Heeey!!! Been a good while, sorry about the silence! Even though I've got a couple folks helping, it's still primarily just me cracking away at this. Got a new work from home job, so my exhaustion shouldn't deter me from working so much anymore. Let's get into what's new!!!
Well, since we last spoke, I've improved midair physics a bit, so there is a lot more stability!
There's also some nice lean to your turns now! (was implemented literally 3 days ago)
Just for a moment I'd also like to show off some of the SDK capabilities, using a Vampire Survivors skeleton as an example! (We have no association with those devs, but I'm a big fan. (poncle if you ever hear about KART please let me make a Vampire Survivors track(s)...)) Also, sorry in advance about some of the gif compression on these. Someone once mistook it for an artistic choice.
First of all, say hi to Sid! He's a 2D character, based on old original Gameboy graphics. Art direction for this game is going to be a bit weird, so bare with it; we're intentionally going to mix a lot of art styles together. He's of course riding a bike. We can talk more about that later.
So what are you looking at exactly? Well, these skeletons are made by using 100% modding tools! They are made using things you'll have access to. Here's a breakdown of what the skeletons made of:
- Roamer (script to make them move around a point)
- Spawner (script to make multiple of them spawn)
- Detection zone (script to detect the kart and do things...)
- Speed filter (to detect player speed)
- Damage zone (only hits players beneath a certain speed)
- Flinger (flings an object depending on how fast the racer is going)
- Coin effect (to give coins to a racer)
- Timer (waits to respawn the skeleton)
- Tagger (tags players when they kill a skeleton)
That last one feeds into a larger tagging system. You can selectively effect racers by applying tags to them. So, in theory, you could have alternate routes in a track designated for players who have achieved something in particular. You can make the tag visible (see the skeleton tag near the coin counter?), or hide it for more subtle effects.
The tools I'm making will be able to be mixed in matched to create very cool stuff!
Anyways, too many words not enough pictures. Here's some UI in progress here. (The background is a placeholder, unfortunately.) I wanted to make sure the UI was as speedy to navigate as the game is.
Also busted character in progress there, don't worry about that.
Here's something fun too: when playing local split screen, your icon at the bottom of the screen is interactive. This way, you can show all your friends how impatient you are by mashing buttons.
"Me and my friends only have enough money for one copy of KART..." no problem bro, maybe get a job, but otherwise just invite up to 7 friends over to play.
You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get audio working for 8 players. A lot of time was poured into that over the last couple months. I tried a lot of stuff, and eventually wound up with something pretty good here. That said, it's still a lot on the processing end, not sure if all systems will be able to handle it, but you're welcome to try.
You may notice the top left player is someone we haven't seen before. His name is Ichigogo, little fella is based on Sanrio characters & art. I think taunting has been in for a while, but it's a good opportunity to show you here.
You can perform a taunt by pressing jump while you're at the peak of your midair time. If you keep mashing it, you can drop coins as a flex on your haters.
Ichigogo is a strawberry jam salesdog in his regular life. You can learn about him through the collectable figurine unlockables around the tracks, OR just be a quitter and buy them with the coins you've collected.
Other unlockables will include racers, vehicles, tracks, and sound effects you can use as horns. Probably also skins, but not in the "buy the season pass!!1!1" sort of way. Just fun alt costumes. The whole game is sort of getting a chaotic air about it, and that's kinda the way I want it. So, to encourage the chaos, I'm allowing players to animate the text in the in-game chat.
Online stuff is in the works. I initially planned Steam Workshop for hosting mods but if we ever want to move to a console, we'll want a mod system that is cross-platform, so we're thinking hard about that. There's other little touches and flourishes I've got going on back this way, but I'll keep it in my pocket for now.
I love you guys! Thanks to anybody who has wishlisted KART so far, it's been a long journey but hopefully before long we can laser focus in on some environments and really show you what we've got.
Take care! I'll try not to take so long on the next devlog this time!!!