The Greatest Ride
Posted on October 24, 2006 at 01:29 AM
About a month ago one of the greatest time wasting apps since the dawn of the internets debuted on a site called Deviant Art. It's a little flash app which is known as Line Rider. It's a simple little app that lets you draw a path for your intrepid rider to traverse. His fate is in your hands as you design his destiny, either big air or big time crash.
I haven't had a lot of time to sit down and play with line rider much in the past month since it's debut, but I did have some time over the weekend to test my line riding skills. Let me warn you, it is very easy to lose yourself within Line Rider's clutches, so give yourself ample time to play with it.
Though let me give you a few helpful hints for the Line Riding newbie within you. The trick with line rider is keeping the rider on the sled. Our little buddy is very sensitive to small bumps at high speeds so it's imperative that all transitions, jumps and loops be perfectly choreographed.
Line Rider doesn't have any editing features, (i.e. no undo or erase). If you screw up half way through and the rider gets ditched, the only hope you have is that you saved your progress up until that point so you can revert back to a previous change (I didn't figure this out until about half way through my creation). You also can't project where the rider is going to go when he jumps, you have to kind of pan over and draw a line (which can take a long time to perfect). One last warning, if you have a sweet creation and for some reason you refresh you browser or it crashes you can kiss it goodbye as your saves are only good for your current viewing session.
Though it's because of these limitations which make creating the greatest ride all that more sweet.
Music in the following clip is performed by one of the best bands to come out of Omaha called Criteria. They rock hard so check them out when you get a chance.
With that being said, I proudly give to you "The Greatest Ride". Enjoy.
Unable to see the video? Click here to view the clip on YouTube.
Tools used to create this clip are listed as follows:
Firefox - browser to display the flash app
Camtasia Studio - provides the screen capturing goodness.
iMovie - brought everything together.
ed. note: If you're wondering how long it took me to make this, I'll just say that it took about 1 hour for each 20 seconds of line riding beauty you see in the clip. I'll let you do the math.
