Hey everyone!
Big day today as the racing update has been released! Now you can setup races with laps in (almost!) any way you want them to be! Along with some general improvements, marble skins, 2 new shapes and confetti trails!
The Racing Patch
Using the new racing specific items you can now set up races for your tracks! All it takes is a racing marble spawner, at least 1 checkpoint and a finishline. In the bottom right corner a racing button is added, in the window that will appear when clicking on it lets you see the requirements in order to start racing and will tell you if you miss anything.
Two new marble spawner's have been added which will help you set up your marbles with their skins / names / effects and which order they should appear in. These spawners also come equipped with special marble holders and one of them with a built in finish with lights for when the race starts. They function similar to the current "normal" spawners, but when clicking on the names in the list it will let you change every marble individually. This list is also re-orderable by dragging the names around. The spawners are the same length as the original wide one in order to let you replace them easily on existing tracks if wanted.
Note: these new spawners only spawn up till their max positions (36 per piece) or till there are no more marble names available.
This list of names is taken from a new file called MarbleData, available at the usual location where all the Worlds are saved. C:\Users\(your name)\AppData\LocalLow\Vector Interactive\Marble World
Originally there was a file here that was not readable by the human eye, or editable! Now this new file will let you arrange the names as its a readable JSON file. This file includes the name, skin and effect. The
order of the marbles in the file represent the order of spawning in. The old file will be converted into the new one on startup.
A race also needs checkpoints, the game uses these as time measurements to see who is further or behind. So if you want quick updates you'll need a few, but if you don't really care for that but just the end result you only need 1 as that is the minimum. A race also needs a finishline, this will show you the amount of time inbetween marbles as they finish or (if its a multi-lap race) per lap.
Once its all set up (this all sounds more work than it actually is!) start the race either by pressing the hotkey (X) or the button in the racing window and let's see who's the fastest!
The Notes
- Added the racing patch and it's required content such as checkpoints, finishlines and starters
- Marble World now checks for capitalization when entering duplicate world names in order to prevent overwriting similar named worlds
- Improved hitboxes of 6 triangles
- Entering new names can now be done by pressing enter, also no need to clear that inputfield manually anymore, hurray!
- The nail got a shorter renderdistance
- Added a ring and an arch as a shape
- Added hotkeys to start the race (X), to follow the marble in currently first position (/), to go up/down in leaderboard whilst following marbles (up/down arrow)
- Added a confetti trail effect for marbles
- Added a confetti effect to place down
- Added 12 new marble skins
- Added 4 new metal paints (work in progress) and a finishline / checkered paint
- Added 2 race tire props (paintable)
What didn't make it
As usual, sometimes things don't make the cut. And in this case it's because making the racing patch logic was more time consuming than expected. It's sometimes difficult to estimate the work amount if your not sure why bugs are there or why logic isn't behaving as expected, this was also the case for racing as it should support hundreds of marbles at the same time. The following feature's are replanned for another patch:
- A improved marble following camera where you can rotate around the marble
- Loading in marble names from a seperate CSV file
- Ability to set up different camera positions and swap between them during a race
Next patch will be involving bug fixes & small improvements that are requested, a small patch to prepare for another big one that will be improving track building!
Thanks for reading and thanks for your continuous support! I'm grateful to have such a great community :)
p.s. Don't forget to join on Discord for the most up-to-date news! https://discord.gg/jbx92tbMSG
You're free to ask any questions you have, suggestions to mention or report any bugs you may find or just have a chat. I check other social media's or the steam community forums too from time to time, so if that's more your thing that's fine too :)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1491340/Marble_World/