Racing Sub-Game? I Don't Get It

[Makeda]

Your argument against racing could be applied to every single racing video game put out since the start of video game arcades in the late 1970s...

But somehow this is a genre of games that survives. Developers of them manage to find ways to allow different racers to take advantage of skill and circumstance to alter that otherwise every pixel moves at speed X from point A to point B.

I'm sure someone at SE has experience in making a video game other than FFXIV, and so could figure it out. Heck I took a 1 semester class on making games for Flash apps, and even we covered tricks on this subject.


Some things that don't require boosters and powerups, so they can be hidden:
- surface friction. Moving through some zones slows or speeds.
- Response time. Built in "lag" between a command and a response that varies depending on current velocity and current attempts to apply turning force.
- Resistance to change. Or rather, built in innertia against any change in speed or direction. Similar to Response Time.
- Stress. Collisions with course edges or other 'drivers' causing a wearing down in your speed, control, friction, and other variables.
- Road grip. Taking actions to increase your 'grip' on the road to avoid sliding out of control, but at the cost of speed loss. Thus forcing a player to choose when to do it. For a chocobo, this could be 'gripping the course with talons as you run', and using wings to generate air-resistance.
- aerodynamics. "Put your head down and lung forward for speed, pull it up and skid to slow."

All sorts of things can be built "right into the bird" without ever needing a single floating cubed question mark that people have to run over.

You could even tie in use of the abilities to exhaustion meter... run out your meter, and your bird collapses right there on the track, to become ab obstacle for anyone behind you.

[busere]

Yep...and bookies to take bets.