Zero Gear is physically-fueled, online multiplayer kart combat PC madness that me and 2 other guys have been developing for the past 2 years and change.



Trailer:

You Tube

official game website:
http://myzerogear.com

we have been keeping a development blog for almost the entire time that has a lot of the details behind the project. You can check it out here: http://nimblebit.com

Steam Official Game Group
http://steamcommunity.com/games/zerogear

screenshots:
http://myzerogear.com/media.htm

We have set up a Wiki for all editing informational purposes:
http://myzerogear.com/wiki
The Model SDK can be found here:
http://myzerogear.com/wiki/index.php...Gear_Model_SDK

Zero Gear is available for pre-order! Players who pre-order will get 25% off the price of the game, as well as immediate access to the beta version! Visit the Zero Gear product page for pricing information. Zero Gear is slated for release on January 12th, 2010. Stay tuned for more release information in the weeks ahead, including a 4 package deal!

that would look awesome with tf2 specs and engine.

Looks good...now work on the tire treads and headlights.

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that would look awesome with tf2 specs and engine.

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Yeah definitly needs a nice rimlight shader in game (pretty much like you rendered the models).

Nice work!

I have already experimented with a rim lighting shader in our engine, I knew that I wanted that kind of look the moment I saw the mario galaxy and TF2 screenshots. I am not a large fan of the traditional "cartoon" shading with a big black outline.

cool! i love the cars [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

the roads could spare some extra polygons if they're available - the only thing that detracted from the sleek smooth visual was the lines on the road tessellating in the hard turns.

the western themed track is rad!

cool look to it though [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I agree, I hope to be able to add more tessellation on the road sections, for collision purposes as well as visually.

One area in particular I feel is my weakest point in the character faces, I have no background in characters, and I'm not happy yet with the direction as a whole of the mouth/eye textures. I want it to be unique and simple but not cliche anime or too simple and look like a lego character. The plan is to have a bunch of different options to swap between but they all need to share a certain style of course. If anyone can point to any other references for Ideas and stuff it would be appreciated.

The carts and characters look awesome but the environments lack good rendering. Get some real shaders in the engine.

Yeah, you could probably work on the eyes a bit, they seem a little long and close together. They're pretty "cute" but i think could have a little love spent there to make them a bit more round ish. You could still change their race up by altering the eyelid, but they feel very oval.

I love the mouth expressions, but they eyes could use a little work.

Best reference i could suggest would be South Park, but anything from Disney/Pixar may work :P

I wanted to keep the rendering in the game as inexpensive as possible to make the game lightweight and playable on very low-spec machines. (I never mentioned it but the target platform is PC/Mac) So at least for now, the environments are vertex lit without any shaders, for the fastest drawing speed possible. Performance permitting, it would not be much trouble to add some simple effects like specularity on some surfaces that really scream for it. For now I am going to focus on effects like shaders on things like the karts that people are going to pay the most attention to.

There are many parts like the ice and the metal pipes and bridge that I will probably experiment with adding some effects on to gauge the expense. I would like to serve the lowest common denominator as much as possible, especially in regards to making people choose different gfx settings and such.

check out Kid Robot for some awesome kinda-cutesy/kinda-not characters-- right now your characters remind me of Duplo toys, but wit the right textures they could easily resemble cool big kid figures! [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

I love the style of the karts - excellent work. How many polygons are you working with on those? I agree that the characters are the weak point, especially compared to the karts themselves. I'll second the South Park suggestion, but moreso the style of the celebrity characters, which are more detailed than the main cast.

A couple more small suggestions:
- Make the hands chunkier. I think bigger hands would balance out their oversized heads and make them more visually appealing.
- Compared to the karts, the colors of the character's faces and accessories are a bit washed out. I think some more color would help keep them eye catching. For the same reasons, it might be better to avoid using the same color for the racer's jumpsuit and the car itself.
- Have you considered kart decals at all?

these environments are great!
Nice touch with the music [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

I've not got much to say, only that I think it's a winner project and I'm jealous because it appears to be a lot of fun to make!!

The characters are too static, and bare in mind you mostly be looking at them from behind so thats where to focus the detail / identifying marks

I think I'm just gonna re-do the base character model, I agree for sure about the bigger hands, they will look much bigger than the little nub hands on there now and then they could also sport some kick-ass driving gloves. I like the kid robot style hands. I have considered decals yea, kind of like how mario kart DS has a poly somewhere on every kart where they can display a custom logo or such. Customization is main goal for sure, the plan is to hook up a shader on the kart and character textures so that you can use a slider to change the hue of your kart/character.

I don't know the poly counts of the karts offhand, but they are conservative compared to next-gen standards. I can make some wire shots later if anyone is interested.

Oh, and I got to play super mario galaxy last night . . . . gave me a lot of inspiration for sure! I'm going to see how a rim lighting shader looks on the entire environment as well as the karts and characters. It gives the entire scene a nice consistent glowy/dusty style in galaxy.

WIN!!
Any chance we can get a wallpaper size screenshot of all the drivers/cars??

Nice work!

But it seems to me that you have inversed the direction of tires grooves? (I think that's the word [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img])
example

I can alway tell who the real race fans are because they mention my wheel treads [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

héhé.. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

so after playing super mario galaxy I wanted to try adding rim lighting to an entire environment and see how it looks. This was probably the wrong level to try it on since it's already so bright, but here it is anyway. I'm trying this vimeo site to host videos, not too sure about the quality:

http://www.vimeo.com/387045

so far my impression is that the rim lighting works especially well in super mario becuase of how rounded all the environment elements are.

i would definately buy this game if it was for the wii [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I can think of a pretty big competitor on that platform [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I never could really get into the wiimote as a racing wheel to be honest. I hope mario kart for the wii has the option to steer with the joystick / dpad. The lack of resistance of holding a steering wheel floating in midair is disconcerting to me.

About the eyes : try a really small pupil/iris rather than a great big one. Showing a lot of white in the eyes of toony characters generally looks better than a slightly creepy giant iris [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

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About the eyes : try a really small pupil/iris rather than a great big one. Showing a lot of white in the eyes of toony characters generally looks better than a slightly creepy giant iris [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

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ahhhh! thanks! Thats an awesome crit.

been experimenting with rimlighting a lot after playing super mario galaxy: a video of it on one of my tracks:
http://nimblebit.blogspot.com/2007/1...ng-test-2.html

and a little gif showing the difference

I'd suggest putting a few edge highlights in the texture mapping, but not with the scene lights over every object. The gif example just washes out most of the detail in the scene. It's also making things appear flat (like the water tower and cacti). It's also strange because the light source isn't really indicated anywhere in the scene and there's an absense of shadows. You'd need the sun setting directly behind the mountains to explain the edge highlights. The style of your racers look like everything should be more 3d in their world than flat to me. Try using more saturated color on highlights for objects rather than white and see what you think.