Rolling Coaster has been developed over the course of a couple of years. I have always liked racing games but I didn't want to make a standard car-racing-type game. I wanted a game that feeled a lot like racing a car but with different physics.
The idea of a ball rolling in a track is absolutely not new but I liked it enough to make a prototype for the physics with a skelleton of objects (track, ground) to go with it. I was new to "modern" graphics programming (the kind that has been around for decades) and it took quite a while to learn. My approach has been to not use a pre-made engine but to make everything from scratch to learn how it all works. Time-consuming to say the least.
I feel that I'm pretty finished with the racing part of the game. The racing is the best part of the game. It's actually the only part of the game. Even though you may make upgrades to the ball and unlock races on areas that have different textures and color schemes that is not enough. The game is, well, to put it bluntly, just too boring.
But I still like the game. I like the racing part and the close competition with the computer AI balls.
That is why I'm announcing the continued development of this game. There will be a version 2.0. There will be changes to the overall goal of the gameplay as well as other minor or mayor updates and additions.
What will change? This is a list of possible mayor changes:
Huge open world to explore. The game drops the single race on a single track principle and you are free to explore a world of tracks and areas. This was the way I wanted it from the start.
Ball-to-ball combat. It will be necessary to take on balls with the aim of killing them. Guns and rockets? Possible. But also by the means of magnetic linking, tractor beam, hitting etc. If you install the latest version you may go to the setup-game-menu and change the aggressiveness of the opponets. This gives you a feel of how combat may be.
Make your own track. Laying out new tracks to reach other areas may be a part of the game.
Multiplayer. A bit hard to do with a game that was designed as singleplayer from the start. But I will look into it.
Underground races. Tracks go under ground in tunnels.
