Roadmap

KexEdit is intended to serve as a foundational “low-level layer” for coaster building, which will be the backbone of Backyard Coaster, a simulation game I’m developing about building a roller coaster in your backyard. Backyard Coaster will have a more simple, intuitive building experience, but allow enthusiasts to import .kex files for more depth.

This roadmap outlines the current state of KexEdit, near-term development goals, long-term goals, and open-source plans and how it fits into Backyard Coaster.

Current State

Completed features include:

• Core Sections: Force, Geometric, and Curved sections
• Property Overrides: Fixed Velocity, heart, Friction, and Resistance can be controlled over time (as well as core section properties)
• Experimental Nodes: Reverse, Reverse Path, and Copy Path nodes for flexible layouts such as shuttle coasters (not yet production-ready)
• High-performance compute/rendering:
  • Track elements are computed using burst-compiled parallel jobs and should be performant with complex tracks
  • The track mesh is both computed and rendered on GPU in real-time. This requires modern hardware, but should enable performant, immediate rendering

Short-term development goals

• Output Graphs: Right now only editable graphs are included in the timeline. Next to-do is adding read-only graphs, like forces for geo sections. (Done)
• Stabilize Experimental Nodes: Get reverse, reverse path, and copy path codes into a more stable, usable state - add docs and video. (Done)
• Bridge Node: Introduce a new node that connects two anchor inputs with a traditional spline, allowing complete circuits. (Done)

Backyard Coaster

Following short-term goals I’ll focus development on Backyard Coaster, a simulation game built on top of KexEdit. Think Schedule 1 or Supermarket Simulator but for a backyard roller coaster, starting with micromanaging a coin-operated kiddie ride and growing into a full-blown backyard theme park automated with hired workers. More info and a dedicated page will come later.

Long-term development goals

• Timeline Event System: System of timeline event triggers and specialized nodes that respond to events, enabling complex elements like switch tracks, drop tracks, etc. with a flexible, modular system
• Launch/Brakes: Rendered acceleration/deceleration timeline properties with different brake/launch rendering options
• Custom Tracks: Additional options and/or custom track meshes
• Supports: Maybe, I have no idea how to do them so we’ll see
• Mesh/Image Overlays: Import custom images and meshes to help guide building
• Stations: Modular, low level stations (likely tied in with the Timeline Event System above), maybe with a helper node to make it easy

Licensing

Currently proprietary until I’m further along the roadmap.

Tentatively: I plan to open-source (MIT) KexEdit alongside the release of Backyard Coaster, to both support my game and also help the coaster community to use it as a tool for other games (e.g. NoLimits 2) and other future games.