Musicracer

[3devils]

Hey guys,

we've just released our first game "Musicracer", a rythm game for Mac + PC.
Like Audiosurf, it creates 3D racing tracks from mp3 (ogg,wav) files.
It's completely free, so please check it out and tell us what you think - we would really like some of your rythm game enthusiasts feedback to help us make the game better.

http://www.musicracer.de

Gameplay video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkGuOdBPWfM

bye,
Thomas

[Mincus]

It's an interesting start to a game, but it's far from finished.

- The beat detection seems ok, but the number of objects on the track is so sparse it's hard to tell.
- The controls are far too loose, this makes it very, very frustrating to play.
- Hitting red spikes has a nasty cumulative effect because you can't see where the next one is, so you tend to hit several in a row if you hit one.
- No FLAC support, which made it impossible to play most of my music collection.
- There's artifacts with the track rendering in the distance, I suspect it's a z-buffer issue, it might only occur on the highest graphics setting, I didn't test too much.

What's good:
- Nice graphics overall, it's shiny and nice to look at, although a little sparse.
- It's fun to play, although doesn't really challenge Mono on Audiosurf in terms of fun, it's ok to pick up for a few minutes.

So, as I said, good start, needs a lot of work.

You might be better off posting it somewhere like the TIG source forums as you'll get better feedback (http://forums.tigsource.com/). Take a look at the rules and try to do more than just post in a forum then vanish though, it helps when you're a part of the community before doing a drive-by advertisement, even if it's for a nice and free product.

[blue_h3x]

First off, congratulations on the Audiosurf ripoff game.

No FLAC support, well there goes most of my collection. It’s not as much rediscover your music more like lose it. Doesn’t seem to support ogg or wma either. I had to convert tracks to play them, not something I’m gonna do often.

The menu buttons are hideously large, and the UI seems slapped together. No keyboard entry for folder names, so I’m forced to scroll instead of begin typing the name.

Otherwise the game graphics are pretty. There’s not enough variation in track speed, I could hardly tell the difference between up hill and down hill. Although playing was rather like my head being placed in a large cow bell and it being hammered. The ‘hit’ sound is painful and annoying.

What exactly does the ‘change view’ do? I didn’t see any difference while playing.

No tag reading, simply gives me %file name% not %song_title% - %song_artist% on the results screen. With yet more hideous buttons.

Nice work on the track generation, but it just lacks any reason for me to play it. Also having to convert my music collection is not a plus.

[S.]

Only seen the video. No time to try out.

1: The sounds are like being waterboarded, underwater.
2: I like the bobsleighish track.
3: Beat detection seems ok
4: Can't really see how the music influences the track shape.

Of course, this is jsut by the video. But I think 1 and 2 apply to every song being played in the game.

[Mincus]

Yeah, I forgot to mention the sound effects: They're terrible. Really distracting and don't fit well.

[3devils]

Thanks for the feedback.

@Mincus: With the controls I bet you mean the keyboard - that's actually a late addition. The game was meant to be played with the mouse/trackpad, those controls are much better.
Forgive the drive-by advertisement, but when you spend so much work on something you want it to be seen, and this community seemed like a good place to mention it. (And as you said - it's free)

@blue_h3x:
FLAC Support: That is indeed missing, but ogg works.
ID3 tags are high up on our list for the UI.
"GUI Slapped together": Proper description of the process. Yep, needs work.

And we don't consider it a "rip-off" although we kinda expected people to say that.
Besides being quite an obvious concept, the game was developed since early 2008 as part of a University project, first in some other 3D engine. Our programmers didn't know about Audiosurf back then.
We changed all the graphics and did some finetuning the last months.
Although you all noticed different parts not being perfect, it was quite some work to get it to it's present state.
And hey, it's free and it got a MAC client.

@S.Eagle:
The sounds are even higher on our priority list than the ID3 tags.

bye,
Thomas

[Passerby]

ya i didnt try it yet since most of my collection is FLAC but from the video it is hard to tell how the song affect the track.

[S.]

Remind me to actually test this out. I'm open to these kind of games.

Speaking of which, I still need to play that GH-ripoff

[blue_h3x]

Been playing some more. The engine sometimes doesn't draw the score indicators (+5 etc) but instead I get just a green blur. Seems to happen when the skysphere is at the dark bits or the track is behind that bit of the screen.

I played a song which for the first half had no things to hit at all. The beat detection should be tweaked on the fly for softer songs really.

Also when the track goes round a corner, ideally it should bank not remain flat, it'll feel faster and look better that way.

Good to hear ID3 and FLAC are coming soon.

[Mincus]

@Mincus: With the controls I bet you mean the keyboard - that's actually a late addition. The game was meant to be played with the mouse/trackpad, those controls are much better.

No, I mean the mouse, it's very loose and difficult to control.

Forgive the drive-by advertisement, but when you spend so much work on something you want it to be seen, and this community seemed like a good place to mention it. (And as you said - it's free)

This was more aimed at if you decide to post on TIGsource, they don't like drive by adverts on there.

[blue_h3x]

@Mincus: With the controls I bet you mean the keyboard - that's actually a late addition. The game was meant to be played with the mouse/trackpad, those controls are much better.

No, I mean the mouse, it's very loose and difficult to control.

Indeed mouse control is too fast. I had to set the mouse speed to the lowest before it was remotely playable.

[3devils]

Hey guys,

just wanted to tell you we released a new Version 1.0.1 with some bugs fixed you mentioned here:

- fixed keyboard control and improved mouse control sensitivity.
- added FLAC support.
- added keyboard navigation to the filechooser. You can now
  jump to folders by simply typing the first few characters of
  a band or folder name.

http://www.musicracer.de/

bye,
Thomas

[blue_h3x]

Nice to see you weren't just drive-by url spamming and listened. I'll check it out.

Mouse sensitivity is better and makes the game more playable.
Nice addition of the keyboard entry, though it doesn't recognise spaces, which can be annoying.

All in all, this game is still boring to play. Even being able to play my favourite tracks (in FLAC) I was still bored playing. It needs something more to it, that makes you feel more engaged.

The cow bell hit sound is still annoying as well.

[3devils]

Thank you for the honest feedback.
We also think it needs some more fireworks, something more engaging, and we are working on tuning the assets among some other things. Expect a new version in a couple of weeks.
Our day jobs keep messing with our schedule for the game.

[blue_h3x]

Can you make the track bank? So the normal to the centre of the track isn't parallel to horizontal.

Also, as you are going down the 'racer' path, you could try adding inertia when cornering. Such that you need to adjust position to make the corner without hitting the outside.