The game is single player focused with you moving up through the ranks of local karting clubs. Currently there are 6 kart types, over 100 parts, and 9 tracks with more planned.
The racing is physics based, inspired by vintage karting (1950s-80s). It’s not quite a full sim but I’m simulating terrain types per wheel, and dynamic weather with a forecast system. Part selection has a significant affect on the way your kart performs, and they will need to be maintained and replaced throughout a season.
I’m hoping to release towards the end of 2024 2025 but I’m alone so I reserve the right to delay things for my own health!
This is made with Godot 3.6 entirely with GDscript. I make my models in Blender with hand-painted textures, and my sound and music in Cubase. This isn’t my first Godot game but it’s the first game of this size I’ve attempted.
Thanks @newtodevelopment - it’s been a fight to keep from adding more details to the UI but other than needing pop-ups for parts breaking and pickups I’m pretty happy with it.
In Miracle Karts you’ll get to witness the leaves change with the seasons.
To make things a bit less insane for myself I chose 1 leaf type that will change almost every other day that is present in most tracks. This way all my other trees can have significantly less variance.
PBR values, normals, and transmission are all made based on the lushest variant of the texture, with only the albedo being swapped. While I could (and am tempted) go in and make unique PBR and transmission values for the winter trees it’s almost impossible to tell in game.
For background trees I’m using 2D planes so I made a “photobooth” scene where I can screengrab the different passes. I take a screenshot of the raw colour values, ambient occlusion (shadows + texture), and transmission for each season, then clean them up and re-import them into Godot as PNGs. I was initially capturing normals as well but they didn’t add much.
This was a huge time saver and is thankfully something I can re-use anytime I need 2D versions of my models.
To manage all these textures I use a procedural forecast script. In it I have dummy Meshes with each of my leaf Materials that I can update before a track is loaded. My trees are made in Blender from very simple shapes so it’s relatively quick to make a new tree Mesh that will work with any of my leaf Materials.
There are still some issues, specifically how bare the tracks look in winter but maybe that’s accurate? All I know is it feels rad to watch the leaves change as you progress through a cup and that’s all I care about!
If you have a question on how I did anything feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to share.
Bro, I gotta say, the amount of effort put into this is highly respectable. I will most definitely keep up with the game.
By the way, the leaves watch over time is just really unique. Hope you could find more interesting things to add, for example a map that changes over time.
Track wise, I mean. You could drive through a portal and the track is not the same anymore, that could maybe be really cool. Just an idea tho.
I might give it a try soon!
Part wear still hasn’t been balanced or tested but here’s a brief overview of how it’s implemented.
There are repairable, and disposable parts. Parts wear down from use, but a crash or impact will also degrade parts depending on where you’re hit and how hard. Once parts are broken it can lead to overheating, backfires, and reduced performance.
I don’t want to go into more detail yet but it’s more like an RPG status effect than a realistic consequence. You can still compete with a broken kart and sometimes you’ll have no choice.
I’m supposed to be finishing up all the mechanics in the next two weeks so the last 4-6 months before release can be spent adding in the rest of the game content, polish, and balancing. This week I’ve been connecting all the menus and sorting out input mapping.
This is the main screen you’ll be seeing when you’re not in a race. The map can be controlled with the keyboard, mouse, or a controller - and snaps to the nearest point of interest. The map is how you find new clubs to join, unique story events, or practice on tracks you’ve been to.
From here you can also access your Profile, Outfitting, and the Event Calendar.
The Outfitting screen has been one of the hardest to figure out. Showing the player stat differences with just number values feels too abstract so I’m going to add bars under the stats like they have in the Horizon games that use a simple 0 - 10 range.
I want so badly to bring RPG like mechanics into the inventory but I find it hard to adapt them to vehicle stats that use realistic numbers. If anyone has any advice or know any games that manage this well please feel free to share!
Hopefully I’ll find the time to do another video update soon. I had some family stuff over the past couple of months so between that and work I’m not always in the mood to make content when I could be working on the game.
Back from the dead! I’ve been steadily working on getting the game ready for its initial release for the past year and am excited to share my progress. The first in-game season is complete and is about 1+ hour of events on the first 9 tracks.
I’ve added some QOL features like being able to swap certain parts from the pre-race menu. I might expand this a bit, but it made dealing with weather changes during cups a lot less brutal.
I remember trying to get into the Toca series when I was younger and hating rain events and how unforgiving they were so you’ll have a lot of tyre options throughout your career to deal with the rain and snow.
There are also dynamic crowds along the trackside that change based on the event’s popularity and weather.
Outside of races you’ll be able to manage your driver and your kart. Stat points don’t directly affect your kart’s performance but they will help mitigate some of the simulation effects like crash recovery, and overheating your engine and tyres.
The Outfitting screen has been improved, and I got the status bars in. There are about 100 parts currently so this will hopefully make choosing between them a bit simpler…
Instead of there being locations for each karting club, you’ll be interacting with the clubs and other racers at a single location. I was wasting a lot of time trying to create unique club spaces, and while I’m sad to lose them, having them all in one spot is way more functional (and manageable for me).
There are a few other locales to visit I’ll share more on later. You’ll also be able to create custom events from the world map at tracks you’ve discovered.
Finally, the calendar is where you can see current and upcoming events. As you join more clubs the calendar will expand, allowing you to retry events in subsequent seasons.
Right now I’m finishing up a teaser trailer and the Steam page so I can start building up wishlists. Only a couple of friends have played so far so I’ll be doing the first closed beta this spring. Here’s to hoping it goes well!
As a fan of 60s and 70s F1, and also loving old enthusiasts built gokarts, this is collected and followed !
Keep up the hard work, have fun!
Thanks and cheers !
Oh, trying it as soon as I’m back up at the office after my
Edit : Damn, I thought there was a demo, hence the remark about finishing the smoke, only got back to posting this edit now, a few days and cigarettes later
@OleNic Hehe, I figured as much! Once the Steam page is up I’ll start putting a demo together, hopefully for early summer.
@WorldyBear It’s definitely short enough to be in arcades right now…
I didn’t realize how barren a lot of the tracks looked without a proper skybox so I decided to finally “deal” with that.
I made different pieces on paper with alcohol marker, water colour and acrylic. Doing them like this added quite a few steps but it was way more fun, and gave me a nice excuse to be away from screens.
Each track’s skybox is built roughly around what landmarks would be visible on the world map, and assembled in an image editor. They are still pretty crude but I’ll be adding track specific details like coastlines and unique buildings eventually.
A fog mask with a faint gradient and tint are added in the sky shader so they blend in with the time of day and weather. There will be night lights and a few seasonal variants, but for now these are already a vast improvement!
The sky shader is based on a cloud shader by Danil from 2019 that I’ve been adding to over the years. I can’t find the video I got it from but here is a link to their git: danilw on GitHub
I recently updated the itch page with some more details and screens, as well as a light smattering of lore. Other than that it’s been a lot of controller support and fixing the messes I’ve made over the past two years. Welp, back to work…
