Hi guys! Long time no see!!! I'd like to do more regular dev logs but as it turns out writing UI systems isn't very interesting work... But despite naysayers, this project is making nice headway! Before I start, just wanna say the game is in a VERY playable state now. You can load into a game, play it, collect coins, and go back to the main menu to unlock stuff to do it all over again.
First, some visual stuff. Improved underwater things: screen distortion should now work for multiple players, and the light caustics are now obscured in shadowy areas.
"But developer!!!" I hear you say, "What about the MENUS? Video games are all about MENUS!" First of all, stop yelling, I got you covered. Secondly, that's what a lot of my efforts have been toward, and it's grueling work. I want the menus to not be dreadfully boring, so I'm putting a lot of effort into them. So here's what happened with those gachapon machines...
Sorry to you guys who love watching the dream feet video in the background, had to pause it because it makes the gif file sizes really big...
Anyways, you can spend the coins you've collected in races! Pretty awesome, I think. There are gachapon machines for racers, vehicles, figurines, horns for honking, tracks, and then one for just random stuff. All of them cost 10 coins right now, but I'll probably adjust the economy later on.
The gachapon machines are intended to be the "easy" way to unlock stuff, in case you didn't want to hunt down collectables in the tracks. Ideally you could probably completely ignore the machines if you really wanted.
Anyways, let's see how buying something looks...
Wow! A new kart?! This one is for the strawberry fella, Ichigogo.
Mod authors can opt in or out of having their content unlocked by default, unlocked in the machines, unlocked in stages, or unlocked via a password. (Password screen not yet available...)
Also did you catch earlier I mentioned "figurines"? What are those?
These are figurines! They're sorted by "series". They're pretty much trophies from the Smash Bros. games. These are nice to have, because every model takes some development time, and characters are supposed to have their own world lore, so I thought it'd be nice to pay homage to a classic and allow people to read details on their favorite tracks and characters. Just like anything else, people can add figurines through mods. These are easy to implement so there ought to be a lot of them.
Regarding these, expect some cameos from other indie devs; I'd really like to collaborate with as many as I can. If you are a dev or know any who might be interested, let me know!
Now something a little more gameplay-oriented. How are tracks made? Here's a peek at some track tooling. Nothing crazy, just an idea of how it works.
Basically you can dictate how AI racers "see" the track by setting the width it along the path. The CPU racers feel out the curvature of the track and determine whether or not they should drift it. Racers can also be smarter or dumber and their behavior will change based on that. It effects drift usage, and can be used to determine whether they'll take certain shortcuts. Aggression is also a factor; some racers may be more quick to use items against you.
But yeah, alternative paths are also feasible! Pretty satisfying to watch the traffic split...
Along with new features, there are also old bugs... There was previously an issue with the kart's orientation code. It's a bit technical, but the kart used to orient itself like this:
It used to check the slope under each wheel, and match it. This is a problem because if the slope was drastically different for one wheel, but elevation was not, the kart would inappropriately tilt. Likewise, if the elevation was different but the slope was the same, the kart would inappropriately NOT tilt. It looked like this:
EW!!! Bad! See that jitter? There should be no jitter if the ground is not moving...
But I fixed it! Here's how it looks now:
So much better! The kart should now glide over imperfections really nicely. Basically what it does now is check directly below the kart, and get the elevation to the contact point of each wheel, and rotates the kart away from the high elevations and toward the low elevations. In hindsight the old method was kind of dumb. But hey, I never claimed to be Einstein!!!
I also discovered an interesting bug where if you hold accelerate and decelerate at the same time, you can drift in place... Thinking I might just give this functionality, because it is pretty cool. I think it will probably end up giving you a massive instant boost the direction you're facing. Kinda feels like Kirby Air Riders!
Where might you see this stuff? Well, perhaps in an actual track! Here's the track select menu, excuse the fact there are only two crappy unfinished tracks available.
One of the neat things about my track selection system that I don't think I've seen before is the queue. You can basically create a custom "cup" by queueing multiple tracks in succession. You can see it in the top right of that gif. I'm not 100% sold on this track selection screen right now but it does the job fine. I may come back to it! I'd also like to have some sort of cup selection screen, but I need more tracks for that...
When you play through the track, there's also a results screen. Man, how do I think of this stuff?! Well here's how that looks; mega gif compression incoming!
And that's pretty much it for now!
I still have a lot of work to do, as you can see, but there's actually a game loop! So that's really important. Among the things I have to set up is an actual multiplayer menu with separate player cursors and stuff, but all the infrastructure is ready for that. Also, a way to select your horn. For the most part though, a lot of the work left to do is adding content!
Thanks a bazillion to anybody keeping an eye on the project and especially so to anybody who has wishlisted. I'm actually baffled this many people are looking at my game. Hopefully soon there will be a place for you guys to gather, even if just a Twitter page? Only because I'm not sure how immediately I'll be interested in doing community management alongside developing this AND working my day job. Sorry to anybody eager to engage, but I promise I'm still cracking away! I'll get this in your guys' hands as soon as it's ready.
Please don't be shy to leave some comments if you have any suggestions or questions!
Thanks again, and I'll see you guys soon!