Carser

[Rody]

Carser is a top-down view single player retro racing game.

It was released in 2023 for MS-DOS, development took a bit of a pause in 1998
Discovering zakstunts and this community gave the inspiration and final boost to actually finish this game!


The goal is to go through all checkpoints and get the fastest time possible.
Nitro boosts, jump ramps, ferry boats, rail level crossings, road blocks, cows, oil spills, gates and traffic will make this challenging.
Shortcuts and offroading are allowed but your car can only take a certain amount of damage before it slows down and eventually blows up.
There are 20 levels to complete to get to the final prize and animation which will unlock new cars.

A map editor is included to make your own levels!

Replays are saved for the best runs on each level. They also serve as proof that the level and frame rate was not tampered with.

Download / Play here: http://rodisoft.com

On Dosbox you'll need ~35k cycles to play full fps.

[alanrotoi]

Hehe is a fun game! I played the browser version

The voice of the trailer is yours in 1998 or from your kid?

[Rody]

The voice of the trailer is yours in 1998 or from your kid?

it's my son. The "checkpoint" voice is me from 98 though

[Duplode]

Lovely game, congratulations on the release! I really like all those little details. Those poor trees must be terrified of my driving, though   

[Erik Barros]

Lovely game!!

[KyLiE]

Nice work! Although it was inspired by Micro Machines, it reminds me of Super Speed.  The development history is quite an interesting story as well.  Do you have the magazine article that featured your demo?

[Rody]

Nice work! Although it was inspired by Micro Machines, it reminds me of Super Speed.  The development history is quite an interesting story as well.  Do you have the magazine article that featured your demo?

I do have it yes, maybe should scan it an add to the website. It was a magazine called PC Guru (Hungary). Unfortunately they did not write an actual review but pasted most of my own words from the readme. If only I'd known, I'd have written it properly lol

[Cas]

Hey!  Congratulations!  I'm very pleased to find a fellow contemporary DOS game programmer!  Maybe we could do some collaboration at some point 

[Overdrijf]

Very cool game!

[Rody]

Hey!  Congratulations!  I'm very pleased to find a fellow contemporary DOS game programmer!  Maybe we could do some collaboration at some point 

Nice, what are you working on these days?

Not sure it's a good time investment to do anything sizable for DOS anymore. I decided to finish the project because porting it to something new would have been a lot more work (real mode, direct VGA and sound access in 8086 asm). These days gaming frameworks do everything out of the box that took months to implement 25 yrs ago.

[Cas]

[...] what are you working on these days?

Lately, I've been working on projects for the Stunts community, mostly not DOS, although Bliss does run in DOS (though in protected mode). Anyway, these projects are related to Stunts, which is a DOS based game.

In the past, I was concentrating mostly on pure DOS. I made a small game in 2000 and then ported it in 2015, if I remember well. Not sure if it's up somewhere still, but I can re-upload it. It's called Syderal. Super simple game, but a curiousity. I'll see if I can put it somewhere for you guys to see it.

Now in any case, I'd like more to build for modern OSs, but using a DOS-like approach (no dependencies, no hassle at install time, no third-party libraries, software-based graphics, all hand crafted, you know). I'm using FreeBasic, so my programs usually can also compile for DOS (via DPMI), but I love assembly too.

[Rody]

Yeah, things were so much simpler then, no dependencies everything compiled into one binary and running on the same 320x200 everywhere
You might want to also check out FreePascal which supports a very large number of platforms including DOS.
For something more modern I'm playing these days with Solar2D, also compiles to many platforms and has an emulator that makes the dev cycle extremely fast.

[KyLiE]

Not sure if it's up somewhere still, but I can re-upload it. It's called Syderal.

It's available from the Race For Kicks website: Download Syderal

[Cas]

I had forgotten that I had left it there!  Yes, Syderal is something I made to prove that I knew how to handle multiple things happening together. I just wanted to see how good I was at making a complete game even if the idea was too simple. The way it's implemented is more important than the game itself. Then later, I wanted to also see how viable it was to port something like this. Also, the old DOS version I had made didn't run well in DOSBox because my old code exploited hardware specific features, so I did feel like I had to port it and see.

I've tried to get FreePascal running in the past. At some point, I was trying it under DOS, if I remember well, but when I tried to use it in GNU/Linux, I had some problems. Right now, I don't remember what kind. I should give it another try at some point. But when it comes to graphics, FreeBasic is the best I have found because it lets you do things whatever way you want. It doesn't force you to use a certain thing. I also like it that, unless you want to, you don't need to use any OOP at all with FreeBasic. And I hate OOP so much!