April State of the Game:

Happy April everyone! Another short update for this month, as it’s been just a repeat of last month. I’m close to being finished with the player cars, and then onto the AI cars. See you all next month!

March State of the Game:

Hello Everyone! It’s crazy to think we are already 1/4th of the way through 2022! I hope you are all doing well! Anyways, this month, I have continued to add the new physics systems to quite a few cars, but there are still a lot more to go. Thanks for taking a minute to read this! I’ll see you all next month!

February State of the Game:

Hey all! During the month of February, I fixed a few bugs that arose in the new physics system for the player cars. Also, I’ve started to add the new physics system to various player cars, and getting the audio to sound how I want it to for each of the cars. Bit of a shorter State of the Game these past few months, as I don’t have anything too vast to show. See you all next month!

January State of the Game:

Hello! This month, I’ve made some major progress in getting the new physics system working properly, along with testing out some various scenarios for the AI cars. It’s going pretty well so far. I don’t have much else to report for this month, so I’ll see you all next month!

December State of the Game:

Hello! And that’s a wrap on 2021. As we move into the new year, I hope to finish working on Hot Lap, and publish it for you all to play. This month, I scrapped the built in Unity Car Physics, and started working on creating my own system. So far, it’s working pretty well. I’ll have to port it over to the AI cars at some point, and add the scripts to the player vehicles, but the AI cars should handle and perform much better than they are currently. Hopefully this means I should be able to add different levels of AI skills for newer drivers and for more advanced drivers. That’s all I have to report for now, see you all next month!

November State of the Game:

Hey all! I hope you are all doing well as we approach the end of 2021! This month, I made some great progress on the car engine audio. Also, I’ve been working hard on trying to get the vehicle physics better, as it’s pretty hard to drive these cars with the current settings (mix of understeer and oversteer :0). Hopefully, with some tweaks, they’ll accelerate much better and be able to take turns, which will in turn make the AI drivers much better! See you all next month!

October State of the Game:

Hey! Thanks for taking a minute to read the state of the game! This month, I was able to make a lot more progress on the car engine audio. Currently, I’m working on making sure that the acceleration and speed of the cars are matching the engine audio sounds, and more importantly, making sure it is close to the real life counterparts of some of the vehicles. Once I get those tweaks done, I should be close to add the car engine audio to all of the models, making the game sound even more alive! That’s all for this month, I’ll see you next month!

September State of the Game:

Hello! It’s crazy to think how close we are to the end of the year, and the beginning of 2022! Anyway, this month, I have continued working on adding car engine audio to the game. As I spend more time working on getting it polished, it keeps sounding better and better! I’ll have some more to share for next month, so see you then!

August State of the Game:

Hey All! I hope you are doing well! This month, I have been working on getting car engines sounds added to the game! It is sounding pretty good at the moment, but there is still quite a bit more to go until they are fully polished. I don’t have much else to report for this state of the game, so I will see you next month!

July State of the Game:

Hey Everyone! Sorry about this post being a bit later than normal! Had some stuff come up that took up a quite a bit of time over the past few weeks. However, I was able to make some pretty good progress this past month, including working on adding and polishing some more tracks. But, I do have some pretty big news to share! This month, I was able to get some car engine audio, and start adding it to the game! This is going to take a bit of time as I figure out the best way possible to get it added to all of the cars in the game, but so far, it is sounding pretty good! Check back in next month for some more details!

June State of the Game:

Hey Hot Lap Fans! I hope everyone is doing fine this month! This month, I was able to add 3 new tracks to Hot Lap, and I was making some various Quality of Life changes. Also, I was starting to look into getting some engine audio for the cars on the track. I was able to get some more feedback from my friends on the game, and it is all very positive so far! That’s all I have to report for this month, see you all in a month!

May State of the Game:

Hello Everyone! I hope you all are doing well! This month, Hot Lap is growing in the amounts of tracks that can be raced on it! I have created, and completed, 2 new tracks for people to race on, and I am most of the way through creating a third track. Also, I was able to make the AI cars handle more consistently with each other, which helped them get around the track better. And for some really awesome news, I was able to let a few of my close friends try a prototype copy of Hot Lap, and they liked it and gave some cool suggestions of things I could add and change as well. I will continue creating more tracks and polishing some of the bugs and other various issues that arise in doing so, with the hopes of being able to release the game sometime in the next year! That is all for this month, I will see you all next month!

April State of the Game:

Hi Everyone! It is crazy to think that we are already a third of the way through the year! Insane! This month, I made a lot of progress on Hot Lap. I was able to finish the skid marks for the player cars and all of the AI cars. Also, I was able to add some very nice quality of life changes. I was also able to work on making the AI cars drive better, and making them act like a real person would. I continued creating the Oval Track, and it is looking very nice! Finally, I was working on animations for all of the menus, making them look better. This raps it up for this month, see you all next month!

March State of the Game:

Hey Everyone! For those of you who haven’t seen the news yet, I published Lego Micro Racers! Go check out the link to the page, and go play the game! At the moment, the judges should be judging the competition, with news on the winners occurring in a few days, wish me luck! Also, for news about Hot Lap, I have gotten back to developing on the game and made a lot of progress this month. This month, I was able to finish the car positioning system, and I was able to add some other quality of the game features, such as increased steering under a certain speed to allow for better turning around power in case of a spin out. Also, I got some music and sound FX added to the game, making it much more lively! Next, I started to work on a new track layout for use in the game at a later date. Finally, I started to work on adding skid marks to both the players cars and the AI cars, making the driving a bit more realistic. Currently, those need a little bit more tuning and setup to be where I would like them. Thank you for reading this, and if you haven’t yet, go check out Lego Micro Racers, my free web game for the Lego and Unity Game Jam!

February State of the Game:

Hello there! Earlier this month, I found out about a Game Jam between Unity and Lego to build a game using Lego bricks and models, and I am currently building a game for it. For those of you who don’t know what a Game Jam is, it is an event where you have a set amount of time to build a game, usually with a set of requirements, and post it into a competition. This Game Jam has prizes being given out to the top games, random winners, and everyone gets a special Unity Lego figure. This means that I haven’t had much time to work on Hot Lap, but don’t worry, I have still been working on it a bit. I was able to continue working on the positioning system a bit more and fixing other various bugs that arose. I will have a post up for you all to see my Lego Game, called Lego Micro Racers, sometime in the next 2 weeks. Wish me luck! See you next month!

January State of the Game:

Hello Everyone! Welcome to 2021! I hope that the year is starting off well for you! This month’s progress included a lot of work on adding more A.I. cars to the test track to make the race more interesting. Also, with adding more A.I. cars, I had to redesign the positioning system to accurately show what position you are in during the race, which has taken a lot of time. Thank you for taking a bit of time to read this, I will see you next time!

December State of the Game:

Hey Everyone! I hope you are having a good holiday! There was a lot of progress made in Hot Lap during this past month! This month, I was able to get a lot of the AI Cars set up on the test track. This includes getting them to follow a path around the track, getting them on the minimap, and having them apart of the positioning system. Also, I have been fixing a lot of bugs that have arisen from setting up the AI Cars, and from other additions to the game that has caused some other parts of the game to break. Next, I have worked on getting the end of race screen to be more polished and actually show the results of the race and the amount of credits that you get from the race. Finally, as some of you may have seen, there is a new teaser image! This teaser image shows off a bit of the garage where you will pick your car and the track before the race starts. Thank you for taking the time to read this, please share this with your friends and family! See you next year!

November State of the Game:

Hey Everyone! I hope that you are all doing well. This month on Hot Lap, I have gotten a lot of progress on the AI Cars and setting them up on a test track. Also, I have continued fixing some bugs that have arise during development. My goal for next month is to finish up the AI Cars by getting them to choose a random car based on what the player has chosen, and to start creating tracks that better fit the theme of the game. That is all for this month. See you next month!

October State of the Game:

Hello Everyone, I have decided that at the end of each month, I am going to write up a little message about what I have developed in the past month on Hot Lap. So, this will be the first one. This month, I have worked on the UI and UI scaling in the menus. I have also put some of the finishing touches on the car positioning system for during the race, but some bugs have arisen that need to be squashed. I have worked on the car AI’s and adding the scripts to the rest of the cars to have them act as race opponents. I have added loading screens so instead of the game looking like it has frozen as you are loading different scenes, it has a little animation that appears.

I plan on releasing Hot Lap on PC, but I do not have a set platform on PC yet. So, that is it for this month, and hopefully during the next month, I can finish getting the car AI’s set up and maybe have some more images of the game to show!