• Projects

  • 3D racing game - Close Call Racing | tech-demo now available | [ early WIP ]

Hi,

I've started my first project in game development. I'm a bit familiar with 3D modeling and am a graphic designer with somewhat of programming skills. I always wanted to make a fighting game, but quickly noticed that its not something to go on for a first game, design/animation wise or programming. So I'm starting out with an arcade racer with Split Second as inspiration.

I created the model in Blender v2.8x and started of a base script and adding my tweaks and functions to it. Currently I'm at a point where I first want to get the basic controls and physics down. If those are fixed, I'll go on to creating the first track. When I got 1 car design (already have that) and one track designed, I'll go on to script the gameplay bits into it. I also want to prepare it for VR functionality if things go well. So I try to keep the polycount down and keep shaders to a minimum I guess. Still looking for a visual between low poly/cartoon and realistic.

A video of where I'm at right now can be viewed at: https://youtube.com/watch?v=f_AA6MHzi1Q

Although I know I have to keep my expectations down, maybe letting people know will help me find the energy to push through and also get advice in the areas I struggle with. So here is keeping fingers crossed for a steady progress and hopefully one day pass the finish.

Cheers

This looks promising so far. Keep going! :D <3

@SIsilicon28 said: This looks promising so far. Keep going! :D <3

Thanks! Going to try.

@Unityfugee said: Hi.

Are you using the default Vehiclebody?

That's right, I'm using the default Vehiclebody and using most of the suggestions found in the 3D racing tutorial on Youtube by Bastiaan Olij. I did use other slip fraction setting tho.

car got great physics! good job on that. keep us updated :)

@GogetaX said: car got great physics! good job on that. keep us updated :)

That's actually mostly just standard VehicleBody settings and wheel-settings used from the 3D car tutorial of Bastiaan Olij. I'm currently working on expanding on how the car controls and how the camera reacts. But I need help from people more used to programming for games and used to Godot. I did change the weight of the car and thereby also the engine_force yesterday, so that the car doesn't get airborne too easily.

Going to start modeling a bit of a real track in Blender today, so I got something interesting to drive on. And because the track is going to be interactive, it's there is going to be a lot of work needed on that aswell. Think I'm going for sort of a city beach theme.

https://youtu.be/gL8Wzka86-c

Making a little bit progress, got the start of a small section of the track. Also a few steps backtracking (modeling-wise). Still wobbly physics/collision detection.

11 days later

Here is another video of the progress I made with this wip-project of mine. [My apologies for the jittering in the second half of the video. This was not happening for me when playing, so I think my OBS-studio was choking a bit at that point, for some reason].

What has changed? Better modeling of the cliff section and adding extra collision detection (invisible walls). Improved the car-controls for better handling between lower speeds and higher speeds. Added a boost-button for now, just to test things out. At later point you have to build up your meter to be able to boost). Some basic interaction for now. The bridge isn't build yet, so I thought I would have a little fun with it _.

https://youtu.be/suT_heUgWig

16 days later

@Zireael said: That cliff looks really cool! Thanks! This track is going to have a coastal theme, because I enjoy those environments so that was the first thing that I thought would be a good idea to get inspired by. That's also why I'm trying to work in sections, so each of them can have something about them. So those sections can make a statement in their own. And since I started this project with VR in mind, hopefully it will also look great in VR and be a place that you can even do some relax driving.

I just need to solve one problem I'm currently having with the camera and I'll be uploading a new video of the progress. I added some stuff to the cliff which make some of the gameplay elements appear and also the vibe I'm going for.

Finally able to put a new video on the progress. A gameplay element added in form of a hazard-trigger. A few sounds added (no car sounds yet) with one main looping and 4 randomy picked. And also better camera dynamics, which were quite the challenge to get. Onto the next step... modeling inside of the car and Virtual Reality.

And thanks for help/advice coding by godotforums, godot q&a and reddit.

https://youtu.be/4oXq6czZxtI

Finally a tech-demo/prototype available @ https://eyeemotion.itch.io/close-call-racing .

Although keyboard-inputs are provided, it is advised to play with a controller, since the export is doing something weird. There is a camera effect in the game that should only work when playing with a controller (with joysticks). I have a code that prevents these effects from working when using a keyboard (since its only 0 or 1). It all works fine in Godot. And it works fine when exported as an executable... atleast for a while.

So the controller is your friend. And hope this issue gets resolved.

Hey, nice to see you are overcoming the problems you described initially. Good to see projects (specially from novice game developers) to grow up!

@Saitodepaula said: Hey, nice to see you are overcoming the problems you described initially. Good to see projects (specially from novice game developers) to grow up!

The problems I described initially?

And thanks! I always try to go further than my capabilities at any point. Otherwise, how will one learn new things. It's a challenge, but a fun challenge. And it is especially nice when you have some concrete proof of that. I've done the same in the past with learning Photoshop, Flash, Blender, ... . I never went "Let's make something I can make". I always thought: "What do I want to make, regardless of my skills?! Every skill needed, I will learn along the way". My goal currently is to atleast get one full and interesting track and hopefully people will enjoy it as much as I did with the game that this one is inspired by, but now I'm the director B) =) . And although Godot is still a work in progress in itself and not without its headscratches and bugs, it's also nice its a great tool that gives me the opportunity to make something I want to make with a budget I don't have.

In my current living situation, it's also a way of not losing my sanity, because I need creativity and challenges in my life, which are mostly taken out of my hands. Hope to keep the updates/progress regularly, because I'm also renovating and that needs to be done aswell, for my parents sake.

6 days later

Just showing off where I'm currently at with modeling the inside of the car, in preparation for V[irtual] R[eality]. Just still a base interior. Will be adding detail, although also not too much, because I still want other racers and the track also needs its share of detail.

https://youtu.be/Xb6PyWdD1Vs

a year later

Hi,

have been in the shadows for a while, due to some necessary things needed to being done in my private life. So I'm hoping to be able to jump back into my game. I recently have been able to buy a second hand Oculus Rift CV1 for a cheap price, so I could finally implement the game in VR and see if everything was alright. Luckily, most of the scaling is how they should be. Guardrails might be made a tad smaller. I had to disable shadows from the DirectionalLight as apparantly they are too resource heavy to be keep framerate smooth. So if anyone knows a better way for lighting and shadow in VR, I would like to know.

I also now noticed that steering is too twitchy for VR and is harder to control that way in VR. The car also seems more slippery, for some reason. So I still don't have the feel and control of the car as I would like (would like to have it more like Split Second and DriveClub (I'm aware they are somewhat different to control/handle).

Anyway, here is a video of my same concept demo, but now in VR. Keep in mind it appears darker in the video than it is in the VR headset.

https://youtu.be/YqrWqoFK8WI

Cheers

Many VR games still rely on baked lighting for static objects. That is - only dynamic objects are dynamically lit. Consider Half Life Alyx for an example.

As Megalomaniak said above, I would recommend going for a fully baked lighting setup (lights' bake mode set to All instead of the default Indirect). See Baked lightmaps in the documentation for more information.

Use a Sprite3D + RayCast to draw a blob shadow for the car, so that it still appears "grounded" somehow.