Tachyon-R: A brutally fast futuristic racing game. Tearing around the narrow tracks at breakneck speeds can be deadly enough, but factor in the opponents and it becomes insane - 'more [opponents] you have, the worse it is ..'

I'm extremely happy with how this compo worked out and with what I achieved. I've long ago giving up the idea of finishing a complete and fun game within the 48 hour limit, as this just seems way too difficult for me. Instead this time I've concentrated on a genre of game I've never attempted before: a racing game.

I used a library which I have been building up over the last 7-8 Ludum Dares and this time around I did have to expand it a little (collision/response code mostly) and fix old issues. Despite this, I still managed to get a full track generator, track/car physics and a crude A.I. racing around. The challenge of the game is definitely shallow: simply finish the track without exploding - but it works! and it would be a good starting point for a more complete game.

There are a few things missing which I initially planned: weapons and pickups being the main things, as well as some fast electronic music. The hand-brake controls feel surprising satisfying but unfortunately, there is nowhere in the game to really test them out. As usual, I left too little time to do any decent graphics and I totally neglected soundFX/music (the only music is from Incomputech: of course I disabled the sound rating).

There is definitely a lot of room to expand on this game in coming weeks: pickups, weapons being the obvious missing components to make this a proper 2d wipeout clone - and better track generation with loops, intersections and jump would be cool. There are a few little bugs in the game: sometimes the tracks generate with really large angled-corners (you can still pass drive around them normally, but it doesn't look nice). Also, to simplify the physics and maintain the fast pace, touching a wall will re-bound you can in the track direction. This feels good while racing, but makes turning the wrong way on the track hard-to-do.

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