Futuristic Racer in development - We need YOU!

[atrkid]

Hey guys!

As the topic states, I've started about a month ago a project to create a new futuristic racer, and I could think of no place better than here to post about it!

I'm a student in International Business, and also happen to be an old WipeOut 2097 fan! In my spare time, I design games.
So finally a month ago, I decided to get work started on a futuristic racing game project, aimed at online racing, so racers can compare their scores and compete :)

The reason for that is because back when I was playing other games, I had no proper way to get ranking etc.

So, with the help of arts and media students, and coders, we've started making this project!

Project's been going for a month now, but I've been writing the concept document for a lot longer than this, how to balance ships, weapons, and gameplay in general. Unfortunately I cannot disclose any of it here at the moment.

The game itself is a commercial project, and we're paying the people who are helping the project. But the game will be completely free!

As development progresses, we're getting closer and closer to being able to have a test demo. We can already display ships and tracks, but need to improve the code (keep in mind, we're all students here!), and then to add physics etc :)

We're basically hoping that some people in this community will be interested in helping, in order to get the best controls and physics, discuss the weapons system and balance, or simply if they have ship or track ideas and can model them!

Basically we're hoping that real wipeout fans will be able to join the team and submit their input in order to create a good game. The good point is that the game will be open for upgrades, meaning that you'll be able to get new content, and upgrades (graphically etc) as development goes :)

If you're interested, send me a private message or reply here :)
Thanks in advance!

[Lance]

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''The game itself is a commercial project, ...But the game will be completely free!''

would you care to clarify this apparent paradox?
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[Axel]

This sounds interesting. Anything to do with furturistic racing I'm all for. Send me a pm with details, thanks :)

[Chill]

Sooo, what kind of racer is it? I do admit that this is awesome, but are you gonna use hovering crafts, or mabye something like jet-moto, or mabye something else? I thought of something a lot like Need for Speed that would be cool, but more along the lines of like the movie 'VHX1138', with futuristic cars and robotic police that chase you down. Or mabye something like the movie 'The 5th Element', also like Need for Speed, but airborn, making a more of a challenge to dodge traffic. Other than that, I only can think of Wipeout, which is already made, but don't get to near to the Star Wars racing games, and if I were you, I wouldn't even do anything in space. But no matter what way you do it, you should have a great atmosphere, and not one copying Wipeout. Theirs some cool ones I could think of... :wink:

[Thruster2097]

:lance
oh, it's obviously the completley free game you have to pay £34.99 for.

:atrkid
:lol:
very funny.
you want to make a clone of wipeout, and you want the true wipeout fans to help you.
I know that sentence is correct, but no matter how I rearrange the words it still doesnt make sense.

Go pester some of the f-zero kiddies.

[Shem]

don't be so rough on him Thrusty.
I give him credit. Unless he show's me some screens, a working demo, a list of ppl involved, and what they do, and a copy of the document. Maybe i was born in the dark, but i wasn't born yesterday. I can help. If the thing to help with actually exists.

[atrkid]

Wow, thanks for the interest.
Didn't expect to get so many replies quickly!

I was worried that you guy would be wondering about the "free" thing :P
Indeed, the game will be completely free.

You don't have to pay anything to unlock all of the game's content, you can get all the new ships, tracks, skins etc for free.

We're currently working on some concept art, so we could show it to you when it's done :)

Now just to clarify
I do like FZero, but I think its driving involve no skills. On the other hand the track design is very interesting, but the game lacks serious style.
The game is definitely not going to be a Star Wars Racer type of game, that was horrible.

It will feature hovering ships, and the key aspect is that it'll be online:
you can challenge your friends online and keep score tables.
the other advantage is that you can add new tracks, new ships etc, have tournaments online, and upgrade the game's engine with time.

As for the commercial aspect, all I can say is that yes, everything will be free, but you can guess that there'll be sponsors for the tournaments to give you prizes :)

Pleaseu, understand that I really can't disclose more about it at the moment, because the demo isn't ready yet, and the business plan is quite unique, so we don't wanna disclose it to non project members.

Oh yeah I forgot to add earlier, you'll be able to do your own tracklists for music of course :)

As for the game itself, the universe will be quite similar to Blade Runner, and massive corporations running the (secret name) racing league :)
It is aimed at pure racing, has weapons (that can be deactivated for races for the best time).

There are currently:
3 coders working on the game engine (2 on the gfx engine and menus, 1 on the network code).
1 person helping with test gfx
2 people composing a soundtrack for the game
1 person handling the business aspect, game design, and project management (me)

I hope that clarifies things a little bit!
Axel, I'll send you a pm asap :D

[Lance]

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''You don't have to pay anything to unlock all of the game's content, you can get all the new ships, tracks, skins etc for free.''
which sounds like you pay an upfront fee for the online play, or possibly for the original disc or download. or both. your sentence leaves a lot of room for paying something somewhere even though you try to give the impression that everything is free. it would be nice if your phrasing were more upfront and less weaselwording. this sort of thing makes me distrust you and your organisation and therefore the excellence of anything you might be involved with. to echo Shem's sentiments, we weren't born yesterday; we have too many experiences with companies to believe everything they say, and to not notice what they don't say. so far you sound like one of those telephone solicitors who says they're not trying to sell you anything when in fact that is exactly their purpose.

it looks like you're trying to get free ideas and assistance to make a product you want to charge for, but don't want to pay your workers [i.e.: us] for their efforts. perhaps the effort is underfunded and as a result you resort to somewhat underhanded labour tactics? the whole deal smacks of a certain dishonesty and misdirection on your part.

i eagerly await a convincing explanation of why none of what i suspect is correct.

on a possibly unrelated note, i find it interesting that this is the occasion of your first post when you've been a member for more than two years.

suspicious little bugger aren't i?
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[Prometheus]

[edit] I'm with Lance on this one... I just read the first post and saw the opportunity... but we need clarification... it's way too open and I don't want to aid something that could harm the wipeout franchise. It does seem like you're not charging us for the game, but you do leave it open for services/subscriptions.

[atrkid]

The game is FREE
The download is FREE
Ships, Tracks, everything in the game is FREE.

EVERYTHING.

how can I make it more clear :)

I'll explain to you the concept in PM.

[Prometheus]

got any concept art we could see?

[atrkid]

Also I wanna make it clear that there is no subscription or anything.
You do have to register to be able to play, just like you would in Starcraft or WC3 for example, so that we can save your high scores and ranking.

Also because it seems people are ultra suspicious about everything, just wanna point out we WILL NOT like give your email adresses to spam or marketing sites or anything!

The game is free :)
We are a group of students in business, art, and programming, teaming up to do a game together so we can use that for our portfolios later and get hired in good companies later.
Our teachers loved the idea, so they're helping kinda organise the whole thing.

As for concept art, we don't really have much right now, cuz as I said the gfx work didn't exactly start yet. But I can show you the stuff the engine coder is using, and the stuff the current modeler has produced!

They won't be used in the game as it is, cuz of course we're going to add textures, and that ship is just too much like a Quirex :P

http://atrkid2.free.fr/gk/vehicle.jpg
http://atrkid2.free.fr/gk/trackex.jpg

[Lance]

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i edited your post so that the images are provided as links instead of directly displayed in the post. please read and remember the WipoutZone guidelines.
and as mentioned frequently in the forums, 'large image' is anything over 50 Kb. also no series posting of images that total more than 50 Kb
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[zargz]

hmm .. looks cool!
you seem serious enough - let's hope this project will make it till at least a working demo! 8)
so tell me atrkid - what's your location?


Praeterea censeo autopilotum esse delendam

[atrkid]

I'm currently studying in Finland, but I'm French.

The network coder happens to be my flatmate, and he's Finnish.

The main engine coder is English, the other is Swedish.

The concept artist is from Norway.

Most of the artists will be Finnish as well, from the art and media school of Tampere (where I live in Finland)!

[genjix]

Hi, I am the coder for this project and am working on the physics and graphics rendering engine.
I'll be pleased to answer any questions, although I am a little busy at the moment.

[zargz]

:D cool!
one question > when you think you'll have a playable demo? 8O
approx ..


Praeterea censeo autopilotum esse delendam

[Gonaka]

this sounds interesting, im gonna keep tabs on this

[genjix]

i could probably have something crappy whereby you fly a ship round a black screen without gas trails pretty soon.

As for single player racing along a track with physics, is a bit longer off (I have to figure these out .etc)

And a full blown game even longer off.

Artists, Coders and game designers are very important early on in a game, as facilitating people midway through projects becomes difficult, although of course generating interest in the beginning is hard enough.

Also atrkid's account seems to be disabled and he's registering as atrkid2.
Could one of the admins check the sql database and see if his account still exists?

[Lance]

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it wasn't me. i'll check

edit: the account still exists, but is deactivated. presumably it was done by infoxicated for good reason. i will not go against his wish, therefore i will also deactivate any new account started by the same member in an attempt to get around the deactivation. this sort of posting by atrkid is presumably considered to be commercial spamming.
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[Spiral Motion]

I'm willing to help out, no problem.

Always good to see projects like this going on. :)

[genjix]

I don't see why this is considered commercial spamming, when we are trying to release a 'free' game.

We are simply making an appeal to futuristic racer enthusiasts to help make a game, not marketing our game.

BTW, anyone interested in meeting us just to get a general idea of what we're doing can contact us in a variety of different ways
irc.efnet.org:6667 in channel #xlr8
aphidia@hotmail.com is my msn
248287836 is my icq
rameenparis@hotmail.com is atrkid's msn

the others haven't come online today, so I haven't been able to ask them whether I can give out their contact info.

We Are posting here because we're wipeout fans. I think it's really unfair if they stop me from posting, if they think it's bad to create a new futuristic racer in active development, in whatever image we want.

[Lance]

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i don't even know for certain how the account was deactivated, but as far as definitions of 'commercial spam' go, the person who pays for the WZ server determines what that bandwidth is used for, so his definitiion is the one that is applied. :)

also don't forget that so far this game looks like a clone of Wipeout, and is therefore of questionable legality. remember all the 'look and feel' lawsuits about this very point? since it is being proposed that your group will profit from the game, even though they are students, your legal liabilities would be the same as any other commercial group. you abandon your doing-it-for-the-fans-for-no-profit position, and that's what happens.

if as atrkid says, you would be supported by sponsors, then those sponsors are commercial ventures paying you to compete with Sony, who originated the game you are essentially copying.
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[genjix]

As for your point about this project being of questionable legality when you abandon profit, well these rules still apply to OpenSource software as well.
But thank you for your input ;)

Oh yes, and I should probably mention that we are developing for windows and linux platforms (and hopefully mac with a developer to handle that source tree).

atrkid:
"Please don't kill our project here!!
We're just trying to reach the community so we can offer the game people want.

We can swear to you, this game will be free, and we've given your proof that it's real, and we'll try to get more people involved as development progresses in order to help balance the gameplay so you enjoy it!

We are not SPAMMING, we're asking for your help here.

We are fans, and we're making a game. We'd just like a chance to share it with you. I think it would be really unfair to stop us from posting about it and trying.

also, if you really don't want to see this game happen, fine. Keep us from posting here.

Just how many look and feel games do you think are out there?
I can list futuristic racers that date from WAY before WipeOut!

What about Fzero? Slipsteam 5000? What about other games like Ballistics, Dethkarz, Extreme G, Megarace 3?

We're making a futuristic racing game. There's plenty of rally games out there, I don't see them sueing each other."

[Lance]

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but so far, the only one of those that LOOKS like Wipeout is yours.

don't you see anything wrong in using a site, created and paid for by someone who is now a Sony employee working on Wipeout, to promote a game from which you would derive income, and which is a copy of Wipeout, and designed to compete with it? just because you are not selling the game, but are selling advertising in the game does not mean it does not compete with the original that it copies. it would still be a competitor [whatever its actual level of excellence] with the originators of the game being copied and exploited.
i have no problem with a clone as long as it is purely amateur, but you guys have a business plan for the game. that is a different thing entirely.

that ship design shown above is clearly a Wipeout ship. even the guy who designed the original Wipeout did not copy Wipeout ship designs when he formed his own company and did a futuristic racer for Microsoft's X-box.
.

[genjix]

There are plenty of examples of futuristic games, with ships having similar designs (take some of f-zero's ships having uncanny resemblance to feisar).
The only time copyright infringement takes place is when you explicitly take material from another project (i.e a video film clip from a film, as opposed to a scene from another film).
Also making a game in the image of wipeout, is not making a wipeout clone. Using good ideas from wipeout is definitely going to be done, but using material from the game is not (i.e tracks, teams).

From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
"Copyrights do not cover ideas or facts, only the particular expressions of such. A copyright on a Mickey Mouse cartoon, for example, does not prevent others from creating artistic works about talking mice. It only prohibits them the right to distribute Disney's cartoon, and to create derivative works closely copying that particular talking mouse."

I will be making no more posts regarding legal issues of the game. I will only be posting about the game content, and its improvements/contributions (provided the board allows me to do so).

Anyone interested in this fledgling project, feel free to come on irc.efnet.org:6667 #xlr8 and meet some of the other members.

atrkid:
" 1) The game will not look like wipeout.
The picture that was given above is just for eye candy, and will not be used in the game.
They won't be used in the game as it is, cuz of course we're going to add textures, and that ship is just too much like a Quirex

We're working on our own original ships tracks etc of course.

2) as i explained to you in private message, you are not to disclose our business ideas. Please edit your message asap."
[/b]

[Chill]

Well, I'm sorry, but it just looks to much like Wipeout for me to help out. You can be lowering the number of possible future buyers of any of the Wipeouts, so I'm gonna back out on this one, sorry. :wink: I love Wipeout to much for it to ever go out of business if this comes out to be really big. :D

[Lance]

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atrkid, i said only that you had a business plan, not what it is; in fact i said less than you yourself said in an earlier post.

do not forget that people who are asked to contribute to a project should know the nature of that project. they can ask you in private for more details; i have not divulged any in public. your very desire for secrecy says something about the project's nature, btw.
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[genjix]

Well, I'm sorry, but it just looks to much like Wipeout for me to help out. You can be lowering the number of possible future buyers of any of the Wipeouts, so I'm gonna back out on this one, sorry. :wink: I love Wipeout to much for it to ever go out of business if this comes out to be really big. :D

ok, what you are saying here is that there should be no competition and that SCEE should have a monopoly on the futuristic racer genre?

And anyway, this is for the pc platforms for which SCEE has never developed a futuristic racer, and the funding is nowhere near as much as the millions of pounds they put in.

As we said the information is free to anyone who asks, its just not in the public domain (yet).

For those who are interested in the project, why not follow up and find more out. Its not about making money, we are primarily making an online competitive game that will be fun.
More than anything we need Artists and Concept Designers.

[Lance]

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''And anyway, this is for the pc platforms for which SCEE has never developed a futuristic racer,''
Wipeout and Wipeout 2097/XL were both made for PC when Sony already owned Psygnosis. 2097 was released of Mac less than 2 years ago. you need to check your 'facts' before you get in legal troubles. i am not a fan of big corporations, Sony included, and their anti-competitive practices. what i am trying to make you aware of is a: that you are treading on dangerous legal ground, and b: that it is wrong for you to be using Rob's site for this promotion.
i realise that have no evil intent, and that you think you are just doing this for fun, and for a class project, but the commercial involvement changes all that. can you not realise this?
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[genjix]

I do not want to get into more arguing about the legal issues, but support for wipeout on pc platforms is discontinued (and I never saw a linux port either).
Commercial involvement changes nothing, if you take a look at Linspire's recent suing by Microsoft (read Lindows).
What made you think Im doing this for class anyway? (I don't even go to school anymore)
As for the promotion, we are not trying to promote the game, just get active development on the project (all the people who talk about wipeout concepts in the pilots lounge actually applying and making use of their ideas). Its not like we are trying to advertise and sell a product (that doesn't even exist yet).

[Space Cowboy]

Something about this whole thread, stinks! Im really suspicious of first posters like this.

[empee]

Its not like we are trying to advertise and sell a product (that doesn't even exist yet).
Yea.. sell a product that will be free when it's finished ;P

Maybe if we were coming here to get sponsors then you could say it's commercial spamming.

And let me introduce myself..

I'm atrkid's flat-mate and co-writer of the concept of this game.
I'm also the network coder for the project.
And i'm not a student anymore. I work as programmer for a big finnish company currently.

[Lance]

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how do you know what platform Sony may choose to compete on with a version of their intellectual property? the Wipeout series is not abandonware, as is clearly evident from the release of Pure. they certainly still own the exploitation rights to EVery version of Wipeout. even if it were abandonware, the companies that own the rights still have legal right for retribution for infringement on their copyrights. but it isn't even abandonware; it's a still continuing franchise. you must make it sufficiently different from Wipeout to not infringe, as indeed, you say you are. if so, then there is no problem.

seeking contributions for a commercial project is still a promotion of that project, just not at the stage of active sale to sponsors or buyers yet. however you look at it, you are still seeking to use someone else's private site for something that person may not choose to support. that is the final point that overrides all others. you can not have a valid objection to someone controlling their own site.

[Lance]

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i am temporarily locking this thread because i must be offline for a while.

please do not anyone start other threads on the same subject; they will be deleted if you do.
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edit: since the topic has been butted and rebutted, and then butted and rebutted some more to the point where nothing would be gained by either side from more dialectic, i am going to continue to leave it locked, but not yet disappeared. further review and input from admins and other moderators would be good. i am really trying not to be hotheaded and highhanded here. the temptation is strong to delete the topic and the memberships of all three of you for thinking you have the right to do what you want in a private forum owned by someone other than yourselves.