Showing posts with label Luke Benstead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Luke Benstead. Show all posts

Driving Strikers Review - The First New Online Dreamcast Game in 20 Years

With Driving Strikers, LD-2K and Reality Jump have taken Sega’s iconic “why don’t we play together?” slogan to heart, producing the first online multiplayer Dreamcast game since 2002. Whatever your assessment of the gameplay itself may be, this is a monumental achievement - probably about as significant a leap as we are likely to see within our niche community. Commercial indie releases have been hitting the shelves for two decades now, and although there have been some phenomenal entries made to the Dreamcast’s library during that time, no one had mustered the courage to tackle what is probably the keystone of the console’s identity; online play. That is, until recently.

Luke Benstead and David Reichelt, the former of which invented the popular DreamPi method for connecting your Dreamcast to the internet, have been plugging away at the development of Driving Strikers, a fast-paced ‘car football’ game, for several years now (Rocket League? Never heard of it, mate). The duo, assisted by a handful of others, and with WAVE Game Studios on board as publisher, finalised the game back in June and physical copies have recently begun landing on doormats. Regular scene-watchers may already be familiar with the fundamental concept and overall design given that several demos have been dropped during the game’s developmental lifespan. For those that are still uninitiated though, it’s really quite simple: you take control of a car in a football match, and are tasked with scoring more goals than your opponents within rounds of a few minutes at time. You drive. You strike. It’s all in the name! Well actually, you can boost and jump too, but Boosted-Jumping-Driving Strikers would’ve been a bit of a mouthful.

All screenshots provided by Luke Benstead.

Those who have played the demos will immediately notice that the final commercial release of Driving Strikers is significantly expanded and improved upon when compared to those earlier builds. The most important change is undoubtedly in the handling of the cars, which are directed via your analog stick or D-pad. To be honest, in the demos I found controlling my vehicle to be virtually impossible, resulting in a chaotic experience replete with own goals that would make Frank Sinclair blush. In the final product though, the cars are much more manoeuvrable, allowing for more clearly defined defensive and attacking plays which are greatly rewarding when they pay off - especially so when you can rub it in the face of a human opponent. Matches are still quite hectic in nature, but now to a degree that suits, and while the gameplay is intuitive enough for total beginners it also has space for the development of skill from practice.

The arenas available to players, four regular and two unlockable, are diverse in their design, ranging from a serene beach (which looks more Seychelles than Skegness) to a dingy cobblestone castle. The distinct earworm-laden music that accompanies each stage is a particular highlight, with the Christmas stage track acting like a homage to the classic Dubstep Santa. If the stadia had differed a little more in their shape and terrain, and if the teams you choose from had material differences in their operation (speed, boost, strength etc.), then that may have helped spice things up a little more, but understandably for a game like this, boundaries need to be kept manageable.

The ‘league’ mode featured in the commercial release definitely adds a little longevity to the game (and must be traversed if you want to unlock one of the arenas) but fundamentally Driving Strikers is all about multiplayer - whether that be in person or online. What can at times be a bit of a dull experience when played solo becomes infinitely more fun when the competitive human connection is thrown in. If you are blessed enough to be able to call on four friends to cram round a screen, then Driving Strikers will easily give you the same vibes as local multiplayer classics of old. 

Best game ever. No bias, or anything.

Of course, if your Dreamcast is connected to the internet, then playing online is a must. However, as much of a watershed achievement as this feature is, it does come with some caveats. When it runs smoothly, the online multiplayer experience is fantastic, and you’ll find yourself happily burning through half a dozen rounds before you need to take a breather. Unfortunately though, the lag experienced by DreamPi users can disrupt things, and it seems to be a bit of a lottery as to whether you have no lag, a noticeable yet serviceable level, or a big fat dose. LD-2K and WAVE do acknowledge this, recommending in the manual that hosts should be using a Broadband Adapter wherever possible. The times I have played with a BBA have certainly been noticeably better, but the reality is that this peripheral remains expensive and far less widely used than the DreamPi. Aside from the lag, the game’s online mode does have other occasional hiccups too, whether that be freezing (requiring a console reset) or potential difficulties with the login screen.

No doubt some folks may feel a little aggrieved by these issues, which is understandable. After all, everyone is entitled to an opinion, especially so when the exchange of hard-earned money is involved. However, I personally feel that a more rounded perspective is warranted, and can be arrived at if we account for a couple of contextual factors. Firstly, lag and other snafus aren’t unknowns in the realm of playing your Dreamcast online. Those of us who play regularly will all have had jittery slideshow-like rounds of Mobile Suit Gundam, sessions of DeeDee Planet that desync, or pulled our hair out as a match of Worms World Party fails to start for the third time in a row. Secondly, Luke and David are the first to attempt the feat of getting an indie release online, without being able to follow pre-existing guidelines or rely on the support of a large well-resourced team.

What has been delivered is a meticulously thought out online architecture, compatible with all current Dreamcast internet connection methods and featuring cross-platform functionality with the PC. Granted, there are flaws, but in my view at least, they are forgivable. And, as the online code will be publicly shared, the door for other future online indie titles has finally been smashed open. Given that the battering-ram used for this progress is a vibrant, well-designed, and fun little game leaves me feeling that the £20 I forked over was well spent. The finishing touches such as multiple language options, in-game VMU icons, and a plentiful options menu (that aren’t always present on DC indie releases) only reinforce this perspective.

The three styles of physical copy available from WAVE on release - from Mike's A to Z account!

Here’s hoping that LD-2K return in the future with another online outing for our beloved little white box - after a well earned break of course. In the meantime, check the Dreamcast Live and Sega Online schedules to join us for some rounds of Driving Strikers.

Driving Strikers is available now in physical or digital format from WAVE Game Studios.

Have you played Driving Strikers yet? If so, have you had the chance to enjoy playing it online? Let us know in the comments below or via our various social media channels!

Driving Strikers: The First Online Dreamcast Game in 20 Years Is Up for Pre-order!

The Sega Dreamcast is alive and well, my friends, and today's announcement not only solidifies that fact, but also marries together two of the most unstoppable forces of the Dreamcast's modern day indie scene: new software and online play. Upon its release next month on July 24th, Driving Strikers will be the first Dreamcast game release to support online multiplayer in 20 years.

Developed by Reality Jump (a team made up of Luke Benstead and Dave Reichelt), Driving Strikers is a 3D action-sports game where up to four players zoom around an arena in cars playing a giant game of football. The gameplay has obviously drawn comparisons to Rocket league, although the perspective is top-down rather than following your car from behind. Also Rocket League can't go online on the Dreamcast, so sucks to be that game. 

Anyhow, considering Luke developed DreamPi, a popular means to get your Dreamcast online, it was only natural that one of the games he'd eventually go onto develop would include online play. You will be able to enjoy Driving Strikers' gameplay in person or over the internet with full modem and broadband adapter compatibility. It also supports cross-play between Dreamcast, Windows, and even Linux!
Blue skies... definitely Dreamcast.
Wave Game Studios are in charge of Driving Strikers physical release, and as we've always said here at the Junkyard, their quality is consistent and can be trusted. Now up for pre-order, the release is available in three styles, all indicative of official Dreamcast box styles: European blue, American white and Japanese orange. A cool addition from Wave on the game’s artwork is the "online gaming" banner and "online multiplayer" oval as seen on original European and American Dreamcast releases, respectively. 

For a limited time, the game is being sold for an early-bird price of £19.99 (full price £29.99), so go grab it at this cut price while you still can from the Wave Game Studios store! There is also a digital version available for those who are rocking an ODE like GDEMU in their Dreamcast.
If you're interested in learning more about Driving Strikers' development, give our interview with Luke Benstead a read. Also, if you've stumbled upon this article and are asking "What? You can play the Dreamcast online in 2023?", check out Dreamcast Live's connection guide to get started!

Are you excited for Driving Strikers? Will you be playing it online when it's released? Let us know in the comments below or via one of our many social media channels.

Driving Strikers: it's online! - an interview with Luke 'Kazade' Benstead


Last December, Reality Jump delivered to the Dreamcast community a gift on Christmas Eve in the form of the first playable Driving Strikers demo. In the months that have followed, the game has been further developed and expanded into what is now the first ever indie Dreamcast release to support online multiplayer gaming!

Whilst the game isn’t ready for a final release yet (that will be in early 2023), Reality Jump have just released a new demo which includes much tighter controls and online multiplayer for everyone to try out.

Following this latest demo release, I caught up with programming wizard Luke 'Kazade' Benstead to get all the juicy details on what promises to be by far the most ambitious indie release to date.

DCJY: Hi Luke, thanks for chatting to us again! So, what inspired you to first start work on Driving Strikers?

Luke Benstead: Last October, Dave Reichelt and I worked on a Halloween demo called 'Tunnels' - we thought it would be a nice little thing to put together to demonstrate the capabilities of my Simulant game engine, and Halloween was also an immovable deadline so it gave us something to focus on.

Following the release of Tunnels, we looked at the calendar and figured that a Christmas demo would be great. We threw together some ideas and Dave suggested a 2.5D Rocket League-style game. So we frantically spent November and early December 2021 putting together a quick and dirty multiplayer game.

I think as we approached Christmas we started discussing making it a full game, which is why we released it as 'Driving Strikers: Holiday Edition' - with the idea to follow up with a full game in early 2022…that obviously didn’t happen.

Simulant - a new game engine for Dreamcast

The name Luke Benstead is, by now, synonymous with the world of online Dreamcast gaming. That's because Luke is the man who created the DreamPi and along with DreamPipe and Dreamcast Live, kickstarted the online gaming revolution we now find ourselves in the midst of. Not content with having this impressive credit on his resume, Luke has now launched his next venture - Simulant. Simulant is a general purpose game engine designed to work with Android, Windows, Mac OS, Linux...and Dreamcast.
As Luke explained on a recent episode of our podcast - see DreamPod episode 80 here - Simulant's development actually precedes DreamPi by several years, with work first starting on it back in 2011. As many reading this will no doubt be aware, a game engine is the foundation of a game and is the toolkit developers use to create the interactive experiences we all know and love. In this case, Luke likens Simulant to something like Unity, however unlike Unity, Simulant doesn't have a graphical user interface and instead relies on the developer to use pure code.
Luke explains in his own words:

Simulant is a general-purpose game engine for multiple platforms: Windows, Linux, OSX, and of course Dreamcast. General-purpose means it can be used to build any style of game. It's similar in concept to Unity but it doesn't come with a pretty user interface - games have to be developed purely in code.

I've been developing Simulant for almost 9 years, I started it well before I got involved in the Dreamcast scene and for the majority of that time I've been the only developer. 

It's really very powerful, and is currently being used to build (at least) two Dreamcast games: Swirling Blades (my chopper game) and another 3D game called Dark Space Pioneer.

It's also spawned a whole community and a number of related projects, including a full OpenGL library called GLdc, which is being used by Summoning Signals, and the nuQuake Quake port to accelerate performance. An OpenAL audio library has also been built, as well as a software profiler for the Dreamcast called dcprof.

Even after all this time, Simulant is still in Alpha state. I'm always on the look out for skilled developers who want to help! I particularly could use help with the Android and OSX versions!

If you want to see what Simulant can do, check out Swirling Blades on itch - it's a fairly basic 3D helicopter shooter, but as a proof of concept that can be burnt to a disc and played on a Dreamcast hardware, it is impressive.
So now you know the basics, why not see if Simulant is something you'd like to try out for yourself? The Simulant project is open source, and released under the LGPL license, and the code can be found at the repository on GitLab here: https://gitlab.com/simulant/simulant

There's also a dedicated website with more information, screenshots and documentation at: https://simulant.dev.
It seems there's already a really active scene springing up around Simulant, with some well known Dreamcast indie developers testing the waters; and the Simulant Discord server has become a popular home for all kinds of Dreamcast developers. There are nearly 200 lurkers there, and about 20 or so active people, and everyone shares their work and helps out where they can. If you want to have a go at writing a game with Simulant, or if you just want to dip into Dreamcast development, then the Simulant Discord server should be your first port of call (after downloading the code, of course!).
So there you have it. A very brief introduction to Simulant. It's worth nothing that to use Simulant you'll need some level of C or C++ development skill , or at least some good experience in another language (and enthusiasm to learn), but hopefully this will bring a whole new wave of indie developers to the Dreamcast scene.

Be sure to follow Luke on Twitter for updates on Simulant. What do you think? Will you be taking your first steps into Dreamcast development with Simulant? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter.

Online Dreamcast Playercount Hits 1000 With DreamPi

Unless you've been living under a particularly large rock for the past couple of years, you'll no doubt be aware that the Dreamcast is once again a viable online gaming platform. This is mostly due to the work of one Luke Benstead, the talented chap behind the DreamPi. The DreamPi software (recently updated to version 1.7) written by Luke uses a Raspberry Pi to enable the Dreamcast to connect to online gaming servers hosted by Dreamcast Live, and as such a burgeoning community of online Dreamcast gamers has sprung up in recent times.
Toy Racer is one of the many games enjoying a renaissance thanks to DreamPi 
It might be a far cry from the initial 6 billion players, however the fact that the number of accounts set up to use DreamPi has recently hit 1000 is an amazing feat, and shows that there's plenty of life in the old Dreamcast yet. Indeed, NFL 2K was recently restored to full online multiplayer functionality by programmer Shuouma, yet again expanding the online gaming library available to Dreamcast owners. In recognition of this milestone (it's probably the highest number of online Dreamcasts since the early 2000s), we spoke briefly to Luke regarding this not insignificant user count. Here's what he had to say:
 
"I'm still amazed that a little side project I started  few years back has had such a massive and unexpected impact on the Dreamcast community. That over a thousand people have gone to the effort of setting up a DreamPi to get their Dreamcast back online shows their love for the console. The community is definitely still growing, too. It's also worth mentioning the work of Pcwzrd at Dreamcast Live and Shuouma, as if it weren't for their efforts I doubt anyone would be bothered about DreamPi."
- Luke Benstead, creator of the DreamPi software

 
Most of us here at the Junkyard are regular participants in the online gaming sessions organised via the Dreamcast Talk forums, and setting up a DreamPi is literally as easy as pie (sorry). If you would like to join the ever-growing community of online Dreamcast gamers, head over to Luke's blog or visit Dreamcast Live for further details. Here's to the next 1000 Dreamcasters joining the party!
A naked Raspberry Pi rocking DreamPi
Do you play online with your Dreamcast? Have you screamed at the sky as I beat you mercilessly at Toy Racer or POD 2?  Let us know in the comments, on Twitter or in our Facebook group.

Online Gaming On The Dreamcast Is As Easy As Pi

I'm going to start this post with a confession. I never played online with the Dreamcast during the console's natural lifespan. The main reason was that we only had one phone line in the house and I wasn't ever allowed to hog the line for longer than about 30 minutes at a time to do some web browsing. Plus, it was pretty expensive using dial up, even with BT's 'friends and family' initiative and evening and weekend reduced call charges. Fast forward to 2017 though, and I've finally managed to shake off the shame of being a Dreamcast fan who has never battled with other Dreamcasters over the internet.
This is all thanks to the sterling work of Luke Benstead, Pcwzrd and all of the talented folks working behind the scenes to resurrect the Dreamcast's online abilities through the DreamPi project. After being supplied with a DreamPi unit several weeks ago (thanks Pcwzrd!), I thought it was about time that I actually got it up and running and jumped into one of the regular online gaming sessions organised through the Dreamcast-Talk forum. It was incredibly easy to set up using the instructions and various guides available over at Dreamcast Live, and with the use of an old DreamKey 3.0 disc I had lying around I was able to get my Dreamcast hooked up to the internet with little more than a WiFi-enabled DreamPi and a tiny USB modem.
As mentioned earlier, the whole online gaming thing is one aspect of the Dreamcast I never dipped into back when I had my original console in 1999, and I honestly didn't think it would be so easy or entertaining as it was playing Dreamcast games online in the modern climate. We're all so used to the effortless online multiplayer options offered by current consoles and computers that I feared trying to get online to play Dreamcast multiplayer games would be a bit of a pain. How wrong I was...

Get Your Dreamcast Online With DreamPi - 2017 Edition

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last couple of years, you'll no doubt have heard about DreamPi. For those uninitiated rock dwellers though, I'll explain. DreamPi combines a Raspberry Pi mini computer and software created by a clever dude (and occasional Junkyard guest writer) called Luke Benstead, and enables Dreamcast owners to play online multiplayer games through a cool service called Dreamcast Now. The main source for up to date information and trouble-shooting guides for DreamPi is undoubtedly Dreamcast Live, and custodian of the site Pcwzrd has just released a 2017 edition of his DreamPi video guide:


It's pretty comprehensive and covers all the main steps for getting your Dreamcast online for some hot Chu Chu Rocket! action. Be sure to check out Pcwzrd's YouTube channel, Twitter and of course Dreamcast Live for pretty much everything you could ever want to know about playing online Dreamcast games in 2017.

Guest Article: Sega Should Resurrect The Dreamcast Brand

You many be familiar with the name Luke Benstead. He's the guy responsible for creating the DreamPi - the Raspberry Pi based device that is enabling Dreamcast owners to get back online around the world. We've covered Luke's work extensively here at the Junkyard, he appeared as a guest on an episode of DreamPod and he wrote a previous guest article for us. In this new guest article though, Luke takes a look at what it would take to resurrect the Dreamcast brand...

Recently, it was the 17th anniversary of the Sega Dreamcast in the US and the occasion caused Twitter and Faceback to fill with birthday greetings for the console that refuses to die. If you're reading this you are probably well aware of the stubborn and ever-growing 'Dreamcast Scene,' but if this is news to you then I'll give you a quick overview. 
Dreamcast trended on Twitter briefly on 9/9/2016
After Sega stopped supporting their last home console, homebrew developers made tools to create games for it, and every year more and more games created by indie developers are released. On top of that, the Dreamcast continues to gain more and more online multiplayer games as aspiring geniuses reverse engineer the old game servers. Just in the past year alone, Chu Chu Rocket, Toy Racer (dial up), PAL Quake III Arena and The Next Tetris, have returned from the dead. On the horizon is Alien Front Online, and there are sure to be more to come. There are weekly game nights scheduled for both the US and UK, and well over 100 people now regularly play online. Which is quite some achievement considering you have to actually do some soldering to get the dial-up Dreamcast to connect in a fibre-optic world. 

In summary, the Dreamcast isn't dead, it's alive and well. Sure it doesn't compete with current gen consoles but no other console in history has had as much community support. Which brings me onto the main topic of the article; Sega should bring the Dreamcast back.