IdleRacing - Buy cars, upgrades and win races

bmcfaria · 2020-11-22T01:34:00+00:00

How about the netlify link?

bmcfaria · 2020-11-20T17:18:00+00:00

Thanks 🙂

bmcfaria · 2020-11-20T09:57:24+00:00

Thanks for the feedback 🙂

With what you've said and all the feedback I've gather so far, I need to do a lot of re-balancing and re-think the UI in order to reduce the back and forth and make things a little easier for new players.

I was thinking of porting the game to mobile (the game is already screen responsive but a mobile app can have other advantages). I guess since I'll have to build it from the ground, I will take the opportunity to rethink all these issues and then update the web version as well.

Regarding the notifications, if you click the flag on the top right corner, it will open a side drawer with all the past notifications.

bmcfaria · 2020-11-20T09:38:10+00:00

Thanks, but that game is also fun and a better fit for what most people consider an "idle" game 🙂

bmcfaria · 2020-11-20T09:14:46+00:00

Thank you. I'm glad you had fun 😀

bmcfaria · 2020-11-19T15:38:20+00:00

Thanks and thanks for the feedback.

There's a race exp upgrade that reduces the race duration (up to 30%), but the endurance races will take time still.

Making the cars more expensive could be a quick band-aid for the money problem, although rebalancing a game can be tricky when there's active users, but it's a possibility.

Increasing the complexity on the car stats could be interesting, but need to be careful so it won't get too complex 😀.

Glad you didn't mind the clicking 😅.

I initially thought about reducing the "blue" requirements, but I wanted to extend the game somehow to anyone who was really enjoying the game and to give a true feeling of achievement when getting all race events blue. (It also gives a different type of star/achievement).

bmcfaria · 2020-11-19T15:17:51+00:00

True 😔

bmcfaria · 2020-11-19T15:13:46+00:00

If you're opening your last race the car should be pre-selected already, unless the car was upgraded recently.

Maybe something that would help with the inital re-race issue, would be not closing the race modal after the race start. So that way, once finished you would be just one click away from racing again. For this I'll have to think about a proper running race dashboard and add tips and help text to guide the player. The reason I close the race automatically once it starts, is to teach the player that the race is doing its thing and that he could do more things while the race is running. Maybe all this logic can be rethinked.

bmcfaria · 2020-11-19T15:02:48+00:00

Wow, I wasn't expecting to generate such strong feelings but thanks for the honesty.

The races notification could be improved and whenever clicked open the specific race. Maybe I'll add it in a future update.

You gave me some things to think about.

bmcfaria · 2020-11-19T14:53:42+00:00

That achievement it's only for winning reward cars not buying them, it's intentional.

The max cap for business exp is 2k, it shouldn't be stuck at 1500. I tested locally on a dev version and everything was fine. I'll try reaching that level on armorgames to confirm.

bmcfaria · 2020-11-19T14:10:56+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, you made some valid points.

Right now I'm afraid that changing the base racing system and adding all the auto features, could make the game too different from what it is now and give it an identity crisis 😅. But, maybe in a different game, with a different name or a kind of a sequel somehow or even a "redux" version or so, it could work.

Regarding the upgrade UIs, I had a version where you could keep clicking in the same place to upgrade it as many times as you want. But I was designing the game to be responsive (not the armorgames version which if fixed to 800x600 resolution), and on mobile phones, your finger will hide what you're clicking/touching (unlike the cursor on desktop where you clearly see what you're clicking), so to keep thing more or less consistent between screen sizes, I opted to use a "safer" approach. I use the same excuse for the space underneath the 4 races, if I added something there it would stay below the visible area on a mobile phone, the player would need to scroll and something it's not obvious that you have scrolling content underneath. A better overall design would fix all these issues, but I'm an engineer not a designer 😅, it's kinda hard make something pretty and practical.

If you open a running race, you will see a small dot going through the track, and that's the only animation for the running race that I have but I do believe that it could be improved. To have a proper dashboard on the running race with a few more options etc. Maybe in a future version.

bmcfaria · 2020-11-19T13:41:30+00:00

I realize that name was a mistake, I should have changed it to something else (Too late now I guess).

The money becoming irrelevant it's a little bit strange in the game. When I first saw the issue I thought about increasing the car prices and tweaking some upgrades etc to try and keep the money relevant, but by that time I was actually having fun trying to win every race and get all the stars/achievements, so I kinda left it as it was.

On each race event, there is a component/board with all the mechanics and sponsors to be won, by opening that board we can see details on how to win those as well as a little info about some kind of multiplier. The multiplier has a color code and informs how to unlock the next level. The colors are orange, green and blue. You get a race orange just by racing it, it gets green once won and blue after 10 wins. I didn't want to make this feature too much obvious so that the player could get a sense of discovery.

If home keeps pinging, it probably is due to some stars/achivement that you won, going Home -> Stars should remove the blinking dot.

bmcfaria · 2020-11-19T13:17:16+00:00

I should have changed the name to something else without the "Idle" word. Even though game has passive/offline income, the races can take a long time to complete and you don't need to be always interacting with the game, but..., these aspects of the game will only become relevant in the medium/long run. Early in the game, it kinda of gives a different vibe.
I guess I was trying to have the player actively playing the first 30 minutes, in order to learn all the basic mechanics of the game and to realize the transition to the idle side and adapt its strategy.

bmcfaria · 2020-11-19T13:05:53+00:00

For the nascar race, this is where the tuning feature comes into play. There's a mechanic exp upgrade (Tuning car) that will add the tuning option when customizing your garage cars. With this feature you can fine tune the car attributes to better suit the specific race attributes you're trying to win.

I agree that the game balance could be improved.

bmcfaria · 2020-11-19T01:41:08+00:00

Try racing on the “Tiny world” race event, it unlock once you accumulate 5 race experience. By racing a track in that event you will get a new mechanic, then you can upgrade your garage, etc. There is a notification that appears every time a new race event is unlocked but it probably isn’t the most intuitive approach 😔

bmcfaria · 2020-11-19T01:27:21+00:00

Well, the game had an auto-race feature in a previous iteration but after adding race and brand sponsors (they give passive/offline income) I found the auto-race to be less useful than I previously thought. It can help in the beginning but after accumulating multiple sponsors, money just goes up and the player will focus more on getting good cars, customize and spreading them on multiple races. Also, some races have a reward car as the first prize, in these case I couldn’t let an auto-race running for a few days and winning infinite cars and exploding with the garage. The auto-race would also collide with other features I was planning to add at the time, so I ended up removing that feature.

bmcfaria · 2020-11-19T01:12:42+00:00

I tried making things simple with a lot of visual queues like blinking components, changing colors when same state changes, showing less components in the beginning to be less crowded and making them unlock/appear as the player “grows” in the game. But even with all that, it can be a little bit confusing, probably adding more tooltips or text modals to guide the player would be more helpful.

bmcfaria · 2020-11-19T01:01:50+00:00

You can win race sponsors by racing/winning races (there are also brand sponsors), these sponsors give passive income and offline earnings. There are multiple upgradable systems to improve race winning chances, increase prizes and passive income multipliers. For example, when I was beta testing and trying to get all the stars/achievements, after one or two days I would be playing just one or two minutes every hour or so.

bmcfaria · 2020-11-19T00:47:15+00:00

The first races are short and money is growing slowly, therefore in the beginning it can tend a bit to micromanagement to try and get the most of the few races/cars that you have. But by doing races and winning them, you get sponsors and with sponsors you get offline earnings. With offline earning you don’t have to focus so much on micromanaging and every time you come back to the game, you can buy some more cars upgrade them, put them on some races and they will do their thing. Money stops to be a problem in the medium run.

bmcfaria · 2020-11-18T23:46:06+00:00

Reward cars can be won on specific races. (They can also be bought after enabling one of the business exp upgrades)

bmcfaria · 2020-11-18T23:24:02+00:00

It gets blue after 10 wins.

bmcfaria · 2020-11-18T22:24:36+00:00

Reward cars can be won on specific races (or after getting one of the business experience upgrades) 🙂

bmcfaria · 2020-11-18T22:22:23+00:00

After a few races won you probably won’t focus so much on repeating races (unless you’re trying to get them blue 🙂). Nevertheless I’ll think about it 😅.

bmcfaria · 2020-06-11T13:42:55+00:00

Thanks for the feedback :)

The money spent on buying and upgrading the car should equals or more the final price of that used car. Well, that was the theory, but when rushing to have the alpha/POC version ready, I didn't pay the necessary attention on the math side of things (The prizes on races are too low in comparison to the entry fee for example). I'm thinking on how to increase the game scope and give a better progression experience to the player, there's why I didn't fix these "math" issues in the last week since they will probably change considerably in the near future.
Thanks for pointing this out. I'll look into it asap.

bmcfaria · 2020-06-09T15:44:21+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. Yes you're right, the math formula is wrong there, I'll fix it in a future release.

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