Devlog #2: wheel, pedals and overtakes
The driver now turns the wheel and works the pedals himself, and overtakes look real. What still breaks, what comes next, and why the site and the Discord appeared.
A small correction to the last post: the game has not been in development for two weeks. Work started in the first days of September; I only began writing devlogs now.
This week I kept working on the physics and the race simulation, and there is progress. The simulation looks realistic and the overtakes are real: you can see a driver take the fast line, and in a fight pick a line to defend or to attack.
Wheel and pedals
The main change this week: the steering wheel became a real way to control the car. Before, the car more or less ran on rails. The driver chose a line, and the car followed it exactly, at the limit of what it could do.
Now the driver works the pedals and the wheel himself, with a reaction delay and with limited strength and speed of movement. The car no longer has to end up where the driver wanted; it goes where he pointed it. Since then the movement has become much smoother and more realistic, though not perfect yet.
Gears are planned too, but later: they change little in how a race looks.
What still breaks
The main problem now is collisions and retirements. A race can have 20–30 contacts, and about 10 of them are hard enough to put a driver out. I am spending the last days of the week on exactly this. Even so, the race already feels real to watch.
What's next
The next stage is most likely blue flags and getting past slow cars in general. The last time I switched that system on, there were even more crashes. I will improve the driver's control first; after that it should go better.
The site and Discord
A lot of this week went into this site: the landing page, the news feed and Discord. I decided to do it now so there is a place to share devlogs and news. New posts from here go to Discord on their own.
No advertising for now, for sure. Everything that can be done for free is set up. Maybe a bit later I will post on Reddit and other social networks to introduce the game to a wider audience. For now, whoever finds it, finds it.