Thoughts on the upcoming releases (3.0)

After all my testing of the game, it became clear to me that some implementations needed to be changed or implemented.
End of races :
  • When the player finishes a race, the game returns to the race configuration page, forcing them to click “back” to continue. It would be more efficient if, upon finishing the race, the game returned to the main page (races or carer). I tried a solution that works, but it crashes the game when exiting the program; I’ll have to find out why.
  • A bug appeared when playing the first race in “races” mode: the player’s level isn’t incremented, even if they are below the target time.
  • In career mode, if the player abandons a race or doesn’t complete it, they return to the same position in the available races. This shouldn’t be the case; the level should be incremented regardless of whether they complete the race or not (just no rewards if they don’t).

Text data :

  • Currently, all the text is hard-coded, which significantly lengthens this part of the code. I think this entire section could be stored in a SQLite database and displayed according to the player’s current index.

Other data :

  • Similarly, the number of races considerably increases the number of files. In theory, all of this could also be stored in a table and loaded with the index of the selected race.
  • For cars, this needs testing, but I think it’s also feasible. I’ve always wanted to include the possibility of upgrading your car by buying parts (for certain cars). As it stands, this is impossible without creating a considerable number of XML files. An index in the table pointing to the part (with the appropriate data) would, I think, allow for more flexibility.
  • For tracks, this seems more complicated due to the complexity of the data to include in the table (but this needs to be verified).
  • For player setups and race saves after qualifying or in championships, this could also be stored in a database in the $HOME directory (Linux) or DOCUMENTS (Windows).
  • All this, needs to be tested before implementation to verify its feasibility and whether it reduces disk loading times.

The interface :

  • I would like the user interface (UI) to be 3D itself. This requires me to redesign this entire section to load the necessary objects directly into the interface and convert it to OpenGL 2.0.
  • Similar to the database, I will need to create a development branch to implement and test this interface and see if it impacts performance.

The Game :

  • In the future, I will definitely remove the “races” section with its unlocking of higher levels, which doesn’t add much to the game now that the career mode is implemented.
  • Instead, I will reintroduce practice (to allow players to test different tracks), challenges, endurance races, and championships. The choice of races will be linked to the car selected by the player. In this section, the player will only have access to a new car set after completing certain races.

All of this needs to be tested before implementation, and these changes generate significant modifications to the code, so implementation will take time. I will keep you regularly updated on the progress.

Xavier

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