Tachyon-R

Tachyon-R: A brutally fast futuristic racing game. 

Tearing around the narrow tracks at breakneck speeds can be deadly enough, but factor in the opponents and it becomes insane - 'more [opponents] you have, the worse it is ..'

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I'm extremely happy with how this compo worked out and with what I achieved. I've long ago giving up the idea of finishing a complete and fun game within the 48 hour limit, as this just seems way too difficult - so instead this time I've concentrated on a genre of game I've never attempted before: a racing game.

I used a library which I have been building up over the last 7-8 Ludum Dares and this time around I had to write (copy/paste from stack overflow) some new methods for particular collision/response code but I still managed to get a full track generator, track/car physics and a crude A.I. racing around. The challenge is definitely shallow: simply finish the track without exploding.

As usual, I left too little time to do any decent graphics and I totally neglected soundFX/music (the only music is from Incomputech: of course I disabled the sound rating).

There is definitely a lot of room to expand on this game in coming weeks: pickups, weapons being the obvious missing components to make this a proper 2d wipeout clone - and better track generation with loops, intersections and jump would be cool. The vehicle physics are quite fun, although there is no real opportunity to use the hand-brake which is a shame.

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Instructions:

WASD   - movement
SPACE  - Air-brake
M      - Toggle music on/off

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* Linux Version

Please note that although I have uploaded a Linux version of the game, when I tested it the timing functions are messed up (some components are crazy fast while others are too slow). I was using Ubuntu with OpenSDK 1.8.0 - maybe it works for you (I'd love to hear)?