LEGO AcceleRacers (Bèta 1.0)
The bèta release of the difficulty increase mod for LEGO Racers. All tracks are done now, but testing and feedback is appreciated. I have already tested it a lot, for I had to make sure that the mod meets with its standards. I also need your test results, because I don't know how you people perceive the difficulty that I set for the tracks. Also, I recommend you to read the following in this topic, before you start giving your opinion on the modded tracks I made for this mod.
Standards:
Warps are allowed.
Shortcuts are allowed.
Power-up layouts need to be balanced.
Needs to be 'difficult'.
These are the four major standards for this overhaul. I heard that some refrain from the use of shortcuts and warps, to make the race harder for them. I want the player to have full freedom of using the advantageous aspects of this game, which include the first two standards. The third means that there needs to be a balance between the different types of power-ups, and not having certain types dominate the track. I thank Creator for providing me with his/her custom power-up layouts for most tracks, which I slightly modified to fit into this mod. The fourth needs some explanation ofcourse. The player should not be able to get too far ahead, and since there is no rubber-banding concept of the AI going faster when this occurs, it is hard to find that balance between AI and player. So it might occur that you end up far ahead, but I tried to avoid this from happening by speed-editing the opponents correctly.
There are two more things I want to mention. One of them is that the speed-edited AI paths aren't so smooth anymore. The AI path is likely to be prerecorded by the developers, so any changes made within a node of its path will look 'out of place'. This is not in the sense of the AI path being all distorted because of the speed-editing, but more that the AI accelerates and decelerates through its path. Unless we're able to record our own path and convert it into nodes useable for the AI, new and smooth AI paths aren't really an option.
The other thing is that there is a difference in difficulty between the normal and mirrorred version of this track. You probably knew this already, but that's not my point. I had to make sure that the mirrorred version isn't too hard, but also not too easy. If I found that right balance (in difficulty) in the mirrorred version of the track, that (perfect) balance may not be present in the normal version of that track. Therefore, the normal version of the tracks may seem a bit easier than the mirrorred ones, because I focused on setting a well-balanced difficulty on the mirrorred tracks.
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