If you're looking for something slightly different this week, then look no further than this latest development by Deuteros called 'Spirit of Eternal Racer'. A personal experiment turned technical demo that requires a very beefy Amiga 1200 with added (PiStorm/ RTG). A tech demo that the creator says mixes retro charm with realistic driving physics and a smooth, fast-paced experience. To coincide with this news provided below is the full details and gameplay footage.
Here's the latest "Spirit of Eternal Racer is a personal experiment turned technical demo — a 2.5D racing engine inspired by games like Out Run, Vroom, and Nigel Mansell's World Championship. Designed with performance on the Amiga 1200 + PiStorm in mind, it mixes retro charm with realistic driving physics and a smooth, fast-paced experience."
Why This Exists
- I wanted to create something new — something that actually uses the power of the PiStorm for more than ports or emulators. At the same time, I was itching to make a 2.5D racer… and test how far I could go using AI coding tools while still keeping full control of the project. Fun was the main goal — fun in coding, building, and optimizing for a strange but exciting mix of old and new tech.
- This may or may not turn into a full game — that depends on performance, interest, and whether I get around to implementing AI rivals, collisions, menus, and game logic. But as a playground for coding, creativity, and exploring what's possible on hybrid retro hardware… it's already doing its job.
Features (So Far)
- 2.5D Racing Engine
- Based on segment rendering & perspective projection (inspired by Jake Gordon and Lou’s tutorials).
- Dirty rectangle rendering for optimized redraws.
- Occlusion system to skip rendering hidden elements.
- Parallax backgrounds for motion depth.
- Custom copper sky effect on Amiga for performance.
Vehicle Simulation
- Realistic acceleration, braking, and top speed.
- Centrifugal force on curves.
- Gear system (manual & auto).
- RPM & engine sound simulation.
- Terrain effect when going off-track.
Sprite System
- Cached and scaled based on distance.
- Composite objects and sprite registry to avoid duplication.
Configurable Options
- External file for screen resolution, fullscreen mode, draw distance, etc.
- Supports keyboard and joystick input.
I know it is early, but the car looks like a block of ice floating on the track. Where are the wheels, or motion of an actual car moving.
ReplyDeleteHopefully that's next.. Does look very slidy ;)
DeleteThanks for your comments. Since then, I've tried to improve the graphics after reading your opinions. So now, there is a new demo on itch.io and aminet.
DeleteIn the new version, the car sprites are more detailed, the roads have skid marks, the wheels rotate, the car shakes when it loses traction and drifts wide on curves.
https://aminet.net/game/race/SoER-0.5.1.lha
https://deuteros76.itch.io/spirit-of-eternal-racer/devlog/1509171/amiga-v051-demo-available
Amiga needs these kind of beefy games, games like Need for Speed and Grand Turismo 5. Even Racing Fever on Android would be a good project to port to Amiga (it has no road turns even). Never owned a PC capable of running modern games, so I'm still waiting for PC ports of various car racing games to show up on e.g. Pistorm and Vampire. I bet there are a lot of Amiga users who never owned a good enough PC/Windows machine to play modern games and only had a Linux system running on a second hand PC they got for free (or Android phone).
ReplyDeleteWhy only for Amiga 1200? This could easily have been done on OCS...
ReplyDelete