Hello and welcome back the our amazing game in progress: "Rollin' Rascals"

This week was all about prototyping and starting on our art bible.

Development

Our developers started working on some prototypes using the new knowledge they acquired last week by conducting small tests in Unity.

player movement:

The input for movement uses the left joystick and works logically. This means forward is forward. (This must be taken into account).

When the player starts moving at a good speed there is no turning back. But this will be helped by using a sprint mechanic that increases your input direction.

In creating the player movement we accidentally froze the torque but luckily for us this created a cool effect. The player started sliding/drifting. You can call it a break. This gives the user even more power over the direction they will move at.

Air Control:

When the player is in the air, either by jumping or because of the way the track is build, they will have to have some sort of control about where they are going.  For this we also build a small prototype, as you can see in the gif below, Some values may or may not need some adjustment. But the core of the mechanic works.

Camera movement:

In the previous week we had some issues with the camera movement and when it should follow the player. when it didnt follow the player the camera movement was really buggy and not doing at all what we wanted. Luckily we got this fixed in a new prototype. The camera now rotates automatically with the forward of the player and can be manually adjusted with the right joystick.

Decals in Unity:

Another prototype we are working on right now is for using decals inside of Unity on top of the track. We came to the conclusion that decals are possible but unfortunately you have to use another shader for it to work. The reason we needed decals in the first place was for making oil spills that are laid out all over the track. For now we got this fixed  by using the normal direction and a ray cast to put the oil or slow field on the ground.

Art - Visual Development.

We started expanding on our visual concepts for the game.  Color schemes were developed to convey a range of different emotions to the player. For these, the first and last seem the most viable as it is based on the triadic primary colors which are often associated with children and simplicity. The houses are based on French architectural styles, which still wait to be tested if they are viably styled to make prosaically in Houdini. The background is a minimalist city-scape intending to be turned into a  HDMI during the production phaze.