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Zach Griffin has released some new previews and a development update on his Kart Sim title.

Aside from the new previews that show off the title’s HUD, the update gives us an estimate on when Kart Sim will reach the public beta stage that was initially planned for the beginning of 2012:

Firstly, thanks for being so patient with the release and I appreciate your support and concern about the lack of updates!

As I’m sure you’re all aware, the development has taken longer than anticipated. This is largely the result of being a 1 person development team and balancing work/completing my business degree with the develop

ment of the game. This is further compounded due to the ambitious nature of the title, which introduces a highly immersive and seamless off-track experience as well as having to exceed the existing features of the competition.

The great news is the game/engine is now close to being in the public beta stage. Despite having said this before, various features took somewhat longer than previously anticipated as is the case with most tasks in game development, if you haven’t implemented them previously. Since the previous update, additional tasks were also added to the now current sprint which were the result of observed usability testing and feedback from internal testing (Read: Watching people play the game to make it as playable, entertaining and easy to understand as it can be for both simulation and arcade racers and those new to the genre.)

The latest development has centred around completing these new tasks and extracting more performance from the engine so as to be able to run on lower spec hardware. I’ve also spent considerable time fine tuning the net code to ensure the smoothest online racing.

I understand just how much you want to play the game and nothing has more priority than allowing you all to as quickly as possible. Although many have mentioned the purpose of the beta is to allow you guys to find any bugs and tell me what works, it is much more successful when based on a beta version that has all the initial features more or less completed so you guys can find design/gameplay issues that I’m not aware of. There is an estimated 7 full weeks left for the remaining tasks of which I hope to achieve within the next 10 weeks.

A final word to those worried about KartSim being abandoned. Having dedicated nearly every day since March 2005 and most of my twenties to the game, I’ve resigned from and turned down many highly paid jobs as well as given up most of my social life and free time to do so. Given the opportunity cost, it is not something I have ever considered and the risk of doing so is far too high. The passion, motivation and desire to make the best racing game out there is as strong as ever; made a lot easier by just how good the game is.

Finally, an update like this would not be complete without some new screenshots which I’ll put up in the hour. As much as I’d love to show you all some new gameplay footage, I can’t let the competition see what we’ll all be playing just yet..

Thanks once again and the wait is definitely worth it!

Zach Griffin

Kart Sim will be accurately simulating the the thrill of driving a racing kart, the starting point of almost every professional racing career. To ensure realism, the title uses an industry standard tire model and a real-time FEM model to simulate the flex of the chassis. The title is based on the Unity engine that is paired up with a scratch-made physics engine developed by Zach.