FormulaProc Dev Report

Ok, here’s what has kept me busy lately.

Thru this last month of dev, the project graduated from a ProcJam entry into an official Slashware project with contributions from QuietGecko, Simernio and Esteban Martinez. All the current stuff can be reached from formulaproc.com

Simulated Events

I set up and ran the events for the Spanish, Monaco and Azerbaijan Grand Prixes and their qualifier sessions, each event has had something new as detailed below.

Main Simulation

The first thing I improved was adding the circuit map; this was critical for players to get the feeling of being there. It was implemented with some basic trigonometry allowing to locate the markers alongside a polyline (only straight segments, no curves for simplicity, so long curves in the circuits are just a lot of small segments which works good enough)

Gecko created an upbeat music track for the races, and sound effects for the events such as new lap, surpass, and countdown. We also worked together to create the engine sound which was something critical to get the feeling of the race; it was an iterative work which required tweaks on the simulation itself so that the dynamics of the RPM and the gearboxes on the vehicles matched the variations in pitch we needed to get just the sound we wanted.

I added a couple more visual indications too, first off I added “combat notifications” to let the viewer know when a car was trying to gain a position and when/if he was successful; that ended up being super confusing and useless, and was later replaced by indicators in the newly added “intervals table”, which is a permanent indicator of the positions in the track and the difference in seconds between the drivers.

I also worked with Simernio to fully redesign the appearance, and added a box with the stats of the race leader.

Discord Bot

Along with the creation of FormulaProc’s discord server, I developed a first version of the bot using discord.js (including persistence to mongodb with just its native nodejs driver) and deployed it to DigitalOcean.

Right now you can use it to place a bet on a driver for the next race, buy virtual mechandise and event cast spells over the drivers to affect their performance in the upcoming races.

The Intro

I commissioned Simernio to create a new logo for FormulaProc itself, along with logos for each one of the teams and a full blown animated intro taking all this together. It wound up amazing.

Content

Worked along with Esteban to create a page for the teams and pilots with extended descriptions, incorporating the new logos as well as generating portraits for all of the drivers using Unreal’s MetaHuman creator.

I also created a Calendar page listing all the events of the season and their winners, and another one for the current standings. I still don’t know if I’ll have enough time to simulate all of them before Season 2022 starts.

We have also been trying to give some life to the FormulaProc universe via articles covering the qualifiers and the races. We plan to maybe add more content such as interviews, driver profiles, and events happening in this world besides the Grand Prixes.

The Future?

So far we haven’t managed to get much traction, and the amount of work that this has required is not small. For now I’ll release the gas pedal a little bit (will continue releasing the simulations but don’t feel like I should put much more dev into it, especially with the upcoming release of NovaMundi and our secret lighting project.

In any case, if you haven’t done so, please subscribe to the channel and join the discord so you don’t miss the fun and the chance to see this evolve 🙂