We’re happy to say that Road Redemption offers a variety of selectable bikes. Currently the list includes sport bikes (crotch rockets), standard cruisers, and custom choppers.
Different styles are associated with different in-game factions, though you will have the chance to use all types in the single player campaign.
As you complete missions, you’ll earn cash for the bike shop, where you’ll unlock new bikes with better stats, as well as have the opportunity to customize elements of your current bike, such as its color.
In the multiplayer game, by default, you’re able to choose your own bike. We’re going to add an option to allow admins to customize bike selection. So if he or she wants nothing but choppers in the game, it can be set up that way.
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There's a lot of strategy when it comes to multiplayer in Road Redemption. We expect most multiplayer races to involve many combatants, both AI and human controlled. In these multi-combatant races, the fiercest competitors end up finding their way to the front of the pack, where they face the fiercest competition.
We find that this creates a natural balance to races, and it's rare that a single person dominates for the entire race. Everyone will usually wipe out or be taken out at least once per race.
If you and your buddy choose to do a straight up 1 v 1 race, without AI-controlled allies, both players are still likely to crash a few times due to obstacles on the road, civilian traffic, and the police, which have a natural inclination to chase after the first combatant to pass their checkpoint.
After the opening story segment and intro mission, you’re presented with the game’s world map, which features missions to play, the bike shop, and your gang’s clubhouse.
Road Redemption’s missions are all variations on the classic combat/racing formula. For instance, one mission might challenge you to be the first to reach a turned-over armored car. Another mission might ask you to lead your gang out of enemy territory while being chased by an army of rival gang members and crooked cops.
As you play through the single-player campaign, you’ll generally have two or more missions to choose from at any one time. However, at certain points in the story, all events will converge on a single mission - such as a showdown with the leader of a rival club (flanked by his loyal captains of course).
Story segments will appear at the beginning and ends of specific missions. These segments will be skippable, but you’ll get a warning before skipping one that you’re seeing for the first time.
You can replay completed missions at any time in order to improve your performance (more takedowns, better time, less damage to your bike, etc.). Currently we’re using a medal system similar to Star Fox, Burnout, Pilotwings, and many other games, but this may change.
The cash you earn from missions can be spent at the bike shop, where you’ll be able to unlock new bikes with better stats, as well as have the opportunity to customize elements of your current bike, such as its color. You’re also able to improve your own character’s stats by buying new equipment such as helmets, weapons and body armor.
“We’d like to give a huge thanks to all of Road Redemption’s backers for making this possible, and for helping us spread awareness. Road Redemption has been our dream project for over a decade, and we’re so excited that we can now devote our full time towards finishing it.
We’d also like to thank Road Rash Co-Creator Dan Geisler for all of his support as we’ve tried to raise development funds.”
I want to give an update on the current state of Road Redemption. We have a playable build.
You can currently ride against 5+ enemy racers with good artificial intelligence that actively engage the player in melee combat.
There is a functioning GUI (graphical user interface) that uses placeholder art that displays your health, your current nitro level and which weapons you have at your disposal, and which one is in your hands.
You can switch between melee weapons and your guns and they both work in combat.
You can also play with, or against up to four players in splitscreen mode.
I will now run through the different game systems and give you the status on them.
Gun Combat – functional, you can shoot other bikers and targets and it is fun right now, but reloading is only semi-functional and gun combat still needs to be more balanced with melee combat.
Melee Combat – Functional, but it still has some bugs. For example, right now you can hit other bikers and knock them off their bikes, but you can also hit them while you’re winding up of your swing. When you are lifting your bat to take a swing it can hit people.
Kicking is also functional but is buggy. You can kick other bikers and it works, but it doesn’t have the right feel to it yet. Part of this has to do with all of our algorithms which keep the bikes upright interfering with the algorithm we employ to give a bike a kick. Once we have time to devote a solid day to working this issue out, I’m sure it will feel great.
Currently, melee combat with the AI is the most fun aspect of the game. However, the feel of melee combat still needs to be greatly expanded.
Melee combat between players is working, but fighting the AI is more fun because the AI is much better at matching speeds and aggressively engaging you. We’re working on ways to make it so that two players can have an easier time aligning their bikes to facilitate prolonged combat.
Bike Feel – This is fairly good right now. When you are driving your bike, it mostly feels right. Right now there are about 8 different physics algorithms running on the bikes. This is on top of Unity’s built-in physics engine.
Adding bike-to-bike melee combat to a fully 3d game is our biggest challenge. It’s not as easy as just adding melee combat to an existing racing engine. Grafting motorcycle melee combat to a game like GTA5 would never work. The vehicle controls and physics need to be tailor made for this kind of play, in order to feel right.
We feel like we’ve finally gotten over the hump, and our melee combat is as almost as tight as the sprite-based Road Rashes. Now we’re working on giving it more depth.
The nitro boosts feel good, and the speed is about right. The super-fast high end bikes are still a little too unwieldy though, and we think we have a pretty good solution for this, which we’ll be implementing shortly.
Bike on Bike collisions – This does not feel right currently, and is part of the reason melee doesn’t feel right yet.
We are trying to get to a place where big fat bikers can muscle you around the road with their size, and while it does work right now and it’s not crazy or buggy, I just don’t like how the collisions feel yet. We have a plan for adding specific collision objects to each bike (invisible of course) solely for bike-on-bike contact, and we are confident that this will greatly improve the feel.
Bike Artificial Intelligence – This is good and getting better. Right now you can race against at least 5-6 AI Bikes(probably more, I just haven’t tried) with solid framerates in excess of 100 fps on my computer at max graphics settings.
These AI Bikers actively engage you and each other in combat, stay on the road, avoid obstacles, drive intelligently, and behave pretty much how you would expect.
The AI does not handle gunplay right now though, so when you give the player a gun he just dominates them.
GUI – functional but pretty rough. You can acquire weapons and it shows them in the correct selectable slot. The health meter is there, but implementing the current health system is currently a work in progress. Nitro meter is in and also accurate, but the entire GUI is placeholder art that doesn’t have the look and feel that we want.
Biker Animations – These mostly work, but there are still bugs around the reactions to getting hit and occasionally the attack swing has a minor glitch at the end of the swing, in regards to weapon location.
Also while the gun aiming animation system technically works 100% right now, there is a change we would like to introduce that will improve it. That is sort of an involved discussion though, and it is a minor issue so I won’t go into it.
Tracks – We have a few different test tracks that we use, but they are test tracks. The reason we haven’t fleshed out the tracks is because we want the gameplay to be as fun as possible, and then design the levels around that. If you’ve played Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, you know what it’s like to play in levels that were built before the gameplay was finalized.
Racing System – Currently the game knows if you are in 1st or 3rd place in the racing mission types, it just doesn’t share that information with the player, because it is not built into the GUI yet.
Similarly, the game knows when you cross the finish line, if you won the race, but it isn’t hooked up to the greater Game Controller system to end the race. This will be implemented by the end of the week
Cross Traffic/Obstacles – Currently obstacles, like vehicles, can drive along the roads when they are scripted to the specific track. The AI is smart enough to avoid them, however the system for generating cross traffic is not dynamic enough.
Sound – We currently have sound effects for pretty much every action that occurs, and a sound system that works correctly in splitscreen mode (surprisingly, the most difficult aspect of splitscreen to implement in Unity). These sound effects are not final, but they do sound pretty good.
Art – The art is coming along, but it is behind the gameplay, because until we lock down the gameplay, it is a bad idea to start generating a bunch of art assets that we may have to throw out.
Also
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We are absolutely going to finish Road Redemption. There is no doubt about this at all.
Three out of the four owners of Darkseas are videogame programmers. The other owner is a videogame artist and animator. We all have published titles under our belts. We are all extremely committed to Road Redemption’s success.
The game has been greenlit on Steam, and we have developer licenses with the major console makers.
We have kept the team small while testing and validating the gameplay with placeholder art to make sure the game is fun, so we have not been burning through the kickstarter money. There is literally no way Road Redemption will be cancelled.
We apologize for the delay on the alpha, and we’d like to thank you guys again for your support.
The video, which was released to keep backers of the Kickstarter campaign up to date, demonstrates the graphical improvements made to the game so far, and includes some early examples of how the uzi and grenade launcher weapons will work.
Bits about video:
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"this is pre-alpha footage"
"All of the gui is placeholder art"
"There will be cities. Also this was captured on a laptop on medium settings and a lower resolution. Cars can drive correctly or all lanes can be oncoming traffic. In this video it was all oncoming traffic."
Last edited by prudislav on Tue, 14th Jan 2014 10:48; edited 2 times in total
I hope the ammo for guns is very limited. Otherwise there'd be no reason to go melee if you can just let yourself sit in last place in the beginning and shoot everyone in the back. They're pretty much defenseless because they have to choose between looking back to shoot at you or look forward to see where they're going.
If people want to do driveby shooting on bikes, they'd play GTA. A game with exponentially better production values in that department.
I haven't played GTA V but I assume it doesn't have a very detailed or varied melee bike system, which is where this game can stand out.
Dark Seas Games released today the alpha version of its spiritual successor to Road Rash, Road Redemption, for all the alpha level backers and above. According to the team, this alpha version is only a small sliver of what will be included in the final version, and represents something like 5% of the content that will be featured in the final experience.
Do note that the alpha version of Road Redemption currently only supports Xbox 360 gamepads. As the team noted, keyboard and mouse support is coming very soon.
Dark Seas Games has also released a trailer for the launch of the game’s alpha version that can be viewed below
The only Road Rash I played was Road Rash 95. That was great, it was very fast paced and punishing. This on the other hand just doesn't look as punishing. I don't remember you being able to trade paint with cars and not get knock off and go flying, then having to run all the way back to pick up your bike. Also weapons can one shot others? Really? I remember being lock in combat with another, trying to fight him off while dodging on going cars. That was tense, especially with Super Bikes.
I hope they just haven't added those in the alpha yet.
Some new info about the Game Modes by developer Ian Fisch:
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This is just a quick post to fill you guys in on the game modes we're currently working on for Road Redemption
Career Mode
In the game's main career mode, you (and friends) will journey accross the United States. This mode is a rogue-lite, which means that you only have one life and it's different every time you play. It also means that you'll be able to upgrade your character(s) after every playthrough. If you've played Binding of Isaac or Rogue Legacy than you're familiar with this type of game.
As you traverse the United States, missions/quests will sprout up organically. For instance, you'll be notified that an oil tanker full of precious petroleum has crashed 5 miles from your current position. All of the sudden you'll be in a race mission. Get first place and you'll win a huge bonus.
As you traverse from desert, to mountains, to cities, to forests, you'll face progressively more difficult enemies and gain awesome new weapons and abilities.
Career mode will be playable, in its entirely, in both 4-player splitscreen and online multiplayer.
There's a ton more to talk about here, but I'll save that for another day.
Multiplayer Quick Play
In this mode, you and your friends will choose a map, a weapon set, a bike, a game type (last man standing, race, team race, etc). Unlike the career mode, an average play in this mode will only take a few minutes.
On thing we're excited about in this mode is the ability to have each player control a gang of AI bots. If you've played League of Legends, you know the drill. Each player has his own team of minions. That means that every player can earn a bunch of satisfying takedowns every playthrough, without constantly being taken down himself. Of course, this will all be completely configurable, and you can disable AI gang members if you like.
This mode will also be playable via 4 player splitsceen and online.
it doesn't change that the game still looks super bad
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