Author: Shawn

Tunnel Racer is dead.

But there’s no need to mourn Tunnel Racer. See, I was contacted by a couple guys in California who have started a little indie game development company called Homunkulus. Their lead designer had an idea for a tunnel racing game and when they were doing a little research on their “competition”, they stumbled upon Tunnel Racer and liked what I was doing.

We chatted over Skype a few weeks ago and I really liked their ideas. When I started Tunnel Racer, I was just going for a simple “endless running” game with a retro art style. The guys at Homonkulus have a much more fleshed-out game design, and what I’ve done with Tunnel Racer actually fits into it quite nicely.

So, we’ve decided we’re going to work together to create this tunnel racing game of theirs and publish it. They’ll be adding to the game and handling a lot of the bits I’m no good at (sound, some art, and businessy stuff), and I get to continue working on this tunnel racing game.

Together, I think we’ll make a much better product sooner, and I think my work gives them a good head start, so we all benefit. I’m excited to work on this new game, but I’ll have to hash out with them what details I can provide here… I’d like to keep blogging about Tunnel Racer, but this is their baby as much as mine now, and I’m not sure how much they want me tossing out here on the interwebs. Likely anything specific will be posted to their website, as I have my very own username and password and everything! If anything, I might just post some asides here.

That said, I wanted to throw the final version of Tunnel Racer up here: version 28a. It was in a sort of weird, halfway-ready state when I stopped, so this version has some odd bugs, like the progress bar doesn’t work quite right.

It’s been awhile since I made an update (a month?!), and I’ve been sitting on these changes for a while, so I figured I’d finally post an update.

Changes this version:

• The progress bar and explosion move smoothly, rather than jumping to their intended position.
• Updated the Accelerator mutator. Instead of gaining speed when ending levels, you gain speed over time.
• Removed the level-end sound effect. I still want something to play when ending a level, but I don’t know what yet, and I hated the sound I was using.
• Updated the main menu with new mutator descriptions and removed the health stats from the ships.
• The speed rating of ships now factors into how much distance you gain when hitting a booster.
• Updated most of the spawn patterns that started with boosters so the boosters are now optional and have the same chance to spawn as they do elsewhere (i.e., rarely).
• Removed Blitz as a ship option and updated speed values. (I thought Blitz had the most boring ship design.)
• Redesigned Alpha.
• Removed the testing options on the main menu.
• Reorganized the ships on the main menu so they’re ordered by speed.
• Added a brief speed boost when picking up a booster, and an animation to go with it. I also changed the boost effect on Alpha – a spray of yellow (to match the boost pickup color) out the engines. I’m not satisfied with it yet, though, and it’s hard to see.

And since I just played it and found some new bugs…

• The player and explosion don’t seem to be moving at the same rate. They should always be equidistant from the center of the screen. I think I’ve got a math bug somewhere.
• Sometimes you’ll hit a panel that you shouldn’t when changing lanes. (For example: if the lanes are “1-2-3”, changing from 1 to 2 will sometimes hit a panel in 3 as your ship banks.) This bug has been around awhile, but I’m still having trouble getting rid of it.

Here’s the link: Tunnel Racer v27a

I like the new mechanics more than the old, so I’ve started ripping out some of the old code and cleaning things up. I’m still trying to get the feel right, though. I need to figure out the best way to handle the speeds, because once things get going pretty fast, collisions start to fail (your ship can glide over panels without hitting them), animations will twitch (resulting in accidental collisions), and other problems start to crop up… I think I might just need to find a better way to control all the animations that occur as you move around.

Brainstorming
UI
I need to figure out what options I’m going to allow on the right-side of the main menu. My plan has always been to put the mutators on the left and some game options on the right (like sound/music options), but I don’t know what options I’m going to add. Sound and music settings are obviously important, but what else?

Animations and Effects
I’m still playing with effects – trying to find something that looks good, but isn’t too “loud” is a lot more difficult than I expected. I need some new sound effects, but I don’t know where I want to go with the graphics and sound – realistic or retro? I’ve been using a “retro” theme for everything thus far, but I can’t find an explosion or fire sound effect that doesn’t sound annoying…

The animations when the ship changes lanes, jumps, and boosts are all nice but cause some problems. I need to figure out some way to improve how they work to make them more fluid, and I need to figure out a way to prevent collisions with panels that shouldn’t be hit (like I mentioned in the bug list above).

Player Progression and Achievements
I’m going to start working on implementing ship unlocking and achievements with the next version as well, since these are going to be critical for the final game, and some testing is going to be needed to determine a good progression for unlocking ships.

Tonight’s update is pretty minor. I’m still playing with the new mechanics, but I think I like where things are headed.

Changes this version:

• Levels 2+ are shorter.
• Boosters have a lower chance to spawn. (Only applies to the places where they can appear randomly, like during the spiral and random patterns.)
• The “difficult” patterns (walls and deltas) have a slightly higher chance to spawn.
• The health UI has been hidden.
• Health pickups have been disabled. (Though sometimes it looks like a health ring will spawn.)
• The speed UI has been hidden. It doesn’t really mean much now that speed is locked during each level.
• The Doom mutator has been updated so the explosion is constantly gaining on you.
• The Sudden Death mutator has been updated so the explosion starts very near you, and a single hit causes it to catch you. (The opening animation doesn’t work out so well yet.)
• The Turbo mutator has been updated so you start at max speed and never slow down when hit.
• The “near-death effects” (UI shaking, red border) have been updated to display at the same time the warning symbols and skull-and-crossbones appear.

I’ve got plans for the Accelerator mutator, but it’s a bit more involved to change, so I want to get some testing in on the new mechanics before I go in and start making major changes.

Here’s the new version: Tunnel Racer v26a

And some random brainstorming:
UI
If I decided to ditch the speed and health UI elements because of these gameplay changes, then I’ll probably rearrange the UI – maybe put the pause button in the upper-right and the distance bar between the score on the left and the pause button on the right. This would free up a bit of space.

Ships
If health disappears, it means there’s really no need for more than 5 craft if I keep the 1-5 rating for speed. Since there are currently 6 ships, one would likely get dropped, or I’d have to come up with a new reason to have more than 5. I don’t think losing a ship would be a huge loss, but I had been thinking about maybe offering ships as DLC. If there’s no use for more than 5 ships, ship DLC doesn’t make much sense.

I think it’s time for a huge mechanic change, don’t you?

I’ve been thinking about how the game plays and I haven’t been very satisfied, so I thought about it a while and decided to simplify some things. When I introduced the different ships, it made my job a lot more complicated because each ship has different speed multipliers, which makes balance a huge pain – the movement has never felt quite right. Also, the speed levels usually felt too slow or too fast – there was never the “just right” feeling. And now that the giant explosion is in there, I have a few new options for gameplay and decided I’d try something new.

Here’s a list of the mechanic changes in this version:

• The only way to die in this version is for the explosion to catch up to you.
• Health is disabled. (It shows up, you just don’t lose any health.)
• You start the game at what used to be speed 3.
• You speed up a bit each level. At level 10, you’re moving at what used to be speed 5.
• When you’re hit, you drop to what used to be speed 2 for about a second, then return to full speed.
• When you’re hit, the explosion gains on you.
• When you pick up a booster, you increase your distance from the explosion.
• Each level increases a multiplier applied to the explosion’s speed. There’s currently no maximum speed for the explosion. The multiplier increases by 10% of the base speed each level, so at level 10, the effect is doubled, and at level 20 it’s tripled.
• Each level decreases a multiplier applied to your boost speed. Your boost speed decreases by 5% of your base speed each level. The minimum is 10% of the full effect at level 18.

There are a lot of things that will change as I figure out how to balance everything again. In the end, each ship’s speed stat will determine their base speed. Faster ships will be easier to play because they’ll get a bigger boost from each booster. I don’t know if health will return. I think having health and this new boost mechanic conflict with each other, so it’s likely health will disappear entirely. If that happens, several of the mutators will have to change, but I’ve already got ideas on how to modify them to make them work again. (I didn’t bother making any changes to them in this version.)

And here it is: Tunnel Racer v25a