Krautscape (16.5Mb)
Here’s one to look out for in the coming year! It’s a multi-player racer in 3D, where the track is procedurally generated, and the leading player constructs the next part/section of the track! The download is for the Alpha 3 version (It’s been completely re-written for Alpha 4, but because of an application for funding, the consortium involved doesn’t allow publication of the latest version as yet).
As such, it’s a bit rough around the edges, with occasional stability issues, but will give some idea of what the finished game will be like. The graphics are likely to be improved, and hopefully will when finished include a proper online mode, rather than just being able at present to use a LAN. There are also likely to be added elements to gameplay and other graphical features added such as flocks of birds and such-like. Your car/craft also has foldable wings, so if you go off the track you can extend wings and fly back on, or try to take airborne shortcuts.
The curve of a track is determined by the leading player’s position on the road when crossing the white line, and they can use the up and down arrow keys to change the pitch of the track up or down before the next piece of the track is laid. A wireframe pattern shows what kind of track will be built next before the first vehicle crosses the line. If you lead, you can control the track direction. If you keep driving on the right side of the road, the next track element will be a right curve. Drive on the left side and it goes left.
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It would be good in the final version if some cars or even a single computer car was available to race against, but we’ll have to see, so it might just stay as a strictly multi-player racer.
Because each racetrack is generated afresh, and the leading player can decide how to extend the track, each race is going to differ completely from previous races. The only downside or disadvantage of course is that you can’t practice tracks. Playing does take more than a bit of practice with steering/floating etc. You can set up the number of checkpoints and hence length of the race when setting up a server. The game can result in long complicated spaghetti type race tracks. Great fun!
The menu is mouse driven, and controls are ‘A’ key to accelerate, ‘Y’ key to decelerate, hold ‘Spacebar’ to extend wings and float, and ‘L/R’ arrow keys to steer. It’s also gamepad and joystick compatible. To start playing on your own just click ‘create server’ and ‘start server’. The ‘Esc’ key returns you to the main menu, and the ‘Tab’ key resets your car.
It plays Windowed or Full-screen in Windows, and you can set the graphics detail from low to high in a range of steps, depending on your computer and graphics setup.
It’s a super new concept in racing games, and I’m looking forward very much to when it goes Beta, and well looking forward to the final release of the game. It’s a bit like Scalextric on steroids, plus wings! Go grab your pals and get racing!
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXGmlvwThrc
Download http://www.gamezone.com/downloads/krautscape
