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Dreamcast New Indie Dreamcast 3D Racing game by JoshProd called Arcade Racing Legends has a playable demo out and kickstarter is live

segamax

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Actually while I was doubting on the quality game, the last picture and video in game have reinsured me and it seems they put a lot effort in it, it looks more than decent.
When I said disappointed by them, I meant the games they have published so far which are all emulation and port of old pc/new geo games and not as good as the original.
This game is also a port of a game that already exists on IOS (racing pro) but it seems they have worked a lot on it.
 

Anthony817

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That is where you are wrong. This is not a port of Racing Pro, this is the 4X4 Jam engine, with assets ported over from Racing Pro. Not really even close to the same thing. They bought the rights to both those games if I understand. So while they didn't exactly outright port Racing Pro, they did use some of the assets. They are also making all new content for this game as well as brand new tracks. So think of it really as a highly modified version of 4X4 Jam.

This is why the cars bounce around so much becasue the game engine was really only made for off road racing, and doing track based stuff would require a lot of changes to the physics code. They did mention there will be a drift button, somewhat similar to the Mario Kart games but without jumping in the air to initiate it.
 

Greg2600

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Ehhhh, sounds sloppy.
 

MastaG

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Wow, this map looks a lot better compared to ones from the the previous demo.
Still not the same quality and details of MSR but amazing nevertheless!
 

dark

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Wow looks pretty decent.
 

Anthony817

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A new update and a video! Preorders start very soon!

 
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Greg2600

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Is that 480p mode? I am still not comfy with the graphics.
 

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Is that 480p mode? I am still not comfy with the graphics.
They should pre-bake some shadows on the world geometry, that'd help a lot.

Currently, it looks like a half-life map without the rad pass.
 
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Anthony817

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Yeah I agree it could use some prebaked shadows to really help it feel not so flat.

But don't forget, this is not using the official Katana or Windows CE SDK's, so graphics will never look as polished as Daytona USA or Sega Rally 2. It is no small miracle that it looks as good as it does being made with the with KOS libraries. I think all things considered, this is revolutionary for indie game graphics on the Dreamcast and hopefully will usher in more 3D games. I will take this over more 2D games any day. There is a reason why we don't see more 3D homebrew and Indie games because they take a much larger team of people to get something worthwhile created.

They have posted more gameplay which I honestly think look pretty nice. When they drive through the lava section the lighting looks quite good. That previous video I posted above they were just showing off the split screen mode, which if you know anything about games, you know that graphics tend to be dumbed down to get the game to render twice as much. They also mentioned the split screen mode wasn't finalized yet so my guess is there could always be some improvements made.

 
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Greg2600

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The textures on the cars looked like N64; that's what got me.
 
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Anthony817

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Yeah, no doubt it doesn't hold up to retail games graphics. I doubt we will ever see a 3D indie game that truly does unless like a Quake engine game or something. And even then it is dated compared to what the DC can actually do unless hardware accelerated like neo's NuQuake build. Also don't forget, it is running on an engine made for one of those PSP Mini games called 4X4 Jam, just heavily modified as JoshProd bought the full source to that game and repurposed it for this. Even on PSP 4X4 Jam didn't look the best. It may just be an engine limitation in why the graphics look the way they do?
 

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But don't forget, this is not using the official Katana or Windows CE SDK's, so graphics will never look as polished as Daytona USA or Sega Rally 2. It is no small miracle that it looks as good as it does being made with the with KOS libraries.

Hey now! What happened to this attitude from last year:
If they are able to get retail quality graphics now with KOS this literally changes everything and the perception of these games, and KOS itself should be seen in a much better light now. No longer is KOS seen as subpar to the official SDK libraries, and this is really a great thing for everybody involved. This proves once and for all, that KOS is just as good as the official tools.

It's no miracle! It's the hard work of indie devs.
Never say never. Just in 2020 tremendous work has gone into the Dreamcast homebrew libraries and tools. It's not just KOS, it's a whole ecosystem surrounding it.
Simulant engine is still in early development (alpha) but very useful as an engine and people are already writing software with it.
Simulant is built around GLdc which is what mrneo320's NuQuake is based on -- mrneo320 worked with kazade on the testing/optimization.
DreamHAL is letting people do fast math on SH4 and now devs can do stuff that before they could only do with assembly knowledge. Moop has also included low-level video hacks that allow indie devs to do 720p output over those vga2hdmi adapters now.
In just the past few months we now have a few performance analysis libraries that has helped tremendously for devs to pinpoint what's keeping their game performance down.
SiZiOUS is nearing completion of DreamSDK R3, which now simplifies getting started with DC dev on Windows with a whole toolkit of UI based tools.

I don't know what's public knowledge and what isn't and I don't want to air everyone's business but I will say that I know at least one of the above guys has been given money to improve certain areas of their project. When people are being paid to work on open source projects that are available for the public to use freely, that's the biggest sign of a healthy open-source ecosystem.

Last year or the year before or whatever (time seems to fly for me these days), I said on here or AG that I'd resent any commercial indie dev for "cutting corners" so to speak by using the official SDKs and getting a leg-up on other commercial indie devs who play fair, don't risk legal trouble (Sega is not much of a threat but don't count out the myriad middleware vendors for example), and use the KOS ecosystem. I have seen so much movement behind the scenes in DC dev in 2020 that I am more excited for homebrew DC dev than I have been since around 2002. Seriously. So now I can truly say anyone who wants to use Katana/WinCE: knock yourself out, you're wasting time digging a hole tying your game engine to legacy code that won't be improved.

Just you wait! There will soon be no reason we can't have full-fledged indie releases on DC using the open-source libraries other than the typical necessity to have larger development teams and artists for 3D games.
 

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Hey now! What happened to this attitude from last year:


It's no miracle! It's the hard work of indie devs.
Never say never. Just in 2020 tremendous work has gone into the Dreamcast homebrew libraries and tools. It's not just KOS, it's a whole ecosystem surrounding it.
Simulant engine is still in early development (alpha) but very useful as an engine and people are already writing software with it.
Simulant is built around GLdc which is what mrneo320's NuQuake is based on -- mrneo320 worked with kazade on the testing/optimization.
DreamHAL is letting people do fast math on SH4 and now devs can do stuff that before they could only do with assembly knowledge. Moop has also included low-level video hacks that allow indie devs to do 720p output over those vga2hdmi adapters now.
In just the past few months we now have a few performance analysis libraries that has helped tremendously for devs to pinpoint what's keeping their game performance down.
SiZiOUS is nearing completion of DreamSDK R3, which now simplifies getting started with DC dev on Windows with a whole toolkit of UI based tools.

I don't know what's public knowledge and what isn't and I don't want to air everyone's business but I will say that I know at least one of the above guys has been given money to improve certain areas of their project. When people are being paid to work on open source projects that are available for the public to use freely, that's the biggest sign of a healthy open-source ecosystem.

Last year or the year before or whatever (time seems to fly for me these days), I said on here or AG that I'd resent any commercial indie dev for "cutting corners" so to speak by using the official SDKs and getting a leg-up on other commercial indie devs who play fair, don't risk legal trouble (Sega is not much of a threat but don't count out the myriad middleware vendors for example), and use the KOS ecosystem. I have seen so much movement behind the scenes in DC dev in 2020 that I am more excited for homebrew DC dev than I have been since around 2002. Seriously. So now I can truly say anyone who wants to use Katana/WinCE: knock yourself out, you're wasting time digging a hole tying your game engine to legacy code that won't be improved.

Just you wait! There will soon be no reason we can't have full-fledged indie releases on DC using the open-source libraries other than the typical necessity to have larger development teams and artists for 3D games.
I should really start actually coding for DC, versus coding DC stuff, once I have some free time, seems like a good time to start doing so!
It's just a pity that Real Lifeā„¢ gets in the way sometimes...
 

Greg2600

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Yeah, no doubt it doesn't hold up to retail games graphics. I doubt we will ever see a 3D indie game that truly does unless like a Quake engine game or something. And even then it is dated compared to what the DC can actually do unless hardware accelerated like neo's NuQuake build. Also don't forget, it is running on an engine made for one of those PSP Mini games called 4X4 Jam, just heavily modified as JoshProd bought the full source to that game and repurposed it for this. Even on PSP 4X4 Jam didn't look the best. It may just be an engine limitation in why the graphics look the way they do?

PSP? Ahhhh, I was under the impression the engine was from a DC 4x4 game!
 
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Anthony817

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Ah ok! Yeah it was based on the PSP Minis game 4X4 Jam, not the DC game 4X4 Evo. 2 quite different games graphically. I always thought at the time 4X4 Evo was an example of "photo realistic" and it still actually looks quite good to this day. It was my very first DC game I bought back in 2000, along with an ounce of weed from my first job at 17. šŸ¤“

You can see how nice 4X4 Evo looks compared to this engine.



Hey now! What happened to this attitude from last year:

I have always felt this way, at the time I just wished that more people utilized the official SDK libraries to get the most out of the system possible. I understand that KOS is way more advanced now than it was in say 2005 or so. I do appreciate the fact that we even have a game like this, or 4X4 Jam ported to the console. 3D homebrew and indie games are so few and far in between that it is almost regarded as a special occasion when we get one. I have never been against KOS not even once, if not for that we wouldn't have gotten so many great indie and homebrew games to begin with.

All those other projects sound great. 720P on Dreamcast? Please do tell more! I do have one of those cheap VGA2HDMI adapters! Is this exclusive to those devices or other VGA to HDMI solutions? I actually have quite a few different ones in addition to the VGA2HDMI.
 
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dark

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The drifting reminds me of the drifting in Virtua Racing on playstation 2, where the car appears to rotate from the center. Just an observation rather than a complaint. If its good enough for sega ;) ...
 

FamilyGuy

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The drifting reminds me of the drifting in Virtua Racing on playstation 2, where the car appears to rotate from the center. Just an observation rather than a complaint. If its good enough for sega ;) ...
It shouldn't be too hard to find the proper angle of attack using simple discrete dynamics for the car. Also the cars should spin around their center of mass. @JoshProd I'm available as a physics consultant :p
 
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Arcadia

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Does the game utilise the VMU in any capacity?
 
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