Space Jump WIP video

This is a 4x speed run through of a map I am working on to test out a "gauntlet" type game mode where the goal is to be the first to get to the finish against the clock. We are planning on having checkpoints throughout the map so that if you fall off you can respawn. Brian is also anxious to add physical obstacles along the blank straight lengths that will move around which you will have to dodge.

In other news, I have found a new place to work on Zero Gear - a real actual office space shared with my brother, exciting!

Zero Gear Trailer 1

We were asked to provide a video that will be shown along with our entry for the IGF, so here is something I whipped up!

Chute Shoot video to boot!

Here is a video we took last night while playtesting our new map, it was a blast!

Twister Item video

I know it is sat. night, but what else would you expect us to be doing with under one month left until IGF submissions are due? Tonight we took a break to make a little video showing how fun our new twister item is. It is the latest in our quest to create physics based weapons. Click to watch!

New movin' pictures: Zero Gear race track showcase

As I have been promising for some time now we finally have a new video for everyone. This video showcases our initial 3 race maps that we are working hard to outfit with all the gameplay gears and gadgets that Brian is developing as we speak. These will be 3 of the 5 maps that we plan to have for our first beta release.



Looking forward to racing some of you in these soon!

P.S. These beautiful levels would not be possible without the fine rendering engine Ogre3d, as well as the well crafted particle engine, Particle Universe.

Video: Garage Editor

Here is our latest video!

Here we are showcasing the garage portion of the game which will allow players to customize their kart and character. We built this portion of the game with heavy utilization of Hikari which enabled Zero Gear developer Ian Marsh to engineer the gui elements in flash and actionscript. We are using the open source Ogre3d to render the characters and environment. Also you will hear some great sound effects by Tapio Liukkonen of Kaamos Sound.

If you are interested in getting the the garage and toy with creating your own special character, stay tuned! You just might get the chance soon!

P.S. If you are in the United States remember to check out the latest issue of 3D World which has just hit newsstands! It features Zero Gear in their feature of open source software!

Look-Back and status update

It has been a little while since we posted an update - Brian has been a little bogged down moving to another apartment in San Fransisco, and I have been slightly derailed doing some non game related contract work to bring in some more development funds.

But here is just a little feature we got working last weekend, a "look-back" key that you can press to check out what it going on behind you. I think it will be very useful!


Zero Gear Look-Back from marshmonkey on Vimeo.

A Mini Map With Maximum Enjoyment

After getting Hikari working, we wanted to test it.

We wanted to create something we could use in game. Something that would be difficult or time consuming to create manually. We also wanted to see how well it held up. What better test than a Mini Map?

First, here is the Mini Map in action:


It was created by Dave's brother Ian and supports rotating, zooming, and any number of icons on the map. It was written in ActionScript 3 and is a Flash element that is being rendering in our game using Hikari.

It performs quite well. There is barely a FPS drop and it is pretty smooth.

You can see the full source here and the data file here.

Here is a quick summery of what I needed to do to get it working in game.

I call the ActionScript
loadMap(imageUrl:String, mapWidth:Number, mapHeight:Number):void
function from Lua, passing in the name of the mini map image, the width of the map in game units (1 unit is a meter), and the height (or depth in 3D).

I can then call the ActionScript
setPlayerPosition(x:Number, y:Number, rot:Number, zoom:Number):void
function, passing in the x position, y position (or z in 3D), the degrees rotated around the y axis, and a zoom amount (based on speed of the player).

There is a similar function for setting data related to other players called setObjectPosition().

From there Ian takes care of the rest and that means I have time to watch an episode of Dexter instead of writing a Mini Map in C++. Yay!

New Video! Fallout gameplay mode and 3 Items!

Thanks for patiently waiting, (well most of you) we have reached another milestone in the development of the game. This video was from an online playtest we held to test out a fresh gameplay mode called "Fallout" (where the object is not to fall out of the level) along with our very first implementations of 3 different items. There are also a few new characters thrown in and some other things we have added along the way. You might also notice another new thing for Zero Gear, sounds! We have been working with a mysterious character from the icy north to provide Zero Gear with sounds. We will reveal all about him in another post soon! Enjoy the video!


Click to play video

multi-player mayhem

Brian has been working a ton of hours getting the networking portion of our game far along enough to have our first Zero Gear play test, which we hosted at a LAN party this weekend. It seemed to be a great success and everyone seemed to have a great time driving around their characters even if we didn't have any real race rules in place yet. I was able to grab a lot of footage and I pieced together a little video, click the image below:



Here are a few action photos of the Zero Gear party in progress, thanks to everyone who came and played!