Posted September 22, 2020 by misterakuma
This is another big milestone for the game, this new version includes the foundation to implement two big improvements: leaderboards and progression.
Before today, at the end of a race you were shown your best laptime but this information was not saved. From this version forward, personal best laps are stored locally and kept between sessions, so that you can work on improving your laptimes. The next step is to improve this feature and have leaderboards so you can compare your times with other players. The same infrastructure will be used to track your progress, which opens the doors to have a career mode with some progression.
This release also brings new content. Monza, the temple of speed, is now included in Pretend Cars Racing. You have to thank Wil (check his profile and games at https://satanas82.itch.io/) for this, as he bought a reward for the game and chose this classic track. If you want to see your favorite track in the game, check the section called Exclusive Content, located below the download link.
As I have migrated the game to Game Maker 2, this allowed me to fix controllers support in the HTML5 build. This engine migration will also allow a mobile version of the game. Its not something that is going to happen very soon, as I think that the game needs some improvements before considering jumping to new platforms, but its something that is now in the roadmap.
To close things off, I made a trailer for the game, it wont win any awards but I am happy with the result, you can watch it here.
Update notes for build 20200921
- Implemented local saves between sessions for best laptimes and player's name
- Added the ability to pause and resume playing music (press M in the menu to toggle on/off)
- Added Monza with full AI
- Controllers are now supported in Chromium based browsers
- Tweaked AI cars collisions with the player
- Tweaked AI speed
- Improved Catalunya AI
- Improved Ricardo Tormo art
- Decoration: Added semi trucks to several circuits
- Decoration: added clouds to all circuits as a test
- Removed rookie class (with the new physics, Mini is now the low tier)
- Migrated the game to Gamemaker 2.3
- Windows download is now an installer instead of a standalone .exe (not by choice but due to changes in Gamemaker 2)