I've been making a list of fixes/goals I should try applying to BSR hopefully by 2020.
So far:
- diversify vehicle features, either by varying bounciness or adding friction (current ship stats aren't even what I intended or what the AI was optimised for), to make the game more accessible. Radaccel would stay as it is now.
- make attraction field strengths dependent on the speed class (now negligible in the fastest class)
- tweaks to tracks, especially reducing the pit depth in Sqwezz.
- redo the AI: dumb down the AI for the tracks in the earlier cups a lot more
- draw a new opening screen
- a few more sound effects, maybe a few animations
- maybe a second visual look for some tracks
- I understand using some screen mode from MSX2 would let me avoid sprite flickering without being a major change from screen 2?
- looks like there's something weird going on with the sprites on OpenMSX/real MSX as opposed to blueMSX...
Any further suggestions that are suitable for a novice to add and don't require extra hardware?
I think the decreased AI difficulty in the first levels and the second visual look would be great additions!! Can't remember now, but does the game keep track of the lowest times achieved by the current player? maybe a high score table (lowest times) would be nice for people to compete!
The game has already separate records by speed classes (super, hyper, mega) and modes (race, time trial), so that's six track records per track. The times included on the ROM are mostly done by my friend (most megaclass time trials) and me (all the rest). Did you mean adding a second record (best times since the last system reset) or just doing away with the current records? While the game does note broken records (until the next reboot), I imagine breaking the current records is not very easy to do.
I finally got around to doing something about this... so far, I've only:
- respecified the ships by adding various amounts of "friction" to them (will need to adjust the AI) and renamed them
- attraction fields now have speed class -specific strengths (may need to adjust these further)
- fixed a minor visual glitch in Flyre, changed Sqwezz
Redoing the AI and records will need to wait until I've locked in these adjustments, which means the AI racers may now get stuck at various points. Case in point, I replaced the AI in Passage with an unoptimized one in the hope that the ships won't get stuck in the top edge now.
As I'll be calling the result Bumper Ship Racing Plus, the DL link isn't the same but this.
Update notes from the version now uploaded:
v 2019-05-20
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- hopefully fixed the ship selection menu
- redone AI optimization and degradation (still finetuning)
- AI levels vary, with Helium cup being the easiest and Radon cup the most difficult one.
- invalidated most records
- added + to the title
I'm considering making a version with the AI performing to its best and making a Youtube video of it, because I lose against those AIs by a whole lap or more (and I could win the original BSR's AI maybe 80% of the time).