@shadxen-fx

Devlog 1 — Got the windows working
Okay so before touching any of the actual F1 stuff, I wanted the core OS bit working first, cause without that the whole project is just a webpage with some divs on it lol.
Used React + TypeScript + Vite, same as the guide I was following. Spent most of today on the window manager — basically one file that keeps track of every open window (where it is, how big, which one’s on top, minimized or not). Everything else just reads off that instead of managing its own state, which took me a min to wrap my head around, but it makes way more sense once it clicks.
Got dragging working with pointer events (no library, just tracking the mouse offset on the title bar and moving the window). Click a window and it comes to front. Minimize sends it down to a dock at the bottom, click the dock icon and it pops back.
Also set it up so adding a new app later is just: make the component, add one line to a list of apps, done — it auto gets a window, dragging, and a dock icon. Figured future me will thank past me for this once I start adding the actual F1 features.
No styling yet, on purpose. Wanted to prove the mechanics work before I make any decisions about what it should look like. Screenshot below is literally just grey boxes you can drag around, ugly on purpose.

Next devlog is the actual design, going for the F1 25 menu look. This one was the boring bit, but it had to come first.

Dev Log — Styling & Code Refactor

CSS Redesign: I just realised I used the wrong images in my last dev log, but overall I slightly updated and polished the project’s CSS for a cleaner look and better UI responsiveness.
Code Optimisation: Rewrote and refactored previous AI-generated code snippets to ensure every part of the codebase is 100% my own work.

Today was a massive 5-hour grind, completely transforming the game from a basic pet project into a much deeper, higher-octane experience. The primary focus was a complete design overhaul for Thunder McKing, ditching the old look in favor of a modern, aggressive NASCAR stock car. The new character design features aerodynamic lines, a high-mounted rear spoiler, Goodyear-style racing slicks, and custom race decals. To make the garage look seamless, every character mood (happy, hungry, sad, sick, sleepy) was re-rendered on isolated transparent backgrounds. A smooth cross-fading system was implemented in the code so when Thunder’s state drops or recovers, the visuals morph fluidly without any clunky image snapping.With the core visuals locked in, the garage environment and pit crew system were expanded to give players more active control over Thunder’s stats. A brand-new tire service mechanic was added, requiring strategic pit stops to keep the race setup performing at its peak alongside the refuel, rest, and engine repair actions. The entire dashboard UI was also overhauled, featuring retro neon gauge tracks, critical low-stat warning alerts, and real-time state detection that reacts immediately to how well Thunder is cared for.The biggest chunk of the build session went into completely rewriting the Race Mode mini-game engine from the ground up. The basic track was replaced with an updated racing canvas that supports fresh map layouts, sharper cornering, and refined driving physics—including custom acceleration curves, drifting feedback, and off-track sand hazards. To make the track feel alive, dynamic AI competitor cars were added to weave around, along with a lap-timing system that tracks split times, triggers flash effects on new laps, and saves your absolute best lap and race records. The result is a much tighter, more rewarding game loop that bridges the gap between pet management and arcade racing!

Today was a massive 5-hour grind, completely transforming the game from a basic pet project into a much deeper, higher-octane experience. The primary focus was a complete design overhaul for Thunder McKing, ditching the old look in favor of a modern, aggressive NASCAR stock car. The new character design features aerodynamic lines, a high-mounted rear spoiler, Goodyear-style racing slicks, and custom race decals. To make the garage look seamless, every character mood (happy, hungry, sad, sick, sleepy) was re-rendered on isolated transparent backgrounds. A smooth cross-fading system was implemented in the code so when Thunder’s state drops or recovers, the visuals morph fluidly without any clunky image snapping.With the core visuals locked in, the garage environment and pit crew system were expanded to give players more active control over Thunder’s stats. A brand-new tire service mechanic was added, requiring strategic pit stops to keep the race setup performing at its peak alongside the refuel, rest, and engine repair actions. The entire dashboard UI was also overhauled, featuring retro neon gauge tracks, critical low-stat warning alerts, and real-time state detection that reacts immediately to how well Thunder is cared for.The biggest chunk of the build session went into completely rewriting the Race Mode mini-game engine from the ground up. The basic track was replaced with an updated racing canvas that supports fresh map layouts, sharper cornering, and refined driving physics—including custom acceleration curves, drifting feedback, and off-track sand hazards. To make the track feel alive, dynamic AI competitor cars were added to weave around, along with a lap-timing system that tracks split times, triggers flash effects on new laps, and saves your absolute best lap and race records. The result is a much tighter, more rewarding game loop that bridges the gap between pet management and arcade racing!

Dev Log - Final Log

So this project did NOT go how I planned. At all.

I started out building Thunder McKing in Python. Made a whole Pet class, got the stats working — hunger, happiness, energy, health — even had a game loop ticking away. Spent a good few hours on it, honestly thought I was close to done.

Then I hit a wall. Python is great for logic but the moment I wanted to actually show the pet on screen with images and buttons and stuff, it got complicated fast. I had these five custom illustrations of a little race car — happy, sad, hungry, sleepy, sick — and I really wanted them front and centre, not just some text in a terminal.

So I made the call to scrap the Python build and switch to JavaScript + HTML. Bit of a painful decision after all that time, but the right one. JS just made way more sense for what I was actually trying to make — a proper interactive game you can open in a browser, tap buttons, see the car react.

The rebuild went quicker than expected. I carried over all the core logic from my Python project — the stat system, the decay loop, the health penalty when hunger gets too low — and rewrote it in JS. Then built the UI around it: four action buttons (Refuel, Race, Rest, Fix Up), animated stat bars that pulse red when critical, and the car image swapping dynamically based on whatever state he’s in. If he’s hungry you see the hungry car. If he’s about to die you see the sick one. Little details like that make it feel alive.

Got it running with Live Server in VS Code which was a nice workflow — save the file, browser updates instantly.

Biggest lesson from this whole thing: don’t get too attached to your first approach. The Python version wasn’t wasted time — it helped me figure out the logic before I built the real thing. Sometimes you have to build it wrong first.

BUT….

After an initial review after shipping I received feedback to change that overly AI generated look, and to change that up I decided to make the UI a bit more “Radiator Springs” vibe with that rustic Route 66, dusty desert, neon signs, cracked asphalt, the whole look to bring the simulator together. I tried to make a small mini game inside, and instead of an infinite road sim, i made a small track where you have to control a small 8-bit version of Thunder around the circuit and race him to victory!

Dev Log - 3D Car City Game

What got built

• Started turning a simple car demo into a city driving sim
• Replaced endless road idea with a flat city world
• Added building generation across a grid system
• Introduced traffic cars that move in the world
• Added police system that reacts when speeding
• Added basic collision system for buildings
• Started shifting toward an “infinite city” structure

⸻

Key systems working now

• Car movement with rotation and speed physics
• Camera follow system
• Procedural building generation
• Traffic spawning and movement
• Police spawn when speed limit is broken
• Basic collision response with buildings

⸻

Problems found and fixed

• Car could drive through buildings due to weak collision checks
• World ended after a fixed area instead of continuing
• Some code errors broke building generation and movement
• Traffic was too random and not structured like road behaviour

⸻

Next planned upgrades

• Proper infinite city chunk loading
• Road and lane system inside city blocks
• Improved traffic AI (lane following instead of random movement)
• Car models instead of cubes
• Police improvements (sirens, chasing logic, stopping system)
• UI system (speedometer, cash, fines)

⸻

Current state

Playable prototype, but still early stage:

• You can drive around a city
• Collisions partially work
• Traffic and police exist but are simple
• World generation is now being upgraded to infinite streaming

Added Roads and Building refinement - fixed the original AI traffic movement from aimlessly moving around, now they follow lanes properly (however some travel sideways in a certain direction of road layout which I plan to fix shortly)

• Added city roads across the map
  -Reintroduced building collisions so the player bounces off buildings.
• Restored AI traffic spawning.
• Fixed empty grass areas by expanding the city.
• Identified a traffic bug causing stretched green vehicles and server lag.
• Next objective: rebuild the traffic system with proper lanes, turning behaviour, and realistic road following. As well as building the car models and the in game UI.

Dev Log 3 – 3D Car Game (Traffic + World System Update)
Today the focus was on making the world feel less empty and giving AI cars more believable behaviour at junctions.
The environment now uses a grid-based road system, where roads run in straight lines across both axes. AI cars are spawned directly on these roads and are assigned a fixed direction along either the X or Z axis. This keeps traffic aligned with the lanes instead of drifting onto the grass.
A chunk-based building system was added so the world is no longer limited to a fixed square. Buildings are generated around the player as they move, based on which chunk of the map they are currently in. This makes the environment feel continuous and removes the visible edge of the map.
Intersections are now detected using the road grid. When a car reaches a point where both the X and Z positions align with a grid crossing, it is treated as an intersection. This allows the game to recognise junctions dynamically instead of hardcoding them.
A basic intersection blocking system was also introduced. Cars now check whether another vehicle is already using the same intersection. If it is occupied, the car will stop before entering and wait until it becomes clear. This prevents multiple cars from crossing at the same time and reduces overlap at junctions.
Traffic behaviour was adjusted so cars no longer rely on simple frame skipping. Instead, they actively pause movement when blocked and resume once the intersection is free. This makes the stopping behaviour more visible and consistent during gameplay.
Several bugs were fixed during this update, including incorrect chunk key formatting, a broken loop structure in the chunk generation system, a typo in traffic positioning, and inconsistencies in how cars were rotated based on direction. The intersection detection range was also widened slightly to make triggering more reliable.
There are still limitations in the current system. Cars do not yet form proper queues when waiting, and they do not make turning decisions at intersections. The blocking logic is also very simple, allowing only one car through at a time without priority rules or traffic lights.
Future improvements will focus on making traffic flow more natural. This includes adding proper queuing behaviour, introducing traffic lights, allowing cars to turn at intersections, and improving braking so cars slow down gradually instead of stopping instantly.

Dev Log 4 - 3D car game.

The project has moved beyond a simple driving prototype into a more advanced 3D traffic simulation. The system now supports imported car models, a working camera control system, and improved AI traffic behaviour. The focus has shifted from basic movement to building a more structured traffic environment with multiple systems interacting at once.

Vehicle System
The vehicle system has been upgraded from simple placeholder meshes to fully imported 3D car models. This improves visual quality and makes traffic feel more varied and realistic.
AI traffic now uses a random selection system when spawning cars, which assigns different car models to different vehicles. This creates more visual variety on the road and makes traffic easier to read.
The player vehicle is still handled separately from AI traffic, which keeps control responsive and prevents interference between systems.

AI Traffic System
The AI system currently uses lane-based movement where cars follow grid-aligned directions. Each car is assigned a direction on spawn and continues moving along that axis.
Traffic spawning has been improved so cars appear in structured positions aligned with the road grid rather than random world coordinates.
Basic interaction between cars is also present, including collision checks and spacing logic to prevent overlap.
However, there is currently a major issue where traffic sometimes stops moving completely. This is likely caused by cars entering a blocked state that is not properly reset or a velocity value not being restored after collision handling. This is the next major bug to fix.

Camera System
A mouse-controlled camera panning system has been added. This allows the player to look around while driving instead of being locked to a fixed camera angle.
The camera still follows the player smoothly but now includes manual input, making movement feel more natural and giving better spatial awareness in traffic.

World Structure
The environment is built on a grid-based road system. Roads are aligned along fixed axes, which provides structure for both player movement and AI navigation.
This grid system allows for predictable traffic behaviour and supports scaling the world without major changes to core logic.
The world is still visually simple, but the underlying structure is stable and supports further expansion such as intersections and traffic rules.

Known Issues
Traffic occasionally stops moving entirely and does not resume. This is the most important issue currently affecting the simulation.
Some AI cars become stuck at intersections due to collision or state handling not resetting correctly.
There may also be mismatches between car rotation and movement direction in some cases, especially after collisions or model changes.
These issues suggest that the AI system currently lacks a proper state management structure.

Next Steps
The next priority is to fix the traffic freeze bug by reviewing how movement states and collision responses are handled.
After that, the AI system should be refactored into a proper state-based system. Each car should have clear states such as moving, waiting, and blocked, rather than relying on simple speed changes.
Once stability is improved, the next major upgrade will be intersection logic. This will include controlled turning behaviour and basic traffic rules such as right of way or traffic lights.
A longer-term improvement will be replacing random movement with destination-based navigation so cars actually travel from point A to point B instead of spawning and moving endlessly.

Dev Log 5-

Spent a good few hours setting up a much cleaner, more responsive user interface. This included building out a dedicated garage control panel that features an interactive headlight switch synced perfectly with the existing keyboard bindings. The HUD and telemetry gauges were also refined to give better layout feedback on speed and active vehicle statuses without cluttering the screen.The structural layout of the world received a major upgrade as well.

The building generation logic was completely reworked to create a significantly better, more immersive cityscape. Spacing, height varieties, and blocks were tuned alongside an updated day/night cycle that properly adjusts atmospheric fog and ambient lighting based on the position of the sun.Additionally, a massive chunk of time went into getting the AI traffic to actually work correctly. The tracking matrices were refactored so that the procedural cars recognize both the player and fellow commuters, allowing them to form clean lanes and slow down rather than creating clipping pileups.

On top of that, the crash physics were successfully re-integrated; slamming into a target now calculates a kinetic knock-back vector, sending the AI spinning and launching into a gravity-bound arc that provides maximum impact feedback while keeping the chaos contained. Next up on the list will be implementing functional traffic light cycles at the intersections and applying building textures to phase out the flat solid colours.

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!

Devlog 7 - Today I focused on learning how to make a minimap, this was quite a long process as I watched a few YouTube videos on how to use the Renderer function, however it did come out quite well in the end, as seen in the picture it shows a sort of simplified top-down view of the road and also smaller versions of the AI traffic on the roads.

I also tried to build functional traffic lights at each intersection. I had to use the inbuilt tools to model the lights as I couldn’t really find any proper pre-built models. They do seem to work in terms of changing colours, but I am yet to pair it with the traffic behaviour which I will be doing soon. I also ported in a few more Kenney Kit car models to upgrade the selection of driveable cars in the game. I will soon start the currency system and law system as well.

Dev Log 8 — THE ECONOMY IS ALIVE (And crashing into traffic pays)

WE HAVE A DEALERSHIP AND COLD HARD CASH NOW!!

HEAVILY expanded the game loop by moving past the sandbox stage and introducing our first functional progression systems. I built out a clean, modern landing page/start screen to welcome players before they drop into the city, complete with smooth backdrop blurs. From there, you can hop straight into the brand-new Garage and Dealership overlay. The dealership features a fully populated grid displaying every vehicle class, complete with UI image previews for each ride and real-time ownership states. To complement the new screens, I also gave the HUD a massive facelift, swapping out the basic UI for a beautiful, responsive analog speedometer that dynamically reacts to your current vehicle profile’s top speed.

Got the baseline currency engine fully wired up and tracking across the session. Money isn’t just a static variable anymore; you actively generate cash dynamically based on how you play. You get a steady flow of passive income just for cruising around, a high-speed multiplier that drops more cash the faster you push the speedometer, and a “reckless driving” bonus that rewards you with a payout whenever you trigger the arcade crash physics and launch AI traffic into orbit. To make balancing and tuning the car prices easier during development, I also thrown in a temporary on-screen Test Panel that lets me inject cash or reset the balance with a click.

There were some problems I encountered on the way while getting all these UI layers and states talking to the main Three.js engine. Figuring out the DOM overlay Z-indexing took a bit of trial and error to make sure the menus sat cleanly over the canvas without breaking the mouse-drag orbit controls. The biggest headache, though, was managing performance. Everything ran fine until I started adding more features, causing some massive main-thread lag and heavy input delay. I originally thought the new UI rendering or the currency calculations were locking things up, but it turned out to be a massive bottleneck with the PCFSoftShadowMap rendering at 2048x2048 resolution, especially when combined with high device pixel ratios and individual shadow calculations on every single moving traffic car. I managed to optimise it heavily by killing off shadows on the ambient AI cars completely, letting us keep flawless input response times while keeping the player’s car shadow intact.

Next up: Now that the economy is working, I really need to make sure the AI is behaving correctly at intersections. I still want to implement that GTA-style police system to give players a reason to run from the law once they’ve racked up cash from crashing into cars. Any suggestions on car pricing or how much cash you should get per crash, please let me know!

Dev Log 8 — THE ECONOMY IS ALIVE (And crashing into traffic pays)

WE HAVE A DEALERSHIP AND COLD HARD CASH NOW!!

HEAVILY expanded the game loop by moving past the sandbox stage and introducing our first functional progression systems. I built out a clean, modern landing page/start screen to welcome players before they drop into the city, complete with smooth backdrop blurs. From there, you can hop straight into the brand-new Garage and Dealership overlay. The dealership features a fully populated grid displaying every vehicle class, complete with UI image previews for each ride and real-time ownership states. To complement the new screens, I also gave the HUD a massive facelift, swapping out the basic UI for a beautiful, responsive analog speedometer that dynamically reacts to your current vehicle profile’s top speed.

Got the baseline currency engine fully wired up and tracking across the session. Money isn’t just a static variable anymore; you actively generate cash dynamically based on how you play. You get a steady flow of passive income just for cruising around, a high-speed multiplier that drops more cash the faster you push the speedometer, and a “reckless driving” bonus that rewards you with a payout whenever you trigger the arcade crash physics and launch AI traffic into orbit. To make balancing and tuning the car prices easier during development, I also thrown in a temporary on-screen Test Panel that lets me inject cash or reset the balance with a click.

There were some problems I encountered on the way while getting all these UI layers and states talking to the main Three.js engine. Figuring out the DOM overlay Z-indexing took a bit of trial and error to make sure the menus sat cleanly over the canvas without breaking the mouse-drag orbit controls. The biggest headache, though, was managing performance. Everything ran fine until I started adding more features, causing some massive main-thread lag and heavy input delay. I originally thought the new UI rendering or the currency calculations were locking things up, but it turned out to be a massive bottleneck with the PCFSoftShadowMap rendering at 2048x2048 resolution, especially when combined with high device pixel ratios and individual shadow calculations on every single moving traffic car. I managed to optimise it heavily by killing off shadows on the ambient AI cars completely, letting us keep flawless input response times while keeping the player’s car shadow intact.

Next up: Now that the economy is working, I really need to make sure the AI is behaving correctly at intersections. I still want to implement that GTA-style police system to give players a reason to run from the law once they’ve racked up cash from crashing into cars. Any suggestions on car pricing or how much cash you should get per crash, please let me know!

Devlog 7 - Today I focused on learning how to make a minimap, this was quite a long process as I watched a few YouTube videos on how to use the Renderer function, however it did come out quite well in the end, as seen in the picture it shows a sort of simplified top-down view of the road and also smaller versions of the AI traffic on the roads.

I also tried to build functional traffic lights at each intersection. I had to use the inbuilt tools to model the lights as I couldn’t really find any proper pre-built models. They do seem to work in terms of changing colours, but I am yet to pair it with the traffic behaviour which I will be doing soon. I also ported in a few more Kenney Kit car models to upgrade the selection of driveable cars in the game. I will soon start the currency system and law system as well.

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!

Dev Log 5-

Spent a good few hours setting up a much cleaner, more responsive user interface. This included building out a dedicated garage control panel that features an interactive headlight switch synced perfectly with the existing keyboard bindings. The HUD and telemetry gauges were also refined to give better layout feedback on speed and active vehicle statuses without cluttering the screen.The structural layout of the world received a major upgrade as well.

The building generation logic was completely reworked to create a significantly better, more immersive cityscape. Spacing, height varieties, and blocks were tuned alongside an updated day/night cycle that properly adjusts atmospheric fog and ambient lighting based on the position of the sun.Additionally, a massive chunk of time went into getting the AI traffic to actually work correctly. The tracking matrices were refactored so that the procedural cars recognize both the player and fellow commuters, allowing them to form clean lanes and slow down rather than creating clipping pileups.

On top of that, the crash physics were successfully re-integrated; slamming into a target now calculates a kinetic knock-back vector, sending the AI spinning and launching into a gravity-bound arc that provides maximum impact feedback while keeping the chaos contained. Next up on the list will be implementing functional traffic light cycles at the intersections and applying building textures to phase out the flat solid colours.

Dev Log 4 - 3D car game.

The project has moved beyond a simple driving prototype into a more advanced 3D traffic simulation. The system now supports imported car models, a working camera control system, and improved AI traffic behaviour. The focus has shifted from basic movement to building a more structured traffic environment with multiple systems interacting at once.

Vehicle System
The vehicle system has been upgraded from simple placeholder meshes to fully imported 3D car models. This improves visual quality and makes traffic feel more varied and realistic.
AI traffic now uses a random selection system when spawning cars, which assigns different car models to different vehicles. This creates more visual variety on the road and makes traffic easier to read.
The player vehicle is still handled separately from AI traffic, which keeps control responsive and prevents interference between systems.

AI Traffic System
The AI system currently uses lane-based movement where cars follow grid-aligned directions. Each car is assigned a direction on spawn and continues moving along that axis.
Traffic spawning has been improved so cars appear in structured positions aligned with the road grid rather than random world coordinates.
Basic interaction between cars is also present, including collision checks and spacing logic to prevent overlap.
However, there is currently a major issue where traffic sometimes stops moving completely. This is likely caused by cars entering a blocked state that is not properly reset or a velocity value not being restored after collision handling. This is the next major bug to fix.

Camera System
A mouse-controlled camera panning system has been added. This allows the player to look around while driving instead of being locked to a fixed camera angle.
The camera still follows the player smoothly but now includes manual input, making movement feel more natural and giving better spatial awareness in traffic.

World Structure
The environment is built on a grid-based road system. Roads are aligned along fixed axes, which provides structure for both player movement and AI navigation.
This grid system allows for predictable traffic behaviour and supports scaling the world without major changes to core logic.
The world is still visually simple, but the underlying structure is stable and supports further expansion such as intersections and traffic rules.

Known Issues
Traffic occasionally stops moving entirely and does not resume. This is the most important issue currently affecting the simulation.
Some AI cars become stuck at intersections due to collision or state handling not resetting correctly.
There may also be mismatches between car rotation and movement direction in some cases, especially after collisions or model changes.
These issues suggest that the AI system currently lacks a proper state management structure.

Next Steps
The next priority is to fix the traffic freeze bug by reviewing how movement states and collision responses are handled.
After that, the AI system should be refactored into a proper state-based system. Each car should have clear states such as moving, waiting, and blocked, rather than relying on simple speed changes.
Once stability is improved, the next major upgrade will be intersection logic. This will include controlled turning behaviour and basic traffic rules such as right of way or traffic lights.
A longer-term improvement will be replacing random movement with destination-based navigation so cars actually travel from point A to point B instead of spawning and moving endlessly.

Dev Log 3 – 3D Car Game (Traffic + World System Update)
Today the focus was on making the world feel less empty and giving AI cars more believable behaviour at junctions.
The environment now uses a grid-based road system, where roads run in straight lines across both axes. AI cars are spawned directly on these roads and are assigned a fixed direction along either the X or Z axis. This keeps traffic aligned with the lanes instead of drifting onto the grass.
A chunk-based building system was added so the world is no longer limited to a fixed square. Buildings are generated around the player as they move, based on which chunk of the map they are currently in. This makes the environment feel continuous and removes the visible edge of the map.
Intersections are now detected using the road grid. When a car reaches a point where both the X and Z positions align with a grid crossing, it is treated as an intersection. This allows the game to recognise junctions dynamically instead of hardcoding them.
A basic intersection blocking system was also introduced. Cars now check whether another vehicle is already using the same intersection. If it is occupied, the car will stop before entering and wait until it becomes clear. This prevents multiple cars from crossing at the same time and reduces overlap at junctions.
Traffic behaviour was adjusted so cars no longer rely on simple frame skipping. Instead, they actively pause movement when blocked and resume once the intersection is free. This makes the stopping behaviour more visible and consistent during gameplay.
Several bugs were fixed during this update, including incorrect chunk key formatting, a broken loop structure in the chunk generation system, a typo in traffic positioning, and inconsistencies in how cars were rotated based on direction. The intersection detection range was also widened slightly to make triggering more reliable.
There are still limitations in the current system. Cars do not yet form proper queues when waiting, and they do not make turning decisions at intersections. The blocking logic is also very simple, allowing only one car through at a time without priority rules or traffic lights.
Future improvements will focus on making traffic flow more natural. This includes adding proper queuing behaviour, introducing traffic lights, allowing cars to turn at intersections, and improving braking so cars slow down gradually instead of stopping instantly.