Gamedev

Only really like a small portion of game dev. Racing games. Always interesting to check and see whats been made, what are people working on after a while. Some cool projects out in recent years, some are still the same asset flips with 0 originality, most are "drifting" while not really drifting. Theres a big difference between tossing a car sideways and it losses grip and goes diagonally when you press on accelerator and drift. Drift is when you are abusing inertia forces, power from the rear to make the car do a controlled slide. Its all fully in your control, its not random slippiness, cars actually straighthen out really quickly as they are made to be stable. Got a whole new perspective on it after drifting IRL and on sims so much. The challenge is how to make it fun and easy on keyboard/joystick, rather than force wheel gameplay

 

fun to see others attempt what I've attempted as well

boring drift physics, prime example

love the style (made in blender)

fellow BattleGear enthusiast

Damn didn't know blender can do this??????

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before I continue, gotta go do grocery shopping. Check the map first for the cops and gogoog. Bless the apps like Waze.

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Ok lets learn from the past mistakes and not spend all my time tinkering with physics. Yes there is a lot to improve, but got somewhat of whats enjoyable for now. Instead of wasting all my time and energy on that, lets code up some minigames and have fun with it, as I slowly progress and get more practice modifying them

Some ideas: (keep them simple)

    - overtaking is fun - use that AI driver prototype with simplified physics, spam out a bunch of them, see how performance holds up. Make them use different lines? Slow motion?  Opposite way traffic? Funny things like trucks with space underneath them, or ramp cars. Rage mode on cars that makes them want to ram you? 

    - memory battle - drive a lap, can record it, then play it and it makes you appear so you can drive alongside your own physical copy (not a ghost). System to store these, spawn in one after another, different cars, different instances etc. Load external from some kind of serialized file

    - just a simple full arcade game prototype with the basic features: a track, a timer, checkpoints, finish line, dummy AI opponents that get in a way. Think sidebyside special 2000. Could also add unlockables based on results. Add a little flair to dummy bots by adding them personality. "Rival mechanic"

    - street racing with bets. Pull up to parking lots, theres NPC's. Can make wagers them with and race them

    - Not particularly racing game related, but - would be cool to have in thebackground objects that respond to a music rhythm for atmospheric purposes. Think retrowave kind of game, where you are racing down neon highways, and theres neon objects pulsating to rhythm of music. Just a cool effect

    - any of the above with a "upgrade" system. Dont care about visual side, but performance side. Its basic, but I remember playing this cool flash game which had basic driving, and upgrading you could do. Took 30min to finish, but was kinda satisfying to have something to work for and upgrade, even if its just basic stuff.

    - composite system for vehicle physics. Rather than tweaking values, lets instead create objects for separate type of engine, tyre, transmission etc. Then make some UI for swapping things around on the fly and test this out! (Can play into upgrades system later)

Just gotta play around with these. Every attempt will further improve my racing game development skills. Some things to stay away from though: multiplayer/online. Racing games dont have many concurrent players, and theres a huge monopoly already. Dont waste precious time and energy on something that has no place. Single player is where its at, so rather focus up on ideas that can make single player racing fun. Also avoid realism. Theres simulators already, no one needs that.

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Did a lot of the above, will write tomorrow. Sleepyyyy