You can quickly identify two constraints here, CPU headroom and memory. The car is captured at 36 different angles and then scaled into different sizes, Playdate can’t efficiently scale these images in real time so they’re all pre-rendered, resulting in a total of 1400 images (just for the car). As previously mentioned, the car is generated in Blender (a 3D creation software) and it looks like this: With P-Racing, there were lots of challenges, mostly technical ones. The optimization process was very long and some game components were rebuilt from the ground-up. I knew that was something wrong, so I continued to optimize the game. The game ran slow, really slow, just 8 FPS. PlaydateĨ months later, I received my Playdate and this was basically the result. The early prototype was ugly, but it worked. That quickly became: “Can it run on a similar hardware?”, so I purchased a development board with the same CPU used on Playdate. “Can it run on Playdate?” was the question that kept me company for months. The first public appearance of the game was on Reddit and the reaction was super positive but also skeptical. I started the development without really knowing where it would take me. The combination of the “Mode 7” (a graphics mode that efficiently simulates a 3D environment) and pre-rendered sprites, is in fact the hallmark of P-Racing. Mario Kart: Super Circuit - a kart game for GBA - was definitely a source of inspiration. The Game Boy Advance (GBA), a portable console comparable to the Playdate, was the perfect candidate to better understand how past games have solved specific problems. A racing game for Playdate with 3D pre-rendered sprites that really inspired me.Īt that time, I spent days brainstorming, prototyping and studying old consoles. One game caught my attention: Daily Driver from Matt Sephton. Jokes aside, the journey of P-Racing begins on June 8 2021-that day Panic released the first Playdate Update and I was impressed by all these little, awesome games. He was focused mainly on programming and designing iOS apps. Once upon a time, there was a developer who really wanted to make a game but never had a chance to do that. P-Racing delivers a pure racing experience pushing Playdate to its limit. I’m an indie software developer and author of P-Racing, a pseudo-3D racing game. Hey! I’m Matteo, better known as RPDev, owner of Risolvi Productions.
A 3D Racer on Playdate?! Here's the story of P-Racing.
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