September update on The 90's Arcade Racer (Nicalis Kickstarter game)

[parallaxscroll]

Hello everyone,


For this update, I'd like to focus on how development has been so far and address some concerns.


It's been around two years since the Kickstarter campaign was launched and in this time the project grew and transformed.


The original plan was for three tracks, three cars, a single Arcade mode and was targeting PC, Mac and Linux only. However, with Nicalis being part of the picture the project grew, both is scope and in quality and the most importantly the game is releasing for Wii U, as we had previously announced.


Having a fixed hardware meant the limitations where set in stone, that was a great thing for development but also had its drawbacks. Getting the original PC code to run on Wii U at 60fps meant some effects had to be replaced or disabled and that we had to do plenty of custom work. However, once we had the game running properly and our targets set, development went smoothly and sped up for PC as well, at least in most areas.


Like we've mentioned in the past the major hurdles we had to overcome had to do with car physics and AI. I would like to get in to a bit more detail on this area.


Originally, the game was using of the shelf components to handle car physics and AI. The game was functioning but it didn't really play like it should, it was closer to a simulation than an arcade racer and could only handle a handful of AI cars.
Once we had a programmer on board it became clear that we would have to redo almost all the existing physics code and then do a lot of custom work to get where we wanted the game to be.


We went through several solutions and figured out that the best way would be to maintain the realistic car simulation with custom work on top to get the arcade handling we wanted.


This way we got the best of both worlds, the cars feel like proper cars and have settings for everything from tire pressure, suspension, downforce, wind resistance among many others and everything had to be balanced since any one of those could throw the simulation off. For the player it'll feel very much like an arcade game, but for development we needed all these parameters to get the right arcade feel. On top of that we had to create a lot of settings for our drifting model while making sure that the cars behave realistically only up to the point where they don't interfere with gameplay.


This was a very lengthy procedure because we could only afford a single programmer working on the game at any time and not taking the most optimal path to that final physics model meant we would have to go back and start over--which we had to do twice.


As of this time we have what I believe is a very fun, robust and unique driving model. In this area we are not imitating any particular game, but have come up with our own solutions. The goal of the game is to walk the line between pick up and play and challenging. Drifting is entirely physics driven, there are no predetermined paths and if you want to put in the best times, you will have to drift, brake, change gears and be keep your focus at all times. On the flipside crashing or simply not doing well will not be overly punishing.


With the player car physics and gameplay mostly done we turned to the AI. The biggest chalenges have been with the AI interacting with the player and getting everything to run smoothly.


I'm happy to say that we now have a functioning AI driving model and we can focus on game progression, playtesting and polishing, areas that are less challenging but require quite a bit of time too.


I know that some backers are not happy with the delays and my communication at times and, for this, I apologize. Please do keep in mind, though that I've been working on the game full-time with Nicalis since the Kickstarter; that has never changed. Sometimes I get caught up in development and postpone doing an update or answering emails and sometimes simply forget.


However, to those of you that disagree with the direction of the game or our actions up to now drop me an email and we can talk about getting a refund.
I would like to also thank all of you that have been supporting us even after all the delays.


Antonis

http://emuforums.emuglx.org/threads/90s-arcade-racer-progress-report.4778/

[MykonosFan]

I'm really glad we got this update. I'll admit I've felt a little frustration having backed the title so long ago and hearing so little about it, but he said a lot that needed to be said to people that were way more frustrated than I. Really excited to play it.