The Karters
Early Acess #1.1 version just released
- Added changelog window
- Unlocked Controller Settings with weapon key rebind (Sound and Graphics will be unlocked soon)
- Fixed not saving joystick/keyboard configuration bug
- Fixed Ronald adventure
If you can follow development progress every day, post features request or vote for the features please join me on public Trello board:
https://trello.com/b/dIEC0i7v/the-karters-early-acess-development
You can follow The Karters Development progress on Steam Community as well:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/488350/discussions/3/3051633726582655525/
Thanks for all your supoport,
Sebastian
The Karters goes Early Acess after Full Release! Some explanation and a roadmap for the future.
As 10Ants Hill’s founder, I feel I owe you some apology and explanation as to the recent game’s release. Most importantly, I will try to regain your trust and belief in The Karters by clarifying what needs to be clarified and showing you a roadmap for the game so it could become the one we’ve all strived for.
Why so rushed?
Many of you have voiced your criticism that the release date seemed to be rushed. The story standing behind this decision is actually pretty simple and mundane. The studio’s existence has been always dependant on the games and apps published so far and all the money it earned was instantly invested into The Karters’ development. Unfortunately, the financial situation was getting more and more difficult and finally the time has come I found myself up against the wall - I knew we were inevitably running out of funds (and time!).
The darkest clouds would gather around us 2 months ago when I just realised we will either finish the game and release it or we won’t be even close to finishing and releasing it because the studio will simply cease to exist.
With all honesty, at the time we set the release date, I was quite confident we’ll manage to cope with the most important things to deliver a great karting experience. However, the reality turned out to be much less optimistic, as the amount of things-to-do was way too overwhelming. Nevertheless, the whole team was extremely determined and motivated to release the game in its best possible state on the premiere day and thus we literally worked day and night.
It was a very hard time for each and every member of the team but I have to say it - they did a fantastic job and I am proud of all of them. Unfortunately, despite our huge effort, the worst case scenario has come true and today I had to say goodbye to the whole team.
Skipping Early Access ...
What I consider the biggest mistake during the whole process was a too hasty decision (21st September) to skip Early Access.
Around that time the game was redesigned and the code had to be completely deleted due to rewriting gameplay mechanics and preparing the whole game for consoles in the future. This was also the time we strongly believed we’ll be able to deliver the full version of the game. Unluckily, I failed to anticipate the problems that might arise in the future and moreover, I wasn’t aware that going back to Early Access is even possible (although from time perspective, it may have been the best choice).
As for the release, I must say there are some great things about the game I’m really proud of: splitscreen multiplayer/gameplay mechanics/gamemodes etc but as hard as I tried, I didn’t have enough time to finish other crucial aspects of the game like AI/weapons or buggy multiplayer. I want you to know that both as a founder and a programmer, I take a full responsibility for the flawed state the game was released in. For that - please accept my most sincere apologies.
… and opting-in to Early Access!
Day after the release I have contacted Valve and I have told them our story. At this point I was well aware of the fact that in spite of my best intentions, I will not be able to convince a large group of our fans and followers that the bugs will be actually fixed and the game will be under constant development. It’s understandable that for many of you these could be just empty promises. I cannot express how surprised and happy I was when I got back from Valve saying they agree to change The Karters release state to Early Access. From now on, the current state of the game and the progress it is making will be crystal clear for all the community and future players.
In view to the fact that I feel nothing but sorrow that the game has failed to fulfill your expectations (to put it mildly), I would ask everyone who’s disappointed with the current state of the game and doesn’t want to see the game’s development in Early Access to ask Steam for a refund. If you already have more than 2 hours of playtime - please contact me personally at sboczek@10antshill.com and I will make sure that you will get the refund. Let’s get this straight - The Karters has never been about the money but about creating the best contemporary karting game out there.
Future development
As mentioned before, I was forced to say goodbye to the whole team and from now on, I will be a ‘lone wolf’ who will not rest until the game gets the shape I’ve been always dreaming of. I have also the luck to be part-time supported by an animator and a 3D graphic designer and I hope we’ll get back to work full-time in the nearest future :-)
Future development - details:
First of all, I want you to know I have created a public Trello board, where you will all be able to see the development progress, a roadmap and the things I’m currently working on. You will also find the ‘animation’ and ‘3D graphics’ tasks there. Additionally, you will have a chance to vote for the tasks, leave comments and (possibly) add the requests others will be able to vote for. It’s a ‘fresh’ topic to me as well but I really hope we will all benefit from such form of game management.
https://trello.com/b/dIEC0i7v/the-karters-early-acess-development
Secondly, it’s not a big secret that the game has mostly programming limitations and issues but please don’t worry it’s nothing that can’t be fixed :) The updates will come as frequently as possible (please, remember you will be able to follow the progress on Trello,Discord and Steam Community) but the last thing I want is to speed things up at the expense of quality.
Please note that I have to temporarily disable ‘Race’ gamemode, as this is where both AI and the weapons require the biggest amount of work to be done. I will not deny it may take some time but I believe this is the best solution. Meanwhile, I will give every single weapon in the hands of community, as well as every phase of the improved AI so that everyone of you could see exactly in what direction this game is going. I am really looking forward your feedback and suggestions!
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Last but not least, I want to apologize to you once more and I am really sorry I didn’t deliver the game you were looking forward on the release day. Opting-in Early Access, I hope not all is lost yet and I will be more than happy if you join me in this hope.
Those of you who still have faith in this project - it will be more that appreciated if you spend a few minutes and consider adjusting your review on Steam by judging the game again from Early Access perspective. If not, it will be perfectly understandable and I hope all the actions I’ll take to make this game great will convince you it’s worth giving it another go :-)
Keep your fingers crossed and please, join the development process! :-)
Yours,
Sebastian
Post-release update. There is some work to do but we're not giving up!
As the game is already live, we feel we need to reassure you that it will be continuously improved. Despite several negative reviews, we still believe that the game has its potential and that we’re able to deliver the game we’ve been all dreaming of.
Of course, we do realize there are plenty of bugs to be fixed but we will not give up until the game gets the shape you (and we!) always aimed for.
You can expect a more detailed update on Tuesday - it is going to show you exactly what our next steps will be.
Thank for begin with us. We hope that you won't give up on The Karters!
"The Karters" goes live!
This is possibly the biggest (in terms of importance) update of our entire development as The Karters is now Live!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLw4TbgIUQc
Almost 3 years have been put into this game and we’re finally able to say that we’ve done it; we’ve done it thanks to your continuous support and we are forever grateful for your contribution throughout these years. It’s been tough, but in the end it all comes down to creating a great game, so that people will enjoy playing it and we hope we did just that.
We’re aware there are still number of bugs to be found but please, be sure we will try to patch the game up as often as we can.
If you have any suggestions and ideas you can always voice them in our Steam discussions or on Discord, or even on our Facebook and Twitter!
Let’s get it going, enjoy the game and let us know your thoughts in the comments :)
Last announcement before release with launch trailer !
We would like to show you our new trailer where we showcased a lot of our features that you will find in the game. Definitely, something to look forward to right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLw4TbgIUQc
The official release of our game is going to be in the next 3 hours, not long now!
Keep your fingers crossed!
We're good to go!
Just a short update, we are all set to bring you guys to the game!
No more delays guys! This is it!
One more day everyone, show how excited you are in the comments and by liking this announcement! See you tomorrow!
The Karters Postponed!
Dear Kart Fans,
Unfortunately, we have to postpone the release of The Karters until June 7, 2018.
The reason for this is fairly technical, we haven't been approved from Steam to release our game due to the Online Multiplayer not being fully operational. We have been fighting really hard to deliver the game, and we are truly sorry that you will have to wait one more week.
This week and the next one we are fixing what needs to be fixed, so that the game will bring lots of joy to our fans from all around the world. We hope that you will stay with us during this time as we are finally nearly releasing the game we all have been waiting for!
Let's see each other in-game next week, hopefully with even bigger numbers!
Beta Deactivation News
Hello Kart Fans,
Just so no one gets a heart attack that their The Karters Beta position in the library has disappeared - we deactivated the beta keys. This is a very common process now that we are so close to launching the full game.
The process might have reset your wishlist if you had one, so we strongly recommend wishlisting it again as you will get a notification just as the game will be released :)
Other than that...
Tomorrow is the day!
Thank you for your continuous support!
The Karters Countdown - 11 Days To Go!
Greetings Kart Fans,
Just dropping in to let you guys know we're hard at work and everything is looking good and steady for launch day.
We've concluded our little poll where we ask our beloved community to help us in naming 4 characters and we've got to say we're satisfied with the results. Here are the final names for our characters:
Thank you very much for your continuous support!
So, right now we're on ensuring our game modes will be working properly, we don't want to spoil too much in this regard, but we're confident that you will have plenty of things to do in The Karters when we go live. Multiplayer has undergone some testing by professionals as well. Here's a behind-the-scenes video of their work:
We cannot wait for May 29th and to let you finally inside of The Karters world. Plenty of competitiveness awaits, a vast amount of fun to embrace - here we go! 11 days!
Let us know if you are just as excited as we are :)
Follow Us:
The Karters on Facebook
The Karters Discord Channel
The Karters Youtube Channel
Official The Karters Website
@The Karters on Twitter
The Karters on Instagram
The Karters' Dev Blog #14 - Release Date, New Gameplay Trailer, & More!
Greetings Kart Fans,
The weather in Poland has become very pleasant; birds started singing and the sun finally decided to reveal its circular, blinding shape from the everlasting clouds of February and March. Most importantly though, The Karters is going steadily and the gathered feedback from our Beta Phases has been immensely helpful. This Dev Blog is going to cover our release date, our brand new Loyal Karter Program, the Beta overview, and some things we will proudly share with the community, so let’s get this show on the road as we’re very excited to bring you the news!
THE KARTERS RELEASE DATE CONFIRMED!
Alright, this is very exciting so… let the news sink in. The Karters is going full release on 29.05.2018. Again, let that sink in. This is some big news as we are confident that we can finally give you the game that you have been waiting for all this time. We’ve made this decision because we want to enable you the experience as quickly as possible and the Beta proved that our game is competitive - simply put - we’re ready to go!
NEW GAMEPLAY TRAILER!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a59JJCIo5n0
We’re releasing The Karters earlier because our community has been waiting for this game almost 2,5 years! Our Beta is living proof that people are really enjoying The Karters and that they simply cannot wait to start racing against each other - we will not wait any longer. This is the perfect time to calm everyone down about the content; we’ve been posting our tracks like City and F.Frost as they’re in the works. We’re still working on adding more stuff as it goes, so don’t worry. Our players will have a lot of playing time: story, local split-screen, multiplayer, and checking your times on the leaderboards.
Speaking of the Beta, the community has reported a lot of bugs, but luckily for us, those bugs aren’t something we can’t handle and we’re working on them as you read this post. We’ve to admit that a lot of fixing and testing is ahead of us, but we’re confident that we will make everything safe and sound before the release, so don’t worry.
SPREAD THE WORD
We can’t stress enough the importance of your aid. Sharing, tweeting, wishlisting, commenting - it really, really helps a dev and we trust that we can count on your support!
cough Wishlist, Wishlist, Wishlist cough
Yes, that’s why we made this a headline. We got your back and we hope you will have ours.
IMPROVEMENT SHOWCASE
We have updated our Steam Store page, so definitely take a look and let us know what do you think. Does it look better? Is it catchy? Leave your comments below! :)
We have used our very own in-game Replay System to create these breathtaking scenes in our Gameplay Trailer and we gotta say - it looks pretty good ;)
Take a look of the tool itself: https://youtu.be/TjUZYA7QieA
Each character has been slightly redesigned and improved as we are closing in on the final release day of The Karters. As you can see, Laika has finally came back from her training and she is ready to dust everyone on her path to glory. She is, as you may imagine, a very welcome sight in the roster.
We haven’t enabled split-screen during the Beta, but we think this screenshot should answer the question of playing with your friends in the final game. Yes, you will, we played as well and it’s working. We still need to fix a couple of things in regards to this mode, but as you can see, we almost nailed it. Let those old-school couch party events come back with The Karters!
Speaking of events, here are the final leaderboards from our Beta Phase Two (cough Tazua cough):
We’ve been selected to the Indie Showcase 2018 at Digital Dragons in Cracow! We will do our best to win that trophy and represent our community well!
And we fixed a whole lot of bugs along the way. We’re confident our game is the game we all have been waiting for!
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Whew! That was a lot to cover in this issue of our Development Blog. We’re extremely excited to bring you this news and, wow, we can finally release The Karters! We hope you guys are just as excited as we are and we would like to ask you guys a favor - please wishlist our game, join the Loyal Karter Program and tell your friends that The Karters is coming 29.05.2018!
Come join and hype each other up on Discord where you can meet some new kart racing friends and where we can all share the countdown together :)
Comments appreciated, wishlists greatly appreciated :) Let’s hear it!
Let the hype train begin!
PS. Thumbs up help a lot too! <3
Follow Us:
The Karters on Facebook
The Karters Discord Channel
The Karters Youtube Channel
Official The Karters Website
@The Karters on Twitter
The Karters on Instagram