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DU Racing - what is possible so far


Burble

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I know, I've been going on and on about making a race track for a while now. Well, the two tracks are all laid down now and ready for racing, time trials, illegal gambling and so forth. I can't even begin to describe the hours or explain why I would willingly do this to myself, but I think this is the kind of community that understands insane building projects so I don't fear too much judgement. Think I might quit DU now for a while. To the handful of people who kindly donated a bit of material here and there your names have been cemented into the foundations of the course at various points. 
 

-2 separate and complete race tracks covering 10 hexes on Alioth

 

-The scale of the tracks allows for high speed racing. I'm really excited for to see what kind of racers people dream up. 

 

-A restricted class cup and an unlimited builders cup could be something for the future. 

 

-Head to Head racing for quanta

 

-There are pit garages for sale on site for race teams.

 

-Land plots available for opening shops and markets for those with a plan, contact me.

 

 

As for the racing and physics, I think what is possible with a bit of practice is really pretty cool. Like a 2021 version of that old classic nintendo game F-Zero if anyone is as old as me.

 

A  lap preview of the two courses can be seen as raw footage here:

 

 

 

Here is the super cheesy awesome bit I slapped together.

 

 

 

 

The total materials if anyone is interested are approximated here:

 

Aluminium: Countless millions of litres

Concrete: quite a lot

Luminescent glass: a really serious quantity 

Alioth sand and rock : >2mil L

Madis soil: 200,000 L

Symeon soil: 190,000 L

L and M cores: more than 135

Time for construction: 3 months more or less

Quanta spent: all of it

 

 

VR Station is open : Melanuma Super Speedway race track - come visit and set a waypoint, then come race and build.

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41 minutes ago, Burble said:

I know, I've been going on and on about making a race track for a while now. Well, the two tracks are all laid down now and ready for racing, time trials, illegal gambling and so forth. I can't even begin to describe the hours or explain why I would willingly do this to myself, but I think this is the kind of community that understands insane building projects so I don't fear too much judgement. Think I might quit DU now for a while. To the handful of people who kindly donated a bit of material here and there your names have been cemented into the foundations of the course at various points. 
 

-2 separate and complete race tracks covering 10 hexes on Alioth

 

-The scale of the tracks allows for high speed racing. I'm really excited for to see what kind of racers people dream up. 

 

-A restricted class cup and an unlimited builders cup could be something for the future. 

 

-Head to Head racing for quanta

 

-There are pit garages for sale on site for race teams.

 

-Land plots available for opening shops and markets for those with a plan, contact me.

 

 

As for the racing and physics, I think what is possible with a bit of practice is really pretty cool. Like a 2021 version of that old classic nintendo game F-Zero if anyone is as old as me.

 

A  lap preview of the two courses can be seen as raw footage here:

 

 

 

Here is the super cheesy awesome bit I slapped together.

 

 

 

 

The total materials if anyone is interested are approximated here:

 

Aluminium: Countless millions of litres

Concrete: quite a lot

Luminescent glass: a really serious quantity 

Alioth sand and rock : >2mil L

Madis soil: 200,000 L

Symeon soil: 190,000 L

L and M cores: more than 135

Time for construction: 3 months more or less

Quanta spent: all of it

 

 

VR Station is open : Melanuma Super Speedway race track - come visit and set a waypoint, then come race and build.

I was mulling this around earlier myself. Perhaps in the following methods:

 

My general idea was to create some kind of hover racing type thing. Either just a drag strip with spec requirements when Talents are the deciding factor. Or to create some kind of contained sunday cup type designs using the flattening tool and then using static cubes to add lights and finer details. The general idea is hoverpads on the top/bottom/sides so that it sits perfectly balanced in flight so that the hover pads are kicking off the ceiling and floor at the same time or if you get close to the walls it should push off as well if tera voxels act as what the hover engines push off of.

 

I also thought about using Teravoxels to create a cage of sorts around some kind of tube track system like old racing games that is fairly large that has holes to let in light but still react to hoverpads in all directions but backwards since you will need the addition of the front hovers to keep from bumping the cage.

 

But I think racing would be a rather fun experience if it could get off the ground

 

Or if it required an entry fee to pay out prize money with a small cut for the track owner. You could also do pink slips and other fun stuff too.

 

It just all depends on the set specs for the race for size, grade, talents, and parts allowed or if people stick to it.

 

I also thought about a flying version of racing similar to the drone racing with rings or other obstacles.

 

The general idea is a track that does have danger or ship collisions and accidents costing money and cores built into some of the track types.

 

Nicely done tho. Looks like a lot of fun. I think the only thing you are missing is a mario cart type version with XS weapons. Its almost like mario cart with san fransisco rush if you can knock people out of the race or there are collisions.

 

I think it would be interesting if it were modular with switches and other potential lane configurations that spawns forcefields to cut off that path or to turn on or off different track routes. Or to use a lazer or proximity sensor combined with the security system which tells who used the element and in this case who triggered the laser(s) (if there are multiples so that if you fly higher/lower you still trip one) that it acts as a lane counter to know who won.

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I fly FPV racing drones in RL, and technically it should be possible to build and fly something similar in DU. The movements would be slower, but it should be possible to do all the classic moves like power loops etc.

 

But without proper analog joystick support, we are nowhere near having the control responses and accuracy needed for competitive flying.

 

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3 hours ago, Leogradance said:

Amazing. Really. Amazing!

Cheers!

 

6 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

I fly FPV racing drones in RL, and technically it should be possible to build and fly something similar in DU. The movements would be slower, but it should be possible to do all the classic moves like power loops etc.

 

But without proper analog joystick support, we are nowhere near having the control responses and accuracy needed for competitive flying.

 

Flying with the mouse gives very fine control as can be seen in the full lap preview video. Better fine control than a gamepad without doubt.

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I think the best option would be to buy up a bunch of tiles along a lake with maybe 2 outside tiles deep if you can afford it and build up the surrounding area enough to create a continuous height valley around the lake for a course and like 50-100m wide for turns. You could make some kind of inner F1 racing course and then another nascar type straighter loop. Since its being constructed of Teravoxels you can use the L cores for details like placement on top of the track, scenery like cages to prevent cars from flying off the track. OR to make angled turns. You want to make it fast enough to have some sense of danger but not blowing up ship cores left and right. But also long enough to make it a nice 1 lap race. You could also do drag strips.

 

I think the only thing a mario cart type racing would need is some kind of duel mechanic where you all can choose to do damage to each other until killed and out of the race basically if XS weapons are to be on the table. You cant do that in a PvP free area unless there is eithe 1on1, 3v3, or 5v5+ races. I think it needs either a basic grouping system at the very least to have the group leader initiate friendly fire enabled.

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2 hours ago, Burble said:

Cheers!

 

Flying with the mouse gives very fine control as can be seen in the full lap preview video. Better fine control than a gamepad without doubt.

The mouse control works for normal racing, but I was talking about FPV race style flying where you need two high resolution analog sticks (4 axis control).

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I started building my own track a while back too. When you showed me yours it kinda blew my mind though, so I'm totally on board with the whole thing now. I know first hand that the amount of effort involved in making something like that, and for anyone curious, it's considerably bigger and more time consuming than most of the huge org projects you see out there, like mini cities, space elevators or stations.


Warlander - I think you're just describing what Burble has already done mate, seriously - go check out his place and have a fly around it. It's seriously good fun already. I've crashed my racer enough times there to know the level of risk is about perfect too. You can safely get round the track no problem, but when you start pushing yourself it's dangerous enough that high speed collisions are a constant threat you need to be thinking about: A threat that needs evaluating against going faster. If you crash constantly, have a track that hits you with squashers, or have PvP damage enabled then wins and losses would start to feel a bit random, or at least would be less a consequence of skill. In Mario games your racer is back on the track in a few seconds following hurling yourself off a cliff or being blown up, so a crash isn't nearly as punishing as it is in DU, so ensuring that crashes are always due to the pilot pushing things too far in order to get more speed out of it is good game design. I also wouldn't bother with drag racing - can't see the point seeing as the meta for going fast is just max skills with expensive engines and lots of them. No player skill involved (even in designing them), unlike in the bendy, technical style of race Burble's got nailed down. If the game mechanics around engine use and aerodynamics were more nuanced then it could be really cool though of course.

CptLoRes - The smallest thing you're likely to get flying around will still weigh about a ton in DU, which is of course not going to handle like an IRL FPV racing drone which as you know are measured in grams, but even still it's absolutely possible to do what you're talking about. There's even at least one group that already does it in fact. Besides, considering the level of collision detection in DU (being an MMO after all) and the increased inertia from ships just being bigger than in reality, I don't really think the high resolution analog sticks are going to make much difference to ship performance, and certainly aren't a hard barrier for entry. Just a barrier for making it feel exactly like its real life counterpart. After all, it's not like we're pitting a real life drone against a DU one here.

Anyhoo, once I've got my game working properly again I'll be setting up shop over there for sure. Cheap engines for all so nobody feels bad ploughing into walls whilst learning XD

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9 minutes ago, Bobbie said:

Nice!

 

 

Receipts or it didn't happen...

haha! Well you got me, no paperwork.

 

At one point Dangersnoot and me mined out a 2.3mil silicon meganode and sold it all to buy aluminium, that was about 50 million quanta by itself

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15 hours ago, NQ-Deckard said:

I cannot transcribe in words how cool I think this is. ?

Amazing work Burble! 

This is actually the forth racing org I have seen, as far as i am aware the other three have folder due to lack of community support, which is an absolute joke (players moan there is nothing to do but then dont take part in the stuff players create).  Part of this falls on NQ, there is zero support for these sorts of community projects, this sort of thing should be front and centre of what NQ promotes.

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3 hours ago, Moosegun said:

This is actually the forth racing org I have seen, as far as i am aware the other three have folder due to lack of community support, which is an absolute joke (players moan there is nothing to do but then dont take part in the stuff players create).  Part of this falls on NQ, there is zero support for these sorts of community projects, this sort of thing should be front and centre of what NQ promotes.

Advertising is definitely an issue in game. I have similar concerns with all the groups creating player cities, markets, apartments, etc. It's hard to see how they'll have enough participants to survive. 

 

That said, this track is a lot of fun to fly on. Thank you for your work Burble.

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On 1/11/2021 at 10:53 PM, Burble said:

-Land plots available for opening shops and markets for those with a plan, contact me.

Is there a fuel/scrap depot on site? If not, I would be interested in setting one up. It would help for those like me that crash a lot and don't bring enough scrap. :)

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7 minutes ago, fiddlybits said:

Is there a fuel/scrap depot on site? If not, I would be interested in setting one up. It would help for those like me that crash a lot and don't bring enough scrap. :)

There is not and you would be welcome fiddly, if you have discord contact me fink#1867. Otherwise my in game name is burble although I have not been able to play much the last few days

 

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On 1/15/2021 at 3:44 PM, fiddlybits said:

Advertising is definitely an issue in game. I have similar concerns with all the groups creating player cities, markets, apartments, etc. It's hard to see how they'll have enough participants to survive. 

 

That said, this track is a lot of fun to fly on. Thank you for your work Burble.

For me it is the BIGGEST issue with the game, internal comms.  I read over and over again that all there is to do is mine in this game.  When actually that is totally not true.  The problem is that you need to search for all the other options.  You can be a prospector (but you need to use another discord), or ship sales (but again, really need another discord), you can have your own shops (but noone know they are there), you can offer refueling / repair services (again though, noone can contact you about it in game - discord again).  I have a list of 15 different Career paths you can currently take in DU, only 3 of them are really viable without having to work outside the game.

I really think that once NQ allows us to share / advertising what is going in actually IN the game, then we might start to see the civilisation start to emerge, not the current sandbox of hundreds of seperate orgs that barely interact with each other.

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1 hour ago, Moosegun said:

I have a list of 15 different Career paths you can currently take in DU, only 3 of them are really viable without having to work outside the game.

Have you posted your list on the forums? This would be useful for people who are looking for something new to do.

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On 1/20/2021 at 2:17 PM, Burble said:

yup, just me posting race stuff again.

The X-Class racers are developing quickly, and are making short work of the track. It's like the formula 1 cars of the future
 

 

X-Class just reminds me of X Class drone racing haha, I may have to throw down- have some experince flying giant drones, and itching to start making a ship to race this track :D

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