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The main selling point of JS is that it's fast to write and execute. Unity has been used for quite a few major commercial titles across all platforms at this stage and you can use either JS or C# for all of your code, so I wouldn't worry about performance to be honest.

If you're writing a simple 2D game first, just a tarted-up version of SR2, then you don't have Unity or anything else to add overhead so it'll be even faster again.

JS is the way to go alright, for a game like SR. I'm writing my Unity game in JS too actually :)  Good luck with the project, I'll keep an eye on your site now and then to see how you're getting along.

I also need to find time to get back to some game dev, just been too busy the last few months to find any time for dev outside of work. On the plus side I'm not hugely busy in work at the min so spent yesterday writing a WebApp using NodeJS + expressJS and MongoDB. Would it be a bit too far to install Unity in work? ;)

@Maxaxle:
It does run, yes, and runs perfectly fine. running JS in a HTML5 canvas is perfectly adequate for moving 2D sprites around a screen so I wouldn't worry about performance. It's not online; see reply to Venomous below ;)

@Venomous:
Thanks for the tip, I wasn't sure what the legals were around the franchise so never put it online. To be honest, it's not complete enough to bother putting it online anyway as this is the current state of it:
- Start in an empty garage, current money shown at bottom right, can click on a newspaper in the bottom left
- Newspaper opens a new screen with ads for cars and parts. Can click to buy, then return to garage to see the car (currently all cars use the same image, which isn't even a classic let alone something from the correct era :P)
- Can click 3 different parts of the car to go to the related screen (engine, transmission, underneath)
- Some basic functionality on engine screen to drop engine in plus some parts from a parts list (if you bought the correct compatible ones in the newspaper).

Like I said, only about 16hrs work so its far from something worth releasing as an alpha but the groundwork is there. Not sure if I'll go back to it at some stage, probably will but enjoying Unity3D in the little free time I manage to allocate to dev at the min.

@Marco:
I didn't realise anyone bought the rights let alone was working on a remake (also browser based using JS!). I guess I'll stop so :( Haven't done anything on it in a loooong time so no big deal. Unity3D is great; you could consider that if/when a 3D sequel becomes an option. Looking forward to seeing what you produce, I must have a look around your site later when I get time. BTW, is your project on hold due to legal reasons or is it simply down to having no time to work on it at the moment? The reason I'm asking is that the preview URL only redirects to the main page... http://preview.streetrodonline.com

lol ;)

I'm pretty certain I do, yes. It is nothing close to the type of project that's been proposed here for the last 10 years, it was a much more realistic goal: Make a better version of SR2 which runs in a browser. To achieve that I set the following goals before writing a single line of code:

- Make a clone of SR2 (using temp sprites drawn in MS Paint to intentionally look shite so as not to ever waste time trying to make anything look good) initially ignoring all racing elements
- Add racing elements to the game, only the same race types as were possible in SR2
- Add more parts, features, race types etc to have a better version
- Email all 2D sprite images to a 2D graphics artist and pay them to make "nice" versions

Myself and a friend then spent a few hours a week in our spare time, for about 3 weeks, so in total we spent about 16 man-hours i.e. the equivalent of 1 person spending two full 8hr days on it. We got as far as having 90% of the first goal done.

I think everyone here wants a 3D game so won't understand the draw of a 2D game. I personally think 3D was the death of gameplay. To have a sequel to SR2 that every SR2 fan would love, only requires the following improvements to SR2; cleaner/sharper modern 2D graphics, smoother racing with more of a real physics "feel", more cars and car parts including more tinkering/tuning options. That's it, it doesnt need 3D, it never needed 3D to make it good in the 1st place so why is that suddenly a big draw? People still love Tetris and Mario... they didn't have fancy graphics to hide behind so had to have a clever, fun and addictive core gameplay.

Just remember to make a decent full fledged game you will probably have to get the pay for version.

In my experience of game programming (I've written games in Java, JavaScript and recently started with Unity) this is not true. I am a programmer, it's been my job for 9 years, and I've always had a game on the go in my spare time.

I started messing around with Unity and with not much time invested I've the basics of a 3D RTS written in JS (a C&C style game). You can click a factory icon in the HUD, move it around using the mouse and click to place/build it. That opens new options to build tanks which spawn from the factory. You can left click a tank to select it, then right click elsewhere and it will rotate in that direction and drive there. You can even drag a selection box over multiple tanks and get them all to drive to somewhere. These are the core basics of any RTS which is why I started with them. You keep getting bogged down in too much details too early before even having an organised group of people who can identify and deliver on the basics of a SR style game.

The issue with this project (I was on these forums more than 10yrs ago) is aiming too high. You need to be realistic... how many programmers do you have? Forget 3D models, that's the icing on the cake. Make a game from primitives first, using very rough shapes. Dropping in fancy models is the last 5% of any game. Look at most posts on this forum, they relate to impressive looking models and people talking about controller support or multi-OS support etc... there is no game! When designing a new plane do Airbus start by choosing the paint scheme? If you can't get a very basic SR game going first then you'll never get anywhere.

To prove the point, I started writing my own 2D SR game with a friend using JavaScript and had something closer to the feel of a SR game in a few weeks than has been produced here in 10 years (runs in your browser). We focused on the garage, not the racing; why? Because that was actually the core of SR, not the racing! It's also much easier to get that stuff working than to nail car physics so do ALL of that first. Seeing lots of progress, and I mean playable progress, is the best motivation to do more.

Start with a 2D sequel (SR was 2D and is still fun to play) and if you can get organised enough to see that through to a fully finished and playable game then you could consider a 3D sequel to that. If you can't, then taking on a 3D game is a pointless death march. A fun finished 2D game is better than 5% of a shit 3D game.