Phooey | Making Draftmaster 3 🎮

Tonight's full moon 🌕 taken on my Honor Magic V3 at 100x zoom

Been years since I got excited about multiple game launches, but hard to see me not getting Skate, FM26 and NASCAR 25 in the next couple of months

If you're an indie developer, you should hang this screenshot on your wall and use it as inspiration to never give up

Feeling compelled to do all of my browsing from now on on a Wii to be a part of this statistic. I even have a Wii U in a cupboard somewhere..

Whenever I see PCBWay as a sponsor on a video I'm like "awesome, designing your own PCBs" even though there's no way I could ever design my own PCB for any purpose 😅

After an evening of relearning trigonometry (17 years since GCSE Maths) something just.. clicked! It was a really satisfying moment. 😄

The steering feels heavy, yet smooth. It reacts well to speed change.. It works on both mobile controls and a controller.. And no hacky modifiers! #solodev #gamedev

That time of year again when Google Play asks me to update my target/minimum API for Android.

So I do that.. and in doing so set off an incredible domino chain of required upgrades of Gradle, Android Studio, JDK, NDK, and eventually, Unity.

We got there in the end! #solodev #unitydev #gamedev

How much of Arsenal's transfer window so far would you say is directly down to Andrea Berta?

E.g. choosing which targets to sign, how early in the window they get signed etc. or is it eqally others in the management team.

This window has certainly felt different, in a good way

#arsecastextra

I was scrolling through YouTube Shorts, and for the first time ever I got a video of someone who I don't follow playing my game! A nice milestone. #solodev #gamedev

One of my favourite games is leaving Netflix, doomed to disappear (this is why #stopkillinggames is so important).

Lego Legacy: Heroes Unboxed heavily influenced the UI and Revenue model for Draftmaster 2 when it launched in 2021, and is an important part of my game's success.

#gamedev #solodev

The racing in snow in PGR is still unbeaten to this day 😄 the way it just blankets the whole track except for the racing line

The one Skyrim quest that stuck with me was the one where you get drunk and have to fix the mess you made the next day to get the Sanguine Rose

The "meta"

This is great advice 😊 I have tried task tracking in the past but have struggled to stick with it. I think I just need to find the right app/platform for that, so that it feels like second nature to keep on top of it.

We welcomed a little girl into the family this month 🍼

I thought doing #solodev with a full-time job and 1 child was hard enough, adding another child has really stepped things up!

Fellow #gamedev parents, how do you find the time?!

Dug out my tub of Micro Machines from my parents' house to give to my son.

Memories! There's about 150 in there.

I used to make the tracks out of cardboard, complete with paper hedges and tyre stacks.

Going to attempt to get up at 4am to watch the Australian Grand Prix

Let's see how that goes 🥴 #F1 #AustralianGP

If you've ever wondered what my approach to version control is 😂 #solodev #gamedev

It's happening! I've committed to doing Xfinity and Trucks for 2025, and the roadmap is for them both to appear before the end of March 😊

Great to hear it! Welcome back 😊 I really appreciate the kind words

There's a lot of features I always wanted in Draftmaster, mainly around multiplayer. I just can't do it in DM2 without totally rewriting the engine.

This 3rd game looks similar but feels quite different to play

Anybody else leave themselves sarcastic code comments?

This one has been here for at least 3 years now #gamedev #solodev

#Daytona500 rain delay got you down?

Come and play Draftmaster! The only mobile NASCAR game with the 2025 Cup field!

Free on iOS and Android #NASCAR

The new 2025 Cup Series car set is live!

I always take pride in getting the Cup series car set live before the Daytona 500!

I often have to trawl through announcement posts to see what the paint schemes will look like before they hit the track #solodev #gamedev

Thanks for the suggestions! Being conscious of lighting and depth perception is something I haven't really delved into but it would be a nice improvement.

Getting the curves right is tough with such limited pixels, especially as I don't anti-alias at all etc.

Every year I try to develop the car templates and constantly improve the detail.

This year the main improvements have been in the detail of the windscreen, and a reshape of the lights and windows.

#solodev #gamedev

Anyone else find it hard to justify playing games when you could be working on your own game?

I want to play games, but I just get the itch to go and try and make something better.

#solodev #gamedev

Thanks! 😊

I want accurate tracks in Draftmaster 3, and the current way to do this is to get a Protractor and Ruler out and start measuring on Google Maps!

Then I input the numbers into a ScriptableObject I made in Unity.

#solodev #gamedev

Reasons for doing this:

An environment with many objects used to be heavy on performance, calculating movement per object.

Now every scrolling texture is tied to a single common shader (which scrolls its offset relative to car speed). So 100 objects was 100 calculations, but is now just 1.