2012 Update report, status

The 2011 racing year will conclude next month and then the game will go on a short hiatus until Spring while I give the whole system an overhaul. I've posted before about the plans for this major update and there were a lot of things on the list...some of them stayed, some of them didn't. Time is truly the enemy and work so far has been relatively slow, although recent and upcoming time off from work should provide some more free time...however, I'm expecting my first child next Spring and as you already-parents know, preparing for a baby is a whole other form of time suck entirely (although the best kind).

All that being said, here is a short list of new stuff you will for sure see in the game next Spring.

Car Credits - Along with points earned for picks and entry, players will receive Car Credits during regular game play. These car credits can then be used to unlock cars in The Lot. Rather than me dump a dozen new cars in every season, new cars will be added as I buy them and then you can unlock the ones you want to see race, so we should see a lot of new cars be rolled into the mix more often. But there is a strategy around unlocking cars because when you purchase a car with credits, that car goes into your "Garage" and you get exclusive first rights to enter the car in a tournament. You can "play your card" at anytime, assuming the car meets tournament criteria. After your exclusive car races, it will then be open to everyone for future tournaments like a normal car.

Team Racing - Most of you know about the in-forum team racing that seattlegreyy has been managing and it has been quite successful and a lot of fun. This aspect of the game is being rolled into the update so all the team players, stats, scores, etc will be easily accessible in-game. There will also be some basic team management tools for captains. If all goes as I hope, activities like drafting and trading will be included. There will also be some management tools created for the commissioner to help with scheduling and reporting.

Circuit Tracks - We started doing races on off-site circuit tracks a couple seasons ago with help from Jobe, Jason and JDC and they all went great and I think everyone had a good time racing them. Since this was a welcomed feature, next year the fantasy league will have proper support for non-Redline Derby tracks. You'll be able to see the track and equipment via photos, plus specs on shape and size. All of this data will then be mixed-and-matched with other data to give players more accurate stats.

Stats, stats and more stats - And speaking of stats...next year there should be a whole host of "new" data available within the game. Well, it's not really new new, it's data we've been collecting the entire time, but I'll be building in better tools and reporting to show this data. Things like car performance per track and rating history are on the list. The player profiles will also be expanded to give a more complete history of performance as we go into the future. In many cases in the current version, data is simply "zeroed out" at the end of each season so some historical data is lost but this will lay a foundation for more stats later.

Seasons and Series - Right now a "season" is a set of 16-brackets. Next year a "season" will be seen as the entire year...so the "2012 Season". Each set of 16-brackets will be dubbed a "Series" and labeled based on the calendar season...so the "Spring Series", "Summer Series", etc. This means there will be 4 Series Champions and 1 Season Champion.

More tournament restrictions - Right now tournaments are restricted by class and rating. Next year we will add more to these options including car weight, number of wins and losses, and number of races total. This should help keep tournaments more varied throughout the year even within repeated classes.

More achievements - Given all the things being added next year, there will be a host of new achievements to unlock. However, these achievements and even the reward codes can then include Car Credit bonuses as well as regular points.

Other minor things - The site and game will be getting a new coat of paint as well to match all the additions. The forums won't be changing. Newsletters might get an update to be more useful and the player dashboard will be getting some new features too to help making playing faster and to help promote game exploration.

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There is a lot to do between now and April but I think it can get done. I'm a big procrastinator and I've been doing pretty well at that on this project since the Summer, but now that the deadline is nearing I'm more focused and getting stuff done. I want to do some proper testing in beta before the Spring so I'll be recruiting folks for that eventually.

I know there was a lot of other stuff on the update list in the past, including wagering, but I had to cut a lot of it just so I could get something done. This update will be a much better foundation for building on top of, so as the game continues to grow we can add things like wagering and other features later.

If there's any questions or thoughts or concerns, please post.