Dev log 6-

WE HAVE PROPER BUILDINGS NOW!!

HEAVILY improved the physics model. The physics model is arcade-style, built around per-vehicle handling profiles. Each car has its own acceleration, braking, grip, and turn response values — so the F1 car feels snappy and twitchy while the SUV feels heavy and sluggish. Collisions with traffic cars trigger a knock-back system that launches them with randomised rotation velocities and a basic bounce on landing. Building collisions just reverse your momentum so you bounce off rather than clip through. Of course I do want to improve the model, try and make it a bit more realistic, if I can I will try and model a ‘damaged’ version of the car that the model shifts to when involved in a collision.

Got the base city sim running in the game with a procedural infinite chunk system, day/night cycle, and arcade crash physics. Started porting the Kenney City Kit (Commercial) pack to replace the placeholder box buildings — all 35 GLB models are registered and loading asynchronously with box fallbacks while they stream in. Ran into a few path issues getting the assets wired up correctly across the project folder structure, which ate some time. Also squashed a reverse gear bug caused by a double-negative in the physics loop.

There were some problems I encountered on the way while writing the code for times and setting changes, during development, daytime driving ran at a flawless 60 FPS. But the moment the clock hit 7:00 PM, performance completely tanked down to 12 FPS.I expected it to be the physics or memory leaks to be the culprit, but it was just a bad math problem with rendering shadows. I also learnt how to add different forms of lighting in the form of both lamp posts and head lights on the cars themselves.

Next up: Traffic Lights possibly?? Maybe improve the UI a bit more and also make sure the AI is behaving correctly. I also want to implement a GTA style police system, and possibly a currency system where you earn credits when u crash into cars which can later be spent on getting better car models. Any suggestions, please let me know!