I KNEW that they would screw it up somehow, I just didn't think it would be as bad as THIS. One of the main draws of the original was its simplicity. This is so full of failure that it's mind-boggling.

That looks a bit rubbish.

I dunno... It looks quite cool to me. Where is the line-drawing though?

Never really understood what people liked about that 'game'. It isn't even a game, it's more like a level editor.

Shouldn't a game called "Line Rider" have lines to be ridden?

Going to second a lot of the reservations being aired here. I couldn't even see where the 'track' was in that video. In a game formerly about a simple mechanic (riding along clearly defined lines), having gameplay footage where it's almost impossible to discern between foreground and background (and apparently parts of the track are neither - actually invisible) makes me wonder just what they're planning here.

That's some ace voice acting...

Anybody know the name of the song playing in the background?

My guess would be that the actual editing is done with lines, and the terrain is drawn in programmaticly by the game as you do so. This is most likely a video of some sort of exhibition mode, where the lines are hidden to make it more showy when showing it off to friends/uploading to the 'net.

Personally, if the editing is still done with lines I think this is ace. The original line rider was uglier than sin, it's nice to have some color, and the tricks the guy pulls add a little variety. And for the people who liked the old simple lines, I don't see any reason why there won't be a "classic" skin that doesn't draw any terrain in the background. Assuming it's not going to be in there from a single short clip seems like really negative thinking to me.

Wow.

If this is done with lines and then automatically "skinned" with mountain parts, I want to know who is the crazy genius who coded this impossible thing.

Look at the Worms serie. You can't auto-generate a terrain like that, especially parts like the loops and the chimney (or is the word "snow flume"?).

It look more like if the track was made from pre-made parts, which might make sense. Maybe the game will allow a mix of lines (for simple slopes) with track parts, for loops and more advanced stuff.

Hopefully it has a video recording mode, that you can share over the air.

The thing that worries me though are the tricks that the character is doing, and the part where he grab the sled. It seems like the player will play him, not make the tracks (or maybe both, or a mix of both)

Looks obnoxious.

Actually, I think you could do it fairly easily. It's not all that impossible.

In much the same way as the Castlevania games on DS can recognize a spell shape, you just have heuristics that mark each shape as some sort of structure, and then a loop that goes through each shape and fills it the textures around it, and then fills the spaces in between with semi-random stuff. A closed loop with get skinned with a tunnel, an open loop gets a flume, etc. The important thing to realize is that the terrain (even in this video) needn't match the line of travel exactly, it just has to be close enough. You probably want it a little off anyway, it would look pretty flat and dull if you were always exactly on top of the terrain. After all, even though you can't see the actual lines, the engine will be using those to actually calculate the path of the rider, the terrain is just there for eye candy.

Again though, it's just conjecture that they would have done it that way. For all I know they do use shapes as you say, although that would be lame beyond belief.

Even if this is just for showing the track you have created to friends, that still doesn't work (I think) because the whole fun of viewing the sleigh racing along the track is to see it follow the line, and to see how narrowly it misses or clears parts of the track.

Eye candy is nice but they should still add the track itself as an overlay.

Then again I do not know what is going on there exactly so who knows... :)

@oranda : It might be... If it is, it won't be in real-time, the track will be painted when you are done.

But if they do it that way, it will be pretty hard for the engine to decide which like is good and which is junk. If you check LineRider videos on you-tube, you'll see that even the most seasoned player (that doesn't use an hacked version of linerider) usually draw mutliple lines to get curves and loops right.

I guess we'll see when it come out, and the way they do it might be what make or break the game.