RGP day 10 - a bit of everything

First post in 2013, and I feel it is going to be a great year :]
I know it`s been a while, but I am working on the game again!

It is actually day 10 - 14 of the RGP. I worked on the project quite a lot, mostly tweaking the code to make it work just right. And finally here is also some visual stuff, while only sketchy, but something! So here is the stuff I`ve been busy these last 5 days.

physics and handling

I`ve been collecting some useful resources regarding physics, acceleration & springs`n`dampers aswell as browsing through YouTube videos of Wipeout, F-Zero and other futuristic racing games. I believe now that a nice vehicle handling system will be actually much bigger challenge than I initially thought. I hoped I could stay with Blender`s built in Bullet physics & material properties in UI, but I just could not get the feel and handling right as well as it caused stability issues at high speeds. So I created my own system. Basically it consists of spring-damper system for vehicle suspension, engine system for thrust and turning and a very basic inertia and gravity system.

race track & vehicle

I made a race track to push my physics system to the limits. Basically it is an oval loop with a twist - literally :).  I created a race track based on Möbius strip - "A model can easily be created by taking a paper strip and giving it a half-twist, and then joining the ends of the strip together to form a loop". So you are actually racing on the both sides of the race track. Also the oval in the middle is bent around 90degrees up which at high velocity, will create very high negative or positive centrifugal forces, so that the race car will be either pressed against racetrack surface or pulled off it. In the game speedways will have a gravitational force field which will keep the race cars from falling off the track either at high centrifugal forces or regardless if the track is upside down, so I think that this kind of racetrack configuration is perfect for testing and tweaking purposes.

overview of the "Möbius race circuit"



clearer view of the configuration



This is a generic racecar you would find in similar racing games. As the rest of the game this is only a placeholder. More race car concept-art is on the way :)



UI

This is the first time I am working with Moguri`s BGUI - a graphical user interface (GUI) library for BGE. I have just started to mess around with it, so nothing much to see yet, but I intend to keep it simple and minimal, close to what you can see in the screenshots below.

Camera movement

I worked also on the camera movement a little. A good setup can add a great amount of immersion into the game. Just parenting it to the race car`s chassis does not look good. I will do a deeper look at it sometime later.

Graphics & FX

Nothing fancy yet - a simple skylight setup like THIS, completely texture baked terrain, simple fogging that gives an atmospheric feel. Exhaust trails are cross shaped , textured planes spawned each frame - I should find some more efficient way of doing them.


screenshots showing all of this together which starts to form up the feel of an actual game:













(I am having some difficulties with screen capture software working on Windows 8 so perhaps I will switch back to win7 to be able to make some videos)

Back to Win7 and video is here.



blend file is on the way.