- Version 0.4.2 Released - 30 July 2022
Turns out I didn't get the leaderboards right on the first try. Dang. The champ boards were storing the points, cars, and wheels from the last track instead of the sum of those from the championship. It was a minor error in the secondary data, but it was worth a patch update sooner than later, especially since the other WIP could take some time to complete. Fixes: Champ boards now store points, cars, and wheel sums from entire championship instead of just the last track. Changes: The share image now shows the laps total from the championship (because it may not be the max laps possible), and also now changes the text for an endurance race.
- Version 0.4.1 Released - A.I.-based Wodifiers - 22 July 2022
Because some weren't "getting" the perhaps-too-humanlike oddball A.I.s built into the game, and/or just thinking the A.I. was not well done because some of them crash around a lot (due to their intentional and varied personalities), I had the idea to use a couple of these personalities to create a couple more "wods" (Wacky Wodifiers/Leader Lamifiers) for the game. Because the needed personalities were already built, it just took maybe only an hour or two to add and test these wods. There was already a speed racer personality for the "Bring it on" racing wod. And there was already a heat seeker personality for the "King of the hill" leader-lynching wod. With a tweak of some of their settings to make them more interesting for their particular wods, and they were good to go. I can always tune them a bit more later if needed. I must admit, it is sometimes more enjoyable, when playing alone,…
- Version 0.4.0 Released - Leaderboards! - 20 July 2022
One of the few remaining major basic features has finally been added to the game. Leaderboards! (Yeah.. only local leaderboards... sorry if you were hoping for online global as well. Those will arrive only once enough sales come in to justify the expense.) As you will see once you get into them, adding leaderboards to such a broad game primarily targeted at a variety of party play, was no small task. I could have made a more simple (and rather lame) first attempt... but I'm a data engineer by day and couldn't help myself by doing it right no matter the complexity of it all (just like how I, perhaps over-zealously, tackled the physics, skidmarks, audio, and wacky A.I.). With leaderboards also comes bonafide co-op play (we hear small cheers in the distance). That is to say, part of the array of leaderboards is a 2-player time-trial leaderboard. It follows basic team-time-trial rules of re…
- Version 0.3.11 Released - Remote Play Together - 24 April 2021
These last two releases focus on Steam's feature: Remote Play Together. At first, a long long time ago, that feature seamed to work with GRITS Racing. Then, it didn't work so well. Then, it didn't work at all, except with keyboard input. With some updates from both Steam and Rewired, we finally took a dive back into this. Turns out, the biggest problem was that one of us was running Steam's beta channel. Anyhow, with that corrected and some of these other fixes in place, Remote Play Together seems to be working great. (This, of course, was all on Windows and I suspect the Linux and Mac builds are easier to work out with Steam.) Remote Play Together appears to be limited to 4 players... and we haven't tested this limit yet... or if more can be jacked in locally plus the 3 remotes (depending on controller types and Steam Input settings). The car is a bit harder to control in low gear with…
- Development Status Update - 10 October 2020
It's been quiet here for a few months so I wanted to update everyone on the status of development on GRITS Racing. First, the project is not dead even though I can't say there has been a lot of interest in GRITS. I get it, I haven't given anyone a game worth talking about yet. Rather than trying to compete with all the other games in this genre, I tried finding something new. I own the failures there. There does, however, seem to be a tiny fan base and sales do trickle in. Not enough, however, to pay any bills with. Thus, much of my time lately has been spent looking for work and/or working small contracts. That is also where I'll be for the next few months. Considering that I don't do well in tech interviews and tech quizzes (I'm just not geeky-cool enough), finding work is no small task. No one looks at the work you actually do or your references anymore. They certainly don't care ab…
- Prison Dodgecar is Back! - 6 July 2020
Prison Dodgecar minigame is back! The best 6-8 player couch minigame on the planet! Was it gone? Well, sort of. While working on adding the team-selection feature, I noticed I had broken the primary feature of Prison Dodgecar some time ago. Apparently, it broke when I added the feature that allows drivers to fall out of their cars in collisions (which is not used in Prison Dodgecar). The feature I broke was the attachment of the Tesla Shields™ to the car. Without that, Prison Dodgecar is a pretty lame bumper-car game. Boo! Now, it's a TS-powered bumper-car game again! Yay! In other news, I was wrong in my prediction that the next feature added might be the leaderboards. That one is a huge push as the leaderboards are not simple for this game. Having a team selector for the minigames was another gaping hole in basic features and, being a much smaller feature to add, I chose to do it befo…
- Version 0.3.8 Released - 16 June 2020
Features or content? That is a tough question at times when choosing what to work on next. This time, I chose features since many features that should make this game more attractive are still missing. At long last, you can finally enter your own driver names. Most of the Western European accent characters are also supported (use the X and Y buttons to change the keyboard key). Names are saved for later easy selection. 100 names can be stored. Saved names can be deleted with a tool found under the Game Options menu. This was also a significant hurdle in the way of getting to the leaderboards feature. I suspect I'll get to the leaderboards next as it is pretty important to those solo players. Still so much to do. I had hoped to get to name entry sooner but it was no small amount of work to do it right. Building menu features in Unity is a lot more work than just about any other tool. Buil…
- Endurance Racing Pre-alpha Release - 30 January 2020
With 6 of the planned 24 tracks now built (well, prototyped) it seemed time to start fiddling with Endurance Racing mode so players can select their favorite track and hit it harder. This is not really Endurance Racing as planned but it is sorta close. The biggest missing feature is the yellow-flag one. Currently, Endurance Racing is just a single-track championship run with more laps. The yellow-flag feature is intended to take that one step further by pausing the race every 10 laps or so to allow one of the trailing players to change up the rules with the usual Wacky Wodifier selection. Working out how to reconcile such changes mid-race, however, will take some time. Thus, I chose not to wait for that before allowing entry into this mode. (Besides, the menu work alone to get this working was a big enough lift .) A quick A.I. cheat was also added to Endurance Racing until I have time t…
- Version 0.3.6 Released - 22 January 2020
This update doesn't bring much many will care about but it brings something important for us: It allows us to the check the "full controller support" box in Steam for better exposure. Previously, Unity's default game launcher window was disqualifying this tag because it requires a keyboard or mouse to navigate. Thus, I finally added in-game screen and graphics settings to the Game Options menu and set the Unity launcher to only appear on request. (If you are running on Mac and it is already set to appear from before this update, you can turn if off yourself with this checkbox in that window: Only show this dialog if the option key is down.) Our massive Linux community will also be happy to be caught up on updates (namely, the new Italian Mini Prix track). This also puts us in a better position for when the Atari VCS finally launches. While console builds do not need graphics options lik…
- Version 0.3.5 Released - 19 January 2020
On the heals of the last release which brought a small but fundamental change, here comes another small but fundamental change. I have kicked the AI NPC cars out of the race when you are playing with several friends. After all, playing against friends should be about playing against friends and not the AI. And, well, it seems 6 cars is chaotic enough, which makes 12 cars just plain absurd. This also allowed me to find a simple solution to the AI UI problem: the AI now have trucks with the usual lap counters (I had not done this previously because space is reserved for only 8 players here). This also has the nice side effect that single-player mode feels more interactive. AIs are still limited to 1 car each. Anyhow, here's the rundown of when AI cars will appear: 1-2 players = 4 AI cars 3 players = 3 AI cars 4 players = 2 AI cars 5 players = 1 AI car 6-8 players = 0 AI cars The more aggr…
- The Italian Mini Prix has Arrived! - 16 January 2020
The Rosa Camuna mini GP track is finally ready for testing (loosely based on a minified Monza). It was a long haul in part due to some awesome tool writing to make this and future tracks easier to build. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do. Certainly not a beginner's track (you can't full throttle all of it; and be careful with the funky grip on the concrete banking). You'll currently find it at track 6 in an 8-track lineup. This release also brings a big change to a basic mechanic: max speeds. I noticed many players were very happy with the max speed of the fat-tire car setup. Well, that setup is 17% slower than the base setup. Thus, I did some testing that I should have done long ago to see just how slow I could tolerate the max speed and still feel fast and dangerous. To skip the long story of the deep look I took at things, I landed at cutting the base max speed 15% from 200 kph…
- Linux Build Released - 17 November 2019
Admittedly, GRITS Racing is a small fish in a big pond... so... time to find out what it is like to be a small fish in a much smaller pond. Thus, I took the plunge to run and release a build for Linux. It was a bit of trouble -- and perhaps a waste of time -- but not that bad as most tools were ready to go for Linux. Also, this paves the way for building for the Atari VCS when it arrives. More on the Linux build further down. 0.3.1 updates: Wwise plugin updated from 2018.1.6 to 2018.1.10 to fix a bug in the Linux build. Windows and Mac will likely not see a build of version 0.3.1 since I see nothing else in the plugin update that would affect the game much on those platforms. In other news (for my November update) I hope to start work on a new track soon even though my new job is sucking a lot out of me with their insanely-complex proprietary tools they build their simulator with. We'll…
- Version 0.3.0 Released - 25 September 2019
Version 0.3.0 doesn't add much that will be noticeable over the last 0.2.x version -- it is more of a wrap to all the 0.2.x edits. That said, there was still a ton of hard work behind this update. Most of that was on those barely-noticeable shadows. The shadow controllers were rebuilt, and then rebuilt again, until I found the right setup for optimal performance with shadows on both static and dynamic objects as well as optimal track editing. Thus, just about every object was updated (and updated again) even if not significantly so. New features: All objects (of any significant height) now have a shadow (of one sort or another). This adds a tiiiiiny bit more depth to the track. Sometimes I think it works well... and sometimes I think it is silly looking and not worth the effort. We'll see where it goes from here. Fixes: The larger/wider wheels now show the smoke and dust they generate (…
- Version 0.2.13 Released - 17 September 2019
Updates: The drag chute has finally received the attention to detail that pretty much everything else has. This isn't final polish yet, but at least it is more than the quick test feature that it used to be. There is new art and the chute inflates with motion. The collider on the chute has finally been enabled after resolving most scenarios where the chute might get stuck on the wrong side of the track barriers. This can still happen through no direct fault of the driver, but the precise scenario is extremely rare and, thus, dubbed part of the chaos of the game (don't get rear-ended while diagonally backed into a wall). Anyhow, the chute can now get tangled on some objects such as other cars -- but this feature has been made to also be fairly forgiving and should untangle fairly easily.
- Version 0.2.12 Released - 13 September 2019
New features: New Wacky Wodifier: Greased car seats. This is my new favorite wod. It's for those who think the drivers are a little too glued to their seats considering these jalopies have no seat belts. I'm tempted to make this the only race mode and cancel all the other wods. I won't... I don't think... well, not anytime soon. Changes: Wandle track (the figure-8) has been made a bit easier by moving the barrier tires 2 meters further back from the race line. Some sprite updates and tweaks.
- Version 0.2.11 Released - 13 September 2019
Some cleanup of things missed in all the work of the last release. Fixes: Pedestrian cursor was being drawn on the wrong layer. Other minor sprite tweaks.
- Version 0.2.10 Released - 8 September 2019
This update brings some significant features and updates and -- if you haven't tried GRITS Racing in a while -- now would be a good time to try it again. Update summary: 0.2.9 new features: Drivers can now fall out of the car during hard collisions... BOOM! AI agents can also fall out. If their car is still workable they run to it. If not, they run away until they hit a wall and jump over (really, they just disappear for now). Tesla Shields remain on even when in your car (but it takes a close hit to the cockpit to trigger it). This protects you from t-bones... but mostly helps to unstick the huggy types. New car art and palette tweaking to improve color identification and car direction 0.2.10 new features: "Jousting lances" Wacky Wodifier added Wacky Wodifier selection now appears before the first track in addition to between tracks. (Some players may not like this change but I need to…
- Version 0.2.8 Released... With a New Track! - 21 August 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F34431352%2F30e49725a4f180760f6f2f9f0091e7c51262decf.png Say hello to the new Wandle figure-8 track! (Based on the recently-demolished Wimbledon Stadium track in England -- and the same size as near as I could measure from satellite photos.) I placed it at track 3 in the lineup and moved 3 to 5. I hope ya'll like it as much as I do. This track took quite a bit longer than hoped due to the additional features built for it and/or built for other tracks because of it. About 200 hours. It has simpler art than tracks before it but, hopefully, it is sufficient until we can come back and redo all the art. https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F34431352%2F36deaf8b95ae6d6944e3329eae80dd11c2b75e74.png Also, included here, for the ultra curious, is a photo of some of the physics rigging (the green lines) that…
- Version 0.2.6 Released - 17 July 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F34431352%2F4a3b0b2bdbd02f28e09300591436b3da0564437f.png This is more of a hotfix than an upgrade. This implements a small visual change in the menus. The rest of what follows in this post is just a tl;dr peek behind the scenes. I had made a previous claim that the next update would be the next track. Well, that is still true, depending on point of view over hotfixes. Regarding that track, the background art is now complete (if not simplistic for now). The track will also need some new code because it needs to place trucks in a new way (and maybe the cars and drivers too). So, a day for coding a new track feature, a couple more long and hard days for rigging, and it should be done... that is, whenever I can find time for those long days. Back to the hotfix. While working on the next track, I became distracted by something I…
- July 2019 News Post - 7 July 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F34431352%2Fe83d49da01cad5fab6782aeab974485098129883.png There are no major developments to report this month. I spent most of June looking for a publisher for GRITS Racing to help push development along faster. Most indie publishers don't bother responding... and, well, that is not surprising these days. Of the ones that did, I got one nibble, but nothing else to report on that front. It is hard to promote a game that is both an old genre and not visually interesting yet. The next track, a British-style figure-8 track, got a small start in that I completed the engineering drawing for it (photo attached). Curiously, this track did not need to be minified. I also made a rough sketch of mini-Suzuka (seen in the background), another figure-8 track (due to flattening the bridge). Plans have also been written down for how to min…
