I have changed the name of the project, because the game now can handle several races, so not Dakar specific any more. The "main" race remain the Dakar 2012 when i release the game framework, but later more race can be added.

The sourceforge will remain the main container to handle the source code versions as it was earier.
The project home page remain at http://sourceforge.net/projects/dakar2012/.
The homepage will be available on http://dakar2012.sourceforge.net and on http://bmw.homelinux.org/rallyraid/.
http://bmw.homelinux.org/dakar2012/ remains the homepage of the old project, but won be updated.

With this changes, the new project appear on google code. The source code will be also availabe at there, i don't know yet what else.

This page has been closed!

The good news is that almost everything i planned is ready. Maybe one or more things need to be improved (see the todo list), but basic functionality should work and now i can start to create the stages.

Done:

• road handling
• editor
• AI
• gameplay
• menu

To do:

• the asphalt roads does not have physics as in Dakar 2011
• improved AI

Details:

Road physics

I was able to add physics to the roads, but the hkpExtendedMeshShape in Havok is really slow. Newton Game Dynamics is much more faster in this cases (unfortunately it doesn't have a normal vehicle support). An idea is welcome for the road physics improvement.

Thanks to Ermanno C. for this video!

Done:

• Terrain handling (almost final): terrain smoothing, and larger terrain
• Player handling
• Race handling with editor

To do:

• Road handling
• Editor (final version)
• New AI
• New gameplay
• Menu handling

Details:

Roads and editor

They are related, because the editor will be used to create roads.
Moreover the editor can be used to get informaition about the structure of the game, add new objects, add new races/days/stages, add roads, add AI points and modify the navigation objects.

Done:

• Terrain handling (not final)
• Object handling
• Vehicle handling

To do:

• Player handling
• Race handling with editor
• new AI
• Terrain handling (final part and use roads)
• Menu handling

Details:

Terrain

Now there isn't different terrain information for each stages. The whole earth is handled globaly, everything has a global coordinate.
Only the part of the player sees is loaded into the memory, and if the player is moving other parts are loading dynamically. (Mostly it was like in previous version.) So there can be race that goes along the whole earth in one "step". The drawback is the height data size of almost the whole earth is 10 GB (using zip, which is the only archive that i can use, because i can read it in a simple way).

The remaining stuff is to make the terrain close to the player more detailed.

Object

Now objects are appear if the player is close, and disappear is theay are far. Now they are handled in bunch. The bunch is determined by position, the objects which are next ot each other are put in a bunch, so they can easily created or destroyed.

A small todo is to make the visibility depends on where the player (camera) looks.

Vehicle

Now it is possible (again) to create vehicle dynamically on the game when it is necessary. As all part of the game, it uses the Havok physics engine.

The project has started.

General news

• start from scratch
• redesigned physics
• new gameplay
• new web page: feature and bug tracker

Major changes in the game

• Change the physic engine from Newton to Havok (http://www.havok.com)
• The Havok has a strict license, so the Linux version will no longer support, because there is no free Havok distribution for Linux. Later I can see what can I do with this.
• Improve AI
• Change Terrain handling.
• Improved navigation system
• Change menu: info/car settings menu at the begining of the stages
• Add liaison part of the daily stage
• And several smaller changes

Some details about the implementation will be later.