“Multiplayer Laser Tag, Dogfighting, Desert Racing, Dune Bashing, Extraterrestrial Exploration, and Rock Crawling - All At The Same Time!” Ascend massive volcanoes, race atop elevated plateaus, splash through lava flows, and execute aerobatic stunts using deployable wings while playing laser tag with your friends over the internet!
Many of you will recognize Mars Explorer as my “First Day with Unity” project of a couple months ago, but I have been working on it diligently - and it has come a long way!
You can find out much more about Mars Explorer at it’s website: http://MarsXplr.com
I’ve been following this - you’ve done quite well on the Widget list and are setting a high mark for other Unity Widget developers (getting and holding the top game download for an extended period of time).
K. I was driving around in the lava pit at the top of the volcano, and I went near the edge, to the left (when you’re looking at it from the ground) of the spillway. The buggy fell down to the terrain (under the lava), and then flew straight up at 500 mph. I couldn’t tell which way was up, until I started falling, and saw my trail. When you’re up that high, the map is useless, and you can’t even see the ground. And, the glitch isn’t even that great, because you can’t keep even a fifth of the speed you get from falling! Not to mention crashing a lot, due to the flying physics. Great Game! Keep ‘em comin’!
on multiplayer connection to a game, i couldn’t see other players buggys… just the blobs under em…
also, music and scene lagged significantly upon connection to one game… but was smooth as a bell on another connection… (not the fault of the program i’m sure, just letting you know)
otherwise, this was really kinda neat… definitely continue…
here’s a hack for getting to the top of the volcano. Just drive up the lava river. It makes for slow going, but i couldn’t get up any other way. You might want to change that.
Thanks!
I think the main formulas that have propelled Mars explorer thus far are significant, frequent updates, and the multiplayer aspect of the game - which automatically helps to form a community around it. Although I don’t intend to deliberately exploit “loopholes” in Apple’s Widget distribution system, my “spare time” development model has me releasing major updates somewhat regularly, and lots of people can’t help but download a fun looking game that is always near the top of the “Staff Picks” list on Apple’s widget home page
Invisible vehicles is definitely a bug. Thanks for reporting it! I haven’t yet experienced this, but I will see if I can find what could be causing it.
Perhaps the “slow” game you joined simply had more players in it? I have a hard limit of ten “real” players per game - but the server host is also allowed to add up to ten robots to each game as well, and the difference between three and twenty vehicles in your game could certainly have a visible performance impact.
Whenever the game detects a low framerate, it should present you with the option to disable some rendering effects to speed the game up. Has anyone used this, and is it simple and intuitive enough to actually be useful to people?
@Dakta:
The vehicle wheels should be touching the ground - If you could provide a screenshot, it would really help with debugging.
I will definitely fix the lava “launcher” at the top of the volcano. I didn’t feel like modeling the lava as a complicated 3D object in an external modeler, so I just constructed it as a couple overlapping cubes in Unity. The problem is that where the cubes overlap, sometimes my “floating” script doesn’t realize that you are still in lava after exiting it.
Being able to drive up the lava flowing down the volcano is intentional. There are several ways to get to the top of the volcano, but I figured that if you can’t make it up any other way - and you have a lot of patience - you still deserve to see the view from the top
Thank you everyone for your suggestions! I look forward to releasing lots of new Mars Explorer features in the future…
its funny i cringed when i first heard the music (folky + mars!?!) but it very quickly grew on me and now i love it - particularly when gently coasting through the air. nice choice with that, it gives the game a unique personality.
i think the vehicle could use some more torque so it can climb (and get out of a depression) a bit easier.
I appreciate your comments on the music! It was performed on a mountain dulcimer, with some “extraterrestrial” reverberations added by Garageband.
I hear what you are saying about more vehicle torque, but I want to make sure that the game retains a little bit of a puzzle aspect - I think it’s more fun to have to think a bit about where you can build enough speed to get where you want to go, than to just be able to point your tires and drive anywhere without thinking about it. I am eventually going to be adding some more vehicle types to Mars Explorer, one of which I plan to be a “tank” with super high torque but a low top speed - which should help in those instances when you really feel the urge to drive up a cliff
P.S. Unity 2.1 is great!!! The vehicle headlights I have been experimenting with are really fun…
I have released several new Mars Explorer versions since the last post, and I am sure you will enjoy all the new features. Version 1.8, scheduled for release in a day or two, is getting pretty awesome
On another note, I wanted to know if any of you have experience with the legal implications of accepting third party contributions to a game. Mars Explorer’s community is growing tremendously, and several players have enjoyed the game so much that they are beginning to design their own new worlds and vehicles for it. Someone told me that accepting these contributions could endanger my “ownership” of Mars Explorer, and if any of you have experienced similar situations I would really appreciate your thoughts and suggestions on this issue. My idea was to ensure that all the contributors grant their works into the public domain before I add them to the game, but if anyone has other ideas I would be interested to hear them.
Turbulence is definitely a possibility. By “ascensional force”, do you mean making it easier to drive up the lava flowing down the volcano on the Freestyle world, or are you thinking of a “thermal” effect when you are flying close to any lava?
@gizzerd91;
What kind of animation?
High end graphics cards get a “super reflective” shader for the wingg - were you thinking of something other than that?
I have many more features in the works ~ including an iPhone version - which is 90% of the way to compiling, and would be running on my iPhone already if Unity support could get back to me on the the bug that is causing my editor to crash
What kind of a visual overhaul are you thinking of?
I did all the graphics myself, and welcome any comments you have on them.
After playing it more, it seems there are some consistent problems with people not responding. In the games I played, you couldn’t tell where people were a lot of times. You’d just see their vehicle in the corner and they’d be chatting about going off somewhere. And then at one point connecting to a game kept crashing my Firefox.
Regarding visuals, I guess it depends on what you’re going for. Mars does have an atmosphere, so you could experiment with having a sky of a certain color. I think one issue is that the lighting isn’t very clear, and part of that might be due to the vehicle being really reflective, so you can’t see what direction its coming from. The colors are a little too saturated IMO, and could be toned down.
I gathered up some cool concept art images of Mars subject matter. Here’s the list:
