Redline is out

[mechamac]

You know, the Ambrosia racer. Downloading now....

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/redline/

[Mackilroy]

Indeed I do. I would've posted this myself but I got busy racing – I'm one of the beta testers. :) It's a great game, guys, and I encourage you to download and try it out. Look for 'Mack' if you want to race me sometime. ;)

[Ayre]

Jesus, it's about time. How long has this thing been in development?

[Mackilroy]

Jesus, it's about time. How long has this thing been in development?

Just over 4 years. Official beta testing began about two years ago. We only hit FC1 around a month or so ago…

[Dont Hurt Me]

Cool, nothing like a new Mac game plus its Intel native. I wonder if it will play OK on a new Mini? We need a good review by someone with this game?

[Mackilroy]

Cool, nothing like a new Mac game plus its Intel native. I wonder if it will play OK on a new Mini? We need a good review by someone with this game?

DHM – sure, it will play more than okay on a Mini. When I first started beta-testing it, I ran it on a 1 GHz iBook with 768 Mb of RAM, and it ran usually around 24-28 frames per second. Your Mini will have more than twice the processing speed, a (little) better graphics, and if you choose to do so more RAM. On my MacBook though, I'm able to turn all the options up to maximum and I could never do that with the 9200 in the iBook. *shrugs*

[Dont Hurt Me]

Well I just managed to download, had some problems downloading though kept freezing up but I stopped the download then resumed it and everything then continued on. Its a nice little racer for the Mac. I am running it on a 1.42 Mini with 512. Only stayed on the 1st default race track but it was fun. Couldnt run with the settings maxed out but about midway on most stuff looked ok at 800 x 600. Allways like to see another Mac native game and since I have a 1.66 coming I guess im going to get a copy. $25 aint that much. Anyone tried this with settings maxed out on a iMac or ProMac? Ambrosia has brought another Mac game to us:) My wife was a Pop Pop addict.

[Mackilroy]

Well I just managed to download, had some problems downloading though kept freezing up but I stopped the download then resumed it and everything then continued on. Its a nice little racer for the Mac. I am running it on a 1.42 Mini with 512. Only stayed on the 1st default race track but it was fun. Couldnt run with the settings maxed out but about midway on most stuff looked ok at 800 x 600. Allways like to see another Mac native game and since I have a 1.66 coming I guess im going to get a copy. $25 aint that much. Anyone tried this with settings maxed out on a iMac or ProMac? Ambrosia has brought another Mac game to us:) My wife was a Pop Pop addict.

We have an iMac G5 at home – I can install it again on that, if you'd like. It'll probably run similar to an Intel iMac.

[ColdFlame87]

and as always ambrosia made it plug in compatible allowing you to add more goodies for the game, this keeps the game fresh for some time :cool:

[Lord Blackadder]

Nice game, I've always been a fan of Gran Turismo, and this game really reminds me of GT2.

The game runs beautifully on my G4 tower (see sig) with all settings maxed @ 1680x1050. I had to turn the FSAA down on my 15" PowerBook G4(1.33GHz/1.25GB/MR9700 64MB), but after that it ran nicely at the native res (1280x854).

Kudos to Ambrosia for putting out all the great games it has done over the years.

[Counterfit]

Alrighty, I know what I'm doing the rest of the night.

[Dont Hurt Me]

Just thought I would mention this game has full iTunes support just hit your period and comma keys to flip through your tunes while racing.:)

[Mackilroy]

Just thought I would mention this game has full iTunes support just hit your period key to flip through your tunes while racing.:)

Indeed it does. :) That got added around beta 11 or 12 after the testers asked for it, and it's good to see other people like it as well. :)

[Lord Blackadder]

Definitely a cool feature!

[cartoonfox]

ooh nice, downloading now

[Fiveos22]

Am I the only one who is sad that Ambrosia chose to pursue a racing game for four years rather than working on another Escape Velocity?

[ericsthename]

the mac NEEDS more racing games. I gave up even dreaming after trying 4x4 evo 2. Im downloading the Redline demo now.

I pretty much got into consoles after years of waiting for a need for speed mac edition - back in the days of II SE. Now I've migrated onto the 360 with Test Drive Unlimited, PGR 3 and hopefully soon, Colin McRae.

If apple would just go out and work really hard to improve opengl - or maybe even drop it for DirectX or something similar, maybe macintosh gaming would stand a chance.

I for one think that this is one of the last hurdles that this platform needs to jump before it becomes a TRULY serious threat in the marketplace.

A quick question to some folks more knowledgeable than I - is it difficult to port games made for windows/directx over to OSX/opengl? OR is it difficult to program for OpenGl itself? Why is it that the mac has usually had such underwhelming 3D performance?

[Mackilroy]

Am I the only one who is sad that Ambrosia chose to pursue a racing game for four years rather than working on another Escape Velocity?

There's a reason why there isn't an EV4, and it has nothing to do with Ambrosia. ;)

Redline was made by an independent German developer working by himself. He had an idea, made it, presented it to Ambrosia and they supported him. As for Escape Velocity... go to the ASW forums and look for anything with EV4/EV3D/EV Multiplayer and you'll find hordes or answers on why there isn't one.

Or PM me if you want to, too. ;)

[amiga]

Liking the demo so far... will shell out for the full game soon. The Mini doesn't look as 'realistic' as the other cars... I love that there is a Delorian in the game (and a flying one at that - from the screen shots)!!!! Love Back to the Future!

[thechris69]

just tried the demo on the imac in my sig... all runs well. perfect, no slowdown or anything... graphics are kind of weak on a game thats been in development for 4 years... expecting a bit more, imo... but still, its a fun game to play, multiiplayer is a blast... the mac needs for racing games... burnout any1?

[Mackilroy]

just tried the demo on the imac in my sig... all runs well. perfect, no slowdown or anything... graphics are kind of weak on a game thats been in development for 4 years... expecting a bit more, imo... but still, its a fun game to play, multiiplayer is a blast... the mac needs for racing games... burnout any1?

Well, only one guy is working on it, and I believe he's been going to school in the same time period so it's more about just having fun then flashy graphics. :)

But yes, the Mac does need fun racing games. :)

[Eric5h5]

A quick question to some folks more knowledgeable than I - is it difficult to port games made for windows/directx over to OSX/opengl? OR is it difficult to program for OpenGl itself? Why is it that the mac has usually had such underwhelming 3D performance?

For older versions of Direct3D, the port to OpenGL is usually handled by libraries that have been developed to handle it more or less automatically. Direct3D 9, however, doesn't map nearly as directly to OpenGL, so various effects take longer to convert, or aren't converted at all. Pretty much every company on the planet aside from Microsoft uses OpenGL now (that includes Sony and Nintendo), so don't expect Apple to go for a Direct3D license...they'd have to rewrite large chunks of OS X for no benefit, aside from making Windows games easier to port, which they don't care about. If a game from one platform (which was not written with cross-platform capability from the start) is converted to another, naturally you have to spend a lot of time optimizing it to get the same performance. Companies can rarely afford to spend that time, and people complain about porting delays as it is.

--Eric

[KD7IWP]

I bought it only because I have been wanting a racing game on here for soooo long. I was quite disappointed with the graphics and sound though. I doubt that in real life if I hit a fence that my car will jump in the air and remain there flipping for 15 seconds before landing. And the sound of the screeching tires is pretty irritating after a while. But hey, it's a racing game, it's what we've been waiting for. And it's not every day that you get a company giving you so much support like Ambrosia does.

[Mackilroy]

I bought it only because I have been wanting a racing game on here for soooo long. I was quite disappointed with the graphics and sound though. I doubt that in real life if I hit a fence that my car will jump in the air and remain there flipping for 15 seconds before landing. And the sound of the screeching tires is pretty irritating after a while. But hey, it's a racing game, it's what we've been waiting for. And it's not every day that you get a company giving you so much support like Ambrosia does.

Feel free to register at Ambrosia's forums and voice your ideas for "Redline 2.0" if you wish. :D

[Dont Hurt Me]

We have been a long time supporter of Ambrosia, I do think redline needs a little polish but is a 1.0 :) Still its a lot a fun, The Viper & GT just hammer my Mini but change all the cars to different color Mini's and I can kick butt. I would have liked to have seen a few more obsticles or perhaps a crash mode with lots of objects to bump onto the track and parts flying off like in FlatOut.

[Mackilroy]

We have been a long time supporter of Ambrosia, I do think redline needs a little polish but is a 1.0 :) Still its a lot a fun, The Viper & GT just hammer my Mini but change all the cars to different color Mini's and I can kick butt. I would have liked to have seen a few more obsticles or perhaps a crash mode with lots of objects to bump onto the track and parts flying off like in FlatOut.

Hehe. Well, once the mod tools come out you'll be able to make your own tracks, and you can have as many obstacles as you wish. ;) As for crash, I think the rationale for that was that the developer wanted to make sure network play was as smooth as possible and so he didn't put one in. *shrugs* I don't recall exactly.

[GimmeSlack12]

I just came across this game by random today.

Redline online Rules! Particularly if you are a big racing game fan!

[madmax_2069]

i play this game on my Beige G3 AIO in 10.4.8 , and it play's nicely. its a fun game. i play smugglers allot if i see a server set for it. i also cant wait for the mod tools to come out cause i want to take a stab at making a few cars

[Krevnik]

Too bad it doesn't display right in Leopard. :(

[Mackilroy]

Too bad it doesn't display right in Leopard. :(

Leopard's unfinished. ;)

I can report this to the beta list, if you'd like.

As for the mod tools, slartibartfast (the developer of Redline) just released to the beta testers a new set which will hopefully be the ones released to the public, should they be passed by the testers.

[Krevnik]

Leopard's unfinished. ;)

I can report this to the beta list, if you'd like.

Please do. While Leopard is unfinished, this is actually the first OpenGL app which I have seen have problems on the Mac Pro + 10.5 combo. UT2k4, X-Plane, Lego Star Wars, Homeworld 2, Quake 4, Doom 3... all work just fine, so I am more inclined to believe that this is due to something obscure that Ambrosia might be doing (which could be an Apple bug) which is doing weird things, but it unfortunately is still up to Ambrosia to figure out the weird behavior, as the dev tools don't work so well if you don't have the source code. ;)

To be specific, the display fails to update when you get to the main menu, or try to enter games. If you can finger-walk your way to the car selection screen, the display starts working again (mostly), and then stops working after you select the car, or go back to a previous menu.

[Mackilroy]

Hmm. That's really odd, but ah, well. It's been reported. :)

[Sinsinnati]

My Logitech Formula GP wheel works great with it except the force feedback is grayed out. Does anyone know why this is?