Leute! We are back from a trip to Cologne to Gamescom last week. It was busy, it was awesome, and very insightful. In this post we'll explain what you can expect from TRL the upcoming weeks.
While it was the fourth year in a row for Gamious, this years Gamescom was our entertainment/consumer area debut. Team Racing League had an awesome booth across the Indie Arena, where two teams of three could battle each other sitting on theater chairs, staring at a 78" screen. There was a line constantly and nearly all players who tried out the game where hyped to play some more. It strengthened us in seeing and believing in the potential of the game. We got back to the Netherlands with good feedback and a drive to improve the game as good and as fast as we can.
FIXES, BALANCING, TWEAKS
The current update we're working on is about fixing existing 'issues'. For example, we noticed some gameplay features aren't balanced well enough. Also, we want to make it as easy and fun as possible for players to enjoy the game, even without a big player base. Here's a list of stuff we're working on to improve the Team Racing League experience:
- Rematch functionality: when you have found opponents, the whole lobby is placed in a new match after a match concludes. You can still opt out to return to the menu and look for another group of players.
- We're adding individual leaderboards to see how your win% scores against other players globally. (There's already a team leaderboard.)
- Deactivate anchor when giving accelerate/decelerate input. This should help (first time) players that accidentally lock themselves into the ground with anchor.
- The roasting abilities from the Afterburner and Flamethrower are being powered up. You can roast blocks and players faster now, to hopefully improve the balance and dynamic between the available mechanics.
- We removed the cooldown on blocks. Blocks can be burned faster, so it made sense to remove the cooldown. This means less work to keep your blocks active and more room to focus on obstructing enemies :)
- Anchor (former "anchor mode") is being amplified as well. You cannot break it anymore when using a (solo) boost.
- Made some visual improvements to make certain states more clear, like the leader trail (behind the racer racing in front), flame colours during boosts and when activated the anchor.
- Minor copy changes to make it clear to players that you're racing a Best of Three, not a single race, and that the vehicles of the losing team can be blowed up by clashing into them after winning a race.
ROLE HUD
We noticed that connecting with teammembers can be quite tricky and that there is some confusion about the dual abilities it unlocks. It works like this: when you connect two vehicles, the vehicle racing in front will become the DRIVER. As a driver you control a slightly faster/stronger vehicle and can use a boost once it is charged by your CO-DRIVER, the other player. As a co-driver, you cannot control the car, but have three abilities you can use:
- Boost Charge: you can charge a boost that your driver can use. Charge by using your accelerate button and release it in time. A blue connection between both thrusters means you charged a boost successfully. Black smoke means you failed the timing.
- Flamethrower: by activating the flame thrower two fiery-hot flames will come out the sides of your vehicle, burning all in its path.
- Roadblock: the roadblock will extend your two vehicles creating a barrier in between. When your teammate passes through, he will be granted a boost charge. Enemies will blow up their engine and slip for a few seconds.
We're creating a HUD once you are connected that explains the controls and shows players which abilities are active and which aren't.
LOCAL MULTIPLAYER
We were quite hesitant to add local multiplayer, because we want as much people playing and enjoying the game online as we can. We do however believe that Team Racing League offers a great couch-co-op experience. Gamescom confirmed this as well. We're bringing local team racing to the game very soon so you can enjoy racing with your buddies even without players online!
WHAT'S NEXT?
There are a lot of things we want to improve. Keeping in mind that our team is very small, we have to prioritise tasks and cannot improve everything all at once. The stuff that's on the top of on our list:
- Searching queue for online match in the background. It's a tricky one, but a huge improvement on the game if players are able to activate a searching queue while playing locally (time trial or a playground arena or something). We're hoping to be able to add this feature asap.
- Expand Twitch mode to make the game even more interesting for people to Twitch. (More Twitch = more views = more players = more matches = more fun :))
- Improve menu's and loading times of pages like the Team Ranking.
- Work in some animations to better communicate stuff like Trophies and Best of Three scores
- New tracks!
Should you have any questions or suggestions for the development of the game, please reply here or say something on the forum. Stay tuned for the next update when a new build is live!
