No updates? No worries! news

So there's a notable lack of updates lately, and I bet everyone is thinking I've not been working away on the project. Well, WRONG, Nyah nyah.

So what have I been up to?

Video Time!!

You'll need to turn your volume up! - Yes that's right, I'm FINALLY getting round to adding sound effects to the game, and By golly do I have a renewed respect for anyone who has to do this for a living.

Unity's sound engine is for want of a better word "basic" to say the least, basically you can alter the volume/pitch of a sound via mathematics and code (have I mentioned that I'm pretty bad at both? Not recently? well I'm pretty bad at both!)

So to get anything to sound decent is a real task for me, not to mention sourcing the sound effects with zero budget (yes, I really did consider recording my 53 plate Ford Focus revving at 4000RPM to get an engine loop) - Thankfully I found a loop on the internet with the right legal license which means I'm allowed to use it.

Put it this way the sound effects probably won't set the world on fire, but at least it'll have something which is better than nothing. Right?

Boy this would be a lot easier if I had a budget of any sort...

Release
So the release is pending, I know I keep saying "very soon" but then I go away and add something new like a new track or whatever (we're on 3 now) - and there's a few bugs I want to sort out before release, and a few other "Nice to have" things that will make my life easier, (like the server being able to retroactively stop maintaining older versions of the game)

Why would I want to do this? Well, Imagine if everyone goes around setting great lap times, and then I want to alter the cars performance, therefore making the lap times defunct, I need a way of saying "okay, everything before this version now doesn't count" that's better than how I'm doing it at the moment (a complete stat wipe) - it's not that hard to implement, just time consuming, And it's one of those things I have to do now or not at all.

And then there's the polish.. I'm not going to go crazy, I'll admit, the first release will probably be a bit unpolished, but at least it'll be playable. I'm not a big triple A game here, it's gonna be a seat of the pants kind of ride.

Hosting: the big issue.

Deployment is going to be expensive by the looks of it, I've investigated the Amazon S3 cloud solution and the numbers it produces are quite scary looking. (especially since there's no stop-cock valve I can turn if my game's popularity suddenly explodes)

I know how fast a 5GB download limit would disappear if I ask everyone to download a 100mb file. (pretty easy maths! Now that I can do!) - we're looking at 500 people downloading the game in a month and then I'm at my limit and have to start paying. And what if those 500 people try the game and don't like it and don't pay a penny? That's the risk I'm just gonna have to take I guess.... :-/

I'm desperately trying not to make this sound like a "please donate" begging post - I really am, I know how annoying that is to hear. Just want to make people aware of how tricky it is to make a game with a budget of zero! (I lie, I've already stumped up a few hundred in hosting and other resources)

Anyway, I'll go back to getting on with it. thanks for your time, (oh and by the way, at the time of writing my host is down and therefore the website. Just give it a few hours I'm sure it'll come back..... possibly.. maybe... (the good news there is that they've promised me 6 months free hosting for the trouble.. which helps me out no end!))

Cheers, and have a good weekend.