Hey everyone! Not sure who may be reading this so early on, but assuming you're seeing it not long after it's published, thanks so much for your interest in the game! Programming-wise, it's just me (Eiko) working on this, and for the majority of the development time, the modelling has all been me as well, so any support is extremely encouraging! Somewhat recently, I hired a 3D artist to help work on tracks, so there's more to come on that front, which I'm very excited about. Working on this game has mostly been a daily grind for me, but of course I've still got to pay my bills with my really cruddy job that pays me peanuts.
Mostly, I'm writing this to sort of communicate where I am with development, so you guys know what to expect. I'm not going to be too comprehensive since it's a lot to cover, but I'm going to quickly go over the key things that are finished and things that still need work.
Most importantly, gameplay feels really nice. I often spend a silly amount of time just drifting around and playing the game because it's satisfying to execute drifts, collect coins, and run into hazards. Currently, races are working very well, and a very simple CPU racer system is also working. So, it's currently possible to race CPU's from start to finish. The CPUs are extremely dumb right now, but they add enough chaos to KART that I have a good idea of how the races against other players will feel.
That leads me to speak of multiplayer; it's already working! That was one of the first tests I did a while back. Currently it's extremely user-unfriendly to join/host a game, but I've been designing all features with the knowledge that it must work with networking, so I expect minimal adjustments to code I've already written as far as online play is concerned. Eventually I'll get to a point where I can start focusing on lobbies, then I'll actually start looking at having online play tests. I'll probably need some volunteers when that time comes. Wink wink!
While there's still work to be done there, I feel really confident about the actual racing aspect of the game, so for the last few months I've been pouring a lot of my focus into the modding aspect of the game.
As an aside, I already have the spawning system done, so racers and their vehicles can be interchangeable, and you can choose primary and secondary colors for your racer as well.
In regards to modding, I have a system which I'm also feeling really good about. Since I want creators to have as much flexibility as possible, I've decided to not include an editor in-game. My reasoning is that it would limit people to the tools I provide them. Instead, I will be releasing an SDK that can be used to create content for the game via Unity. This means you can make racers, tracks, karts, horn sounds, and maybe more using external tools. So in theory, you should be able to play as whoever you want if you're willing to put forth the effort. In concept, this will effectively be the same as Tabletop Simulator's AssetBundles, if you're familiar with that.
That said, I will be providing a free demo which people will be able to use to play test their creations without ever owning the full game. This will happen before the game fully releases, so keep an eye out for that if you're interested! (I might eventually decide to include some sort of editor in-game, but as of right now, that's beyond the scope of this project.)
Also, I'm making the modding tools as simple to use as possible, and I'll be creating tutorials on top of that down the road.
The final result will be a little different than the above, since I've already made a lot of progress since that gif was recorded, but it should be approximately as simple as that. For instance, in the case of custom tracks, you can (selectively or not) apply various effects to racers, as well as implement various interactive elements such as timers, counters, detectors, and so on. There's even a feature where you can trigger events based on the beat of the music.
So anyways, this last week, I've been thinking through the game's startup sequence. That is, from the moment you launch the game until you enter the main menu. The method by which you launch the game is important (from Steam or from Unity via playtest) so that's what I'm working on now. This includes loading the proper things, like achievements or user settings, when the game starts up. I wrote 44 achievements tonight. They're not actually achievable yet, but Steam can acknowledge their existence right now, so that's nice.
Alright, it's 6AM and I gotta get some sleep! Thanks again for your support, I'll keep working hard to bring you all a fun game!