I’ve been making steady progress on Total Arcade Racing but most things have taken way longer than I expected. This has been frustrating for me personally as I would have gotten further in the project by now.

Jumps!

What would an racing arcade game be without jumps, pretty boring right? This is one of the things that I mentioned earlier which took waaaay more time than expected. I’m pretty happy with the end result and it’s just plain 2D with scaling and some other magic tricks with collisions etc.

Bridges and underpasses

To be able to build more interesting and complex levels I needed to add support for bridges and underpasses. When you are driving under something like a bridge an outline is displayed.

Car stats

The car stats was hidden in the game before but one of the most common requests was to show them to user.

Country selection

The old country selection was a pretty bad experience and with loads of more countries left to add it was just going to get worse. The solution was to use a more traditional picker that will be easy to expand with more flags.

Improved car graphics & new cars

I re-did the graphics on all cars and remove the complete flat design. I think it looks nice even though you mostly see this difference when picking cars. The old design is above and the new cars are below. I also added 2 new cars.

A bunch of other things have been improve here and there.

Details of what’s new in v0.2.3

New stuff

* Added 2 new cars (total 5).
* Added a new course (total 4).
* Jumps.

Improvements

* When playing single player all keyboard setups can be used by P1. This means that you can drive with arrow keys or WASD if you wish.
* CPU players in local multiplayer will strive to pick another car than another player.
* Adjusted SFX volumes.
* Made oil spill higher resolution.
* Arrow keys now work for car selection country selection.

Bug fixes

* Fixed Bug: While going over a bridge you would still collide with cars going under the bridge.
* Fixed bug: If you play local multiplayer with only 2 human players and the players play as player 1 and 3 the 2nd player doesn’t get spawned.
* Fixed bug: When reversing no sfx is played as engine sounds.

Details of what’s new in v0.2.2

New stuff
* Added a new course (total 3).
* Added bridges.
* Outlined cars when they drive under trees or bridges.
* Added car stats to UI when selecting cars.

Improvements

* Added a bit more drag when you hit an obstacle and slide against it. Before it almost didn’t have any impact on reducing speed.
* When reversing the drift of the car was way too high. Reduced it a lot and now you can drive i reverse much better.
* Added more variation to how AI drivers drives.
* New and improved way of selecting country under settings.
* Added more country flags.
* Added graphics for classic start lanes.

Bug fixes

* If the host is disconnected from a game, the new host will not be able to complete a lap as the states was not synchronized.

Details of what’s new inv0.2.1

Improvements

* Improved: Music fades in at game startup instead of blasting at full volume.
* Improved: Added splashscreen.

Bug fixes

* Fixed Bug: Player start boost didn’t work some times.
* Fixed Bug: If you have music volume set to zero you will still hear the music for a short while when the game starts.
* Fixed bug: UI Canvas scaling doesn’t work properly on ultra wide screen, the UI is offscreen.
* Fixed bug: You can’t get down to “save” in the settings using only a controller, it gets stuck at the player’s name.

Online multiplayer related:
* Improved: Added player idle detection
* Improved: Host checks if players actually complete laps. If no one is completing laps the host will get kicked and another host will take over.
* Fixed Bug: While waiting for other players and you race then lap counts and if you complete more than 4 laps AI will take over.
* Fixed Bug: The host car orientation was not set properly when a race is starting which caused weird things like the host facing the other cars.

I’ve gotten a lot of question if Total Arcade Racing  will support multiplayer. Originally the plan was just to support local multiplayer as it’s complicated and hard to get multiplayer to actually work on all platforms. But with all the requests about adding multiplayer support I decided to at least try to add support for it.

I decided to use Photon Engine for the network support. I’ve used PUN in 3 other projects and felt like it was the fastest way to add support for network and it also works on the target platforms that I want to support. Implementing the code changes wasn’t that hard as I pretty much had all the required code from another project. After a few days work network support was done and I was surprised how well it actually worked. As a start it uses a single US server as it increases the chances of actually finding someone to race with, in the future I can move it to region support instead.

To make the courses more interesting I added boost areas where you get extra speed when you pass them and oil spills which reduces the traction for a while.

Inspired by Mario Kart I added a boost if you press the accelerator at the right time when a race starts.

Details v0.2.1
* Improved: Music fades in at game startup instead of blasting at full volume.
* Improved: Added splashscreen.

* Fixed Bug: Player start boost didn’t work some times.
* Fixed Bug: If you have music volume set to zero you will still hear the music for a short while when the game starts.
* Fixed bug: UI Canvas scaling doesn’t work properly on ultra wide screen, the UI is offscreen.
* Fixed bug: You can’t get down to “save” in the settings using only a controller, it gets stuck at the player’s name.

Online multiplayer related:
* Improved: Added player idle detection
* Improved: Host checks if players actually complete laps. If no one is completing laps the host will get kicked and another host will take over.
* Fixed bug: While waiting for other players and you race then lap counts and if you complete more than 4 laps AI will take over.
* Fixed bug: The host car orientation was not set properly when a race is starting which caused weird things like the host facing the other cars.

Details v0.2.0
* Added: ONLINE multiplayer support.
* New Feature: Mario kart style turbo if you hit the accelerate button at just the right time.
* New Feature: Boost area which you get extra speed when you pass.
* New Feature: Oil spills which causes your car to loose grip.
* Improved: Removed count down on multiplayer & single player in main menu.
* Improved: Added more flags to county selection.

* Fixed bug: If you have a score downloaded and you change nickname or country it won’t update unless you beat your score.
* Fixed bug: Course are a little bit more narrow, when playing on TV it extends the levels bejoynd the TV safe zone.
* Fixed bug: Music volume changed in setting doesn’t work anymore.

Hey!

It took a bit longer than expected to get the release out for Total Arcade Racing but I hope it was worth waiting for.

In this release the graphics for the track has been re-worked which makes it easier to create more interesting tracks. A major thing is that the game now works on Nintendo Switch which is one of the target platforms for the release.

Last but not least I’ve also added a global leaderboard so we can see who is the fastest driver in Time Trail for each track.

A bunch of tiny improves also made it into the release but I won’t go into the details with those, you just have to experience the improvements on your own.

Details of what is new in v0.1.3
* Added Nintendo Switch support.
* Added 2 tracks.
* New Feature: Online Leadeboard support
* New Feature: Ability to change/set nickname & country flag.
* New Feature: Ability to select different courses.
* New Feature: Show icon of how the joycon is held and/or keyboard joystick.
* New Feature: If there are no game pads attached show a key icon and the key a user should press instead.
* New Feautre: Split users input so players get either keyboard or gamepad when playing local multiplayer.
* Improved: Added count down on car select screen with ability to abort.
* Improved: AI players animates their car selection too.
* Improved: Ability to disable AI players.
* Improved: On start auto detect country.
* Improved: Reworked race completed screen where you get the position of each player and leaderboard.
* Improved: Adjusted how skids marks are created and made the tire squeel noise play less frequent.
* Improved: Started to make changes to the graphics using own track pieces that are centered instead.

Hello!

On this update the focus has been to add the possibility to have different cars with different colors.  As a start I’ve added 2 new cars that have different performance from the original car.

After experimenting a bit with different color options I can to the conclusion that pre-made skins is probably the best solution with the future possibility for users to create their own skins.

I’m very happy with the result so far! While I was at it I also added support for up to 8 local players and did a bunch of tweaks and improvements.

Here is a little video of how the game looks and performs now.

Details of what is new in v0.1.2

* 2 new cars with different performance, total of 3 cars now 🙂
* New Feature: Ability to select car.
* New Feature: Local multiplayer with up to 8 players!
* New Feature: Skins for cars which changes the colors.
* New Feature: Your position is shown when you complete a lap.
* New Feature: When a car finishes the race a finish flag is show.
* Improved: Text lap was hard to see, changed it and made text bigger and changed color.
* Improved: AI takes over when the player has finished the race.
* Improved: CPU shows their position when they have completed all laps.
* Improved: Add keyboard support for local multiplayer up to 4 players, on the same keyboard :o)
* Fixed bug: Lap UI should be using one less lap as it now says 8/8 just as the player completest the final lap.
* Fixed Bug: Lap completed sound effect is played even when a player has completed all laps.
* Fixed Bug: Lap counter was not showing the best player when running in local multiplayer.
* Fixed bug: Player cars drives by themselves for a short time when a race starts