Upcoming Death Rally Update: Wraith Gameplay

Teaser of the new sports car Wraith and laser sights! Remember to watch in HD and of course buy the game tomorrow!

A game developed by Cornfox & Brothers Ltd. and Mountain Sheep, Inc. Published by Remedy Entertainment Ltd. All rights reserved. Death Rally is a trademark of Remedy Entertainment Ltd. Duke Nukem is a registered trademark of Gearbox Software.

Making of Death Rally - Part 2

{Click on the images for larger versions)

Race Select Screen, Garage Screen and Resources Screen make up Death Rally's menu system. They all have the car as a centerpiece.

Upgrading and getting new cars is a big part of the gameplay experience so we thought it was important to enhance the connection between player and the cars between races.

While you are racing the cars are relatively small. The menu screens let you see them up close and personal. We gave each car it's own distinct personality: Vagabond is the weakest car but has great handling, Dervish is a strong pickup truck that can take a ton of punishment, Shrieker is the fast sports car that will break under heavy punishment etc.

One isn't necessarily better than the other, it depends on the scenario. For example: If you have a race where heavy weaponry is available then Shrieker could be a bad choice and Dervish a good choice.

This is the first concept mock-up of the Resources Screen:

The next picture is the first 3d prototype of the Resources Screen. The screen didn't have much functionality at this stage except for the ability to rotate the view.

If you look closely the terminology is different from the release version:

"Car" became "Health"

"Engine" became "Speed"

"Tires" became "Handling"

"Armor" was added

"Repair" and "Develop" words were removed because they were not needed. Our design philosophy is to keep everything as simple as possible. That includes the speed of navigating the menus, that's why we added the "auto-fill" which lets casual players to skip this screen.

The following image shows the final version of the Resources Screen. After each race you end up here. You can spend the resources on repairing the car, making the car faster, improving the handling, enhancing the armor or upgrading the weapons:

Race Select Screen lets you choose races or challenges. You can also see if there's something new in the garage. (Notice the "New Car", "New Weapon" tags on the Garage button):

Next up is the Garage Screen. Here you can choose weaponry, change cars and customize car color.

Two months ago Antti Viljamaa amazed everyone at the office, he had used his programming magic to make a procedural damage system for the cars! It helps a great deal in seeing the car's condition:

Making of Death Rally - Part 1

(Click on the images for larger versions)

The development started almost a year ago with this physics prototype by Death Rally lead programmers Antti and Jukka Viljamaa. It's coded in Java using Eclipse:

Placeholder 2d graphics by the talented Heikki Repo (he made almost all art assets for Death Rally):

Combining the 2d prototype with Minigore's 3d engine was a long process. We had to make lots of optimizations and some drastic changes to the pipeline. Heikki uses Blender for 3d, while I made Minigore art with 3ds Max. That resulted in the need to use different exporters.

Seeing the silly car with hands made us think maybe Pixar's Cars would have been a more fitting license than DR ;)

In the final polishing stage we focused on making the gameplay as smooth as possible. The last week of balancing made the game very addicting - there's always that one more race you have to try :)

There was also time to do some extra candy for iPad 2. If you're playing Death Rally on a brand new iPad 2 it has anti-aliasing and 60 fps mode enabled!

In the next part we'll show you the evolution of the garage screen. It's a screen where player can interact with the car, customize paint jobs and change weapons.

Death Rally GDC Trailer

Here's the Death Rally GDC trailer, it starts with a short clip of the original DR:



The polishing phase is moving very fast, we've improved so many things compared to that barely week old footage! :)

Death Rally Achievement Contest!

Post your Achievement ideas in the Death Rally thread at the toucharcade.com forums. The one that stands out and is to our liking gets to be in the game! It may be your idea that is going to be the 50th achievement in Death Rally!

Here are some of the other almost 50 achievements we have already in place:

- Shooting star: Raise your fame in 10 consecutive races!

- Shortest fuse: Die during the first lap of the race!

- Barrel roller: Knock down 50 barrels!

Maybe yours will be something like:

- Duke-on-a-stick: Wreck Duke Nukem's brand spanking new car with Spiked Bumpers

You have until Monday (March 7th) to come up with an idea - the race is on! Remember, this is not a Sunday drive, this is DEATH RALLY!

Death Rally Hands-on by IGN

After seeing such handsome screens for Death Rally, the iOS remake of Alan Wake-developer Remedy's first PC game, I sincerely hoped that the game would be just as fun. My hope was not misplaced. After going thumbs-on with Death Rally for the iPad and iPhone today at GDC, I need to telegraph this singular message: put this game on your radar.

You can read the rest of the article here: wireless.ign.com/articles/115/1152945p1.html