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ThunderWheels another top-down racing game

Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 10:59 am
by dukenuken
Hello everyone :)
Although I'm a long long time fan of GR and many other top-down games like Slick n' slides (specially first versions), Hotrod for C64, Ironman 4x4 off-road racer etc..... This is my first post here, so please be patient with my English and verbosity , I have many things to say :)

I followed with enthusiasm development of GR2... it is really a pity the project is halted. In my opinion GR has the best game play experience due to physics, design and arcade tuning. I've been working the game industry for a little more than 8 years and some years ago I started my won top-down game project called ThunderWheels, we won a prize on Intel Level Up in 2011 in two categories: physics and 3D, but the demo we had at that time really sucked... I wasn't happy with game play and the simulation. So if you already played our old demo please reset the RAM in you brain and give us another chance :)

During those years (can't remember when exactly) I gave a master class explaining how the AI was programmed, I did that master class in aigamedev.net and then I stopped developing TW due to personal things. So the project has been halted for lots of years...
Making a video game in your spare time requires a lot of effort and sacrifices and having children and a wife... I mean "a life" hehe sometimes it is just too much.

Well, today I'm writing here to tell you guys that since the last year I quit my job as "lead developer" in the gaming industry for making my own game, the game I'd love to play instead of making games that just "can make" some money. So if TW (thunderwheels) doesn't make any money I'll be happy any way, first thing for me and the rest of our team (Arcade Injection) is to create the "best top-down game ever" !
I talked with Tuomo and asked his permission for posting some images and links to TW game here, and he kindly suggest me to use the off-topic section, so here goes:



You can visit the store page, we had access to Steam (with no green light at that moment) because it was part of the prize of Intel Level UP, our store page is in "coming soon" state:
ThunderWheels top-down racing game on Steam

This is our website (not really useful but you can see who we are):
Arcade Injection
We're moved from g-boot.com to this new site and rename our team to Arcade Injection.

Our plan is to release the game in a month or so in Early Access first at around 8.99usd, listen the community and continue developing what the community ask. We believe the online will be THE feature everyone will want ;)

As technical notes I can say TW was developed using C++, Ogre3D graphics engine, OpenAL sound engine, Nvidia Phyxs and it runs at 60hz in almost any hardware using OpenGL or Direct3D (version 9).

Thank you so much to all GR community, any comments, questions, suggestions, etc will be really appreciated!

Here are some screenshots:
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Re: ThunderWheels another top-down racing game

Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 1:44 pm
by dukenuken
Thank you :) we're releasing the game, probably on November 2 (next Thursday).

Re: ThunderWheels another top-down racing game

Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2017 2:40 pm
by ThomasMac
Thunder Wheels looks like fun. Did anyone else try it out? Is there a multiplayer?

Re: ThunderWheels another top-down racing game

Posted: Mon Dec 25, 2017 6:13 pm
by dukenuken
Hi Thomas,
There are some reviews in the Steam page and comments in the HUB if you want to hear opinions (some of them are made by GR users :)).

Right now there is only local multiplayer (8 players max) and we are working on workshop integration for sharing tracks and cars (in the future). Online multiplayer is planned after workshop and is the next big thing to develop ;)

Re: ThunderWheels another top-down racing game

Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2018 2:19 pm
by dukenuken
Thank you Bradley :)

We've just updated the game with a new track:
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We also implemented "works shop" functionality on Steam, it means you can share tracks just uploading them with our track editor and players can download them automatically with just one click, comment on them, rate, etc.....
Here are the assets made by the users so far:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/296790/workshop/

We also have two different methods for track creation, one is the "traditional" using an image editor and the new one is using our tileset in Tiled editor (Mina Clavero was made with that).

Also yesterday we released a version with "championships", Generally users will recognize the different modes right away :)
- Hotlap: one track, fastest lap is your score
- Shootout: one track, total race time is your score
- Endurance: same as shootout but longer race, more laps
- Multitrack: Many tracks and you score is total season time

Scores are automatically uploaded to our server and we're going to implement many many different championships with start/end date and global points at the end of the competition. Almost the same as in GR :)
Please take a look the game on Steam and comment here, feedback is very important to us :)

Re: ThunderWheels another top-down racing game

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 10:19 am
by dukenuken
First Round results published !
Any Generally player interested in competing ? the level is quite high in the top 5 :)

These are the general results of Round 1:
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Full results for each competition:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/296790/di ... 792126889/

Round 02 starts today at 14hs (CET time).

Re: ThunderWheels another top-down racing game

Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2018 10:19 am
by dukenuken
Hi everyone :)
It's me again hehe, we are having a lot of fun racing championships with the new "online" mode, it is the same as Championships described before but this time you race against player's ghosts.

It works like this, when you race in any CS category (except multi-track) the game automatically uploads the score and the ghost file to the server. If it is your first time racing that category you compete against the last 7 players in the board. If it isn't your first time in that category then you compete against 2 racers above you and 5 below you so difficulty is automatically adjusted. Ghosts can win your local race so you feel as you were playing "online" async.

Here is an in-game video showing the top 8 ghosts in June Series 2018 CS | Round 03 Shootout:



Hope you like it :)