Hey there!
We want to let you know that the last couple of months were very productive to us and we managed to make a significant progress in essential aspects of the game. We stay on track and our ambition remains the same: we are trying to make a top kart racer on Steam!
Here’s our latest accomplishments!
Physics, Camera, Game Mechanics & Vehicle Behavior
Our major focus was to make the game very skill-based and controls extremely responsive. We spent countless hours to achieve that outcome and we’re pretty confident we succeeded and you're gonna love it!
In the video below, you can see the game mechanics that is casual friendly (you can trigger boost anytime during drift) and very rewarding to hardcore players at the same time. There's an engine power-reserves system (100% +) that indicates the max speed the vehicle can reach. This value is not limited so if you make all three perfect laps you can drive even up to 150% of the original speed!
Definitely not easy, but damn satisfying and challenging when you nail it during competition! :-)
In-game UI Implementation Finished (SP, Online, Split-Screen, Spectator)
We managed to achieve a pretty big milestone, as we finished the in-game UI (in terms of functionality, the visuals and the colors will be modified and adjusted in the upcoming weeks)
In the video you can see:
In-game Player List (at the top during gameplay)
This will show the player’s status, position and other important information. You can enable it during gameplay as well to check how many players are still playing or what’s your friend’s position.
In-game Menu with Options
There’s an option to change UI scale during gameplay. This feature may be very usable during matches in split-screen or played on TV.
HUD : Lap number, Position, Time and Lap times
There are no weapon and boost indicators yet but they will be added during gameplay finalization.
Game Summary in a form of a small window
In this window you’ll be able to see your time, rewards and other after race information. Every player in coop has their own frame after the race.
Split-Screen and HUD layouts (up to 6 players)
Spectator mode
This mode should make the rooms always full during online matches.
In CTR, if a room has 2-3 players the match will start and you won’t be able to join it - you will create a new room where you’ll have to wait for other players to start a match.
This means there will be 2 rooms with 2 or 3 players each, instead of one full room with 6-8 players. Thanks to the spectator mode in The Karters, if a room has any free slots, you'll be free to join it and it doesn’t matter that the race is running - you will just need to wait until it ends to play the next one.
You can also see split-screen online support in action (P1, P2 texts on the player list)
Main Menu - UI features complete
Yet another pretty big milestone achieved - we completed full Main Menu UI implementation!
Main Menu includes:
- Arcade Match
- Challenges (it's like sp campaign mode)
- Online
- Tournaments
- Stake Quick Race
- Friends match
- Settings with key rebinding option
- Shop
- Presets Customization
- Profile coins & exp gathering
In near future, we're going to work on the UI art redesign as well.
You can see all the features in this video:
Main Menu Online Features : Tournaments, Friends and Stake Races
We’ve spent a considerable amount of time developing online systems that you will find in The Karters. Most importantly, we tried to make it really fun and include as many features into online UI as possible.
In the video below you can see 3 major online sections:
- Tournaments
You will be able to join a tournament and race against other players daily (tournament can be joined by an unlimited number of players).
Each Friday there will be a 'Weekly Tournament'.
On last Friday of the month, there will be a "Monthly Tournament" - the most prestigious tournament of all.
Every day, there will be 3 tournaments, one for each region. You’ll be able to join multiple tournaments if you wish to do so.
After registration, rooms will be created and auto-joined. The best 4 players from each room will advance to the next round, others will get eliminated.
The final round will consist of 8 players, and the player that wins will be visible in the "Winners" window (up to 4 months for Monthly Tournament).
It is not yet decided if the tournament has a fixed reward (regardless of player count) or the price is going to be an accumulated entrance from the players.
- Stake Race
The idea behind the stake race is to create natural skill matchmaking. Fresh players won't be able to join higher-stake rooms, but if they have enough coins from their play-time, they’ll be able to try to compete against the best players.
0 points stake room is free-entry with the reward of X coins - these coins will allow to enter higher stake rooms (with higher-ranked players) and to buy items in the shop.
This system will add an extra layer of adrenaline during playing high stake room with players, when you have a lot to win but you're risking a lot at the same time.
- Friend Match
Friend List will show your friends, their rooms and their level.
We’re thinking about making some sort of guilds that will be integrated directly into the game (and created via Discord). It hasn’t been implemented yet but we believe it’s an interesting direction.
You’ll be able to create friend room and race against each other.
You’ll be able to find friends via 6-Digits ID. It will make it easier to find friends from other platforms.
In online races, you can play solo, but you can also join the online races in the coop (up to 6 players).
The online UI logic is almost complete so please share your thoughts about these systems and tell us what we can improve! :-)
Character Skins & Materials
During development, we’ve managed to come up with a plethora of various character skins. New ones are in constant development ;-) Here's a few examples:
The Karters - Track Editor
Below you can see The Karters Track Editor - a very special tool we’ve been working on for quite some time.
Using the tool will speed up track creation process at least 10x, not to mention the fact that we can test the track and do some changes realtime during gameplay.
Right now the tool is used in game engine but there’s a chance we’ll update it to grant the possibility of creating tracks in the normal game build. We’ll need to see about that :-)
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As you can see, lots has been happening recently and the development is shaping up really well. At present, we're carrying on with AI, weapon polish and on-line.
We’ll do our best to post more regular updates on Steam but to follow the real-time progress, we advise you to join our forums or Discord channel.
Last but not least, if you haven't registered to our upcoming beta tests yet, there's still time to do so!
:-)
