Overview
Brief Overview Of Twisted Rubber
Twisted Rubber takes place in a small isolated city in the middle of the most barbaric part of the unknown world. Ruled by a mafia, the city holds a tournament each other. The tournament includes all residents in the City. This is no community passtime, in this tournament each racer can carry as many weapons as his car can carry. And the goal is to stay alive or more alive than the rest.
Game Play
Goal of the Game
The main goal of the game is to last as long as possible without having your car destroyed.
The game starts with a batch of enemy cars, each car battling the other.
Destroy as many other cars as possible to gain points. A car destroyed by the player will lose all its points to the Player. So its better to go after the Stronger cars than the weaker ones.
The best thing about this game is that it can be played on both the PC, Android, or both! i.e. Play it on the PC and use your Android phone as the Remote.
Game Items
Unlike most top down shooter games, in Twisted Rubber the only way to regain Health points, (or Armor), is to be within a few meters of a Refueling Station.
Depending on the level there will be a designated area with walls around it with a small opening. As long as the player remains within those boundaries he will regain Boost or Armor if he is in a Repair area.
Continuous GamePlay
Twisted Rubber uses a different type of GamePlay. In Twisted Rubber each level is continuous, i.e. it is never ending. So a player will continue the game as long as he is not destroyed. The Game is over when the Player's Car is destroyed. Each time the level is played the Player's highest score is recorded. Keeping the Player encouraged to surpass it.
Another feauture of the Game is the Game Map. The set up of the Battle Arena depends on the level. Some levels have a Battle Arena that is completely blocked off with a wall around the Arena. Some levels have a Battle Arena where the Player loops around to the other side of the Map if he steps out of bounds. Lastly, some levels are set up so that if a Car falls out of the Arena it is destroyed.
Weapons
Machine Gun
Sniper
Stinger
Grenade Launcher
RPG
Vehicles
Muzzler
Medium
Speedster
Fast & Weak
Trucker
Slow & Strong
Gunner
Fast & Powerful
Onscreen Controls
Joystick
Analog Controls
Car movement is controlled by one Joystick. Everything ranging from tight to wide turns and reversing.
Reversing is checked by checking the angle of the car in relation to the controls so that if the Joystick is pulled in the opposite direction the car reverses.
Tight and wide turns are taken care of by checking how large of an angle the joystick makes when pulled relative to the cars forward moving velocity.
Speed is managed by how far the Joystick is pushed. Players can slow down by pressing closer to the center of the Joystick.
Buttons
Onscreen Buttons
There are two buttons for the HUD: The Fire Weapon and Switch Weapons buttons.
The Fire button fires the curently selected weapon. There is a delay for when it can be active because a simple press of the button can register more than a dozen times.
The Switch buttons cycles to the next weapon in the list of the weapons attached to the Car.
Difficulties
Tiled Maps
Tiled Maps were extremely difficult to work with using LibGDX. Was never able to figure out what was causing my tiles to appear as if they were scattered randomly throughout the map.
Creating a Tiled Map consisted of using 3 seperate programs, by 3 seperate individuals. The Texture Packer packed the individual tiles onto one image, The Tiled application takes the Composite image and allows you to draw the Tiled Map. Finally LibGDX uses these files with a built in Tiled Map renderer to handle the Map.
Unfortunately the Texture Packer packed the tiles in random order which caused the Tiled application to import and export the Tiles in the wrong order.
To fix this I simply packed the tiles together using the Texture Packer then created my own Pack File in a text editor. I kept only 8 tiles so it was easier to write.
Art
Although I am a pretty okay image editor, I cannot for the life of me draw images from scratch using tools like Illustrator, or draw at all for all that matter. Art was a huge obstacle because it took much time to find decent sprites specifically for my game.
The vehicles were too specific to find online so I had to hire someone to draw the Cars, except for the Gunner which I found online. Everything else, I attempted to draw, after enduring long hours of painstaking youtube videos of "How to draw a Splash Screen".
Car Physics
Moving a 2D car realistically with one left analog controller is no easy task. Luckily I was able to find articles online relating to how 2D objects move and what different forces can do.
I had to look out for things such as, how to slow down when turning. How to keep the car from moving sideways, by canceling out the lateral velocity. Which later became how to allow a car to move sideways sometimes to have the effect of drifting, or skidding. Also how to apply braking forces and acceleration. Reversing was also a huge obstacle.
Future Plans
More Levels!
Need to add many more continuous game play levels. Each one with a small twist. So far there are the closed arena and the looping level.
Vehicles
A nice and small addition would be to add additional vehicles from which a player can choose which Vehicle he would like to use.
Players would then be able to unlock more Cars as they continue playing and accumulating points. With each new Vehicle carrying new specs.
Weapons
The Game Script includes many many more weapons, including land mines, cruise missiles, and flair. The structure is present so I will need to simply create each weapons functionality.
Weapons should also have other effects besides decreasing life points. For example the Ice Shot would be able to freeze any car for a few seconds. Making that car paralyzed.
The Team
Moustafa Ismael
Programmer
Lead programmer for Twisted Rubber. With many weeks of experience. Including late night no sleep coding. With a background in 2D Game Ideas thinking.
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Moustafa Ismael
Designer
Lead and only Graphics Designer. In charge of handling or Artwork requests made by the Lead programmer.
Completed all artwork ranging from the SplashScreen, to the Menu Screen, to the Battle Screen HUD
Did not handle drawing the individual background Tiles, Vehicles (excluding shadows), and Weapons.
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The Video
Gameplay Video
A small gameplay video for your enjoyment.
Unfortunately I was not able to get the Level Screen up and running.
But I did get rid of the crashing!