F1/indi 500 Online Racing Game

[justforfun]

Hey Guys,

Found this site looks to be full of people that share the same interests/hobbies as myself.

the reason I am writing this post is just to a idea that i have, i can really see a BIG gap in the market for F1/Indi racing manager games. I just wanted to know everyone's thoughts on this.

In principle the game will be a free web based motor sport management game (option with paid version), where you get to control and influence a team of your own. Starting out with a basic car (level 1 or 0%) you can try and win your way through the league/table to promote to the top tier in the game to win the crown.

There will be many things you have to take care of, like hiring drivers and general staff members (Technical Officer and Chief Designer just of the top of my head at the moment), setting up your car for qualification and races, managing facilities, negotiating with sponsors and testing.

I am thinking that there will be 10-14 races per season, maybe 2-3 races per week. You will be able to see how your driver performs in each race, and decide the best race strategy according to your driver stats and weather predictions. You can create teams with your friends or with people from across the world that you have never met before to compete in the team Cup.
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so having said all of that the game if in VERY early development, I am not fantastic at coding but i pick things up very fast as i am self taught.

first of all i would like to know what you think of the concept of the game?
second i want to get a little help in turning the concept into reality?
And of course if you have any suggestions/ideas i would love to hear them.

Thank you all for reading this long post sorry it was so long

Thanks for help, feedback and ideas

James

Edit: Sorry for the double post not sure where to put this post

[Jackolantern]

Yeah, I have definitely not seen anything like that. I have also never seen F1 or Indi Racing, so I can't add much in that department, but it likely is a gap in the market.

Also, unlike football, hockey or wrestling sims, it would be a lot easier to make non-interactive HTML5 animated race simulations right in the browser to jazz up the presentation a bit and add some tension lol.

[justforfun]

yer that would be good to implement, the only thing that i can think of will be if there is 500+ people online 40-50 people to each group that would be 12 leagues/divisions to script.

the only problem that I can forecast is the core coding aspect (how it will look, where to start with it, how to make it difficult but also how to make it static so that the core script is the same for keeping record of setups for players, the only thing that will change the setup will be drivers stats, weather, humidity, rain, tyres so it will involve making a standard code for the track and lots of variables for different conditions)

sorry if that was confusing that was the best way to describe it

James

[Xaos]

yer that would be good to implement, the only thing that i can think of will be if there is 500+ people online 40-50 people to each group that would be 12 leagues/divisions to script.

the only problem that I can forecast is the core coding aspect (how it will look, where to start with it, how to make it difficult but also how to make it static so that the core script is the same for keeping record of setups for players, the only thing that will change the setup will be drivers stats, weather, humidity, rain, tyres so it will involve making a standard code for the track and lots of variables for different conditions)

sorry if that was confusing that was the best way to describe it

James

How are you going to differentiate between cars/drivers skill level? Maybe certain cars are literally faster, or maybe driving skill? That plays a huge part into it. I'm a huge sports sim guy, I think I may be able to help out with the "why/how" of the code a bit

[justforfun]

How are you going to differentiate between cars/drivers skill level? Maybe certain cars are literally faster, or maybe driving skill? That plays a huge part into it. I'm a huge sports sim guy, I think I may be able to help out with the "why/how" of the code a bit

well I have wrote down every aspect of the game everything exept the code so we explaining is easy lol

firstly when a new user registers they will have a car with each car part/component at level 1 or 0% (lower level/% parts wear faster, poor performance, etc)

secondly drivers will have individual stats (they will be rated from 0 - 500 the better the stats the better the driver hence better performance)

thirdly the setup is important also having a car setup for handling will be poor in a race that has alot of straights and vice verca.

_____________________________________________________________________________
James

[Xaos]

How are you going to differentiate between cars/drivers skill level? Maybe certain cars are literally faster, or maybe driving skill? That plays a huge part into it. I'm a huge sports sim guy, I think I may be able to help out with the "why/how" of the code a bit

well I have wrote down every aspect of the game everything exept the code so we explaining is easy lol

firstly when a new user registers they will have a car with each car part/component at level 1 or 0% (lower level/% parts wear faster, poor performance, etc)

secondly drivers will have individual stats (they will be rated from 0 - 500 the better the stats the better the driver hence better performance)

thirdly the setup is important also having a car setup for handling will be poor in a race that has alot of straights and vice verca.

_____________________________________________________________________________
James

So what kind of balance is there going to be between driver skill and car? Will a great car be able to overcome a horrible driver, or vice-versa?

Also, I'd say have each track in the database with variables that affect driver skills/car, like you said a certain track that has alot of curves may have the effect of Handling -2, so youy would need good handling to off-set that. Then have weather that has its own effects, like rain would decrease stability by 2 or something like that.

[justforfun]

So what kind of balance is there going to be between driver skill and car? Will a great car be able to overcome a horrible driver, or vice-versa?

I want to keep this as balanced as possible as this would make things unrealistic. but not something i have thought of to be honest

Also, I'd say have each track in the database with variables that affect driver skills/car, like you said a certain track that has alot of curves may have the effect of Handling -2, so youy would need good handling to off-set that. Then have weather that has its own effects, like rain would decrease stability by 2 or something like that.

there are so many variables that i could input into this such as (Downforce of the track, overtaking is it easy or hard, fuel consumption, tyre wear, grip levels, suspension rigidity)

and like mentioned certain driver stats such as:
stamina (e.g lower the stamina then on long races the drivers constancy will deplete giving poor lap times)
concentration (e.g lower concentration stats would make the driver susceptible to making mistakes)

for the actual users I want to create a sense of mystery so certain stats will have pros as well as cons but these will not be revealed making the user have to experiment with certain stats and car parts,levels to improve and find out what works well with what.

[Xaos]

So what kind of balance is there going to be between driver skill and car? Will a great car be able to overcome a horrible driver, or vice-versa?

I want to keep this as balanced as possible as this would make things unrealistic. but not something i have thought of to be honest

Also, I'd say have each track in the database with variables that affect driver skills/car, like you said a certain track that has alot of curves may have the effect of Handling -2, so youy would need good handling to off-set that. Then have weather that has its own effects, like rain would decrease stability by 2 or something like that.

there are so many variables that i could input into this such as (Downforce of the track, overtaking is it easy or hard, fuel consumption, tyre wear, grip levels, suspension rigidity)

and like mentioned certain driver stats such as:
stamina (e.g lower the stamina then on long races the drivers constancy will deplete giving poor lap times)
concentration (e.g lower concentration stats would make the driver susceptible to making mistakes)

for the actual users I want to create a sense of mystery so certain stats will have pros as well as cons but these will not be revealed making the user have to experiment with certain stats and car parts,levels to improve and find out what works well with what.

Oh yeah for sure. I think make sure the track variables are static and don't change (Every so often you could make something big happen, like the track gets repaved) but that way it adds a sense of mystery and keeps hte players guessing and trying to figure out what works best for each track. Then have each track say in the database that way you can just easily access them. That'll allow for the game to grow as well

[justforfun]

Oh yeah for sure. I think make sure the track variables are static and don't change (Every so often you could make something big happen, like the track gets repaved) but that way it adds a sense of mystery and keeps hte players guessing and trying to figure out what works best for each track. Then have each track say in the database that way you can just easily access them. That'll allow for the game to grow as well

I am also going to implement Random errors such as race start errors which will cause drivers to retire from the race this will be a good implementation to the game, also driver training to improve stats.

I have been thinking of the aspect of weather of the race as i would be very difficult to code a 50% wet track and drizzle etc, so what i might implement is if the weather is rain then this suggests that 100% of the track is rain and vice verca this would remove the option of intermediate tyres. As I would not any changes to be made during race everything has to be done before some sort of deadline

[Xaos]

Oh yeah for sure. I think make sure the track variables are static and don't change (Every so often you could make something big happen, like the track gets repaved) but that way it adds a sense of mystery and keeps hte players guessing and trying to figure out what works best for each track. Then have each track say in the database that way you can just easily access them. That'll allow for the game to grow as well

I am also going to implement Random errors such as race start errors which will cause drivers to retire from the race this will be a good implementation to the game, also driver training to improve stats.

I have been thinking of the aspect of weather of the race as i would be very difficult to code a 50% wet track and drizzle etc, so what i might implement is if the weather is rain then this suggests that 100% of the track is rain and vice verca this would remove the option of intermediate tyres. As I would not any changes to be made during race everything has to be done before some sort of deadline

I like the ideas of random errors, but I wouldn't do completely random. Maybe have some randomness, but also takei nto account driver skill + car + pit crew ability?

I think itw ould be pretty easy to add a bunch of weather. Just have set things (IE 100% rain = -5 Handling) and then say use a ratio to just scale it to match the percentage of wetness/rain/whatever you want. So if it was a 50% rain (average rain), it would be at -2.5 handling.

Could just put all weather (Sunny, Rainy, Snowy, Windy, etc. etc. etc.) into a DB and then have the randomness generator (just a rand between 0 and 1) determine how much of the weather is happening at race time, as you can get say .54 and that's equal to 54%. So it's not really that hard to implement.