Like a teenager begging for forgiveness for not doing his homework, I appreciate that probably VERY few people will read this – but I just wanted to mention that I’m still working on this game, but progress is really slow due to a dramatic upturn of “other things” going on in my life. I know, we all have stuff going on right?

A new jobs & a new child have seemingly absorbed all the spare time I have in the world at the moment – not to mention that my PC failed (don’t worry, cloud backup FTW!) – means I’m currently unable to actually WORK on the game, but hey, that hasn’t stopped me. (Well, it has – technically, but hasn’t stopped me thinking of stuff and what I’m going to add)

I appreciate the donations people have sent in, and I really hope that this news doesn’t alarm anyone, (The PC’s failure is just a hard disk, I’ll replace it one of these coming weeks and get right back on it… once my new family addition actually learns to SLEEP!)-

So instead of spending my time working on the tracks, I’m spending it looking it at IP addresses of spambots and then blocking them individually. This makes it quite tricky to find “real users” over the automatons. – so if you’ve registered for the Forums and I’ve not “approved” you yet, it’s because I’m sifting my way through 200 user applications. (if you could do me the favour of signing up for the game Here – and use the SAME e-mail address to register on the forums (yes, I know this should be a unified registration system.. I tried that already and it failed miserably) – then I’ll be able to rig up some sort of “auto approval” script for those e-mail addresses..

I doubt the bots are sophisticated enough to read this message so that shouldn’t be a problem.. Pesky Bots.. *shakes fist*

Please feel free to join in and post a few things – I’ll say “anything goes” till I find any problem people and then I’ll come down with my big ban hammer. (Although seriously, please remember that any time I have to spend administrating the forum is time I’m spending NOT working on the game)

Anyway, the forums are here

Why have I done this? Well only because this is the new home of StuntCarOnline and it’s nearing release. (We’re talking weeks instead of months now!) – you can even register as a user using the link above. I’ll keep the old online demo around till I release the “real version” of the game and then I’ll fire it off into a watery grave. (Maybe to me humming some somber music, definitely TBC at this stage.)

Anyway, feel free to register using the button above. (The download button doesn’t work yet ) – Thanks for reading.

Here’s a video of the new car in the game engine! – It’s been a long road to get to this stage but here we are.

Some notes:

• Ignore the untextured front suspension rods on the car – I’ve just not got round to texturing them yet.
• Oh and ignore the slightly funky normal maps on the car too (I was just testing the lighting and forgot to remove them!)
• There is SOUND now in the game, but I can’t figure out how to get FRAPS to record it yet. I’m working on that area anyway so it’s probably best it’s missing.
• I’ve completely re-written the highscore system so that it’s a lot more straight foward to maintain. Just have to figure out some SQL magic to remove duplicates and we’ll be getting there! (It revolves around “DISTINCT” SQL fans!)
• I’m working up the user interface a bit – but there’s lots still to do
• I’m considering disabling Track 3 “for now” so that release V1.0 can come sooner..
• I need to plug in a few things on the website (http://www.stuntcaronline.com/blog/ for a sneak preview!) – there’s the whole issue of downloading the client to deal with!
• In the above video.. I TOTALLY meant to miss the second jump.. Ahem.. Honest…

Anyway- as you can see, it’s moving along. Thanks for reading!

Which’ll be nice.

Anyway, I’m back, expect big things.

Phew, what a couple of weeks!, It’s been easter break here in the UK so I’ve been away from my computer for two weeks, the break has been nice but I’ve missed working on StuntCar – it seems that there are a lot of Guest players and not that many people bothering to register to play the game, this is fine (I usually can’t be bothered to go through a registration process myself) and I guess the incentive of saving your lap time isn’t all that great.

How are the donations going?

A big fat ZERO.

Anyway, moving swiftly on to version 4.5

FEATURE: Added a head bounce joint to the car, so now the drivers head (when in camera mode 1) will ‘lag’ behind the car giving a much more realistic feel to the driving. Makes the impacts a lot more hefty.

BUG: I STILL had a few bugs with the registration process, basically, now, when you play the game you will automatically be upgraded in the forums to a “Player” group member, which means you can then post on the forums, (It’d be nice if someone said hello)

NEXT UP: I guess the next thing I’m going to look at is more tracks. Boy I’d really like about 80 dollars to buy bobstrack builder http://www.bobstrackbuilder.net/ but I guess *sigh*, the donations aren’t exactly flooding in…

Still, there’s a few back-end kinds of things I can do to make sure the data for highscores and stuff gets sent and put in the right place (Currently the sql database only understands one track) – then I’ll probably quickly bung out a “mirrored” track mode like the old Sega racing games, so I can test the database.

(there’s a good chance the next version will be V0.5!)

Thanks for reading.

I’m going to investigate now.

Hi Folks, Sorry for the lack of updates lately, I’ve been a bit busy planning weddings and stuff. (I’m getting married in less than 10 weeks, eek!)

Anyway, I’ve just uploaded a new version of SCO, we’re now on V4.4, (version 4.3 for the observant was extremely short lived as I noticed a bug) – Here’s the low down:

BUG FIXED: EEK! – the game wasn’t recording your best lap times, All because I renamed my LoginSystem to “Login System”, yep, that space broke lots of things. I won’t do THAT again. Anyway, suffice to say, I’ve fixed this bug, (I think) and now it should download and upload your laptimes properly. Please please please let me know if it doesn’t.

FEATURE: Glowy brake disks! – woot!, you can’t really see these unless you use the external camera (keyboard key = 3) – and pan round to the left or right of the car, and then do a bit of extreme braking. Cool isn’t it? (or hot) – anyway, just a little effect, FINALLY got rid of those stationary brake disks…

FEATURE: Because of the large amount of spam on the forum, I’ve really upgraded my security, firstly you have to verify your account now, (which can easily be spam-botted around I’ve found) and now it creates your username and stuff so you can play the game, BUT, you can’t post on the forums until you PLAY the game. I suspect this will defeat most of the spambots out there as they surely aren’t sophisticated enough to log in to a unity project and play a lap of a racing game. (but hey, you never know)

OTHER STUFF:

There is now a DONATE button on the main page. (and there is a specific “DONATE” page now for a bit more ‘info’) which will accept PayPal donations. It always feels akin to begging to me, but hey, here goes… Basically, I’m skint, the aforementioned wedding has wiped me out, and I can’t afford to buy a Unity Pro license. I would like a Unity Pro license because it gives me lots of things that I can use to make Stunt Car Online better… I promise, not a single penny donated would go on anything but the development of StuntCarOnline.

What’s in it for me? I hear you ask

A Gold supporter is a person who donates cold hard cash to the cause. I aim to use this cash to buy a unity pro license (currently valued at $1000) – with Unity Pro I can use various new tricks to make StuntCarOnline better, real time shadows, projected textures (mirrors, etc) – and most importantly a profiler so I can monitor performance and improve it constantly.

It doesn’t matter how much you donate, a penny or a thousand pounds, just your support would be welcome – and in return, I’ll make you a gold supporter, which entitles you to……

New versions first: Once I get a few gold supporters, I’ll be uploading new versions purely for them, which will only let “gold supporters” log in, it’ll also rank you on a different leaderboard, (and mark you on the global leaderboard as a supporter!) – bare in mind that new versions will contain new tracks and cars first.

If I can get enough money together, I’ll source a sound effects studio to record some audio for me to implement in the game, and then you’ll get that first too. I’m also planning a downloadable version of the game, again, which only allows supporters to play it.

But most of all, you’ll be showing support for a one-man-development game, and I could really use that!

A silver supporter is someone (and there are already a couple of these) who doesn’t necessarily want to part with cold hard cash, but does want to help out the game’s development, and by golly, I need this too. A silver supporter is someone who goes out into the big bad internet and puts a link to this game, or maybe tweets about it, posts it on facebook, puts it on their forum, links to it on their website. Anything that promotes the game. I’d prefer not to just randomly spam the world, but proper, targeted “Hey guys, this game is cool!” support would be fantastic, and muchly appreciated.

What would you get for being a silver supporter? – Well, you’ll get the game updates at the same time as the gold supporters, and heck, it’ll mostly be the same experience, but you won’t be on the gold supporters league table… And maybe you won’t get the exclusive stuff first, (i.e. the tracks, maybe you’ll have to wait for them)

I’d still love you, but just not as much.

The Future

So what if this all back fires and no one helps me out? Well, I’ll keep plugging away at the game, implementing stuff when I feel like it, so basically nothing much would change, and in reality you have NO real reason to help me out. Then I’ll probably slow down with updates, and maybe start looking at other stuff to pursue, and then maybe Stunt Car Online will become Stunt Car Not Online because I can’t afford the hosting any more, and maybe this game will just disappear into the oblivion of the internet… A shadowy bitter memory,

But I can promise right now, if a single person donates a penny, that won’t happen. Cheers.