Protoxide Racing

Here’s new clip from the game, take a look at our work

Steelers’ laws are dictated by the four major criminal gangs of the city. Each gang controls a special branch of illegal business, thus the crime lords do their best to negotiate peacefully, though it doesn’t stop the gangsters from slaughtering each other during the street racing.

The docks are controlled by the Dutch’s gang.

This crime lord was previously a ships captain, though when the shipping company left the city leaving everything behind, he quickly understood that the equipment in the docks may be used to grab money. The Dutch and his gang had taken the docks district and all the equipment.

The dutchmen turn the common cars into warglyders and repair the broken machines. The other gangs have to use the Dutch’s services from time to time.

The factory is under Beebs’ gang control.

Beebs is a tiny, fragile-looking woman but she knows no equals while driving her warglyder. Charismatic and ruthless, she had gathered the countryside brutes around herself and captured the factory complex with their help. Now Beebs specializes in weapon production and supplies all the other gangs.

The “Underwater world” is owned by the Colonel’s gang.

Initially the “Underwater world” was a complex designed to research the depths of the ocean. After the scientists abandoned it, the complex was taken by the ex-security team. The chief of security dubbed the Colonel headed the gang and reconstructed the labs for drugs production. His business is one of the most lucrative in the city.

“The City” is held by the Bomber’s gang.

Once “the City” was a center of business activity, now it’s the crime focus. Brothels, casinos, dens – all are located in the center and controlled by the most numerous gang – Bomber’s jolly guys.

The Bomber began his criminal career long time before the civilized life in Steelers ceased. Since then he has risen to the utmost top of the Steelers’ food chain and now he represents the most powerful force in the region.

It’s been quite a time since our last post in the blog, but trust us – it was worth waiting for. We are almost done working on this game and the time has come to reveal some details of the world which player is going to visit.

The first chapter shall tell about the events preceeding to the events of Protoxide.

The game actions take place in the streets of american city Steelers at 2068. As a result of fast industrial expansion, the resources quickly run out and the atmosphere gets polluted. Meanwhile the technological level allows the humankind to control neighbour planets. The inhabitans of Earth leave their planets in order to colonize the new worlds and start their lives from scratch. The corporation start their production at the remote colonized planets, totally abandoning their outdated actives on Earth. In but a short time some cities became totally abandoned.

Steelers city is exactly an example of such a place. Once an industrial megapolis, nowdays abandoned by the majority of citizens. Only the small group of people who didn’t manage to leave Steelers due to some reasons remains. Although, aside from the common citizens there appeared the bands of criminals. They seized the remains of corporations and power and started the illegal production. Of course, a part of devices was left to rot, but the other one daily and nightly produces weapons, drugs and wargliders (the jet battle machines). What they are unable to produce on their own they just buy or steal from the military or from the other bands.

The goods from Steelers are smuggled to the remaining survived cities where live the majority of illegal products consumerists. There are “mules” in the band – those who carry the stuff with the heavy cars – and “hawks” which engage into battles with the police or competetors, if they do not let caravans go.

Of course the government pays little love to the current order of things, but majority of police and army ensures order in colonies so the smugglers rarely face resistance.

The gangs compete amongst each other but they made an agreement to avoid the needless skirmish. The spheres of influence are decided in the Big Race. The best hawks of all the gangs compete in speed and might, and the winners win title, power and respect.

In the next chapter we shall tell about the Steelers gangs and main characters of the game.

Keeping silence for more than a month was not a good idea of course. Though it’s a vacation time after all. At the moment we have a list of what we’re working on. The two key items are:

Make it look better.
Most of you told us that the textures were not good at all. Ok, ok, agree, had a look at NFS then and dropped my jaw. We decided to retexture the levels. Our tests show that having good textures is not slower than having simple ones, so why not have good ones.

Make it run faster on oldies (2G and 3G).
We’re trying to keep geometry and textures as detailed as possible and this makes reaching fast framerates a challenge. We’re now to implement a PVS system to make sure iPhone does not choke with that much geometry we’re pushing in.

Finally, here are the features that are easy to demonstrate.
The new textures and some geometry:

A lens flare:

We’ve received a number of replies to the prototype video. I’d like to respond to them:

Maktub
looks like some things are copied from q3, if i get it right it’s done for mobile platform, exactly for mac os, that’s on iphone. mobile soft is a progressive direction, the game is sooo stupid, STILL making complicated games for mobile devices is not worth it imho, it’s uncomfortable to play and use more than 2 buttons. i wouldn’t play this one, but people would like it i think.

The controls should be easy and clear for sure. You’ll be steering with accelerometer, and pushing one of the nitro boost or break buttons (with one finger). For those who don’t like accelerometer we’ll add the swipe steering, so that you’d steer with one hand and boost/break with the other.
Read more…

Ok, here’s what we plan to include in the game:

• 5 different ships to choose from, ranging from the heavy tank-like to the light and fast bike-like.
• 4 worlds of 4 racing tracks each, 16 tracks in a total.
• 5 weapon types, pick-up bonuses like nitro or nuclear weapons.
• Quick race and career modes.
• Multiplayer over WiFi.
• Hall of fame, both local and online.
• 3D stereo sound, cool music.
• Motion sensor controlled steering (or swipe controlled if you’d prefer).
• Player profiles. So that when your little brother asks you for iPhone, he won’t destroy your championship progress.
• Game encyclopedia, if you’d like to know what exactly which bonus or weapon means.

All these features are being developed at the moment. We’re not sure if we’d pack them all into the first release, though will try our best.

We’re also not sure about player profiles, whether we need them. iPhone is a personal device, right? Let us know (poll is on the right sidebar)

It’s always better to see something once, instead of hearing about it a hundred times. Thus, I’m not going to describe the game with words. Just watch the video:

It was recorded from the prototype version. Things may change (and will change, and have already changed since we recorded this video , but you should get the idea.

This prototype was running on desktop, however our iPhone one is pretty close to look the same. We’ll show it soon.

PS: yeah, I know, I know, the ship falls too slow. It’s a prototype, right, it’s made to find and fix such things.

Hi guys.

It’s been almost a year since we started prototyping our new game called Protoxide.  It’s a futuristic 3d racing game targeting mobile devices (iPhone primarily). We decided that it’s just about time to start sharing some spoilers about the game. The game starts to look solid so we wanted to know if you’d like it like we do.

We’ll post information about the game in this blog. Expect to see early videos, graphic sketches, our future plans and so on.

Don’t hesitate to ask any question on the game or propose any idea. We need your opinion to create a cool game together.