Blogi - New MRC GUI and the Future

New MRC GUI and the Future

It's been a while since I started working on a new GUI for the game. Many of you tried it already, but now is the time to go live for everybody. In this blog, I would like to share some of my thoughts and plans for the future.

It was December 2022 when nicorz brought up the idea after long discussions about how we can bring users back to the game. The key difference between the time when I started My Racing Career and now is that the usage of mobile phones and tablets grew up drastically. I checked the latest stats, and they show that half of the users accessing the game comes via mobile phone or tablet, and so we needed to look at options how to get these users involved.

We had attempts to build an Android app for the game in the past, but after some time it went nowhere. We can also see other websites, that look good on PC screens but also on phones. So we decided to do the game redesign with the condition that the game should be playable on the phones with ease. Today it is exactly 1 year and 6 months when the first proposal of the GUI was created.

I know, it would be strange at the first look, but I believe it is just a question of getting used to it. I personally used the new GUI for quite some time, and I already think it is better than the old version, and most importantly, it looks very good when I use it on the phone. Of course, the most important thing is how the game will be liked by newly registered users. How many of them will stay with us. I also hope that you will not be mad because of this change. While you get used to it, there is a temporary option to switch from the new GUI to the old GUI and vice versa. If the reason for the switch is a missing or bad functionality, we would be happy if you share this experience with us, so we can fix the issue. The good way to do this is to check our TODO page, find the New GUI Suggestions topic, click the link in the description of this task and fill the Google Form.

There are some new or improved functionalities in the new GUI:

• improved friends system - now you can mark your closest friends and easily follow their races or series

• livery tool - similar to our helmet and racing suit tool you might know from the old GUI, now we have a similar tool for car liveries. It can also be used by non-licensed managers, with some restrictions

• series historical stats

• tutorials - although there are only 2 tutorials available currently, the new GUI has a system for easy, interactive tutorials which helps managers to learn how to play the game

• game modding - it is now possible to set community URL to refresh code to change names or logos of chassis, engines, tyres and other components during each login, or you can manage those yourself like before

• background - there are various options to customize your GUI background, and you can even set up your own background

• special helmets - for each career path, there is now a new helmet type available, so motorcycles and rally drivers do not have to wear formula style helmet anymore

Some of those new features still need some tweaks to make it perfect.

Race Broadcast

There was a high demand for running dots during the race broadcast. If we can have them in qualification and now also in stages, why not in races? I was thinking of various options, and decided to give it a try. You can see that the solution as of now is not optimal, but it is a step forward. The problem is that we do not have enough data to have accurate race broadcast.

I decided to keep like it is now, I will only do some cosmetic adjustments, but the long-term plan is to start keeping the data necessary for the more accurate broadcast. That would include gaps between drivers after each track section (that means after each straight or turn). Of course, this will take a ton of space in our database, so it will only be available for a limited time, which means a few weeks for season series, a few days for other series and single races and only a few hours for quick races. After we have this data, I will start working on a new version of racing broadcast, which will accurately show overtakes, pit stops and so on.

What is coming next?

Sponsor System Rework

This is the next big step to improve the game. Many of you complained that the way, drivers sign sponsors is boring and too straightforward. I agree. The new system will be much different, but the key condition is that the economy of the game will stay untouched. That means the best offers you will get from the sponsors will be similar to those you can get now.

The details of this change will be published in a separate blog post soon, but I can already uncover some interesting features. There will be a huge sponsor database thanks to jeansapia, who created a beautiful set of new sponsor logos. Driver manager will have to assign PR managers to build relationships with potential sponsors and negotiate contract offers.

Rally System

The improvements to the stage races have been already announced before I started working on the new GUI and the first part, damage to the car during the stage, has been already implemented. The second part, doing repairs between stage days should come next, and is very high in my to-do list.

Prototypes

I also missed some creative graphics work during the time I spent with the new GUI, so during the last few days I prepared car templates for Le Mans Hypercars and our team member Pollie also helped with some. We have all the cars that took part in the recent Le Mans 24 hours race. The series is also prepared and will be started next season. Of course, in this game there is no exchanging drivers during the race and so the races will be shorter than real endurance series, so it will be possible to handle the full race with just one driver. Still, it will be endurance races, and drivers with high fitness skill will have an advantage.

You might wonder that in real life racing, there is only World Endurance Championship with such cars, but there is option to change drivers so they do not become too tired, but in this game we have no such option. That is because this game is built on individual success and the key value is driver rating. We do not want managers to pair their development driver with an experienced high-quality guy, to gain the driver rating faster. That would be actually considered cheating, and we do not want to allow this in season series. So the prototypes series will be for single drivers only.

But you might already know that there is still a plan to have a 24-hour race in Le Mans with exchanging drivers as a part of racing clubs, with the option to use prototype cars. That is the future of real 24-hour races.

Heats Racing System

We removed one stock car series lately, and we plan to replace it with races on dirt ovals. If we want to have it realistic, we would need a special event type for this. Some of you might know, that in such dirt races, there is quick qualification and then drivers are split into heats, and the best drivers from these heats advances to the feature race. The rest of the drivers still have in the so-called Last Chance race, which is basically just another heat without drivers who already advanced. Since this would be very useful for other racing competitions like Speedway Grand Prix or Rallycross, I added this to the plans.

MotoGP teams

In the past, I admitted that there is an outside chance that there will be MotoGP teams, similar to our F1 teams system. This idea is still not out of the question, but it is not the highest priority either. Certainly, behind things mentioned above.