Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Cannonball Future Plans

Things are going well with Cannonball. It's great to see some of you getting your hands dirty with ports! One of my original objectives was to bring the definite version of OutRun to every platform known to mankind. And we're slowly getting there ;)

I've added some brief information for those porting Cannonball on the following wiki page.

I plan to work on two features next. The first is analog control, including pedals. I picked up a Logitech MOMO Racing wheel cheaply on ebay. I just need to wait for an adapter plug to arrive in the post and then I can give it a spin.


Force Feedback support will probably arrive later, given that it's not in the current stable version of SDL. It's possible we can patch it in for some platforms though.

I'm also going to start work on an interactive track editor of sorts. This is likely to take me some time, so don't hold your breath on this (and I'll probably divert to working on the steering wheel stuff before). 

I like the idea of rendering the level as you will see it in the game, dynamically adjusting elements of it, and then being able to race it on the fly. 


click for full size version

I've started reimplementing the mode I had in the early tech demo, where you can step through a level and adjust the camera in order to facilitate this. Although now we have hi-res and widescreen as an added bonus. 

7 comments:

d from Shmups said...

In car view in Outrun?

d from Shmups said...

analog, yeeeees! I am getting pretty good at outrun with the digital controls of my usb Sega pad tho.
R = gas, L is brake, X = shift.
I'm fast!

alforata@gmail.com said...

Awesome, I was kinda waiting for that. I have a Logitech G27 and I enjoy it the most playing Daytona 2 and SCUD race :P

It would be amazing if you could add support for the G27 LED lights, I do know that logitech has an sdk somewhere to help with that.

Anyways, keep the epic job on Cannonball. I'm playing a lot of Outrun lately cause of it.

Mr. Rockgovsky said...

Track editor? Awesome news!
BTW, on the highscore screen it's hard to input characters (while using digital input)-is this related to input being analogue on the arcade machine?

Also, is there any way to pause the game that I have missed?

yt said...

Press F1 to pause.
Press F2 to advance a frame.

The high-score input is as intended. If it's a pain, you can always increase the sensitivity of the digital controls.

Dave Wellington said...

Would you ever consider supporting Space Harrier as well? I'm guessing it would be a massive undertaking, but a lot of code would be reusable too?

yt said...

@Dave: Haha, no I don't have another 3 years of my spare time to devote to this kind of thing.

Whilst I still have interest in the project I'm mainly going to focus on level editing tools.

Then maybe teach myself some better electronics skills as a hobby...