Kartkraft Early Access Available On November 1st

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Great news for Karting fans around the world.

 

We did not expect it, but it seems that finally, the often debated Kartkraft Early Access version is becoming a reality. Studio Black Delta now officially confirmed that the Early Access version of their Kartkraft karting simulator will be available on Thursday, November 1st at 9.00am PST. The pricing has yet to be announced.

 

Check the official Steam Store page at [MEDIA=steamstore]406350[/MEDIA]

 

In an interesting post, Zach Griffin, head of Studio Black Delta, explains to the fans why it took a lot of time to get the title in Early Access.

 

When I envisioned KartKraft all those years ago, I wanted to make the game I’d always dreamt of when growing up playing racing games in the 90’s. To say I was heavily inspired by Geoff Crammond’s GP2/3/4, Dave Kaemmer’s GPL, Gjon Camaj’s SCGT, and Stefano Casillo’s NetKar Namie would be an understatement.

 

After racing karts competitively, there wasn’t anything that came close to replicating what it felt like to drive a kart on the limit with 30 other competitors around you and engines screaming at 21,000RPM. And for good reason; despite their deceptively simple appearance, modelling their physical dynamics accurately is an incredibly complex task. Regardless of a kart’s complexity, you won’t ever play a racing game that’s more fun and as close or rewarding than KartKraft.

 

Much to the detriment of the development schedule, little did I know that making the game with the features I wanted was going to be such a monumental task. With a comparatively small development team of 3 programmers and 3 artists, not only did we play catch up to our competition who all had existing foundations to build upon, we also needed to innovate and exceed what they had already developed. We never settle for second best.

 

When we released the Closed Beta Test in 2016 it was evident that there were several shortfalls and fundamental issues that prevented giving you that experience. Most notably, the tyre and chassis models weren’t behaving correctly, replay and photo mode were missing, leaderboards didn’t promote competition and game settings kept resetting. Whilst most testers gave incredibly positive feedback, there was no way I could have released KartKraft and ask you to pay for it when I knew we could do better.

 

Since the end of 2016, and based on the CBT feedback, we completely rebuilt the game from the ground up and have now written over 1 million lines of code. It may not have looked like it, but there hasn’t been a day the game hasn’t been worked on, played or tested with over 15,200 code and art submissions in that time. Let’s not even begin to count the amount of laps driven in that period!

 

And that only fixed the issues we encountered during CBT. It was even more critical that we had a game framework capable of allowing us to consistently maintain a weekly or fortnightly update cycle for content and new features. Secondly, the framework needed to be flexible enough to quickly implement ideas from the community without having to rewrite large parts of the codebase. I’m proud to say we’ve achieved both of these and more. We’ve added a physically based tyre model, rebuilt the physics engine, remodeled all the karts, improved the AI, added cloud saving, leaderboard ghost modes, all the while creating the most advanced customization system ever seen in a racing game. This is the game I dreamt of all those years ago and I can’t wait for you to play it!

 

And now the reason for the update. Given our previous track record with release dates, we weren’t going to make the same mistake of announcing again and disappointing so many of you, until we knew with absolute certainty that KartKraft was ready for Early Access. After an incredible journey, KartKraft will be released next week on Steam on Thursday, November 1st at 9.00am PST

 

Over the coming week, we’ll be releasing new screenshots, gameplay trailers, our Early Access roadmap and an in-depth look at some of the new features we’ve added. It’s going to be an exciting journey and one I and all of you have been waiting for! So set your alarm clocks and add KartKraft to your Steam Wishlist to be notified when it's out. We’re launching!

 

KartKraft is a hyper-realistic kart racing game with real kart physics and laser scanned circuits. The game will become available for both the PC and Consoles. At launch, the KartKraft Early Access version will feature the following:

• 16 officially licensed kart chassis: Arrow, CRG, Deadly, Formula K, Monaco, OK1, Praga and Sodi Kart
  
• 4 kart classes: 45hp KZ2, 32hp X30, 22hp KA100, 13hp KA100 Restricted
  
• 4 laser scanned tracks: PFi, England | Geelong, Australia | Melbourne, Australia | Indoor Warehouse, Utah
  
• Chapter 1 of Career Mode
  
• Full driver and kart customization with officially licensed gear: Alpinestars, Arai, Freem, Mir, Momo, OMP, Sparco
  
• Asynchronous PvP Challenges
  
• Time Trials
  

Official Web page - kartkraftgame.com

 

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KartKraft wouldn't be the leading karting game without chassis' from some of the world's best karting manufacturers. That's why we've officially licensed manufacturers from Australia, Czech Republic, France, and Italy.

 

From launch, drive an IAME X30 powered chassis from Arrow, CRG, Deadly, Formula K, Monaco, OK1, Praga and Sodi Kart. And that's just the beginning. With more licenses already secured, we'll be adding new manufacturers and updated models all the way through Early Access.

 

Steam: KARTS CONFIRMED FOR LAUNCH

 

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Early Access Gameplay Footage

 

 

PRICING ANNOUNCED

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Here's our roadmap to KartKraft 1.0! Anything missing? Comment below!

 

Build 0.1.0.1401 is now live

 

Thanks for your support in getting this out and for all your positive feedback over the last few days. If you could please keep it coming. We're reading all of your posts, reviews and comments and are addressing your issues as fast as we can. If you would like to support KartKraft even more and help it turn it into the game we all want it to be, we'd love to read your honest reviews which let's us see where to focus our development efforts.

 

Known Issues:

Fatal error when entering the store (Hotfix already on the way)

Fatal error when entering leaderboard mode on Windows 7 machines (Please run the game in compatibility mode set to Win 7 SP3)

Missing presets for Fanatec devices (Working on it!)

 

New Features:

Added Practice mode to Freeplay

Added live input diagnositic to 'Bindings' menu

Enabled HUD countdown when under AI Control

Added ability to set maximum pedal input

Added temporary preference to adjust the maximum braking pressure

 

New Presets:

Logitech G27

Logitech G29

Logitech G920

 

Physics Fixes:

Kerbs are less likely to act as trampolines.

Reduced grass damping

 

Game Fixes:

Increased preference cycle repeat rate

Disabled FFB when under AI Control

Vehicles no longer spawn on grid roof in Practice mode

DirectInput no longer spams the log file when alt-tabbed

Added additional safe-guarding and logging for the Win 7 leaderboard mode crash

Respawn notification now appears when you are off track only

Increased contrast of preference menu tabs

Leaderboard widgets now use cached player data

Replay now fades in before cutting

Reduced size of icons in photomode, vehicle selection and configuration screens

News items are now sorted by date

Added missing back prompts to more menus

Adjusted AI racing lines to improve flying lap starts

 

More builds are on the way!