Racing RPG design help?

I was wondering if anyone could help me with designing a system.  I'm not looking for scripting or for anyone to implement it for me, but rather to give ideas of how I might get a certain mix of genres to work.

I'm hoping to add to my game a system that is a 'Racing RPG' in the sense that, you aren't necessarily racing but, different things you do make it appear as you are racing in a way that I can still add a variety of 'tracks'.  Sort of (but not quite due to obvious complications) like "Final Fantasy meets Mario Kart" but in a manner that makes it more of a JRPG with Kart Racing elements while still being mainly an RPG.

I would love to do it in a manner that doesn't use Dice or Cards but should it become necessary to include said elements (or like elements), I would like to do it in a way that doesn't slow the races down much.

The main reason I want to be able to come up with an idea is because, on top of my JRPG obbsession, I'm obbsessed with Kart Racing games at the moment, especially the Mario Kart series and have oodles of ideas in my head for original tracks based off my other projects.

The best thing that popped up when my Fiance and I were brainstorming was the card game, Milles Bornes, but that still becomes a bit far from what I'm hoping to imagine.

 

Look up a DS game called Monster Racers. You could loosely describe it as Pokemon in a racing game.

Monster Racers has you capturing and raising monsters for 2D sidescrolling races. They have a few stats that affect their performance, and that increase when they level up. They can learn passive abilities or active abilities that you can breed with other monsters to try and create super-offspring (much like Pokemon). The sidescrolling nature of the races actually works quite well.

While 2D sidescrolling races are not the same as a Mario Kart game, there are still similar enough elements that it's worth looking into. In my opinion, Monster Racers was a great game, and proves that the two genres can be mixed.

Thank you soo much!  I had never heard of that game before, it looks pretty awesome.  Gonna have to snag myself a copy ^^.

Anyway, to the point, it has given me some inspiration.  I'm just trying to figure out now how to turn that into a 2D top.  I have some ideas buzzing through my head.

I was thinking perhaps to make it similar esque to a slot car thing where in you have different lanes, you get to pick your lane based on inituative (speed) and you also go faster or slower in the race based on speed.  What would happen though is that each lane has varying obstacles as well as perhaps lengths.  Some obstacles will be somehow harder to get through and some easier depending on your stats and what not.

Problem is, I dunno how to give the player any real control over their character, which isn't any good because I really want the player to be able to control their character(s).

Best way is to get a few car spritesheets that work with 4-direction animation, and set up custom move routes for the AI, over 3 laps. The move routes for the AI would trigger switches each time one passes the lap marker, therefore updating the HUD to show your position in the race (to make this easier, don't have a live race position counter). Have your speed modified by whatever you wish, like wheels etc.

There are scripts that edit speed in smaller increments than the maker can do by default.

The track is a bit harder to make, but just get the modern day tileset and use the roads on there? Set it up as a city racer game?

RPG Maker probably isn't the finest platform for such a game, but it's doable.

The first action game in my IGMC contest entry timeblazer was a fully-controllable race-like event with random obstacles and a constant sense of motion.  A couple of other action games (the Bridge Run on level 2 and the Slalom in level 3) also use the same structure and add some twists to the equation.  Maybe they can provide some inspiration, and if you need some help with the eventing I could probably open up some of it up for you.

You don't complete "laps" per se in my game, since you're theoretically moving straight, but you could simulate laps and turns if you use the Mode-7 Graphics script and make some really creative use of events that look like terrain underfoot.  Pixel Movement would also be a useful script if you wanted to float half of a game on the racing.