Inner

Sound and Music

Sound and music is an essential part of any game. And Lagsters isn't an exception. Sound and music in Lagsters embays the player into the atmosphere of the game, and on a par with graphics it gives a better idea of game environment. Is there anyone near you? Is he shooting at you? And if he does, with what kind of weapon? Intent player can find answers to all these questions only by listening to the game's sound environment. In addition, there is in-game music, available in three different styles: rock, alternative and electronic music.

The game uses DirectSound and supports 3D sound, and that makes Lagsters' sound environment even more realistic. Every in-game sound source has such parameters as physical position, minimum and maximum listening distance, volume and sound velocity. In other words, volume of the sound source depends on its position concerning the player. And of course it will dynamically change in a case, when the player races past the sound source.

Static sound sources were preset in track editor. This is also where their audibility radii and volume were preset. In general, these sounds were bound to the track objects, which are capable of generating sound. When all the sound sources were setup on the track, sound technician was racing this track over and over and listening to his masterpiece. Usually, the very first race revealed a lot of corrections to be made - sometimes a sound source was rising above common sound background, sometimes there were excessive sound richness. It took a lot of time to polish the sound environment of every track As a result, we've made it underscoring the game atmosphere and not standing out of the whole gaming experience.

However, while we were placing more sound sources on the track, the problem of overall performance arose. Sounds occupied more and more memory and CPU time for calculations. But we couldn't shorten the number of sources - then we were getting so called "sound emptiness". We've made a compromise by adding track-specific in-game background sounds. It became an integral part of every track and solved the problem of vast number of sound sources.

Lagsters is a fast racing game, and usage of Doppler effect in sound system was just what we needed. This helped us to intensify the sensation of speed while racing past static sound sources or slow pipers - the sound turned out to be more realistic.

There is also a narrator's voice which you can hear while racing. It informs you about all crucial points of the race: who killed whom, who has finished a lap, etc. Why we decided to put this information on player's ears? It's simple - sound channel wasn't that packed with information in comparison to the screen. The player has pretty much of information on his HUD. Moreover, it's always nice to shot your rival and feel it not just by your eyes, visually, but also by your ears.

Physics

For the beginning, let us tell you about the most "unusual" thing, about physics. Physical engine of Lagsters is not something outstanding, therefore the model of the game’s world, that is being worked by this engine performs rather big and accurate system. And its original performance is not the result of super-technologies, but just a result of another way of looking at the usage. In fact, it gives the same flatness and gravitation vectors. We just managed to use all the opportunities in the right way for making the illusion of cylinder gravitation. And from the very beginning of working under the engine we aimed to make it the best one for the dynamic gameplay and to achieve the highest operating speed.

The game levels are performed as a circular tracks with decorative geometry, where as an additions and effects are presented huge fans, doors, different dynamic objects that can be moved, pushed, exploded. Each object conforms the physical rules and parameters as weight, type of material it is made from, frictional force affect and determine its behavior. There are a lot of speeding up and inhibiting dynamic objects, namely transfer lines moving in opposite sides. All the cars represent the set of simple physical bodies, what gave us an opportunity to arrange rather close to real, though some exigent in resources execution of their behavior in different situation.

We cannot say that for getting all those effects of visualization we needed millions of polygons for modeling the world. The polygonal load is rather unpretentious. Speaking about the technical matter – the engine of the game uses the portal technology and supports DirectX 8. The illusion of gravitation, drawing everything to the tubes’ walls was made by means of situating the spline in the center of the tube with all objects with all scene objects attached to it. The renderer of the engine supports few technics at once and can choose the most suitable for your videocard, affording you to play Lagsters fairly good on PCs of not the latest configuration. The maximum resolution is the maximum supported by your videocard; even if you try playing 1600x1200x32bpp on the cards of 5th generation, you will scarcely feel the lack of system resources. What is the real matter of our pride - fine textures of big size (up to 1024x1024) and their add-ins – relief textures that gave our artists and designers the widest field for their action. Owing the fact that we used the latest technologies, such as bump mapping, normal mapping, pixel shaders, vertex shaders, which absence is impossible in really exciting up-to-date game, we created incredibly bright and original visualization of Lagsters’ world. Thanks to LOD system we reached the best representation of the cars and their parts on any distance, you will be pleased with the quality of picture even if you will examine them closely.

Various effects that can be seen in the game, such as explosions, fire, sparkles, steam etc. are easy to preset and designed by programmers with the help of scripts. To make the effects we use particle system, motion trails, corona (flare). The illumination of the game is dynamic with omni and dynamic light sources. The use of different shaders let us accomplish perpixel lighting of all in-game objects. Specular lighting helps to amplify and to improve the picture.

The multiplayer mode is based on client-server architecture and supports UPD TCP/IP. That gave the opportunity many clients take part in the game. The AI is made in two types – the racer and the hunter. Depending on specific situation, that is being determined by many factors, which are following the behavior models, calculation of the speed and the characteristics of the vehicle, the AI make a resolve whether of the best and speediest driving or about unending making of battle situations.

Sound subsystem of physical engine also does not pretend to be named some supernatural, though we reached comprehensive insonification of all effects and actions happening during the race that gives the feeling of full presence in the game. It gives the effect of feeling not only the tubes and the products of their inhabitants’ vital activities, but also the incredibly talkative opponents. Sound subsystem gets the information about environment from logical engine, thus the making of 3D-sound is close to that as in reality to the maximum. Playing the game music brings in the world of Lagsters the special Rovna_Kriva sounds that assume the forming of the game’s unforgettable atmosphere.

Note, that the first part of Lagsters does not fully realizes all the graphical and sound abilities of the engine; well the add-ons, which are expected to appear after the release will make a great impression on you!