06/29/2023: I have an updated version uploaded here. The only real change from the previous version is the hill climb/cliffs area and a few minor touches here and there. If you have any feedback or experience any issues, please let me know! Hello everyone! Following the release of Kartland, I wanted a place to properly test karts that are right in the middle of the performance spectrum between low-end karts and formula karts. This one will include only courses modeled by myself instead of looking for ports from other games and I will be using assets from Kartland for the track surface and terrains. The map is 2.5x larger than Kartland, so there is plenty of room for several courses, possibly more than what is in Kartland as long as the layouts can be slotted together. Here is a comparison of the size of the course vs the map size: I am using a copy of the terrain from kartland, which is why the layouts of those courses are visible. So far, I have the Star Trek loop for the Utah Motorsports Campus Kart track modelled for testing and it turned out well enough that I am moving forward with this project. The length of this version is around 1.8km and the main straight is nearly 400m long. There are literally dozens of configurations for this course, but I will be including 8 of the layouts proposed for the 2023 racing season and one from a video I used to get references for placements and angles of the rumble strips. Where the 600cc config felt confined and restricted before, here it feels much more at home due to the much more open turns and very long straights. It hovers between 4th-6th gear and only ever goes lower if I spin out. If anybody has suggestions of large kart courses they would like to see included, please let me know! As long as it is open enough for the 600cc config to perform well, I will try to include it in the final release Below are shots of the course in-game and a few of the layouts proposed for this year's racing season: Here is the course in Blender:
Last update before next week: I finished the layout of the entire course and am now working on the decoration. For this course, I decided to use a collision mesh instead of the terrain. This is due to the base terrain being roughly 1.1x larger than real life. Here is the layout done.
The scale was off by much more than I initially thought. It was 33% larger than in real life. Now, ten percent or so, I could live with, but that was too much of a difference for me. After the reduction, it is much closer in size to Lentola from Kartland as pictured below, but it is still much longer and with many more high-speed sections. While this is a little disappointing for the prospect of higher speeds (the 600cc config still easily reaches 100mph on this course), it does free up a ton of space for more courses. This also means I had to redo the entire track since I already reduced the width of the course to 9 meters before doing the layout. Since there is so much more room, I am thinking about adding off-road courses as well. Such as rallycross or outdoor motocross courses. This would be so that there could be one map to drive all variants of the backyard kart on. I say all because the larger courses have configurations for slower karts. The size difference between the new scale and Lentola (The previous size of the track is the bounds of the dirt rectangle):
I finished the updated layout and am now working on the decorations. I am going to be placing them all using the forest tool so I do not have to make copies of meshes or the materials files, so I cannot use the spline editor to speed things up a bit (or at least, I have been assuming it wouldn't work). I am glad I got the scaling wrong because I was able to take what I learned the first time and make the course even smoother than before without spending hours just on the smoothness. Anyway, here is the final version of the layout. It includes the pit lane, which will connect to the main road that will go between each of the courses. And here is a look at the general aesthetic. The terrain color is an edited RockyDirt and the rest of the material is from Italy. The road texture is ported from Kartland and the rumble strips are from Hirochi Raceway. As are the tires and marshal stands/towers.
I finished the macro decorations (tire walls, guardrails, and buildings) and am now working on the micro details (track edging, road markings, race-oriented decoration). I threw together a video to show it in its current form as well as the progress on the backyard kart: Here is a list of courses I am looking at adding (please let me know of any you would like to see, whether it is off-road or on-road): Kart Kountry in Kentucky, USA 1.5 mile long course It might not have long enough straights and wide enough corners to be fun, but I will do a quick and dirty version to see PF International Kart Circuit in the UK This one has three configurations I can identify, each are centered around four long straights It has a crossover section that looks like it would be fun to design Cache Valley Motocross in Idaho, USA This is an offroad course that is laid out very similarly to a kart course It is a motocross course, so I will be testing this with the offroad racing configs of the backyard kart Le Mans Karting International in France Three separate courses that can be linked together Jaakarting Botniaring in Finland This one has several long straights and even has layouts for a good crosskart track
I made a bit of progress after getting some lidar data. I have PF International Kart Circuit and Botniaring from the list above so far. Right now I only have the basic layouts for them as I plan how to arrange the courses. PFI was very straightforward to get started as the height data was easy enough to find. I still need to add in the two additional sections, but I just wanted to check the compatibility of the general layout with the 600cc config of the backyard kart. Botniaring, despite being labelled as a kart track was much too big to be challenging for karts. However, I do really like the layout, so I scaled it to have an 8m width, which significantly improved the experience. The fourth course I have laid out is a fully custom course. These courses are all laid out to allow the 600cc config to at the very least reach 6th gear for more than a second or two at a time and at the very most, reach 108mph. I have the 600cc config tuned to be a generalist between Botniaring (the highest speed course) and UMC (the most technical course). I will be releasing the next backyard kart update as soon as I have the first beta released here in the forums. To get a sense of scale compared to UMC, here are the four courses laid out. The only terrain bit that is final is for UMC, the rest is tentative as I gather more courses. With the three courses from Le Mans, it looks like I have enough room for one or two more courses. I do not think I will be adding in kart country as these courses are confirmed to be at a proper scale for the mid-tier karts and I am not sure it will fit. This section at le mans karting looks really interesting. It is two distinct courses that look like they are connected at the bottom. Plus they have an incredible potential for a diverse number of configurations. I did a super early drive around using the base terrain as the driving surface, and the scaling feels just right for the 600cc config. Plus there will be a ton of track configurations for the low-tier configs as well.
I have put in four more courses. Three of them are fully custom and the fourth is Cache Valley Motocross. I also have the routes between the courses planned out. The Le Mans courses will be using the road between the two sections and I have a tunnel built underneath the custom course by Botniaring. The Tunnel: The new overview: The first of the new courses. The layout is still WIP: The second course. Fairly basic layout, but it has a ton of elevation change. The third course. Kind of a middle ground between the two others: Cache Valley Motocross. It is just wide enough for the backyard kart, but it is a fun challenge:
I have finished the basic layout for the Le Mans courses, so here is an updated overview as well as possible plans for even more courses. The top right I will very likely be placing a course into just because the distance between the far right course and the nearest connection is quite large and I want as little empty space as I can manage. I could also probably try to raise up the area under that course as high as possible and then make something like a mini hillclimb stage to get there. Overview with names Potential height of the final course In other news, I plan on getting the beta release for the map as soon as I get the layouts done and the paths between them completed. For instance, custom course 2 has a lot of smoothing that I need to do and also a more proper molding of the terrain around the course
I am about ready to upload an early version of the map. It will have all of the basic layouts done with the UMC track completely finished (It still needs pit and outer area decoration). Currently, I am working on smoothing out some of the courses and getting all of the course configurations for UMC laid out in time-trial format. I have 8 so far including all but one of the layouts for the 2023 season, with the remaining one left out because the terrain scan I got appears to be from before the cross-kart section was added. Here is the new starting line look (It's set up for both directions):
Okay, I am just finishing up the collisions on the tires, (setting up the colmesh. Will tune the groundmodel as I develop the map), then I will be uploading the current version of the map, probably tomorrow morning. I added an offroad trail and some foliage to the motocross track. It helped it look better than I anticipated. I also added the hill climb to the track in the back: As previously stated. The only course that will be anywhere near completion is UMC, but they all (excluding PFI) have their layouts completed and just need decoration.
The map is now uploaded to the original post! It is still very much WIP, so any feedback or suggestions are welcome! Because of its early state, I am also open to any courses you would like to see included.
I started working on decorating the hillclimb area. I am taking inspiration from Italy (the map) for the way I am setting up the cliffs. I have also included a few gaps that can be used to bypass the roads if you are brave. I am dreading working on the cliffs to the right as they are quite huge and I do not have space to smooth it out more I also added a new offroad cruising area near Botniaring that was intended to be a temporary testing ground for a gambler config I am working on (not the backyard kart), but I expanded on the simple loop I made and it turned out to be a nice area for mid-speed offroading. On the topic of offroad trails, I will be filling the space between the courses with small to large offroad trails that will be a combination of distinct courses as well as alternate paths between the large courses. Hill Climb: Off-road area:
Sweet! i'm excited to try it out. I've been playing quite a bit on the regular sized version. I'm not a kart racer but the corners are perfect for drifting. If you are still looking for suggestions, I would really enjoy Pat's Acres Karting Complex/PARC. Either way, you're doing great work, and I look forward to your future projects.
Oooh I really like that area! The combination of a complex street course and an offroad course in the trees is exactly what I have been looking for. Thank you! Actually, the offroad course is way too big to fit in this map, but I can definitely make space for the street course!
I know it has been a while since the last progress update and I do not have much to show for it. I kind of got burnt out on map making and went on to another project for a change of pace. However, I have made at least some progress. I continued to place the rock walls along the cliffs of the hill climb area as well as along some of the in between roads and on a new off road course. I also put together the start of a stunt jump area in preparation for the map-long course With my other project about finished, I am starting to get back into working on this regularly again, so expect more regular updates on the progress in the future. Here are some pics of the changed areas: The stunt jump area. It has almost zero room for error so I will probably be adding some bridges to allow for more room for error The in-between addition The cliffs. I definitely need to figure something out to fill it out, but it's getting there. The new course. More of a slow paced course designed for cruising rather than racing like the others.
I got a lot of the cliffs area done now. I decided to go with a rocky step by cutting out some of the terrain on the large cliffside to fill that out as well as placing a ton of vegetation around the general area. I also started fleshing out some of the trails in this area. I need to work on this layout. It is impassable by anything aside from the rock bouncer and the crawler hopper The stunt jump area got extended a bit as well. This is going to probably be as slow as the rest of the map since it requires a ton of tuning and testing to make sure it is doable and not too difficult. I added a couple of hairpin turns, extended the landing zones a bit, and added a template for a bridge on the first jump.
