I've never had this happen in any game, it's there if you want to use it but you don't have to... this is just to accommodate more than one play style, but some people may want to experiment and change it on the fly... I could also give it a cooldown so it can't be toggled too quickly anyway, lol.

Okay, so just to tell you, I've uploaded a new version of the demo, it includes the following changes:

- You can now toggle between "Drive" and "Drift" driving modes by pressing the D button during gameplay, this is done on the fly.
- When a bullet hits an enemy car, sparks now appear (They're not amazing but I thought it'd add to it... not sure if I did a good job here)
- The text on the pause menu has been moved slightly, and the controls have been aligned properly underneath the rest of the text and centered, making them easier to read.
- Enemy car health has been increased from 20 to 30 (Keep in mind, each individual bullet does 1 damage)

Thankyou for being patient while I released this revised demo, and if you'd like to give me any additional feedback on the new changes, feel free to do so, since I literally take EVERY comment into consideration when tweaking...

What you liked the most: The overall concept. It's pretty okay in terms of execution, but the graphics, a bit bland. Drifting is pretty good.

What you disliked the most: No music. Especially. The sparks were too big and not yellow though (so yeah it was pretty bland). My letters on the keyboard don't seem to respond to HTML5 games so I don't know anything about anything that involved them (and also I can't test any demos that involve them either so yeah that's pretty bad).

Your overall feelings: A pretty more solid attempt overall, though it could use more work. I wish the enemy car takes less bullets to destroy it and its HP increases later on. Also make the humans run away. And give it some atmosphere too. The car also seems so...forceful, too. But yes, good attempt.

The browser you were using: Firefox.

The average FPS you were getting: 50-60.

I'm still trying to find a way to make the enemies run away, but it's harder than it looks, still hoping for help on this, if anyone would care to offer advice on how to do it, that'd be great! As for the sparks, I did mention that I wasn't sure if it was good or not, I'll either change them, or just take them out altogether. It sucks that your letter keys won't work with it, I guess that means you weren't able to switch driving modes...

Also, music and hopefully sound effects WILL be in the next demo, I'm actually working with Tuna right now to get them in the game and working, unfortunately nothing is original though, since I don't have ANY music making program(s) installed on this computer, if the deadline were a week or two later I'd be able to whip something up, but I joined the contest a little too late to be able to fit custom music into the agenda... but yeah, music will be in the next demo, which I MAY be able to release tomorrow, along with hopefully some other new features.

The enemy cars, yeah I think I may have made their health a little too high now, a 50% increase is a tad too much, it's just that while I was test playing, 20HP seemed a little too low, since you can kill one in 2 bursts if you can line it up properly... what would you recommend, just a 25% increase to 25HP, or should I put it back down to 20HP?

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Another thing to mention: As well as working on these tweaks to make the gameplay mechanics fun, I'll be working on a title screen and menu (Instead of giving it to you in the pause menu...), and if I can keep my events under 20 after that's finished, I've decided I'll be using the rest to make the game have levels instead of being just one survival map, each level will have extra cars on, and they'll be harder to kill, and HOPEFULLY I can have a boss level of sorts, and I have two possible endings planned if I do go this way, so I COULD make it a multiple ending game, and factor in the kill variable (Get over so many kills, see a different ending), or I could just have one ending and have people help me decide which one to keep, I'll go into more detail with that later on though.

Also yay another person with a high, smooth framerate! :D

That sounds ambitious, Jason. Don't get caught up in it too much, hm?

Anyways, on the enemy car, I think 20 is good to start then increase it by 5 everytime.
Also, would you like us to suggest music for you if you're still stuck with that problem? Or is Tuna helping you just fine?

He's helping me just fine, I've already settled on two tracks that sound great ingame, now I'll just need to compliment them with some nice sound effects, haha. He's also helping me with the movement of the enemy humans, I can get them to run away now, but they do it as soon as the level starts, then they run off the screen and never return, so I'm trying to make them move randomly, unless you're in their radius then they'll run away, sounds a lot better to be honest, but it's a little tricky.

And maybe I am being a little ambitious, but I'll get everything in eventually, even if I have to keep working after the contest, since I think I could turn this into something really cool, y'know? Besides, I need to put all the extra effort in and try to add things that people want if I'm going to win anything in this contest, even though I didn't join to win, I still think it'd be cool to get some sort of prize for my hard work so far :D

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Also, what would everyone think about a new style of graphics? I'll still be keeping everything squared since that's the style I'm going for, but I mean adding more detail to things, making cars look like cars, while still being rectangles... not sure about people though since they're really small to begin with...

I think that this would turn out really amazing!
Plus you'll have the full version of Construct 2, so you better work hard on this project again once you get it! =P

But yeah, the graphics, make 'em a bit more detailed. Like, add more lines and stuff. And now I'm dumbstruck because I'm bad with graphics. DX

... Maybe, maybe not, who knows? Actually, I know... yes, yes I am, I'm posting on my thread with news, and it's 3:45am, so I'd say quite so. As the bold letters clearly state, I'm releasing a third demo this early (Amazing, right?), with this version I've had the help of Tuna with the enemy humans running away, it was actually quite a ball ache... but in the end we've done it! Demo link and changes:

Demo here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/67653237/Projec ... index.html

Changes:

- Enemy humans now run away from you once you drive into their radius, and will also now change direction on their own (Instead of walking straight forward as before) at random intervals
- Enemy car health has been reduced back down to 20HP
- I've added some background music, although there's a delay before it starts to play (Around 5 seconds for Tuna, although it's instant for me for some strange reason...)

Not much in terms of bullet points, but it's a pretty big step forward in terms of the AI, and I'm really happy with it!

I'd like to know a couple of extra things, which I'll be adding into the main thread form too:

What do you think of the enemy human AI and would you change anything?

How long does it take for the music to start playing for you?

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Also about the long delay on the music, if anyone knows why this is (It's set at preload so I' don't know why it isn't doing so) and could help out, that would be great!

For me it takes like 2 seconds to play the background music. Apparently, the fps at the beginning needs to reach 60 so that the song starts playing.
I like your game so far, but I think the controls are a bit off and rough. Even as long as I played, I couldn't really control the player myself. I think you should maybe let the player change the direction even if it's not accelerating/reverse.
I am guessing that the demo is the survival mode(I think I read that through the topic...), so I think you should let the player shoot some little more bullets before the cooling effect.

You probably don't want to let the player rotate without moving forwards/backwards. You are driving a car after all!

Sorry I just came back from my intensive three days worth of real life stuff, and now I'm finally getting back into HBGames, whew!

Just tried the demo on my core i5 laptop, no graphic card, running chrome, running at a lightning fast 60fps with no loading time at all. It jumped straight into the pause screen, and I never loaded this game on my laptop before so it couldn't have been cached. So that's excellent.

Regarding in game instruction, yes I see the pause screen stuff, but I didn't know that I can only turn when I'm moving. When I merely press left or right without moving first, nothing happens. It just confused me a bit at first.

Also, what does the drift mode do? Sorry if you've mentioned it already in the forum post but I can't quite find it...

Ah it's great to hear you're running it at 60FPS, since the game looks and plays so much better with a smooth framerate, just wondering but how long did it take for the music to start playing for you?

And the drift mode basically lets your car drift when steering, it makes the turning much looser, imagine like on the Ridge Racer games, where you can corner at like 90 degrees, whereas the standard drive mode makes it drive more... safe, there's no drifting and steering has been stiffened, you'll be able to notice it if you flick back and forth between them a few times, by default you're set to drift mode.

Also, you can only turn while moving, because in reality a car doesn't turn on the spot, lol, like Tuna said: You are driving a car after all!

This is an announcement of an update: I'm currently working on new sprites for the cars, so once I release them I'd like some feedback (Although anything is better than blank rectangles I suppose...), unfortunately, I've had to push back the title screen and player health though, unless I can squeeze them in today... however, I may be having an extra day off work on Saturday, so I'll have 4 days straight to work on this, and make some serious progress, since the deadline is coming quick and I'm sort of behind...

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Quick question by the way:

Should I make the blood colour a cyan/teal colour to make it look more... techno/sci-fi since it takes place in the internet? (The grid world is based on the internet... I should probaby write a story up explaining it all)

Update: New sprites for cars!

I've made this update real quick, I mean, I wasn't expecting to have them finished this soon, but my brother and his online buddies looked at the designs I had, and really loved these two, they look great in motion too, infact, here's a screenshot (Well actually it's a crop of a screenshot, lol):



What do you guys think? Do you like the look of these, and is it easy to tell what they are? Basically: A police car, and a sort of... street racing car, with a two colour body spray, and a turbo charger popping out of the hood, because that's what all the cool kids do apparently (Even though I've NEVER seen a car with this, except at a car show... I saw SO MANY BOOBS too... it was great!)

I'm not sure how to work out the humans to be honest, since I'm very limited in terms of pixels, since they're smaller... I actually struggled a bit with the cars but they worked out pretty great in my opinion (And others...)

These sprites will be used in the next demo build, so watch out!

I love the look of the new cars! Excellent work, JB!

Yay, somebody else likes them!

Not sure how it happened so quickly, but I've added player health, the default is 8 but this can be tweaked in a matter of 3 seconds (Literally, just have to change the initial variable number), basically I've decided that it'd be too much trouble, and require more events to have something picture based, so I've made it match with the kill counter, it basically looks like this now:

Life: 8 / 8
Kills: 10203921

(Not the most realistic kills but whatever)

I'm using an event, sub event and a global variable for this, although I could VERY easily change the global into an instance variable, not sure why I didn't to be honest, oh well... also just wondering, since I know global variables take up an even space, do sub events too? I'd assume so but just wondering...

I could cut it down and leave out the sub event, however, I've made it so if your health drops down to 1 / 8, the text changes to red, and I'm thinking of adding a red tint to the screen edges or something.

It'll be easier to manage like this too, since now I can drop power ups into the level that increase your health (I'll make them increase it over 8 too if you can collect enough without getting hit), and it can be done with a simple variable drop, and once you progress to next levels (Because even if I don't get it done in time, I WILL add levels even after the contest is over...) I can reset the variable back to its initial number (Which is 8).

Yay!

This will be shown in the next demo build too by the way (The random white bar in the top left corner has been removed to make space for this, it wasn't actually being used for anything at the time, just a sort of test to see where the HUD would go positioning wise and such... no idea why but meh whatever)

Amazing, Jason. You're working on this game lightning-fast.

You're definitely going to win something in the contest.
In fact, I'm going to put that userbar into my sig because I just love your project now.

By the way, the car sprites are AMAZING! I also love the music (which does start up kind of slow with 2-3 seconds but it's not really a problem) and the human AI is impressive. They should move a bit faster with each passing minute though. I'm not sure if you can do that, however...

Well I could make them move faster progressively, but after so long it'd be almost impossible to hit them except with bullets, lol. And thanks for the sig support, that's really appreciated!

I do have a way around the slow loading of the music though, when I make my title screen, I'm going to make a splash screen beforehand, and I SHOULD be able to preload the music during then, so it'll be ready to start up as soon as the level starts.

I know about the cars, but still, I don't know why but, the controls are a bit rough.

BTW, the car sprites look awesome! I like how this is turning!

EDIT: I don't know why, but now it seems that I can now control the game better. Seems that I only had to play it for
a little longer. Thanks for hearing my feedback!

I'm still not sure what you mean by that, and nobody else has felt that way, sadly I can't fix it if you don't go into detail

It seems that it need some time for me to adapt to the controls! The game's good so far!
So, the game will only consist of killing as much as you can. If you have infinite health, where's the challenge besides
the cars that will block your way?

Sorry if I am bothering you.

I'm not sure if you've been reading my thread or just clicking the demo link... 5 posts above yours, I made a post with big bold letters saying I've added player health, lol, this isn't the finished game...

Oh, I'm really sorry. I will take that in consideration. Sorry again.

No problem lol, but it really does help to read what's going on in a thread such as this, since I update it quite often, and make the big updates fairly noticeable, lol

Alright. I will try to help as much as I can properly!
From what I can see, the car sprites look awesome!
I don't think you shouldn't trouble too much with the humans, if you
can't change them, I don't think it matters so much. From the preview,
it looks like the human squares look alright with the cars.

Just to let people know, I won't be updating this thread until around Saturday, since I'll be doing a lot of work (Job related work, not work on the game, lol), I'm doing the night shift tonight, then when I wake up tomorrow I'll have an hour to get ready and stuff before I go to work again for the entire day, then I'll be too tired to do anything with this once I get in, so hopefully if I find out that I get my Saturday off as requested (I'll be able to find out tomorrow, but if not I finish at 4pm so I can still work on this afterwards)

However, the next update will come in the form of the latest demo build, which will include the title screen for you to look at, sound effects, and if I can get it done on Saturday, a new power up (Since there aren't any right now, but I'll be adding one or two in...), along with new enemy car AI, it's not much better but it does help when dealing with player health and hopefully fixes a weird bug that nobody except me or Tuna have encountered, lol.

Then, between Sunday and Thursday again, I'll be working 'round the clock on it, since I'll have a lot of free time and I won't be able to work on it on Friday or Saturday, which is the deadline... eek! D:

So I woke up a little earlier than usual today, although it hasn't given me enough free time to actually do anything productive, but I will say this:

During my night shifts at work for the last 3 weeks, I've been jotting down notes and ideas for Project: GRID, just simple designs and ideas for names and cars etc. (Only on blank receipt paper, but meh), and these could be classed as my "design documents" of sorts... and I've just been adding to them whenever I get free time (And I get quite a lot during a night shift...)

I'll take photo's of a few of them (They're on multiple sheets of varying sizes... some are twice as long as others, lol) to show you what I mean, and last night I got a CRAZY idea!

I've decided that once the game is finished, be it after or before the contest (It'll no doubt be after, but I'm not doing this to count towards anything, just got some cool ideas for Project: GRID including spanning it off into new games and such, since I've also got a great idea for a back story...) that...

I'll be hosting my own contest/competition of sorts, and the grand prize will involve me sending the winner these exact designs via mail, so they can have a piece of... umm, my game? Along with a custom designed tshirt with... something on it, lol. (Not decided yet)

It sounds strange, but like I said, I've got some great ideas, and actually I think I'll be sticking with Construct 2 if it means I can make whole games easier and faster than RPG Maker/Game Maker (Unless they bring something REALLY amazing out... besides, I could probably make a JRPG in Construct 2 via the full version... if I get it, lol :P *hint hint!*), I'd also need this to be a forum wide thing and not limited to just my game thread, so I'd probably need help from the admins and mods for that... (Imagine it, as big as this entire Construct 2 contest, but all you have to do is play my game!)

That's a pretty cute idea for a competition. I'm a big fan of how well you're doing with your entry, and all your effort in marketing.

Also if you want to do an "officially endorsed" forum-wide competition for something, flesh out all the details and send it to one of the admins so we can get together and discuss it. Wouldn't happen until after the C2 contest is over, obviously :)