Larry and his Rocket LawnChair

Kickstarter ends in 3 days, claim your glory before it's too late: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hakjak/guts-and-glory

Wow, it's been a busy month! Running a Kickstarter is hella hard work, but it's looking like it all may pay off soon. There are just 3 DAYS LEFT and it's 87% FUNDED! That's cutting it close, so I really hope enough new pledges come in to meet the goal. Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing platform, so if it comes up even $1 short of hitting the goal then everything is refunded and no rewards sent out. So crazy!

Luckily you guys have been amazing support. As the deadline nears, tweets and posts have increased, and many backers have even increased their pledges, pushing us closer to that sweet finish line. These next 3 days are both exciting and nerve-racking.

It's easy to let all the power of this thing go to your head.

I've been hard at work on the 4th character for the game: meet Dr. Lawrence Walters, also known as "LawnChair Larry!" He was once a very successful rocket scientist, but one day discovered the wonders of LSD and lost his mind. Now he's building his own rocket-powered contraption from spare parts so he can compete in the Guts and Glory games and reclaim his former life--or just feed his addiction. He's not quite sure yet.

Getting the physics and controls to work well for a vehicle like this was a big challenge. At first, it just wanted to fly all over the place uncontrollably like a balloon losing its air! (Thought I was playing Goat Simulator for a minute, haha!) But eventually I found a way to integrate it into the rest of the vehicle physics system and stabilize the controls. It's so much fun to just fly around on this thing that I probably spent more time than I needed "playtesting" it.

Added a sweet new shader for the rocket flames as well, which really brings them to life. I'll upgrade the vehicle boosters to something similar as well.

I've also been working on a new map for prototyping, playtesting, and benchmarking changes. I call it "Map X" and you can see it in the trailer above. This will be a part of the Beta on Steam, so everyone can rapidly test adjustments made to vehicles on a wide variety of settings. There are track areas for each class of vehicles, include a large car course with a large loop and jumps, terrain friction testing areas, and more. I'll continue to expand on this map as needed during development.

I've also done some bug squashing and a little bit of optimization work. Discovered that having v-sync on by default is a terrible idea as well, so if you have low FPS, try turning that off. My friend's computer went from 30FPS to 300FPS just by doing that! Also, in future versions of the game I plan on adding some legit bug reporting and analytics features so I can fine-tune things much more efficiently.

That's it for now! I'll be setting up an official Steam Store page/Community Hub soon and adding a control customization system. Once those are done it will be time to start building a level editor!

Thanks again to everyone who has supported the Kickstarter and fingers crossed that we hit that goal before time is up!