 48 player cap, but appropriately sized levels for this new cap have not been built yet.
Fantastic work and I loved watching the fireworks with Weak Spots on. XD
I played the last version a bit and it had this weird problem were it would freeze if there was a controller plugged in and I downloaded the newest version and so far it's not there, though I did have a few ideas for the game if you would mind reading a bit.
I really like the game as it is now and I was playing with my sister and we were playing weak spot and we couldn't stop laughing, it was just to funny and so much fun, I really can't wait to play the new version coming out but as I was, I think that you should have a classic mode with all the original sounds and visuals from the latest version but keep the tracks of the new version coming out, I think it would make a great party play kind of deal and I can't wait to purchase this.
I haven't laughed that hard or had that much fun in a while, thank you, very much.
Wow, thanks for the feedback! I'm sorry I didn't see this reply earlier. Hopefully you'll see mine -- the update is out, and a new one coming this week with a new mutator: "king of the hill". Check out the preview video (should be the latest KarBOOM video on IndieDB) to see how it works -- one of my brothers plays a lot with me, and this new mutator is our favourite (only finished it on Saturday).
Please let me know if you do try the latest version and you're still having freezing issues for whatever reason. Meanwhile I'll write "classic mode" down -- it might not end up happening; I'll be prioritising newer features for now (classic mode would require me to make new skins for the older cars and change the way some things work). Also, there might not be much of an audience for it given how few people play KarBOOM at this stage (to my knowledge).
Still, I think it's worth investigating. Thanks for the feedback!
Alright, just played 3.3 and I really dig it, the UI system for selecting which player uses which car is a hell of a lot better than the old system and it looks a lot nicer too. I haven't had the weird freezing issue once, but I do have one issue with an older controller my Logitech WingMan Precision USB controller, it's an all button controller with a D-Pad and shoulder buttons but it works fine in all games except for KarBOOM, without touching the controller the car is constantly Accelerating and so far I've found no way of stopping it but this has happened with every version of KarBOOM so it's not an update issue or anything.
Other than that everything checks out and I even checked it out on two other controllers with no problems and I also really like the new skins specially the black and yellow stripes.
The game plays great and looks really good, I also really like the ice in the center of the tracks and the reflection it gives off of the cars and I love how the points that pop up above the cars have their own shadows as well, same with the kicked up dirt particles. Also liking the fall effect with the beam of light reminds me a lot of Smash Brothers.
Excellent job so far and I can't wait to play King of The Hill, I'm going to have so much fun with that.
Thanks for the feedback :) I should add a buttons-only option for gamepads (not sure how I'll add this on a per-gamepad basis in a user-friendly way, but we'll see) -- I suspect the constant acceleration is because it's checking for an accelerator trigger that isn't there. The fix/option won't make it into 0.3.4, but I'm writing it down so I remember to implement it in future!
Does the game engine you're using have any kind of script for button mapping? Cause that might also fix the problem.
Also, I think I get what you mean, my other controllers all have analog sticks, my WingMan does not, since the game doesn't see any kind of pressure sensitivity on the controller it tests button 1 for pressure which is what's causing it to constantly accelerate.
Also just played the King of The Hill mutator and many laughs were had as we kept blocking each other from the circle and it's even more fun with ice and boost enabled.
I can add button mapping -- it shouldn't be too hard. The engine doesn't really "have a script\" for many things, and when it does I don't use them. A common criticism of the engine I use is that it doesn't have many tools or "out of the box" scripts users often find in other engines, but one reason I love it is it provides a simple programming environment that makes it really easy to get in there and write any feature I want myself (within the limits of Windows). If it gets Mac support I'll probably never leave it :)
I'm glad you like King of the Hill! Team mode coming soon. Keybinding should be fairly easy -- button mapping for gamepads will be trickier since one user (such as yourself) might use several different types of gamepads. These probably won't be in the next update since I'm focusing on getting team modes working nicely under all conditions.
Thanks again for the suggestions -- keep 'em coming! Oh, and just putting it out there -- KarBOOM made Top 100 and could use support to get to the Top 10 if you're so inclined ;)
Does this engine use Direct Input for controllers? Or does it just see the controller and auto configure it as Button 1, 2, 3, etc? I think it just goes through the game as I didn't see a XInput DLL in the game folder.
I would have to agree about the engine, I checked it out a few months back, but never did anything with it but it looked fairly clean and simplistic which could be a great thing for me when I actually do go into coding. Hell yeah, that and I don't know if it already does, but if it also worked on Android and IOS like Unreal does, this would probably be one of the top engines out there.
I see, that sounds like quite a bit of work and no rush cause in all honesty I can always go and get another gamepad but others may not think as I do, plus I'm really looking forward to some good old Team CTF. :D
No problem, man, just like to help and I'd really like to see this game go all out. Hells yeah, been voting for KarBOOM as much as I can and I've been telling others to do so as well. XD
Also, had an idea, if you are going to implement racing features into KB, will you do a top down like it is now, or behind the car camera view? Cause I thought IF you maybe went with both, top down for party mode and behind the car for single and online multiplayer. Another thing, I don't normally ask, but seeing you pump out updates like crazy, where did you learn C++?
I believe the engine just uses the Windows API for controllers -- by default the engine only supports 2 controllers, so I used WinAPI myself so I can have up to 8 (8 being a limitation of my user interface, not WinAPI).
The engine is Windows-only at the moment. Apparently its developers are working on Android support, and a bunch of us just started asking for Mac and Linux support. They're very good at adapting to user feedback, but that doesn't mean it's always a "yes".
Team mode is so nearly there! I have exams tomorrow and Monday, so things have slowed down a little, but team play should be out before Christmas!
Thanks so much for the support :) Early plans for racing features are limited to top-down, mainly because that's the simplest way to be consistent and support lots of players on one PC. I've experimented with a behind-the-car view, and it looks really bad, just because everything in KarBOOM has been designed for viewing from above. It'd certainly be an interesting way to play single-player, though, and KarBOOM still has improvements to be made, so I'm not going to say a definite "no" at this stage :)
I learned C++ from "C++ For Dummies: 4th Edition" about 8 years ago. I use a little C++ these days, but mostly Lite-C (which is pretty much C with some changes so it works directly with the Gamestudio A8 engine). I've been using Gamestudio for a long time -- I started with A5 about 9 years ago, I think -- so I'm fairly experienced with it by now :) KarBOOM is my first game I've tried to finish, but I had been doing some freelance work for about a year before I started on KarBOOM.
One of the best things about C++ is everyone uses it! There are so many valuable tutorials online for doing different things, there's no way I can remember all the ones I've used at different times. But "C++ For Dummies" is what got me started.
Oh, I see, that's why there was no XInput.dll.
Well that's great, atleast they actually listen to their users and glad to see the engine is going to work for Android as well seeing as it's becoming so popular and even out doing the iPhone. True but I suppose it's about making the users happy and being able to implement the code for compiling to Linux and Mac if the developers of the engine have any knowledge of either OS.
Well, I played the newest release and Team Mode and, man, it is fun, I had two on controller and two on keyboard playing with me and we were laughing like crazy, we could hardly play because we would die of laughter, it was just that fun, teamplay is great. Oh yeah, and Merry Christmas, man.
No problem, I wanna see you and this game rise to the top, the game has a lot of potential and you never let your fan base down, always updating. I figured that would be the answer for now, I was worried that because even though the game looks great, it's just not meant for a behind the car view and looks best played top down because like you said, you designed it that way.
I always figured those Dummies books were no good, never thought about actually reading one of them but I will now, I'm extremely interested in coding and game design and actually used to do SOME coding when I was developing on the Rad3D engine but never produced anything worthy besides a simple free roaming driving game. Man, 8 years seems like a long time and I guess I should learn C before moving up to simplify things. Yeah, man, Gamestudio goes back a ways, makes me feel old just thinking about it and you are Gamestudio master. Well, I think KarBOOM has great potential and can even be sold on XBLA and PSN not to mention Steam and various other game platforms for PC and the best part is that it takes literally nothing to run this game, I can run it on just about every computer in my home except for my 2000 Dell Latitude CPx with a 8MB ATi Rage GPU.
Continued from last comment:
So true, so true, and almost all game engines run C++ even if it's slightly modified, like Unrealscript. Well I'm definitely going to pick up that book, really wanna get my *** in coding gear.
While I still highly recommend that book, given that you have some coding experience (even if it's a little) you might want to have a gander at this awesome set of tutorials for SDL: Lazyfoo.net
SDL is a low-level layer that lets you program for Windows, Mac and Linux without changing any of your code, and it's fairly popular (Overgrowth uses it, for example, as well as a tonne of other cross-platform games).
Have a look at the first couple of tutorials -- if they make sense you might be able to dive in without a book or anything. If they don't, then they should after you have gone through C++ For Dummies or another good intro to C++ (there might be some for free online, but I don't know any -- I haven't looked for any, mind you, and C++'s ubiquity means there's bound to be good resources for starting off).
I was away from my development PC for the last two weeks or so, and used that time to experiment with developing my own engine with C++, SDL and OpenGL on my brother's netbook. That SDL tutorial was my first step over this Christmas break -- it has specific set-up info for Windows, Mac and Linux users with all sorts of different compilers. My engine's working well so far, but now that I'm back I'm back to work on KarBOOM. I'm not going to port KarBOOM since that'd mean a huge break from updates and a lot of work, but I'll use what I've learned over Christmas as the basis for my next game so I can reach a wider audience, and maybe get KarBOOM to Mac and Linux one day :)
Thanks for the really encouraging words! I want to see KarBOOM and me at the top, too :D Feedback from you and other players really motivates me to keep working on it!
Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!
Well I bought another book as I can't find the 4th edition and people are complaining that the 6th edition is no good and wish they would bring back the 4th. But the book I bought is actually part of a series and after reading over the first few pages it seemed relatively simple, can't wait to get crackin' on it and I also visited that Lazyfoo tutorial website and it seems pretty simple and knowledgeable, I'll give that a whirl as well when I get some C++ memorized fairly well.
Yeah, I remember reading about SDL but I never quite thought about learning it because there aren't a whole LOT of people using Mac's or running Linux but I don't want to put anyone out if I ever release anything so I think that might be something useful to learn.
Yeah, there actually are quite a few resources and: Cprogramming.com probably being the best by the way it's setup.
Oh nice! Have you created any kind of tech demo for your engine to really test it out?
True and I would love to see KarBOOM ported to Mac and specially Linux because a lot of the scrap computers I have run Ubuntu and Windows XP Dual Booted as makeshift local game servers.
No problem, man, and glad to hear it. I also played KarBOOM 0.3.6 and I really dig the checkered flag sporting the winning team/player, adds a nice sense of accomplishment and makes it look more polished, though I did have an idea if your going to spruce up the GUI is maybe add a background to the main menu just so it's not a plain blue background, not a problem but might make it look a little more polished, but great job on the update none the less, man.
Hey, I thought I'd save my reply for when a new update comes out. A new version is STILL not ready, because I'm working on a new collision detection system which is quite difficult, but absolutely necessary for future features like car soccer, race mode, and the level editor.
Cprogramming.com is fantastic. I'm sure you're finding heaps of good resources there.
No tech demo yet for my engine... at least not an online one. I have some really simple stuff with KarBOOM cars spinning around, but hope to do more soon. Work on KarBOOM is keeping me too busy to spend time on my own engine for now, though.
Thanks for the encouraging words :) I agree -- the checkered flag background makes the blandness of the plain blue background even more obvious :P I'll keep in mind to do something about that in the near future.
Thanks again :)