SmuggleCraft is KICKSTARTED! THANK YOU!

First things first, we are deeply humbled that the SmuggleCraft Kickstarter Campaign Reached its goal and is successfully funded! It’s because of you, our incredible community, that we are now able to bring SmuggleCraft to its fullest potential. 2 years ago, Happy Badger Studio had a dream of bringing a fresh experience to the racing genre, and without YOU, that dream would not have seen the light of day. We are so excited to get the game into your hands. 

We are so grateful to have such an amazing and supportive community. Thank you so much for all of your love and support. Truly. Thank you. 

PAX East Adventures: 

TJ, Ben, and Richard traveled to Boston in early March to PAX East to show some SmuggleCraft! With our previous PAX being a PAX Rising Booth, this was our first PAX where the space was completely ours to work with! 

SmuggleCraft Updates:

With SmuggleCraft now in Closed Beta, we are learning a lot about what needs improvement and what needs to be added! 

The Beta’s main purpose is the online multiplayer, which has been going great! We ran into a few server issues here and there, but thanks to our awesome team, Smugglers were back online and racing in no time. We’re still working on getting sounds and particle effects pinned down. If you’ve played the beta, you may have noticed you are hearing every single sound that’s happening, including the sounds other players are making even if they aren’t in sight. Don’t worry! We are close to locking it down. Particle effects are undergoing some maintenence, so look forward to seeing beautiful particles while racing online soon. 

The game’s narrative has been fully fleshed out and is currently being added into the game. We have an awesome artist working on something special for the single player campaign, so be ready to be immersed in some awesome Dirahlian story arcs. 

Take a look at the gameplay video below, and give us a vote on Greenlight to help us make Steam a reality for SmuggleCraft.

Dana oversees demoers as they play head-to-head mode from the cozy booth-couch

Last weekend we had the chance to demo SmuggleCraft to the public for the first time since announcing the game, which was quite a bit nerve-wracking since we had no idea what to expect from folks. I mean, WE like the game, but what would everyone else think? Turns out, they like it too! (Whew!)

We were invited to Anime St. Louis, a huge local anime convention where we managed to transform our booth space into a SmuggleCraft-themed game lounge, complete with a couch, pillows, and cozy chairs. It was definitely one of the comfiest spots in the con.

Carol commentates the final round of the tournament as Marceline the Vampire Queen, because why not?

As a last-minute surprise, we managed to show off the all-new multiplayer mode for the first time ever, which people immediately gravitated to (though folks still definitely enjoyed the single-player campaign mode quite a bit; some even played for well over an hour). We hosted the very first (of hopefully many) SmuggleCraft multiplayer tournament, which saw over a dozen competitors and some intense gameplay. The final round boiled down to a very heated sudden-death!

Brian (left, on the couch) won the tournament, which was cool, especially since he had some rad Stephen Universe cosplay going on.

We also had one of our very first demo reviews written, thanks to a writer from hardcoregamer.com who called it a “hovercraft joyride!” Consider us thoroughly flattered.

The SmuggleCraft development team from left: TJ, Carol, Joey, Ben, and Dana

All in all, it was an excellent event. Lots of people were glad to hear that not only is the game coming for Playstation 4, but also that the game is up on Steam Greenlight. A lot of folks promised to help us get the game some Greenlight votes, which gives us a lot of hope topped with some warm and fuzzy feelings.

We decided early on that we wanted to use procedurally generated tracks made up of modular track pieces, the idea being that we can design micro player experiences that will be stitched together randomly for a completely unique set of tracks for every player.

The first battle we had to face, however, was not track generation, but basic hovercraft physics. Hovercrafts are hard to program! While we were looking for inspiration and reference, we also discovered that good examples of hovercrafts in games are relatively few and far between. We’ve been lucky enough to have a small group of game dev friends willing to play our early prototypes and give us feedback to help us get it right. We’ve gone through several iterations of the craft physics, and we’re finally getting it to where we want it.

Hovering mechanics are complicated because there’s a lot to account for; hovercrafts are not real things (unfortunately), so we have to make up a lot of physics that isn’t actually real. We have to closely balance things like momentum and drag, turning force, and velocity, all while monitoring the craft’s relationship with the ground. Check out this unity editor image of the ship – you can see we’re using several raycasts and colliders so that we can appropriately react to terrain and environment.

The feel isn’t perfect yet, but we’re getting there. We’re excited to get some solid controls in and start working on our procedural generator.