Grrrrr

The bad news:

For some reason, my domain hosts have decided to break grandprixtycoon.co.uk... so it no longer redirects anywhere useful. As you can imagine, I'm working to try and get this fixed ASAP. Until then you can use http://www.rushyo.com/gpt

The good news:

I've actually gotten around to making a few screenies of recent work. The game still isn't ready for alpha testing but it's getting alot closer. For those who aren't familiar with our work, alpha testing doesn't take a very long amount of time. We do most of our testing for bugs in the early beta stages.

In other words, it's not that far from being playable.

Make your way over to the website to view those screenshots!

Competition!

Over the university term I have been working on a DirectX 9 engine and learning how to write vertex and pixel shaders. I've made a few changes to Grand Prix Tycoon in this time but nothing particularly exciting.

I'm currently working on research and development. Over the course of the season you can improve the quality of your next year's chassis but for each improvement you will increase the cost. Even worse, there's the RRA regulations to consider on whether you can use the previous year's stuff.

So anyway, you're probably wondering what the competition is:

Write a business plan for a Grand Prix supplier. You can be supplying tyres, engines, electronics, brakes, fuel, etc and whoever writes the best will see their fictional business in the game as one of the AI businesses that every player will see and use. References to real suppliers in the name aren't allowed (no 'Badyear's... please) but are fine if only referenced in the business plan.

Things to think about adding:

How will your supplier overcome RRA regulations?
Are there any cutting edge technologies in the field your supplier could take advantage of?
What kind of budget would a supplier have?
How does your board of directors work, assuming you have one?

IP3 engine is gold!

A Quasit-Rushyo Games release (Feudal Britannia) has been remodelled in the IP3 engine. The engine includes integrated forums, a UI model similar to Grand Prix Tycoon and many libraries (bits of code) which I will be transposing over to GPT.

Now work on Grand Prix Tycoon will continue in earnest and a new range of screenshots should be available reasonably soon :)

Concurrent Development

I am currently working on developing algorithms and routines to protect the game from hacking attacks, to reduce the likelihood of bugs and make everything run faster with less strain on the server.

The architecture being used by Grand Prix Tycoon is similar to the new IP3 engine being developed by Quasit-Rushyo Games so the two engines are being developed simulatenously.

The engine which supports Grand Prix Tycoon is far in advance of previous releases and should, hopefully, reflect our passion for creating a professional game. The end benefits for the player are that the server will be able to support more players, the game will run faster and, most importantly, will be as bug-free as possible.

If it seems like a step back, don't worry. No work done so far on Grand Prix Tycoon will be affected and the improved architecture will actually make production go rather faster.

Release date extended

Despite what the title might suggest, Grand Prix Tycoon is certainly not going the way of the vapourware :) However, in light of the excellent progress being made with GPT, it has been decided that additional time will be spent and the design extended, to ensure Grand Prix Tycoon is the excellent release it should be. We would rather take more time to craft an excellent game than write a simply 'good' game.

This will mean bringing in additional technologies (whilst 3d implementations have been scrapped, we are experimenting with other ways to enhance the immersion of the game) and adding more things, which will take time. I hope you can appreciate the end result will be better.

I, and the team, have no intention at all of scrapping this project... we just want to see it succeed in the best possible way.

3d Online Development

I have been looking at Java-based DirectX solutions that might allow 3d visuals for Grand Prix Tycoon. Nothing complicated you understand, just a little spice to the menus.

However, all the current solutions seem a little lightweight for what I want to do (no access to the rendering pipelines, whereas my DX solutions are very low-level) and all are inordinately complicated for even the most simple actions (and this is compared to DirectX development in C++).

As I was writing this, I was asked by someone why I don't develop my games in DirectX and instead use browsers. Here's a list of reasons:

o Cost/time balance. Browser development can be done quickly without any cost. DirectX development is very difficult and arduous and requires a big team to do in any sensible size.
o My games are far more sophisticated than many commerical releases. They just don't have the graphics. So what?
o Browser-based games are easy to maintain and build upon. Software solutions require complicated update management systems.
o Grand Prix Tycoon can be played on anything from a Wii through to a mobile phone.
o I couldn't make it free. The cost of development and the time it would take would be far greater.
o Etc, etc. I can think of a few more but I'm too lazy to labour the point.

Class Listing

Categories (in bold) and classes on the table so far:

Karting

100cc Begineer (eg. Formula K100)
250cc Gearbox National [3 Max] (eg. Formula 250E)

Open Wheel

600cc Club (eg. Formula Jedi Class A)
1000cc Club (eg. Formula Jedi Class B)
1600cc International [1 Max] (eg. Formula Ford 1600)

Touring Car

Stock Open (eg. NASCAR)
Touring Open (eg. Dunlop British Touring Car Championship)
International Rally [1 Max] (eg. World Rally Championship)

V8 Open Wheel

Club V8 (eg. Renault World Series)
Pro Racing [3 Max] (eg. British F3 to Formula One)

Still not sure how to balance these as I know most players will be looking to join V8OW instantly. I was considering 'starter accounts' with an instant Club V8 drive but none of the tycoon features. There is also the issue of karting prices. The prices are so tiny, it won't work with the current system since the smallest increment is one thousand and changing the increment would make the prices in higher classes look a bit odd.

One potential solution might be to have a conversion when displaying on the screen so for a karting team it would show '3000' whilst for a Pro Racing team it would be '3k'. Another (which would also help balancing) is to use falsely increased costs for karting-level teams, but this would decrease the realism of the game.

Whichever route I take, the amount of teams you may have in any category will be limited.