Completed the layout designs for a new outdoor track called “Taybor’s Field”. This is going to be one challenging track and should be pretty fun to race.
Completed the layout designs for a new outdoor track called “Taybor’s Field”. This is going to be one challenging track and should be pretty fun to race.
These are the first revision of menu screen mockups I’ve finished. More than likely they will undergo some changes to design or aesthetic, but for the most part they are solid. Looking forward to cutting these up and plugging them into NGUI atlases soon.
Updates: No work on visual art this week. Implemented a sound controlling system. Integrated sounds when smacking walls, other AI karts. Will play from (3) random sounds in an array. I’ve also included an engine sound that changes pitch based on engine RPM. Lastly I’ve implemented the skidding sound when sliding in turns, I’ve also put the trail renderer in there to leave visual marks on the track behind you. The audio is definitely placeholder (and it’s not high quality stuff). It’s only there at this juncture, as proof of concept that the scripts are working to produce sounds. Follow the link to the updated web player.
Web playable update: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16956434/Kart_Race_Demo/1-18-13_Webplayer/WebPlayer.html
Converted all in-game HUD elements to NGUI. Now they’re rocking 2 draw calls of the entire UI (1 is for the font and other for UI elements.) I am aware of the position indicator doing it’s bugginess. What is occurring, is that when the player and AI are equal in Laps Completed, Waypoints Passed and are relying on Distance to Next Waypoint to calculate who’s in front..well that value is jumping back to 0 at each way point being passed (resets value). So I think because the data is relying on the rapidly changing value to determine race position in these circumstances, it’s glitching a bit. Once you determine a lead by passing more waypoints in general or more laps, the position indicator is fine. It’s a bug and I’ll fix it.
I’ve also added in driver camera functionality if you click the camera icon in the top of the game window. Helps with the sense of speed a bit, but I’ll do more with the far camera’s sense of speed when I get to that. For now I’m working on getting the second functional AI vehicle in…I intend to have a race between (3) Karts.
Okay so I’ve been busy working on another iPad project for myself, so the Kart Demo got neglected for a few days. I came back with a vengeance and smoothed out the physics on the player vehicle and the AI now path smoother (they also have turning wheels now!). Still need a new set of Waypoints for the blue AI. I’ve also implemented a new driver model (completed modeling, normal mapping, rigging and animations, etc.)…the same model has been applied to the AI. It was a bit tricky getting the AI models to play their animations without having any keyboard control input to trigger them.
I ended up hooking into the existing script for Waypoints that controls turning of the AI wheels/car ( I used it’s wheelAngle variable to to set an “if-else”). This would readout a numeric degree of that variable, which I could read from and say, well if the degree number is +15 or greater play the “TurnRight” animation… else if the degree number is -15 or less play the “TurnRight” animation, else play the “Idle” animation (which is a static animation right now.)
I’ve also got the mini-map working in the build too. It’s actually pretty solid right now. I may polish the little blip texture a bit, but it’s pretty much completed. I used a second GUI camera in scene, set its viewport clipping so it only appears in a section of my game window. I set the camera depth for the mini-map to always render on top of the game camera, placed in a GUITexture for the map of the track, placed (3) 16×16 blip textures for AI and the player and created simple code that makes them follow their assigned transforms (i.e. player or AI vehicles).
I feel it’s really coming along now, starting to look like something finally!
Check the latest build out at : http://www.fatboxsoftware.com/#/kart-demo/4565740225
Visually you’ll see some changes in tonight’s build. You’ll notice I’ve started to work on the environment and got some stuff in there. Maybe one more week and the entire environment will be complete. On the scripting side I’ve implemented some more blocks of code to handle slippage at higher speeds…this physics scripting is intense stuff. I’m starting to learn to wear the scripting hat. I spend all day coding/testing stuff and then I’m thinking “man I wish I had an artist to handle all of that silly environment art lol”. I love it…it’s why I do it.
So bullet point 1.) environment art update 2.) physics for higher speed slippage, etc. accomplished today. Oh and if you find you are interpenetrating art geometry it’s because I haven’t gotten around to opening up the collision file and updating it to match the new art. All in good time.
As usual you can test the updated build at: www.fatboxsoftware.com
Build has been updated today with actual updating GUI elements for lap counting and lap timing. It’s rough right now, and not the final look of the text in the UI, but the functionality is working (only slightly buggy :). I’ve also implemented some nice UI graphics that slide in quick when you hit a checkpoint in the road. They ease in/fade in and ease/fade out when triggered onto the screen.
Check the latest build at www.fatboxsoftware.com
I’ve migrated all of the HTML code to run embedded on a new web site now. It’s a site purely dedicated to my Unity development work.
You can find the current builds of the Kart Demo at this link (got a proper URL and all now):
http://www.fatboxsoftware.com/
This is where I’ll be updating the build each night with updates as I progress.