scottai / swervinmervin

A truly radical homage to 16-bit racing games.

Swervin Mervin: A recreation of 80's pseudo-3D arcade racing games

Written in Python over the course of way too much time.

Here is a small video of me playing (poorly).

And here is my bosses son, Jesse, playing the arcade version. Sorry for the portrait mode.

More info on the pixel art is available over at my girlfriends website: MelanieHuang.com.

The Arcade Edition

Yes, it's real. Ships with MAME, SNES and NES (1000+ games). Want something similar for the office? Email me.

Playing

Ensure that you have Python 2.x and Pygame installed, and then:

  $ ./play

Accelleration and steering is performed via the arrow keys. [ENTER] to start, [ESC] to kill the game in fullscreen mode.

Many in-game settings can be changed in ./swervin_mervin/settings.py but I'll also load in settings that are defined in ./swervin_mervin/settings_local.py (which is gitignored).

What people are saying

"It's no Sonic the Hedgehog"

And...

"You actually get points for killing people? I don't remember that bit in the originals..."

And even...

"I've taken dumps that were more fun than this steaming assheap..."

Credits

• Jake at codeincomplete.com and Lou at extentofthejam.com for their fantastic articles on pseudo-3d racing games.
• My beautiful girlfriend, Mel, for all of the original pixel art.
• LazerHawk, Miami Nights 1984, Timecop 1983 and Alverna Gunn for the excellent music.
• Out Run (1986) for "letting me" use some sprites.
• Jim Gillette, Macho Man Randy Savage and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Myself for the sound bites.
• SoundBible and FreeSFX for some sound effects.
• This project is dedicated to Adam Hillier (RIP), for his love of retro video games, and Zak Harvey (RIP), for his love of reckless driving.

TODO

• !Design 2nd and 3rd level properly
• !Congratulations sequence when game is finished
• !Package better for distribution (ship with Pygame?)
• Rethink player checkpoint logic to fix "time left" bug in pause and make countdown easy to disable/enable.
  • Use current actual FPS to determine time left.
  • Move all time/checkpoint stuff into game (or maybe level?) and out of player.
• Local highscore file outside of git
• Engine sounds based on speed
• Screech sound and sprite when hitting tunnel wall
• Walls
• Multiple roads with forks
• Get Mel to create art for: Bonuses, Tunnel roof, Other players, Other levels
• Random boxes that penalise time-left when hit
• Random boxes that give player temporary speed boost
• General refactor and Pythonify of sloppy code