Back to the River
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
A 3D remake of a very well known classic shooter.
Steering:
Arrow keys or WASD - move left & right, accelerate & brake
Space or LMB - shoot
Z or RMB: use boosters to fly up
C - toggle camera mode
P - pause
ESC - return to main menu
The game may still contain some bugs and needs a few things to be polished. I'd like to hear your feedback and suggestions!
Download
Install instructions
Download the ZIP file. Put the .pck together with the executable. Run the game.
For Mac users:
The Mac version is built without notarization and with ad-hoc code signing.
*Info from a person who actually tried it on their Mac: Download and extract the zip file. Right-click on the Back to the River icon and select Open from the contextual menu. A dialogue will be displayed saying the game cannot be opened. Close the dialogue and then right-click on the Back to the River icon again and select Open again. Another dialogue will be displayed that has an Open option. Click Open and the game should launch. From then on you can just double-click on the game's icon to open it as usual.
Development log
- Day 1 bugfix4 days ago
Comments
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Great job. Consider enhancing it further. Lots of cool directions you can go while keeping it feeling like River Raid.
Also, preload / cache your 3D models so the client doesn't hiccup when they are loaded for the first time.
Thank you. I'm thinking of possible enhancements that wouldn't require rewriting the game from scratch.
I think the hiccup is caused by compilation of particle materials from the explosions, not the models. I'm showing them to the camera and activating them when the game starts, but I must be doing something wrong. Still looking for a solution.
I also made a few remakes of old classics from the 8-bit, so this one is very close to my heart. River Raid was one of the first computer games I ever played when I was very young and still play it quite often. I will download it and play it with big pleasure! Congratulations
Thank you! River Raid is the first game I have a memory of playing, and it's THE game of my early childhood. I'd appreciate any feedback which I can use in future updates.
The slo-mo crash bug is definitely fixed.
I did see a couple of instances of enemies appearing out of place i.e. ships inside central islands and tanks floating in the air.
I think missions should be on by default but also think there should be more fanfare for completing them.
The level generation needs tweaking to ensure that the fuel pads are more evenly distributed both in terms of regularity and position: there's a stretch from bridge 2 where if you go right around the central island there's nothing but fuel pads, but going left there's none. Later on, I hit stretches where it seemed that no fuel was available at all.
And thanks for lowering the fuel pads into the water a little so they have the wave shader :-)
I'm not good enough to have made it to a boss yet :-( Maybe add a boss rush mode?
Oh and I forgot to say: this is really, really good! Great work!
Thank you for the feedback! I will check the placement of the enemies, although I don't recall oddly placed ones in the first 50-ish levels. Most likely some edge cases, where the raycast misses by a very small margin, so the game thinks there's no island there. Haven't seen a floating tank though. I hope it's not the engine behaving differently on different systems.There's already a minimum and maximum interval between fuel pads. I'll see what I can do about the levels with big island, as they're trickier. Tweaking and balancing the placement algorithm is on the todo list. On the other hand, there are stages with no fuel in the original as well, where you're doomed to die without prior knowledge 😀
It doesn't work on my Linux PC unfortunately. I need to alt-tab to see the game screen and then it crashes after I click on the Start button.
I don't have a linux machine, so I can't verify it and I honestly have no clue why it happens. It's built from the same project as the windows version, which starts up normally. Do you think that exporting with debug would leave some error message?
Good news, it works ok om my other Linux computer! When I get back to my other computer in a day or so I will run it from the command line to see if there are error messages displayed.
Really nice, but keeps crashing on death (app just exits). I'm on Mac.
Unfortunately I don't have a Mac machine to verify it. The Windows build seems to be working fine. Does it happen each and every time, or are there some particular circumstances?
I was able to solve both problems I was having (Windows version) of crashing and some enemies not moving by disabling "SLO-MO". Hope that narrows down the problem for you. Great work you've done here!
Good to hear that! Maybe the slo-mo tween is messing with the game logic somehow. Lately I've been playing with it turned off, as I found it not as appealing as I hoped it to be. I'll at least make sure it's off by default in the next update.
If you have time and will, I'd like you to check if the CRT shader causes jerky movement with the dynamic camera mode (press C to switch between the overhead default one, and the dynamic one, following right behind the player). It may as well be an issue with my old hardware.
Holy crap man!!! The dynamic view is amazeballs! Love it. It runs smooth as a baby's bottom for me, but I'm running on a 3090 GPU.
Edit: Ok, it did stutter in one area briefly with the CRT filter and the dynamic camera. It was minimal though.
You were right! The slo-mo was the problem. Or rather that the game tried to increment some non-existent variable I forgot to wipe out. Somehow it didn't crash instantly, only after player's death. It also prevented activating the baddies on the level.
Awesome! Love the game. There have been numerous River Raid clones etc in the past, but yours is quality. Thanks for making it!
I'm glad you like it! Stay tuned for future updates if I get enough feedback on what to fix and/or come up with ideas for new features. BTW, there are boss enemies every 20 levels, be sure to check them out! They may not be the most sophisticated and difficult ones, but I think it's a nice break from the usual baddies :)
Looks great! Needs some optimization. A bit jerky when you first start flying down the river, but eventually it smooths out. Also, there is slowdown when you take out a bridge. Not sure if that is intentional. The game crashes to the desktop if I run into a wall in the very narrow part of the river map where you see the first hot air balloon. Hope to see more updates! One of the best 3D implementations of River Raid I've seen.
Thanks for the comment! The jerkiness is most probably shader compilation. I'm showing them to the camera before the start of the game, so theoretically they should be precompiled. I'll look for another way. The slo-mo is optional and can be switched off in gameplay options. I'll check what's the problem with crashing, it hasn't happened for a long time while testing...
Sounds good. The crashing happens every time you die when in that narrow area. Tested on Windows 10. Also, I noticed in certain areas of the river the baddies stay still and do not move. Is this intentional? Just curious. Cheers!
I've just crashed a few times in that area and nothing happened. Will do some more testing tomorrow. Maybe there is some other factor. I'm also on Win 10. The baddies have a move chance and check against it every couple of frames. So sometimes they may just be unlucky. Also they don't move in some very narrow areas, as they would just spin in place, making it look strange. Or some of them may just be buggy :) But not everything moved in the original as well, so I guess it's acceptable.
If you are bothered by that narrow piece, try another random seed and you will get a different layout of river and enemies. I wonder if it will crash in every instance of narrow piece of river?