I built a Stunts-inspired game with track editor (free, open source)

[peterramirez]

Hello everyone,
Long-time Stunts fan, first post. I hope this is the right place for it.
I played Stunts in 1991, in high school, and it never really left me. What got me
wasn't the racing, it was the editor. Building something absurd and then driving
it. Years later I showed the game to my son, and he got hooked on exactly the same
part. Watching him do that is what finally made me start building my own.
It's called OVERDRIVE. It's free, open source, and made with Godot. I want to be
clear about what it is: it is NOT a remake and it is not trying to replace Stunts.
The physics are my own arcade model, not a recreation of the original's. It's a
homage from someone who loved the thing.
What's there:
- A modular track editor with loops, corkscrews, a spiral helix, ramps, banked
  curves, overpasses, pipes, half-pipes, tunnels and crossroads, over terrain you
  can sculpt. Live connection feedback while you place tiles, undo/redo, and Test
  Drive without leaving the editor.
- Track-relative gravity, so the car sticks through loops and barrel rolls.
- Racing with AI, laps, checkpoints, ghost cars and medals. You can race any
  circuit in reverse.
- Replays with scrub, slow-motion and several cameras.
- Shareable challenges: a track plus your ghost lap plus a time, in one file. Send
  it to someone and they race your line on a track they've never seen.
- 14 tracks, 28 cars.
One of the tracks, Tres Marías, is the road loop around the neighbourhood I'm from
in Morelia, Mexico. Another is the city I live in now. Building the place you grew
up in as a track turns out to be a strange and lovely thing to do.

Windows & Linux download and source (MIT licence, CC0 art):
https://github.com/pedro-ramirez-suarez/overdrive/releases/tag/v0.1

**A note on antivirus warnings.** These builds are unsigned, and Godot games are a
known source of antivirus false positives — the executable ships a game engine
alongside a data file, which heuristic scanners sometimes mistake for a packer.
Two different things can happen:

- **SmartScreen** ("Windows protected your PC") — expected for any unsigned
  download. **More info → Run anyway**.
- **Your antivirus flagging the file itself** — rarer, and it may quarantine the
  download without asking. It is a false positive.
  [VirusTotal report](ADD_LINK_AFTER_UPLOAD) if you would like to check for
  yourself.

The game installs nothing, phones nowhere, and writes only to its own folder and
your save directory. If you would rather not take my word for it, the whole source
is in the link above build it yourself and you get the same game.


What I'd genuinely value from this forum, more than downloads:
1. Does the editor FEEL right? That's the part I care most about, and you are the
   only people on earth with the right calibration for it.
2. What's missing from the tile set? I know I'm short of pieces compared to the
   original.
3. Is there anything about how the original handled that I've obviously failed to
   understand?
Be blunt. I'd rather hear it.
And thank you for keeping this game alive for thirty-five years.

[peterramirez]

I forgot to include some screenshots, here are some:

[dreadnaut]

Hello, this is fun!

Just had ten minutes to try it now, but it's an interesting arcade racing game. Big Red Racing (1996) came to mind for some reason, although the feeling is different.

A few thoughts on driving:
- the simulation feels fast, which works well with the large levels, but makes driving precisely tricky
- it's really difficult to align the car so that it drives straight along the road! Maybe some "snapping" towards the cardinal directions would help
- grass penalty could be higher, unless off-road is part of the design
- the cork left right is cruel
- I really want to the get the car to slide, but it's not there, is it?

But you asked in particular about the editor:
- right click to change changing orientation or style is nice!
- both corner sizes feel quite tight, maybe you could add a 3×3 or 4×4 corner
- love you can draw a road, lift the terrain around it, and get a canyon
- would be great if there was a "water level" at the bottom of the elevation (think SimCity 2000)

Nice work overall!

[peterramirez]

Thank you!, this is exactly the kind of note I was hoping for, and Big Red Racing is a compliment I'll take.

Driving

- "I really want to get the car to slide, but it's not there, is it?",it is! Handbrake is Space (or A on a controller). It cuts grip to a quarter and lets the chassis rotate faster than the tyres would allow, so you get proper rear-out oversteer, and it'll pivot the nose around even at low speed in a tight corner. You'll lay skid marks doing it. That you spent ten minutes wanting it and never found it is a problem with the game, not with you, it clearly needs to be surfaced somewhere you'll actually see it.

- Aligning to the road, you're right, and there's no help at all today: steering is a plain yaw-rate controller and the grid is cardinal, so you're eyeballing every straight. A gentle pull toward the nearest 90° when you're already close to it is a good idea; the trick will be making it help without fighting you when you're deliberately sideways.

- Grass, there is a penalty (off-road caps you at 30% of top speed), but it's a speed cap and not a grip loss, so you keep full steering authority out there and it reads softer than it is. Off-road is not meant to be a viable line, so I agree it should bite harder, probably by taking grip away too, not just speed.

- The corkscrew fair. It's the piece that punishes a sloppy entry hardest, which is really the alignment problem above wearing a different hat. Fixing the entry may quietly fix the cork.

Editor

- There is a third corner size already, the banked curve is a 3×3 sweep but it's only available banked, which is probably why it didn't read as an option. A flat 3×3 (and a 4×4) is a genuinely easy add; the multi-cell piece machinery already handles exactly that shape. Going on the list.

- Water is half there: there's a Lakes terrain preset and a basin tool, and you'll drown if you bog down in one. But it's per-basin, not a global water table you can raise and lower over the whole map. The SimCity 2000 model is better and I hadn't thought of it that way. Noted.

Thanks again, genuinely useful.

[HerrNove]

I tried the track editor, but there seems to be some bug. See video: https://mega.nz/file/5DkmFLYa#m5Od_W8MbDerjgsvlZvaWjGJWbYMqOmypIWCppZWNn0 (notice also the errors in the console)

Running on Debian 6.12.57-1.

Starting message:

Godot Engine v4.7.stable.official.5b4e0cb0f - https://godotengine.org
Vulkan 1.4.305 - Forward+ - Using Device #0: AMD - AMD Radeon Graphics (RADV RENOIR)

[HerrNove]

So, I cannot rate the editor, hence I tried one of the bundled tracks.

I loved the choices! Stelvio Pass at sunset under the snow is something I'd love to see in AAA games. The graphics is in the classic "indie 3D game with stock assets" style, but fog effects and pastel colors give it some personality.

The racing is very arcadey, which is OK if that was the goal. After the first lap I learned to ignore the road and took the steepest line to the top of the mountain and back, since the penalty for driving offroad is so small. The punishment for going too far away from the track, instead (dropping the speed to 10 km/h) should be mitigated. The computer AI is very bad, but I can see this game as fun multiplayer experience for a light afternoon among friends, à la Mario Kart.

You should bundle your fonts: I saw a box with "01F947" where the corresponding Unicode glyph (🥇) should appear.

All in all a good effort! I suggest you publish some screenshots on your website, if you have one, or on social media. And at least a couple of videos on YouTube showing track editor and gameplay.

[dreadnaut]

That you spent ten minutes wanting it and never found it is a problem with the game, not with you, it clearly needs to be surfaced somewhere you'll actually see it.

I did find the handbrake! What I was looking for was for the car rear to slip if I took a corner too fast. Keep in mind that I particularly enjoy art of rally, so I might expect more drifting than the average player!

Regarding larger corners, what I was looking for is a corner that needs smooth steering, maybe even tapping keys to keep the car on the road. Again, that might be from my experience, and not part of your concept!

The pipe is fun but "optional", I can drive stright through; maybe a pipe-wall element (like in Stunts) or a top-half-only pipe could make it more interesting.

Seeing @HerrNove's comment, I tried the weather effects: nice variety!

As he says, the 10 km/h penalty far for the track is not fun if you like exploring. Maybe there is space for a "checkpoint" element, to keep folks form skipping large parts of a track?