Zero Gear - an indie multiplayer kart racing game

[Gray Fox]

Courtesy of mapcore

I think Zero Gear deserves it's own thread in gaming discussion now, bringing it out from the shadows of WIP Models

Zero Gear is a project I started last summer with a friend of mine. I had been out of the game industry for a few years after working at several disappointing companies and wondering if games were really still worth making. I had been doing lots of research and absorbing every story written on the web about independent game developers, and the spirit in which they create games. Learning about them revitalized the spirit I had for making games, and seemed like the best way to make games for the reasons I wanted to make them. I was lucky to find a friend who had the same independent spirit and who just happened to be extremely talented and smart when it comes to programming and designing systems. Together we took the plunge to dedicate ourselves to develop an independent kart racing game on the PC, that would be a primarily online multiplayer experience. Along with physics-driven gameplay and as much user-created customization as possible - one of the remaining strengths of the PC platform. Here is what we have so far. We don't have a hard release date, but our first major milestone is Oct. 1st 2008 which is the submission deadline for this year's IGF, which it is our goal to enter and win.

we have been keeping a development blog that has a lot of the details behind the project that has grown quite a bit as of late. You can check it out here:

http://nimblebit.blogspot.com

official game website:
http://myzerogear.com

game forums:
http://myzerogear.com/phpBB3/index.php

screenshots:






Fallout Gameplay + Items:
This video was from an online playtest we held to test out a fresh gameplay mode called "Fallout" (where the object is not to fall out of the level) along with our very first implementations of 3 different items.



Basic Gameplay tag-test:
In this video we are using a ?Tag? type game mode as an intitial test of our gameplay scripting system. Using the experience from this we will design bigger and more exciting gameplay! In this mode, players compete for the longest amount of time being "IT". The longer you are "IT" the more points you rack up. There is also a 3 second immunity after you have become "IT". For this level, we also made points accumulate faster the closer you are to the middle, to encourage people to duke it out in the middle ring.



networking proof of concept video (NOT GAMEPLAY! Just dicking around after we implemented the networking


also, I have done a couple of wallpaper renders for a few of the characters we have so far:

4:3 resoultions:
1024x768,1280x800,1600x1200
widescreen:
1280x800,1440x900,1680x1050,1920x1200,2560x1600

4:3 resoultions:
1024x768,1280x800,1600x1200
widescreen:
1280x800,1440x900,1680x1050,1920x1200,2560x1600

4:3 resoultions:
1024x768,1280x800,1600x1200
widescreen:
1280x800,1440x900,1680x1050,1920x1200,2560x1600

Here is a video of the garage which we have been working on: