Mountain Racing 1.4

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Mountain Racing 1.4

by klunkoplunko

Cart #kp_mountain_drive-6 | 2025-02-10 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

17

	[72x8]

My personal best is 54.2 seconds. That is unless you count a particularly nasty shortcut mid-way through the track, with which I got 38.5 seconds.

Good luck!

Controls

(Control options available in menu)
❎ - Drive
🅾️ - Brake / Reverse
❎+🅾️ - Drift

Turn Control
Press ⬅️ to turn left, ➡️ to turn right
Press ⬆️ to jump

Dir Control
Press ⬆️⬇️⬅️➡️ to turn

Changes

v1.1

• Start line is more clear
• Camera moves to show upcoming track

v1.2

• Collision should be less annoying

v1.3

• Rough terrain added, some sections are now easier
• Can no longer cheese start/finish lines
• Best time is saved (can be reset in menu)
• Medal awarded based on best time (Bronze: 100s, Silver: 80s, Gold: 65s, Special: 55s)
• Water is much fancier

v1.4

• Map redone with better graphics

Solid control scheme! Drifting feels good. I enjoy the way you instantly face the bounced direction when you hit a wall -- that interaction feels good and is also funny.

Polish feedback:

• It should be clearer which direction to go to start the race. I didn't parse the big arrow on the floor as an arrow at first, and I did parse the jump tiles you see immediately when going the wrong way as arrows pointing up, meaning go forward, so I ran into the water a few times trying to figure out how to advance.
• Would be nice to be able to see further ahead to be able to anticipate curves. Some games do this with like "upcoming turn" markers drawn on the floor or flashing on the screen but that feels like a hack IMO. I personally prefer when the camera shows where you're going rather than just where you are.
• When you miss a jump, often you have to back up from where you respawn in order to get enough speed to make the jump. I thought that was annoying.
• The track is surprisingly long! It seems like you filled out the entire Pico-8 map with this track. I think it might be more fun to divide the available space into quarters and have a four track progression, with multiple laps per race. On the other hand, maybe you're going for more of a cross-country mountain drive aesthetic, which I think would be fun but might be a tough sell with these controls, which make me think of of Mario Kart or R.C. Pro-Am.
• You can see the car through the terrain as it falls into the water on the far side of the road. This isn't such a big deal, I mostly noticed just because I fell in the water a lot.

@mogwaipoet I appreciate the very extensive feedback! I do personally like the idea of one big track with a bunch of secret shortcuts, but maybe I'll have a play around with some smaller courses.

Okay, no, you've sold me, big explorable area with lots of secrets please! I can't believe it took us nearly 50 years to get from Sprint (1976) to Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom (2024). Of course I want to play a Search Action game as a car.

I really like the concept here and the drifting is so cool, but it's hard to find a place to actually use the mechanic in the small space that we can move around in.
I feel that the total direction reversal upon hitting a wall is rather annoying, even if it is funny. I could certainly be better at the game, but most of my time was spent trying to get back on course instead of making much of any progress around the track.
This has a lot of potential, I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves!

@Munchkin Thanks for playing! I'll be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of the collision either. I might have another go at it at some point.

Great game, I'm surprized how fast I could get after a little practice. The fact that I did that is a testament to what you have here :)

It would be nice for their to be goals in the game, like medals Trackmania. I.e. 80s to get bronze, 70s silver, 55s gold, 50s developer/community medal (green medal).

The sound effects are pretty cute, neat btw, there might not be much, but that kind of adds to the demo-charm your game has! :)

Also I happened to be playing when you updated the game, and I had actually been using the old "jank" collisions to rebound off certain walls to avoid turning, it might have actually been a little bit faster XD

I still can't figure out what the shortcut is? mind enlightening me, I can see some "weird map design", but I'm too dense to actually find the shortcut :P

I might mod this game in the future to add some features, I'm not sure how much PICO-8 can do as I'm relatively new to it. This make me want to make a rally game and store the maps in strings which the community could past in this forum :)

@Happy_Sheepy Thanks for the kind words! I like the idea of giving the player a medal based on their time. I might have to make the start/finish lines less cheesable first. Also good luck on your modding if you get around to it!

The shortcut I mentioned is here (hidden if you don't want to be spoiled):

If you get a good angle and boost at the right time you can actually jump through the three rocks here to the other side of the track. It's a tricky jump but you'll skip almost half the course.

Excellent!

Fun, would love to play it with 8 players, micro-machine style, or maybe 2 players with diagonal screen split if the cars are too far apart.

Used my trusty show_flags debug code to help me search for shortcuts while playing.

function show_flags(s_start,s_end)
  for s=s_start,s_end do
    for i=0,7 do
      if (fget(s,i)) then
       sset(8*(s%16)+i,8*(s\16)+7,8+i)
      end
    end
  end
end

And found this massive one :

EDIT : just read your post... Facepalm...