@Mihai

This has been a big push to finish the new version of the game. Together with a linux build the new version brings a new map, new UI, racing line, settings menu, AI-improvements, optimization, driver models, 3 new races, a loading screen, and a start race “screen”.

Specific for this devlog, the settings menu, with three graphical presets, a loading screen and a start race screen. Two new races. Small map additions (some houses and parked cars, and physical objects incld cones and barriers that you can hit).
Bug fixes across the board.

A big challenge for this was the data transition between scenes and settings saving. And I used player prefs to save settings, and some simple static objects to transfer info between scenes.

Overall what I have here is a nice base to start building a campaign.

I made a line that shows you where to go, so you don’t need to guess anymore. It uses the baked racing path the AI uses, and passes the points to a line renderer. It also scales with speed, higher speed => line extends further, in order to help you see upcoming corners easier.

So, there have been a few changes. There are now drivers, the cars are no longer driven by ghosts. There are procedural animations for steering using IK (it’s really not that complicated. They also look ahead and where they drive (INCREDIBLE!!!!). Besides that they also react to crashes, eating the steering wheel, cus there ain’t no airbag (poor lads).

I’ve reworked the crash system, not visually but technically. You are now allowed to have 3 small crashes, they still trigger the slow motion, but they don’t end your race. Crash many more times than that, your race ends. This way you are still penalised for bad driving.
There is still a one hit “lethal impact”, but that basically means going top speed into a tree to trigger.

Another small addition are some more sounds, to make the driving feel even better:
-Gear shifter sounds
-Handbrake pull/release sounds
Just a small bit of polish. Besides that there were small bug fixes, nothing notable.

I’ve been working on a new surface system!
Now I can add surfaces with different sounds and effects when sliding. I also added “rolling sounds” that play when just driving over at adequate speed. I’ve added a dirt surface, for obvious reasons.
It also has something called rolling resistance. You will observe the fact that when driving over dirt with one side of the car still on the road, the car will steer towards the dirt, because of the higher resistance, and also will have as a consequence a lower top speed, also acting as a penalty for driving offroad.

Besides that I also added ambient sounds, like a wind and leaves thing so that you can tell when standing still that you are in a forest :)))

Last thing is I made the crashing better, no longer will any impact “crash” you but the sounds are also better, with separate sounds for high and low impact speeds.

Basically a lot of polish for the game, the driving feels better, I feel like, because of it, and it also incentivises you to stay on the road, alltough the trees already kinda did that.

I’ve been working on the HUD for the game.
Really simple, but it was missing.
It features a lap counter, lap timer, best lap, lap delta, position. The speed/rpm/gear cluster is the same as before.

Speed.

Speed is very important when it comes to racing, right? Well yes, but in a video game, where you sit down on a chair, static, in a room, the sensation of speed is even more important. That’s why these few hours i’ve been working on making the game feel fast.

Changes have been made to the way the camera moves behind the car and in how it tracks it. Besides that, there has been a little sound work. At high speeds sounds become muffled and a wind noise can be heard. There is also the post processing i’ve been talking about in the other devlogs.
Besides that, i’ve started reworking the UI, and the first element was the gauge cluster.

I’ve decided to have the text physically live in the world, it reacts to the car, lagging behind or moving from side to side slightly. It also gets blurred at high speeds, because from a certain point it doesn’t matter if you’re going 150 or 200 kph, since that road barrier is still approaching you at a lethal speed, so you should probably just brake.

I LOVE the way the driving turned out, and I sometimes sit for too long just driving around, so I can’t wait to get this game back to you guyz. Peace.

The map is doneeeeeeee!!!!
It’s as varied as I could make it, but you can see the different regions, and I like that. Besides that I’ve made the first race layout, and the AI just works (wowowowwow!!!!).

Another cool thing I’ve added is wind, as a sound, when you go really really fast. On high speed, as I said in a previous devlog, a tunnel vision effect forms. Now, the sounds will deafen as if the ears are getting plugged, the only thing you hear clearly being the sound of the wind passing by your car. It has a really cool implementation, using a curve and some inverse lerp to sample, this way the effect is not linear and at low speed no big changes happen. Anyway, down here i’ll add some screenshots with the map, love to hear your feedback!

I’ve been working on the dry-ish mountain region. I’ve also added grass to the map, as you can see. For the moment I have some lighting issues in the mountain region because of the rock models, and some settings, so the dry grass there is black, but other than that it looks great and it really helps fill the map with life.

Other than map work, I took some time to work on the speed feeling. In the second and third photo is how the game looks at a speed of >120km/h. The edges get deformed, pulled back, and a vignette help sell the tunnel vision illusion. Besides that, its screen shake and FOV work. Between the third and last picture you can clearly see the difference between the two states.

I’ve put in another hour on the map. I’ve decided to split the map in multiple regions for visual variety. There is the dense forest in the first photo, followed by a low vegetation, high altitude mountain region (began working, second and third photo). Planned is also a plains-like region, a lake and i’ll see if I can fit a small town somewhere. The roads are curved and never go straight for too long, and compared to the city map, some of the chicanes here make sense. I am still thinking about how I could still have the night city here in the next demo. Maybe i’ll restore the map itself, or i’m thinking of just adding a docks area for free driving.

I’ve been messing around with assets, lighting and visual effects. I kinda like this a bit more than the city night. So for the next demo, this will be the theme. I’ve also deleted the city scene, since it was just bad in terms of performance and other stuff. Basically, my hope is that, using a forest, will help me conceal a lot more, and repetition of trees and other assets wont be as visible as in a city, thus i’ll be able to finish it faster without losing visual fidelity. Also all the assets have LOD’s for optimization!

So, after all the positive feedback I couldn’t just leave the project to rot. Soo, in my free time I will try to work some more on this game. So I made a little list with what to add:
I will be leaving the night city behind, it’s hard to optimize. Instead I will be making a forest/mountain scene, which I think will be cool to race in. I also decided to experiment some more with the visual effects available to me, so I added flares to light sources, for now a bit excessive, but oh well. I also upped the collision particles, more smoke, sparks and debris => looks better cuz it hides the bad crash physics (maybe ???)
After I am done with the forest scene, and I will make a couple races, what will follow is another ship, and then I will work on traffic followed (if finished) by another ship.

BUILD READY!!!

This is the last devlog before the ship.
Alltough the game isnt in the state I would like it to be, school started and i’m in my terminal grade, so it’s a tough year ahead, so I have to shelve this project. The race is playable, its difficult in a way but its also fun. I also added a second level which is just an open map with a field and hills for you to test the driving physics and also as a lower graphical alternative to the city race.
In the final hours of development I added all the basic necessary menus and fixed some bugs that I catched while testing.

See you in the ship!

I’ve reworked a few sections of the track and tweaked the racing AI. They can now almost always finish the race unless the player does some tomfoolery. Besides that I fixed a ugly visual bug where the terrain would poke trough the road when the camera was closed to the ground.

Next, I remade the speedometer, RPM indicator and Gear indicator as you can see in the screenshots.

The final thing that I added is a detection of “large” crashes, alltough is inconsistent, I dont currently have ideas how to fix it right now. For now when it detects a crash it enables slowmotion for a fraction of a second just for some oomph.

All that remains for me to do is UI:
-Race start countdown
-Race finish info
-Pause Menu
-Main menu
And a Game Over screen for when you crash.

After these additions I will ship the game, as school started and I will have to shelve it, and I dont want to miss out on the sweet stardust it can offer!

The map is done! I added some bariers with a simple shader, but I might change them soon, as I dont like the way they look. I also added a new car for the race.

I’ve also done some optimzing, enabled mesh batching, and after i’m 100% done with the map I will also bake the lighting for even better performance.

I’ve decided to leave out traffic for now, as its’ pretty difficult to implement and I don’t have the time, since school is starting.

As a small to do list for the ship:
-Main menu with settings
-Start sequence
-Race Timer
-Ending Cutscene
-Model credit list
-Sounds
-Maybe some music

Soo, I made the car more believable. It has working brake lights (WOOW), and new engine sounds that make it sound more powerful, but also added something extra spice, like exhaust backfire, that is programically made, with a multitude of firecracker sounds that I then processed. Besides that I also added a turbo blow off sound. They use the simulated rpm to decide their pitch and intensity, while also considering the throttle difference and position.

Last thing (visible in the last seconds of the last video), I improved the crash physics with detachable parts and deformable chassis.

Soo, I made the car more believable. It has working brake lights (WOOW), and new engine sounds that make it sound more powerful, but also added something extra spice, like exhaust backfire, that is programically made, with a multitude of firecracker sounds that I then processed. Besides that I also added a turbo blow off sound. They use the simulated rpm to decide their pitch and intensity, while also considering the throttle difference and position.

Last thing (visible in the last seconds of the last video), I improved the crash physics with detachable parts and deformable chassis.

The map is done! I added some bariers with a simple shader, but I might change them soon, as I dont like the way they look. I also added a new car for the race.

I’ve also done some optimzing, enabled mesh batching, and after i’m 100% done with the map I will also bake the lighting for even better performance.

I’ve decided to leave out traffic for now, as its’ pretty difficult to implement and I don’t have the time, since school is starting.

As a small to do list for the ship:
-Main menu with settings
-Start sequence
-Race Timer
-Ending Cutscene
-Model credit list
-Sounds
-Maybe some music

I have been working on the map ever since the last devlog. There isn’t much to say as there is to show. The scene has gotten laggy with lag spikes that seem random, so I will have to investigate and see how to optimize the game.