Tuesday 24 June 2014

Released on Windows 8!

Wild Animal Racing is now available on Windows 8.


There is a free trial available. Have fun!

Monday 23 June 2014

Uploading...

Version one of Wild Animal Racing is now being uploaded for the Windows 8 Store.... Stay tuned.

More screenshots

A few more screenshots of the game:







Sunday 22 June 2014

Bug watch!

If you think you found a bug in Wild Animal Racing (and hopefully you won't as a lot of time was spent making the game work well) then you can report them below. Thanks for your help and we'll try and fix any as soon as possible!

Saturday 21 June 2014

Release Date

So the expected release date for Wild Animal Racing is this Sunday evening!

Will it be a hit or a flop?


We. Shall. See.

Privacy Policy

This app does not collect or store any of your personal data. 
This app does not connect to the internet.

Monday 16 June 2014

From sketches to 3D

Before you start modelling your characters it is good to sketch out what they are going to look like. It doesn't have to be a work of art but it's good to get your ideas down:

 Here is Ginger the Giraffe driving his go-kart. It was done in Windows Paint - no kidding.
Here is Ginger rendered in 3D. 

The various screens can be sketched out. They don't have to be in colour. Just get things in the right place. They are called "wireframes". They help you visualise where everything goes. Here is a wireframe sketch of the title screen:
And here is the finished screen for the Russian version:


3D Modelling Tools - An introduction

3D Tools for Making a Game

So you've decided you want to make a 3D model, perhaps for your new game. Is there some software that can help you do this? Of course! Here are some to try.

One of the first programs I used which is free, simple and lots of fun is anim8or There was a gap of a few years when it wasn't being updated. But it looks like the developer Steven Glanville is doing some more updates. So check it out. It's good for beginners. But you can do lots with it.

There is also one called Milkshake which is quite good because it can handle lots of different 3D formats. Originally developed to edit Half Life models. You can also use it to make models for games like Quake. Old school!

A good 3D creation and animation program which is free is Blender. You can create very high quality realistic stuff using this program. You can also make no so realistic low polygon models for games. It is open source too. 

If you are a student (or rich) you might be able to get your hands on 3DS Max which is a standard modelling program in the industry.

Companies like Pixar have their own software called Renderman. Now since they made it for their own use, I'm not sure if it is designed very well for the general public or other companies. 

Rigging an elephant

In this part of behind the scenes of Wild Animal Racing we look at rigging an elephant. We created our elephant using the 3D tool Blender.

The elephant is anthropomorphic (that is to say it is human-like) so basically it is rigged like a human being with an extra few bones for it's nose. Yes, I know elephants don't really have bones in their noses but it gives a good approximation if we model it with a lot of bones like a spine.

Once we have rigged the elephant, we can make animate it. We create a set of basic animations such as walking and for the purpose of this game driving.

Screenshots - 22 May

Some work in progress screen shots from 22 May 2014.


The text is localized so here "Choose character" is in French.