One of the most fundamentally important things for racing games has got to be the sense of movement. Sure, one can talk about how true-to-life a car handles and such, but without an actual feeling that you’re doing 300 miles an hour down the intergalactic freeway what’s the point? Which is why German devs GameArt Studio’s space-racer game Quantum Rush ‘s latest update has us excited (and happy). It brings a “speed” update, making the free-to-play racer feel that much faster.
The other big deal is lag optimization. It’s never nice to be playing precision games like racers only to find you’ve oversteered due to lag. That’s been (mostly) done away with by having the game now immediately act on your commands—before it even hits server side. GameArt says this required some “complex prediction and synchronization” systems, although there are some kinks still to be worked out.
The video showcasing the update, embedded above, does a pretty decent job of capturing just how much better the game’s aesthetic benefits from that sense of speeding up with a “before/after” deal. And honestly, it certainly looks like it’s done the job. Alongside that is also news of new AI-controlled racers. This appears to have been a frequently-requested feature in the beta, so players could get down to racing faster rather than sitting around in a lobby.
There’s also word of a new stasis shield powerup players can pick up during the race. Much like the Blue Spiny Shell in Mario Kart, it’ll hinder the guy in first place and try to make it so it ain’t over till the fat lady sings.
If you’re interested, beta signups for Quantum Rush are still going on at their main site here.
Published: Feb 21, 2014 01:58 pm