Next Car Game: Wreckfest

The Game Room
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The unfortunately titled Next Car Game (now “Next Car Game: Wreckfest”) is a spiritual successor to the flatout demolition racing games made by the same studio that made them originally.

The game is currently in early access, due out sometime in the next 6 months, for PC only. Early reviews are very positive.

What prompted me to create this thread is that the game is 30% off through November 3rd, which comes out to $21. It’s unlikely to hit that price again for a while after release, so if you plan to get this game anytime soon, now is a good time to buy. If you don’t want to play the unfinished version, just consider it a preorder discount and wait till release.

The game has a soft body collision physics model where, instead of like most games which have particular areas on cars that can be damaged in particular ways (changing the model and performance in a fixed way), this game models the components and body structure of a car, and hits will dynamically deform the car’s 3d model and also affect driving performance based on that deformation. So the damage is a lot more dynamic and specific to what has happened to your car, and can affect performance in unexpected ways.

The game is going to have at least 18 player multiplayer, they’re aiming for 24, which is awesome. The flatout games only had 8 - and having more than double the number of cars available will create a whole lot more potential for chaos. Most racing games have been stuck on the 8 player multiplayer for so long that it’s refreshing to go up from that, and this is just the game to really reap the benefits from having all the extra cars on the road.

They’ve got regular races, arena style demolition derby, and stuff in between like figure 8 races. They seem to have discarded the gimmicky driver flinging games that were in the flatout games.

We ran a few good games of Flatout: Ultimate Carnage in the SDMB gaming group, but the GFWL integration of that game made the whole thing a big headache and we ended up giving up on it. Obviously the new game doesn’t have that problem.

I’m hoping we’ll get a big SDMB group interested in this game, because I’d love to fill up 10+ of the 18 slots with people all on voice chat together. I know a lot of people aren’t too into racing games, but between the demolition derbies and what I’m presuming to be a fairly arcade driving model, I think this might have broader appeal. You can always have fun smashing stuff and causing destruction even if you aren’t great at racing.

I’m going to grab it and actually play it today or tomorrow, so I’ll post more thoughts later, but I wanted to get the thread up for discussion and to notify people that there was a good discount going on.

I haven’t dug around much for videos, but glancing over this one it seems to cover a decent range of game types.

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Okay, I played around with it a little, both single and multiplayer.

It’s looking really good for this stage of development. The physics, damage, and driving mechanics already feel quite developed.

I had a funny situation occur with the damage model, seen here. What essentially happened is that the entire front left of my car is caved in and I’m missing a wheel. So the car would lean in that direction, at which point some part of the undercarriage, transmission or suspension or something, would hit the ground and do a little pole vault, which sent the car hopping a bit, and pieces would break up and fly out the back, which you can see in there. It stopped after about 10 seconds, but some part of the suspension or axle or whatever was just gone at that point - I couldn’t turn left anymore.

The 24 car thing is really great - very crowded and violent racing. The multiplayer is done through listen servers currently but I have to imagine they’ll be implementing dedicated servers eventually, as it’d be idiotic not to. But the netcode actually seems pretty robust already for something that was implemented just a few weeks ago.

They got rid of the turbo mechanic from the previous games - the game seem to be aiming for somewhat less arcadey than the flatout games, although obviously they aren’t technical sims. So far it seems like the right balance between racing skill and violence - you can definitely use impacts to advance your position in a race, but if you do it poorly you can end up screwing yourself over more than the person you’re hitting. Which is good - there’s skill to the violence and a tradeoff to being aggressive.

I’m going to try to get all the people who used to play dirt 2 and flatout UC back together for this, and of course everyone is welcome and encouraged to join us. 18-24 player multiplayer means the more the merrier. I will be renting a server assuming they release dedicated servers to game hosts and the price is reasonable for a large capacity server.

I don’t know if the price of this game is going to go up near release, as some early access games do (essentially giving a backer’s discount for buying it early), but the current price, $21, is likely the cheapest you’ll be able to get the game at for a long time, so if you want a fun violent racing/derby game, I definitely recommend this. We’re going to have a blast playing together.

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I backed this game on Kickstarter and have been following it for a while. The devs want to get back to that Flatout feel but with improved physics. I think they are getting it right.

The Flatout and Dirt 2 games were a blast with a bunch of people playing, and with 24 cars banging around this game looks like a hoot.

I know some people are leery of buying a game before release, fearing they might get burned by a crappy game. Most of those types of games don’t have a demo or pre-release code that you can play, so you really are going in blind. Not with this game - the devs have released tech demos and early builds of the game in order to get feedback from players. And they DO listen - if you post something on the dev forum you will get an answer from one of the designers.

If you have any interest at all in multiplayer racing mayhem, get this game now while it is on sale.

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This thread put me in mind of Destruction Derby for the PS1, and reminded me how much I enjoyed that old thing.

I’m curious about the control scheme. The link provided (at Steam) mentions ‘partial controller support’, but doesn’t really explain what that means. I haven’t done anything at Steam in quite a long time so I might just be overlooking the obvious.

Are you guys playing with controllers, or with a mouse/keyboard scheme?

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That reminds me of all the time I spent playing Carmageddon back in the late 90s/early 2000s. For $21 it’s not too much of a gamble - I really like racing games. I’ll check it out tonight, if I don’t forget.

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I’ve been playing with a wireless Xbox 360 controller with no issues. I think maybe the “partial support” means that the game has not been certified for Steam’s big picture mode. Since the game is still in development this is not surprising. Try it out - you will definitely get that Destruction Derby feel!

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I downloaded a played a bit last night. I’m having a hell of a time controlling my vehicle (Xbox controller). From a dead stop, turning the wheels and tapping the accelerator sends me into a 360-degree spin. I was having trouble just turning my car around to face the right way sometimes. Thinking about it, maybe I need to trade in for a smaller engine.

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They just patched in a netcode optimization today to allow 24 man multiplayer games. I recorded a 24 man single player figure 8 race last night. The youtube quality is so crappy for some reason - it seems like they lowered the bitrate.

The game is not usually that chaotic - I picked the maximum number of people for the smallest and most violent track - but I have a lot of fun doing that.

The sale is still through November 3rd, so make sure you grab it. Even if you decide not to play it while still in early access, it’s a nice preorder discount. So far I’ve got 5 people from the SDMB group who used to race together who are going to play and another 4 who are maybe/probably. The more the merrier though - it’d be awesome if we could get races with 12+ of us when the game releases.

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I got the game last time it was on sale but apparently my reaction time is too slow to be competitive for any multiplayer racing games.

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I seem to be a lot worse at this game than most of the people I’m racing against (players or AI) – usually coming in below 10th in 18-player games and always driving well behind the pack, and lucky to finish a race with more than two wheels left. I can’t decide if I’m missing some key information about how to play or if I’m just really bad (I lean toward the latter).

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Ok, that looks really cool.

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I’m going out in a couple of hours, but a few of us are playing on a 24 man server now, so if you’re interested in trying it out, join us on mumble and/or friend me.

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If you’re going to grab the game on the current sale you’ve got to do it early tomorrow, the sale ends at 1 eastern I think. We’ve got about 8 with it currently and I suspect we’ll get at least 12 by release. It’s already in a pretty fun and playable state, but we’ll mostly play after release in a few months, so you’ll have a chance to grab it then too. But if you’re interested this is the best price you’ll get, so you might as well order it now.

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The question is, does the PIT maneuverwork in the physics. If so that and the damage model could make for a lot of fun

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Oh yeah, you can definitely spin people out that way.

Are you new to racing games? Are you using some sort of analog control? It’s not a technical sim that requires a ton of finesse, but it does require some - it’s modelling mostly 80s rear wheel drive cars that can struggle for traction as you apply too much power. It’s really hard to play well with a keyboard if that’s what you’re doing - a gamepad or even a joystick will work a lot better. If you could be more specific with the sort of problems you’re having maybe I can help.

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I’m using an Xbox type game pad. I basically have two problems:

  • At the beginning of every race, if I start near the front, I get PIT’d by another car almost right away - usually sending me into a wall.

  • I can’t seem to make a lap without hitting a wall. Most often I’m going too fast and scrape the outside wall but sometimes I overcompensate and hit the inside rail. I’m okay if I slow down and tap the accelerator instead of holding it town, but then I end up with much slower lap times than anyone else. Playing the AI I’m usually wrecked within two laps; playing multiplayer I can usually stay alive but have never finished more than one or two positions above the cars who DNF.

On the other hand, in the derby events, I do pretty well against the AI. Haven’t really tried it in multiplayer though.

I have not played a ton of racing games since the '90s - mainly just a couple of Need for Speed titles and those cars seem to handle a lot differently.

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Yeah, getting bumped around in the pile early on is hard to avoid with 24 cars. You can try to get off to a fast start by keeping the engine revved somewhere below the redline during the start and then accelerating through the start. At least that seems to be the way to go.

The game mostly models 80s style RWD cars. Cars that have more horsepower than they know what to do with. So it’s always a battle for traction. If you keep the throttle on 100% the whole time, it’s hard for the tires to grip and you tend to oversteer and lose control. Learning to reduce the power a little bit when you need to regain control is something you’ll need to practice. Letting off the gas entirely for a moment when entering a turn works, but partially reducing power (keeping it hovering around 70% rather than always full on) tends to let you control yourself better through turns.

Consider running a few laps without other cars (or just add 1 if it doesn’t let you add 0) and go relatively slow and stay in total control of your car and generate a slow lap. Then run it again, push a little bit harder, run a slightly faster lap, etc. Get a feel for what just a touch of braking into turns and running at less than full throttle will do.

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Thanks for the suggestion to practice on an empty track - I did that for a while and kind of got the hang of it. When I went back to some 24-person multiplayer I did better, mostly finishing in the top 10.

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I’m going to try to organize a game tomorrow afternoon/evening sometime around 7 Eastern. If you’re interested in playing with us, add me on steam Steam Community :: SenorBeef.

The more the merrier.

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Here’s one of the races we ran on Friday. 23 man figure 8 race. I love figure 8 races.