Timed Race Events

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SteamsDev
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Timed Race Events

Unread post by SteamsDev » Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:07 pm

This is something that I've been thinking about and decided to finally post it: I wanted to know if it were possible to do timed races, where after a specific amount of time, the number of laps in the race is the number of laps which the leader completed after crossing the finish line. Here's how they would work (slightly inspired by the Battle Tag game mode):

- All the cars will start on the grid and the timer will be set to however many minutes (or hours) that the player has set.
- When the cars launch off the line, the timer begins counting down. It will continue to count down for the entire race, regardless of any shenanigans that might go on.
- When the timer reaches 0, the game looks at what lap the leader is on and then sets that number as the number of laps there are in the race for everyone. When the leader crosses the finish line, he will finish first, and the rest of the field races to see who gets 2nd, 3rd, etc.
- The race can be short races (5 minutes or less), normal races (6 - 15 minutes), long races (15 to 30 minutes), longer races (30 minutes to an hour), and finally endurance races (an hour or more). These number can be set by the player, with the option of choosing minutes or hours.
- There will be the option to switch between races determined by laps or by time and options to go with them.

Possible issue with this idea:

Depending on the length of the track, the number of laps can exceed what the game can handle (as far as I know the max number is 255). Two possible fixes are patching the game to allow people to race more laps or (probably the better option) make an algorithm that can check the typical lap time for a specific track (maybe check the times on Re-volt race of the player has an internet connection), the amount of time the driver wants to race for, and then see if the potential that the race will exceed the number of laps allowed by the game is there. If so, give a compatibility error when previewing the race and force the player to go back to the track selection screen to pick another track. This will prevent crashing during an endurance race on a shorter track or something like that.

Let me know what you think. This is something I think can work in RVGL (within reason), and I would certainly love to see it in the game. Thanks for taking the time to read this. It means a lot!
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