Dev Log 2 - Basic Level Blocking

Basic Level Blocking

This week I fixed a few issues with jittery movement and general movement problems; however, the focus was on basic level blocking. I tried a few new track features with most of them falling into the "too difficult for a few weeks work" bucket. I did manage to get a spiraling climb to test drifting when it's working again.

I created a custom cubemap for the background. I wanted to keep the pixel look so initially tried 128x128 faces. The result was far too chunky even for my tastes, so I ended up settling on 256x256 faces. This was a simple affair in Photoshop with a limited pallet to keep it simple. Removing Unity's ugly default skybox boosted the performance by a ridiculous degree. (Now sometimes in excess of 600fps.)

(Something simple to start with.)

I also decided if creating a 3D world for the track was feasible (no) and if it betrayed the original design idea (yes). Without a 3D world to hide the ugly parts of the track, I had to think of another solution: 2D cliffs. Stacking literally thousand of 2D cliffs on the side of the road creates a great sense of speed and hides most of the ugly parts.

There are a few drawbacks though. 2D cliffs look great but they're too much of good thing. I think I'll need to widen the road and randomly distribute some trees and rocks there. Then I'll have the cliff sides.

There were a few times this week where if I looked just the right way, the game looked kind of cool.

(Still have issues with the car getting stuck upside down.)

(Test tunnel. I was tempted to make this 3D, but stuck with flat 2D sprites. I'm mostly happy with it. Maybe not the texture.)