1/28

The release full release is on schedule for 1/31/23 at 7 PM EST.  To help overall feel of the game, every car has been gone through and some type of moving part (ie. doors, hood, bumper) was added if none existed.  Broken glass effects have also been added during crashes or doors being broken open. Lastly, another car was added to be unlock upon completion of the career.

1/26

Because of the extra time, I have started to implement a "Career" mode. This is essentially a predetermined 25 events that will help unlock various cars in the game.  This adds a bit of a purpose as well as provides rewards to the player.  Currently there is no dialogue or story, but that may be added at another time.

1/14

Bump and run racing was supposed to go off of beta and up for sale, but there was an issue with the listing and it has been delayed.  The beta has been removed from the store and will be relisted on 1/31.  Until then, I will take that time to make additions to the game for launch. This includes a new vehicle and hopefully all around visual improvements.

1/11

I decided to add another game mode last minute to spice things up.  The game mode is "Hot Pursuit" and is essentially a police chace.  The goal is to get the highest score possible by lasting as long as possible, but remaining above a slowly increasing speed minimum.  the faster you go, the faster your score increases. The timer is also dynamic, so the lower the speed minimum the less time you have to get above it.  This means if it is higher, you get more time to get back above.

1/4

Currently work is underway to add some new features and fix as many bugs as possible before the set date where it transitions from a beta to available for purchase (1/14/23).  Some of the features being added are optional colors for vehicles in the game, as well as various visual tuning presets. Back-end code is also being cleaned up in hopes to improve performance across all systems, but especially Xbox One. Most major bugs have been patched and will go out in an update on release day.

12/30

Various bugs and tweaks have been applied based on feedback and testing. The biggest fix has been adding the ability to change resolution on PC. This make the game playable on weaker devices with high DPI, like the Surface Pros. We have received lots of feedback and hope to keep getting more, as it will only help to make further changes that the audience wants.

12/16

Some last minute features were added that should have been there on release. The control scheme has been added to the “Tutorial” menu. A credits list has also been added for most of the various aspects of the project

12/15

The game has officially been made public! It was decided to release it free as a “beta” to get some feedback before going up for sale. 

12/12

Upon further thinking it seems the game was missing a objective, as everything was unlocked right away. To enhance replayability cars are now locked behind a “total takedowns” threshold. Once more cars are added, this will most likely be built up so that the challenges are different. On Xbox this will be tied to your Xbox Live user, so they will follow you between device

11/5

A lot of little changes have been going on in the background to help polish it up, but also development has slowed down a bit due to external events.

10/23

Now that leaderboards are in place, we needed to integrate it into the UI. The main menu UI is mostly on the whiteboard, but that would be too small. Instead, the leaderboard is on a smartphone that flips open when activated. Once down it flips back out and the main menu re-appears.

10/18

We're in! After over a day of debugging and "trial and error", basic Xbox Live integration has been successful.  As of now, we log in, can generate a random placeholder stat, then view the leaderboard for that stat.  I created a tutorial on our YouTube page to hopefully help out others like me who ran into the same issues.

10/17

Now comes the point where I am looking to try and integrate with Xbox Live for leaderboards and stats.  I thought it would be simple as there is a plugin, but I did not realize it is extremely broken.  After spending the entire day scraping the internet and trying to fix compiler issues, I finally got an initial connection to Xbox Live.

10/16

A notification system was added to the game for various things like “double takedowns” or approaching time limits. I also added a feature where the players car explodes when time expires in crash party

10/14

To spice up the main menu, I wanted to add car names and stats when flipping through the different options. My solution to this was to create a script that has set variables for speed, acceleration, handling weight (floats) and name (string). There is a function in this script that compares the input string (car objects name) and find the relevant variables, then another script to update the current values and apply them to the canvas elements. All the cars have pretty much the same statistics “in theory” but still perform just different enough, so now an informed decision can be made by the player.

9/1

The decision to go with a local multiplayer mode over a career system was made.  This seemed like a better fit for the game style, as well as the overall size of the game.  This was essentially built on top of the already existing "Road Rage" game mode.  A timer was introduced to help keep the game moving. The system works by holding variables for the number of players, the leader, the leaders takedown count and the current player racing.  There is also a list that will fill up to keep track of ties, and is cleared once the tie is broken.  It is a simple system but gets the job done.

7/11

City2, now formally named “Downtown” for now, was feeling a bit baron. To make it more interesting props were added with rigidbodies, so can be hit. To not clutter the course after they are set to destroy themselves 6 seconds after contact by a player or AI. Some props were also added to other levels.

7/1

Life happens and you get a bit distracted! Due to personal reason I had to take a break to get settled back in.  To get back into it I decided another course should be added.  I have not named it yet, but internally it is codenamed "City2"

3/17

At this point in development a lot of the gameplay mechanics are in place, but still need lots of refinement. As for what is playable in the game, there is the following:

• 2 courses

• 6 vehicles

• 4 out of the 5 game modes

• Working AI (both pedestrian vehicles and opponents)

I am currently working to improve both AI's behavior.  Opponents obstacle avoidance is very poor, so I find they crash into pedestrians far too often.  This can lead to either the player getting ahead too easy or causing massive pileups.  Officially logged crashes also are inconsistent when colliding with pedestrians.  This should easily be resolved by attaching specially tagged colliders in the correct places so that a crash is guaranteed to trigger.