Version 0.2.8 Released... With a New Track!

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.

Also, included here, for the ultra curious, is a photo of some of the physics rigging (the green lines) that goes on behind the scenes in these tracks.  As you can see, it's no small amount of work to rig up a track for all the features the game offers.

This update skips v0.2.7 (the new track) and went to v0.2.8 due to the new features that came with the new track shebang.

Some of the new features/fixes that add to making a mess:

• Breakable barriers!  Regarding barriers that are not critical for keeping the player on screen, or out of certain areas, many of these are now either no longer nailed down or are nailed down with breakable nails.  Not all tracks can make use of this feature but the one's that do should now be just a tiny bit more interesting to crash around on.
• The lighter-weight track objects not nailed down (such as hay bales) now show their damage about as quick as everything else.  This was done by adding mass into the equation for damage on dynamic objects.
• Tires used as barriers now show damage.  Currently, they "lose their paint" and get darker with damage.
• Barrier tires now come in many more colors thanks to rewriting some stuff to make this both simpler and more flexible.  A win-win.

Fixes:

• The drop point for new cars is now adjusted according to width of tires attached (another happy side effect of refactoring stuff for this figure-8 track).  There should be no more pit wall crowding/entanglements when getting a new car with a wide tire setup.  Eventually, I hope to animate the new car event with car drawers and a crane.

In other news, still job hunting so time on this game is hard to guess and manage.  The next track will probably be a mini Suzuka but we'll see.  The current plan is to work on the remaining tracks in the same order as the order of colors/flags on the punch-in screen.  Thus, it could be a while before I finish minifying Monaco (the choice of Tootsie the Purple Privateer).  Before the next track, however, I need to build more Wodifiers and work out some other things holding things up.

Finally, in case anyone is keeping track, this game update serves as the August news post.  I don't plan to write a separate news post in months where I expect to publish an update.

As always... Thanks for playing!... and party on!!!