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LateBrake v0.5.85 — Arcade Brake Heat and Real Chassis Impacts

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-generated source archives are not installers. This repository snapshot has zero executable binaries and is not verified as an Unreal Engine 5.8 packaged game.

New features since v0.5.84

BRAKE HEAT — bounded, race-local service-brake fade

  • The shared player and AI rival pawn now samples actual finite chassis forward speed and ordinary service-brake demand through the production C++20 ArcadeBrakeHeat policy.
  • Sustained high-speed braking increases synthetic heat from its ambient floor. Heat beyond 62% can progressively reduce existing service-brake resistance, but never below 74% of its unfaded baseline.
  • Releasing the service brake cools the measured history. Ordinary handbrake-only slides cannot raise service-brake heat, and the existing parking-brake resistance floor remains when both brakes are pressed.
  • Pause, focus loss, invalid frames, restart and teleport fail closed, while normal race recovery cannot invent a free thermal reset.
  • Expanded desktop HUD reports BRAKE HEAT and effective service-brake percentage only when a qualified high-heat measurement exists. Small Android touch HUD rows are not expanded.
  • This is an arcade approximation. It is not physical rotor temperature, real ABS, hydraulic pressure, tire compound testing, or installed vehicle gameplay.
  • Brake-heat implementation and real-engine QA.

IMPACT DAMAGE — actual Chaos chassis-hit source wiring

  • The shared player/rival root body registers Unreal's physical OnComponentHit callback and receives collision impulse, impact normal, body mass and observed current/recent qualified planar speed.
  • Only genuinely eligible post-GO driving, significant side-on impacts and plausible measured values may add damage. Ground contact, low-speed nudges, invalid/nonfinite physics, pre-race overlap and interrupted/paused callbacks are rejected.
  • A 0.40-second contact cooldown suppresses repeated hit callbacks from one contact event. Each accepted hard impact adds between 3% and 13% damage, capped at 60% per race.
  • New damage scales the existing shared motor force, human nitro and approved slipstream together to at least 79% of baseline, and lateral grip to at least 85.6%. It cannot increase steering or motor power, add race penalties or change authoritative scoring.
  • Restart resets the player and rival damage; normal pause, recovery, teleport or focus suspension only suspends hit eligibility, so collisions cannot be fabricated across a physics interruption.
  • Expanded desktop HUD can show IMPACT DAMAGE alongside actual motor and grip multipliers. Compact mobile controls remain unchanged.
  • These are source-level engine bindings, not evidence that actual Unreal 5.8/Chaos component-hit events work in an installed game.
  • Collision impact source and real-engine QA.

Previously published racing systems preserved

  • OFF-PAVEMENT TRACTION v0.5.84 remains bound to the real physical track position and applies the existing 78% motor and 72% grip scales after road-edge hysteresis. Damage is composed with this existing multiplier, not substituted for it.
  • ARCADE TIRE condition, RIVAL GRIP pacing, NITRO BOOST, SLIPSTREAM, shared ArcadeBoostArbitration and the portable FrameStableDamping safeguard retain their authority boundaries.
  • Checkpoint order, three-lap timing, earned credits, race results, career progression, saved records and profile schema are unchanged.

Qualification requirements for this source release

  • Compile and execute the complete standalone C++20 test suite on Windows, Ubuntu and macOS at one exact, immutable source SHA.
  • Explicitly require nonempty passing ArcadeBrakeHeat and ArcadeCollisionDamage CTests as well as legacy surface traction, tire, nitro, slipstream, rival grip and motor arbitration policies.
  • The two feature suites cover heat/cooling/thermal bounds, real-impact threshold/cooldown/cap, invalid NaN/Inf inputs, resets, suspended state and 250,000 deterministic numerical frames each.
  • Run every Python Unreal-source integration contract, PowerShell candidate-manifest and fake-archive rejection fixture, and render and verify the MkDocs documentation site.
  • Fail publication if main advances between the tested SHA and publication, or if an existing tag points to a different SHA. Publish a pre-release with zero executable binaries, not a stable release. No job claims to build Unreal Engine.

Still required for a playable game

  1. Compile licensed Unreal Engine 5.8/UHT Editor and Game targets.
  2. Create/cook the real, owned circuit and verify its Chaos collision contact geometry; prove actual player and rival collision callbacks.
  3. Test and tune collision impulses, dynamic brake heat, tire handling, road-edge traction, nitro/slipstream blending and AI over genuine installed Windows gameplay at different frame rates.
  4. Qualify genuine Win64 and Android packages with installation logs, engine fingerprint, map/source hashes and actual touch/gamepad QA.
  5. Keep playable release gate #148 and Android device gate #13 open pending that evidence.

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

LateBrake source is BSD-3-Clause; Unreal Engine and separately licensed content remain subject to their respective license terms.