New game, Trackmania-like with speed boats?

[Insomnia]

Your topic header suggests (literally) a new environment for trackmania. If this is about a new game separate from TM you may want to change the title to something like "New boat racing game; Ideas" or something.

Thank you for the advise! I was not aware the title is misleading. Will change it immediately.
The hovercraft is a good idea as well. I mean, if we go with the 1 boat type per environment approach like TM, we need a lot of varying watercraft types anyways.

At the moment I doubt that Nadeo will be able to create a completely new game

Well this topic is not about NADEO making this game. I am evaluating the concept, feedback, ideas and concerns to launch a project like this with my team.

[Demented]

Thanks, I'm glad you took my suggestion in a positive way. It is how I meant it, but I've found it can be easy to misinterpret people's intentions sometimes in forums like this where we have many people from all over the world.

Making a water based racing game might be tricky because water is kind of linear (not a lot of vertical direction). Although you can jump boats off small waterfalls and there are wooden ramps that you could use to jump up short waterfalls.
Narrow, winding rivers could make for fun courses and you could let players set up open water courses using buoys and log booms and such.
Sprint boats, Hydroplanes, Cigarette boats, Hovercraft, Jet Skis, even Water jetpacks could all be fun or you could even invent something new.
You could even consider environments that are designed for whitewater river racing with Canoes, Kayaks or Rafts where the objective is more control and path choice oriented.

[Insomnia]

The white water idea is actually amazing! Did not think about that before. Maybe something for mini-environments or a certain set of blocks for a special mode in each environment. Will definitely put this idea on my list and elaborate on it a bit more. Thanks!

[tcq]

If you reconsider the white water idea, please implement it better than this one here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I44WmScIxfU

[Demented]

I'd like to see what you guys come up with.
The whitewater game idea is based on a game I started back in the 90's (on commodore amiga) but abandoned after a while because I just couldn't get the physics to feel right. You may have noticed though that physics have changed a lot since then. It was basically a person in a paddle controlled kayak avoiding boulders, logs and other obstructions while choosing the best rapids to go through. I always wanted to go back and restart that one but I don't really program anymore.

[Insomnia]

It will of course still take some time before there's anything to show. For the moment it's only gathering feedback from potential players, experiments with water physics and the development of a great-looking water shader which is adjustable to different flow speeds and directions.

Possible future path:
As soon as we have cool water and enough prototype boats and blocks to build some simple tracks and show some basic motion picture and content, we would collect feedback from everywhere we can, forums, social media, indiegame blogs, etc. Maybe some of you want to give their feedback on a playable prototype as well.
Next steps could then be Kickstarter + Steam Direct campaigns to fund and publish (I am already Steam partner since my last game, so the second part will be quick).

But well, those all are future thoughts. Let's do some prototyping first.
But whoever wants to join with good ideas or helpful skills, you are all invited.

[Stringers]

Sounds cool. Bit like Virtual Skipper.

[null8fuenf10]

Any news about this???