Friday 29 August 2014

Papercraft quest begins! Making Ferrari F14T!

I want to try out something different. I was always interested in origami and other papery things. I did a lot of Origami in my childhood which was fun. Now I want to make some papercraft! Combining my 3ds max knowledge I want to turn a 3d model into a tangible product. I never did something before. I mean I neved did papercraft before, just origami.

I started to work on my model and I started to study the program called Pepakura Designer. It's a program that can turn 3d models to papercraft templates. Very effective and easy to use. But I have no idea, what kind of paper will I need, how to glue the parts, how to print the parts on a stronger paper. Hopefully, I'll get help. Until that, let's see the model. Here is the current progress (the modelling is almost finished):

F14T Papercraft
F14T - the beginning. Looks like a wierd vacuum cleaner... or a fly's head... fly's head? Really?


In Pepakura Designer

Finally, tyre texture!
Accuracy won't be perfect. I don't have perfect, good resolution reference images, and most of them are photos with perspective distortion, they are not 2D blueprints.

Thursday 21 August 2014

Double dilemma! Realism or fun? More details or simpler graphics?

As the title says. Double dilemma. What should I do? Make a game which is closer to realistic in term of physics or make it simpler but easier to play. Also what about the graphics? I tried out different approaches for making it nice and cartoonish, but which method is the best? Let's find it out!

New physics test!

Physics are getting better and better, but it's still very far from my expectations. I still think my tests were successful, however I'll probably rewrite the code that controls traction. As you can see in the video, the traction is low at low speeds and the car slips easily, but I need more slip. Actually it's pretty stable even when I push the pedal to the metal. A real world car like this would spin immediately in this situation from standing position.

Monday 11 August 2014

Back from holiday...

I am back from a great holiday, it's time to get back to work on the project... and some other things. But let's talk about the project only. I have a car, a track in progress and a playable private apk file with configurable touch and tilt controls.

What should I improve? Well, the physics are pretty simple now, I need to program the tyre physics into a way more realistic one. Well, by realistic I mean still arcade, but more believable. Once I made burnouts, but it was poorly programmed, I need to upgrade it. It'll be good on a mobile device. Tapping the accelerator will be a good way to keep the car stable without spinning out in a slow corner. Maybe I'll use animation curves for setting up the tyre friction for different situations. Also I am thinking to make an indicatior that shows how much the pedals are pressed over the touch area. So the player could "feel" the pedals more. Of course it would be optional, but a helpful thing.

Maybe I won't release more public webplayer demo, because the controls are not really good of keyboard. Or if I will, I have to program a better keyboard control with speed sensitive turning like rFactor has.

That's all for today, I am planning to make a great progress in the following week.

Friday 1 August 2014

Working on the background...

I don't usually share only one picture, but when I do, it shows some improvement in graphics.

 Unity Android Racing Game
Hand-drawn background just made overall look better.