Racer looks, and a redraw for the default racers and the guest characters

We have added a new setting, "Racers". Along with it, we redrew the default racers in the casino races and the guest characters that the chance cards call onto the board. All of this is planned for the next test build.

The guest characters, redrawn

The nine guest characters who wander the board, from the Maharaja, Mark Angel and Holidaymon onward, are now drawn at 128×128 (six of them appear in a mode that is still in development). Until now they were a handful of simple shapes; from now on each of them looks like the character it is.

• Idle and walk … a small idle loop (4 frames) and a walk (6 frames)
• In character … the Mark Angel's wand cycles through the suits, the Holidaymon blows a sleep bubble, and the Maharaja flashes a gold coin as he walks
• Readable on the board … drawn so you can tell who is who even at the smallest size

As before, you can dress the guests in any art you like from Settings → Display → Appearance → "Guest characters". If you choose nothing, they arrive in the new art.

The default racers, redrawn

The racers in the casino races are now 128×128 too: birds for the Legacy Race, slimes for the Modern Race.

Racers used to be one picture painted in each racer's colour, which meant the beak and the eyes got painted too. The new art is drawn in two layers: a body that takes the colour, and the parts that never do (beak, legs, eyes, mouth, shine). Whatever the colour, every face stays the way it should.

In the Modern Race, "Metal" and "Spotted" used to be just names; they looked like every other slime. Now the Metal slime has a mirror-like finish that reflects its surroundings, and the Spotted slime has spots.

Dress up the racers

Settings → Display → Appearance has a new "Racers" item. Just like the guest characters, each racer can be given its own art and name.

• Art … pick from your pieces, the guest art or an image you import. The nine redrawn guests can run, too
• Name … leave it blank and the racer goes by its art's name, or by its colour (Yellow, Blue…)
• Colour hint … a dressed racer gets a shadow in its own colour at its feet, so two racers in the same art are still easy to tell apart
• Tab … switches between the Legacy and Modern Race. Racers that only run with 5+ players are listed under their own heading

Only the looks change. Results and payouts are exactly the same.

Pick from a list

On the guest and racer screens, press Enter to open a list of every look you can choose. Move with the arrow keys or the mouse, and press Enter or click to choose. The look in use is marked "now", and the list shows where the one under the cursor comes from (shipped guest, shipped piece and so on).

Both screens now also move the cursor to whatever row or tile the mouse is over. ←→ still steps through the looks one at a time.

That's all for now

These changes are planned for the next test build. Send your favourite piece out onto the track.