Racing games are fun, aren't they? Crashing is pretty great, too, isn't it? Making
other people crash headfirst in a shower of shredded metal and concrete rails is the best, yeah? Bugbear (the minds behind Flatout, Ridge Racer Unbound, and other over the top racers) thought so as well. This great demand is about to be supplied with the oddly straightforward title Next Car Game (Name subject to change, hopefully).
How about some non promotional pictures?
Okay, how about some of these?
Still lookin' pretty good, eh?
Giant Bomb even inaugurated their Unfinished Quick Looks with it.
Check it out here.
The game has had Early Access options open for a while, and showed up on Steam a week or so ago. Buying in gets you a rough version Bugbear calls prealpha on the loading screen. It consists of a destruction derby, a gravel race, tarmac race, along with an American muscle car, or European...something, I don't know, but its got character.
There are plans to include lots of modifications for the vehicles, but as of right now, there are simply tire options (standard, gravel, tarmac) and varying engine sizes. Purchasing and selling these upgrades is planned to use the classified ads of a newspaper, but it's not implemented.
The current state is singleplayer only, however multi is a bulletpoint in their feature list and something that would absolutely make this game, so expect it at some point. Expected 'feature complete' date is 2014, exact date to be determined later.
Buying into the Early Access also gives you the Sneak Peak 2.0. A completely separate download, this is a playground with various objects to drive along, run into, or park next to and let damage your vehicle into the ground to see the wonderful body damage and physics that give this game real potential.
Here is the entirety of my car after a round in just one of these gizmos.
I'm not kidding, that is
all of my vehicle, condensed. Magneto would be hard pressed to do better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUZfKfib7SM
That video consists of the Technology Demo, which appears to be a free download if you sign up for the newsletter
here. It is largely the Sneak Peek 2.0 but with fewer toys. There is a giant stomping spider in 2.0 for instance.
Regularly priced at $30, it is $25 until the 29th. The sneak peek arena and few cars and races they give you now are tons of fun, and enough to decide if you will like the game or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0TUYv5nrXE&feature=youtu.be
Posts
There's not much interest in this game right now and that's understandable. But it's my go-to "I got five minutes let's goooooooo" game right now. And even when I have more time, I find myself throwing on some tunes and just doing round after round of the demolition derby, or perfecting the gravel and tarmac tracks. I've actually stopped playing Sneak Peak 2.0 entirely, because the actual game is so much fun.
I fear for my life when multiplayer is added.. I might not be able to do anything else. Ever.
http://nextcargame.com/weekly-report-7-2-2014/
However, that’s not to say we’ve been just kicking our heels. The second update is incoming next week, and it will contain some great new content as well as significant gameplay improvements. The highlights include a completely new cinematic camera mode for taking great screenshots, highly customizable races with both lap and opponent count settings, rotating steering wheels, a plenty of new upgrade parts such as different types of differentials, another chase camera higher and further back, more precise gameplay damage, as well as a hefty amount of small but important improvements and tweaks. More about the details next week!
One thing that we know many of you are anxiously waiting for are new cars, and we’re happy to let you know that the update will see an addition of a typical 80s style American sedan. It has more weight to it than either of the cars that are now included while it’s perhaps not as maneuverable. We’re pretty confident that it will offer a great new race and derby experience. Naturally the car comes with a set of upgrade parts.
And that’s not all. A figure 8 style track is probably something that many players will consider as *the* derby track, so we thought we’d put one in! That’s right, the next update will contain a modified version of the derby arena with a figure 8 track built inside it. The space is pretty confined so speeds never get that high, but imagine the chaos and destruction with all 24 cars going after each other in such a small space!
I remember playing this track in Flatout and it is the most drunken fun you will ever have in your entire fucking life.
Get hype.
I'm totes looking forward to drinking and driving in NCG PA multiplayer.
1) My 8-year-old loves the racing and demolition derby side.
2) My 5-year-old loves tech demo 2.0, shooting marble boulders all over the place.
Oh my god, if they included school buses so we could have figure-8 school bus races at some point, my life would be complete.
Still though, either way this sounds like a fun update. I need multiplayer so bad for this...
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
The engine has 'health' or something. Look at my ingame shots in the op, you'll see a white undamaged engine on the paper doll. It takes damage and goes to yellow, orange, red, pitch black, before being completely wrecked and you're dead on the track.
Still, when I saw this on Steam, I was caught immediately by the promise of the damage modeling and destruction derby stuff combined with racing. I haven't bought in or anything yet, but I'm keeping an eye on this to see how it develops. I'll be real interested to see where it goes.
A racing game for people who drive like assholes!
New customization options and American Sedan
Rather than on or off, Traction control, ABS, and Antispin are now Full, Half, or None
FIGURE EIGHT
There is also a new camera mode that can be selected from the pause menu. It allows you to freelook at the entire track in that moment, adjusting focal point and blur options for some bitchin' screenshots. For instance, that cool figure eight track shot is from my race in the game.
I'm really curious to give this a go.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
Now that I've got a new rig I'm laughing and laughing at all the carnage.
Wrecked on gravel
Not even across the starting line and people were already inverted
The first turn didn't go much better
Billboards are for squares
Car wins, but barely
Like said, the first iteration of our replay feature is now almost completed. Jani has been working on it for some weeks now, and he’s managed to pack in some pretty neat features. The way it works is that it will record the whole event, and afterwards you can simply let the replay roll and watch the whole barrage of twisted metal again in different camera perspectives or even in your custom one by using the free camera functionality. It will also feature time controls (slowing down and speeding up for those cool slow-motion shots), camera lock to target car (follow), target switching, pause and resume, as well as depth-of-field and field-of-view settings. In short, all the tools you might need to create your perfect cinematic video!
We also have some great news to those using multiple controllers to play the game, for example separate wheels and pedals. Currently the game only supports single controller at a time, and while that is of course not a problem if you use a wheel and pedals from the same set by plugging the pedals directly to the wheel, it makes it impossible plug both the wheel and the pedals directly to the system via an USB connection. Thanks to Tapio all that will change with the next update, after which the game will support multiple simultaneous controllers. The next update will contain quite a few other controller support improvements as well; complete details when the update is out.
Speaking of controllers, quite a few of you have voiced your concern that the handling is currently too sluggish with a gamepad, taking away much of the fun. We’re glad to let you know that we agree with you, and we’ve been working this week to improve the situation. The reason why we introduced slower steering rate in the first place was to make the cars easier to control without any driving assists by preventing the player from making too drastic countersteering measures to combat fishtailing, but now in retrospect it does seem like we jumped the gun and made a too hasty decision on how to improve the situation. We’re of course still working on the handling (probably will be all the way until the end!), but we’re confident that we’ll be back on track with the next update, and we’re already really looking forward to hearing your feedback.
Oh, and before we forget: we’ve also received quite a lot of feedback that the AI controlled cars have too little mass in player vs. AI collisions, making it possible for the player to plow through scores of AI opponents without too much difficulty. We’ve heard you, and there’s an improvement coming for that too in the next build.
The update also contains a new replay mode that makes it possible to watch the whole glorious race again from every imaginable perspective. Naturally we've also included all the usual goodies such as depth-of-field, slow motion and fast forward, target locking, selectable field-of-view, and so on. The user interface will see a complete rework later down the road, but even now there's no reason to make the best crashtastic video ever and share it with the whole world!
Other than that the update features two new derby stadiums as well as a number of improvements, many of which were done based on community feedback. One of the most significant additions is the support for more than one simultaneous controller, so now you can finally drive like a boss with separate wheels and pedals. Also, the suspension and tire physics have been enhanced, and as a result the handling feels more natural than ever. We've also increased the responsiveness of the gamepad controls, as requested by many.
Needless to say, the update also contains an ample amount of other improvements and fixes. Please see below for the most significant changes:
Tracks:
New sandpit race track featuring both normal and reverse layouts, work-in-progress.
New mudpit derby stadium, work-in-progress.
New small derby stadium, work-in-progress.
Environment Art:
Smoothed out track-sides and improved gravel race track readability.
New work-in-progress spectator models - some previous ones remain.
New concrete barriers, used in various derby stadiums.
Weathers:
Two new weathers: stormy evening and misty evening.
Weather can be now specified in the event setup.
Vehicles and Handling:
New driver model, as of now simply static.
Improved suspension and tire physics.
More responsive handling with a game pad.
Improved player vs. AI collision physics.
Damage:
Improved deformation physics so that visual car damage is more accurate.
Improved gameplay damage to prevent cars from getting too torn up and still going.
Fixed a case where cars would get damaged and eventually destroyed from rubbing against a static barrier.
Replay:
New replay mode with slow motion and fast forward time controls (-16.0x ... 4.0x), a number of different cameras, target locking & switching, depth-of-field and field-of-view settings.
User Interface:
Race timer now correctly displays hundredths as well instead of random numbers.
Game is no longer unpaused when exiting Steam overlay if the game was paused.
Input:
Implemented multicontroller support (e.g. wheel and pedals in separate USB ports).
Sensitivity & deadzone adjustments now take effect without a restart.
Added saturation, sensitivity and dead zone settings for XInput controllers.
Game now defaults to DirectInput for wheels, hopefully making some wheels behave better.
The game now detects more than one XInput controllers that are connected simultaneously.
Force feedback is disabled for Microsoft Sidewinder FF wheel in an attempt to work around buggy driver causing lag.
Audio:
Increased AI engine volume.
General improvements.
IMPORTANT: If you're experiencing controller issues such as being unable to correctly assign controls, please remove the user data generated by the previous build by navigating to [STEAM INSTALLATION FOLDER]/userdata/[USER ID]/228380/local and removing the folder labeled 'next car game pre-alpha'.
Long and short of it: 3 tracks, replay mode, improved control, damage, and physics models, and replay mode.
A new car and a new track have been added, along with improvements to the handling and the damage engine. This game is fun again!
EDIT: It seems multiplayer has been added! I haven't got a chance to try it yet but HYYYYPE
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcZNfIkpF7E&feature=youtu.be
Eh, it's okay I guess. I would have been okay with it just staying as Next Car Game. There was something whimsical and fun about that name.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
Steam FNGs, there's a PA Racing group that does racing get togethers from time to time.
This game is getting real close to ready for shenanigans and I love it.
Every time I watch a QL or trailer for another racing game and don't see the destruction I just think "Or I could play NCG. Yeah, let's go with that."