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LateBrake v0.5.78 — Wheel Visuals & Player-Aware Rival Driving

SOURCE-ONLY GitHub pre-release. This is NOT a playable game build. No compiled Win64 EXE, Android APK/AAB or installed game is included. GitHub source archives are not installers. This preview contains zero executable binaries and is not a licensed Unreal Engine cook.

New source since v0.5.77

Visible racing vehicle details

  • Procedural wheel rolling from real signed longitudinal Chaos chassis motion: forward and reverse roll in opposite directions, bounded against physics hitches, malformed velocities and teleport jumps.
  • The front decorative wheels visually steer alongside the existing player control policy; rear wheels stay straight. Wheel axes are oriented along the vehicle's real axle rather than forward along the body.
  • Lightweight collision-free cube spokes on each cylinder wheel make rotation visible without third-party wheel art. These are visual decorations, not simulated tires, wheel friction or suspension.
  • The same car pawn source also supplies the prototype rival car; vehicle forces, collision, official lap timing and progression remain independent of visual animation.

More responsive offline rival behavior

  • A C++20 player-traffic policy reads the real player pawn's location and world velocity, compares it with the rival's measured heading and speed, and conservatively reduces AI throttle or brakes when approaching a slower car directly in the lane.
  • The rule preserves the existing route planner, corner braking, waypoint arrival, pause/start/physics readiness and on-track race clock. It does not generate traffic cars or attempt risky swerves, automatic overtakes or official rival race placement.

Tests and scope

  • Strict three-OS C++20 regression tests for signed wheel roll, steering, resets, malformed physics and 100,000 short samples; player-facing rival traffic detection, relative closing speed, heading projection, lane limits and malformed states.
  • Python source-contract tests confirm these policies are invoked by actual Unreal pawn and rival Tick code, not just detached examples.
  • Documentation and explicit source-only visual/AI QA plans.

Source qualification

The guarded publisher builds and runs the entire portable C++20 suite independently on Windows, Ubuntu and macOS at one immutable main commit, including focused WheelVisualMotion and RivalTrafficAwareness tests. It also runs the Unreal-source Python checks (NOT UE itself), synthetic PowerShell candidate rejection tests and a verified MkDocs build. It refuses to retag an unrelated release or attach any executable and checks predecessor v0.5.77 was itself an asset-free pre-release.

Not yet a playable game

Actual Unreal Engine 5.8 UHT/Editor/Game compilation, original owned cookable circuit, installed Win64 EXE and Android APK/AAB packages, correct rendered wheel axes, physical driving/traffic collision handling and installed device performance tests remain unverified. The car still has a primitive rigid-body chassis, not a production wheeled-vehicle suspension and tire simulation.

See wheel visual QA, rival traffic QA, and private Windows playtest instructions.

SOURCE-ONLY. NOT a playable game build. zero executable binaries. Source archives are not installers.

Original LateBrake source is BSD-3-Clause. Unreal-related components and engine resources remain governed by separately applicable Epic terms.