The Track Game

• track made up of segments with different properties
  • curves
  • straights
  • narrow
  • wide
• segments have a "racing line" and proximity to that affects grid difficulty as well or maybe it's what effects the stamina drain
• each segment corresponds with a play of the grid game
• game performance gives maneuverabillity to get into position for the next segment
  • positioning in the segment affects the difficulty of the grid game
• after a grid game, the track game plays out as the transition from the current track segment to the next track segment

NPC Car Movement

• NPC cars have stats
  • preferred positioning
  • maneuverability
• target a particular positioning for a segment based on car stats

Race Styles

• Finesse
• Bruiser
• Frontrunner
• Drafter

Current implementation

• cars follow the track at a constant speed
  • this leads to cars toward the inside of curves naturally completing the track faster than those toward the outside of curves
  • in PCJ this is not the case. The curves of the track are not simulated, they simply incur "turning loss" if you're toward the outside
    • The UI for this is unintuitive and makes the learning curve for how to control your horse a bit of a pain because you have to parse the weird minimap a step ahead of your current leg
  • I like the physical understandability of this, but I don't want the whole game to just be "stay on the inside as much as possible"
    • it would be more fun to strategically overtake by driving faster at the expense of some resource
      

TODO

• determine distance along track
• determine "pace" by looking at the position of all cars on the track
• positioning relative to pace

Player Movement

• control throttle in real-time?
• maybe control both left/right and throttle "boost"?