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Taupsi

[Release] The Purity of a Child's Boredom

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Story:

Little Kevin did something stupid and is punished by an electronics ban. There is basically nothing left for him to keep himself busy now. Except for the old electronic race track of his father which his parents forgot about...

 

Game Concept:

  • two buttons used on gamepad: analog trigger for basic speed, turbo button for some bonus speed
  • minimalistic 3d graphics
  • perception of race track gets more intense with rising internalization

 

Minimal scope of game:

  • one race track
  • simple story sequence at the beginning
  • basic internalization effects: basic blurring, blending into more realistic graphics and sound
  • some basic track elements: straight track, curves 

 

Nice to have:

  • some more complicated track elements: height differences, looping, ...
  • more sophisticated special effects: explosions(!), interesting perspectives, slow motion
  • racing is actually fun
  • multiplayer mode
  • decent assets

 

Background Story:

I almost would not have participated in my first Wizard Jam because I had no idea what kind of game to make. Fortunately, my girl friend's dad got out his old Carrera race track for the visiting children. The core loop of pushing the 1-2 buttons was actually really fun. It really reminded me of the Trackmania games. I had an inspiration! It should be possible to make this game in two weeks time. Now I only had to find some episode title which looked good enough for this kind of game.

 

 

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Sounds great, good luck! I bet there are a lot of cool things you could do with the blend between the real world and the fantasy internalization world.

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Mostly focussed on track modularity, driving physics and maths today. Took longer than expected. I hope I'll have something nice to show tomorrow.

 

 

8 hours ago, hedgefield said:

Sounds great, good luck! I bet there are a lot of cool things you could do with the blend between the real world and the fantasy internalization world.

 

Thanks! Let's see how much I get to implement :lol:

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Creating GIFs is a great pain...

 

The track physics are basically working, the values must be tweaked later. I also need to restructure the code a little so that I can begin working on the tracks. There are at least 3 tracks for the story I have in mind:

  1.  a simple one for the introduction: just some curves like in the GIF
  2. a track with some difficult parts: make it harder to reach a higher internalization
  3. just a ramp out of the window

After getting used to Blender, Substance Painter and importing into Unity again, I will have to create some simple furtniture for the childs room: a bed, a table, a chair, ...

 

But at first I have to get some sounds into the game.

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On 6.6.2017 at 5:41 AM, Travis said:

That is looking great so far. Seeing the cars fling off the track definitely reminds me of my childhood electric racetrack.

 

 

I had to go find a pic! Man, I loved this thing. Once I got good, it was so Zen to keep the car going as long as possible.

 

https://www.ebay.com/p/?iid=322488585485&&&dispItem=1&chn=ps

 

 

 

The Zen like state you attain while driving was really the main inspiration. I hope I can get that across. Sound seems to be crucial but also really hard.

 

19 hours ago, brendonsmall said:

Yeeesss! I used to love playing with these as a kid. I had this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-AFX-Aroura-Aw-tyco-police-cars-/162532822455?hash=item25d7b60db7:g:L~cAAOSwaeRZK6XV and some other AFX cars. There was also a transport truck that used to jack knife adding more challenge. Good idea for the jam, Taupsi!

 

The one my girl friend's father has is similar to this one:

https://www.amazon.de/Carrera-20062367-Speed-Run-Spielbahnen/dp/B00TKOWV2M/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1496854701&sr=8-5&keywords=carrera

Thanks for the nice comment! Unfortunetaly I haven't had time so far to look at the games other people are making.

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I like the way you've lasted out minimal needs and nice to have!

 

Probably a good idea to set goals, may have to post up something similar to keep myself accountable.

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Seems like you could vary the pitch based on the track curvature or car rotation? Seems like it was the car turning that made it rhythmic. I guess car rotation would work too.  

 

Anyway, whatever you do, it is looking cool.

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I downloaded a nicer car model and added sound of car on track. Already feels better.

I also added some functionality for the very important Internalization Meter. The internalization modifies the intensity of chromatic aberration and the vignette effect for testing purposes. I have a lot of ideas for better uses, but that's enough for today!

 

3 hours ago, Travis said:

Seems like you could vary the pitch based on the track curvature or car rotation? Seems like it was the car turning that made it rhythmic. I guess car rotation would work too.  

 

At the moment I use a looping sound of about 1 second length. It's taken from a recording of someone skiing. Works almost perfectly! :lol:

 

3 hours ago, Old News Belida said:

I like the way you've lasted out minimal needs and nice to have!

 

Probably a good idea to set goals, may have to post up something similar to keep myself accountable.

 

It works so far. I'm still trying a lot of important basic things in my prototype scene. But it's nice to have a rather easy to accomplish goal for a working game. Especially because I'm getting more and more ideas by the hour and could get easily distracted.

 

Edit:

Something I almost forgot to mention! I accidently deleted most of my assets after working for 1 hour. I thought I was deleting a sound mixer, so I ignored Unity's warning. Fortunately, it was not a total setback because I use Git for version control and had most additions and modifications still open in some other programs. 

Edited by Taupsi

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I did not have as much time as I wanted to invest in the project for the last week and basic modelling took more time than I wanted. I learned a lot of things at least, mostly about a working workflow and my dislike about asset creation. As long as it is only basic props.

 

With my current progress, I have to abandon the idea of proper multiplayer. I would have to implement some custom physics, think about a good camera solution and so on. Maybe I will implement the multiplayer mode some time after the jam.

 

I'm still confident that I will finish the basic game and story line till sunday if I concentrate on the following things:

1) most important sounds: racing car, impact sounds, door closing, track building,  ambient 

2) story: intro sequence (the punishment), ending sequence (flying into space)

3) camera: rotation, basic movement, following car automatically

4) hopefully: simple menu, instructions in game 

 

Let's see how many additional features and assets I can add and how much polishing I can do.

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Just wanted to post that I am still pretty excited about this project. Can't wait to try it out!

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Although I missed the official deadline, I am still making the game. After overcoming the track physics problems and tuning the game parameters, the game is somewhat fun now.

 

Here is a video showcasing some sound and internalization effects:

 

Most of the work is now done. I still need 2 simple tracks, a text message system for the story-telling part and basic instructions to the player, and some minor stuff like directed camera movement and nice scene transitions. My reward for finishing the game tomorrow (?) will be playing all the other jam games this weekend B)

 

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For the last two days I had to finish the "levels", the different tracks and the individual scripting.

 

I needed at least 3 tracks for the story ark I envisioned, so I made those. The badly designed track modularity proved to be a major hassle. The track segment models are basically decoupled from the code, so I hade to compute the logical positions of the segment, thanks to unfortunately chosen origins of the meshes. Besides, "guessing" would be appropriate. My maths for the internal offsets seem to be wrong, and I did not manage to fix them... So that took way too much time.

 

I also needed some way to cut from scene to scene. I used a second camera with a second UI. It looks very basic, but the sounds in the background fill the gaps:

 

The title screen you see in the post above reuses the track and scripting of the last level. For the impression of the endless road I teleport the car a small way back after reaching a certain point. It lookes very smooth and works fantastically in the level itself, due to my choice of perspective.

 

I am actually very proud how the intro screen ties into the game, especially the last level. You would expect a very different kind of game when look at the intro screen. Major spoilers for the story following:

Spoiler

When you start the game, you see the car in the open, on an endless road. But when you actually start the game proper, you find yourself in a child's sparse room. Finishing track after track, you see the child use more and more imagination to immerse him-/herself. It concludes in the last track, a ramp "up to the skies". The border between reality and fantasy is no more, and you see the original promise of the intro screen in another perspective.

 

Edit:

After writing the above down, I added a proper skybox to the intro and made some enhancements to the last track:

childs-boredom-intro-v2.thumb.png.c9a3fd40e66a9c23fd3583cef197b367.png

Edited by Taupsi

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This is a post about early reflections of my game making process overall and the game itself

 

Good:

  • I think I managed to convey the general sensations  I mentioned in my introductory post. The physics  are almost good enough to enter a flow state. 
  • The original scope of the game was realistic. Unfortunately, I mismanaged my time and played to much Witcher 3 :P
  • This was my third real experiment with Unity3D. I also already made some complex models in Blender before. I look up less and less and my games get better in a shorter time frame.
  • I had a lot of fun coming up with the story considering I shoehorned the episode title into the game after I came up with the game play. But I guess that is what you do in themed jams :D
  • I also want to thank everyone for their initial enthusiam and later encouragement! I almost simply stopped to work on the game because I did not like my track code and I was late. I hope this will help me finish some old projects of mine and encourage me to try something new and interesting in the future B)

 

Bad:

  • My "modular" track system just sucks. I already complained in the posts above. It was basically the first thing I coded and I should have put more time into designing. Seperating the segments in the game world from the code that describes the course of these segments was really very stupid in the first place.  Creating moderately interesting courses is a nightmare. I am actually surprised that my maths seem to be so wrong, but they are. And seperating the segments was really very stupid in the first place. 
  • The physics system is weirdly dependant on FPS. Sometimes there is no way to push the ball next to the second track.
  • I finished the game a week late because I had bad time management. The Witcher 3 was only one of the time wasters.

Ugly:

  • It is really hard to make your game look consistent. All of the models except for car and all of the texturing work were made by me in Blender and Substance Painter. 3D-Modelling is obviously hard, and painting your meshes is even harder without good UV mapping.
  • The sounds are taken from a free collection of sound samples I downloaded one year ago. They are mady by different people and the dynamic levels and quality vary greatly.

I am not sure yet what that means for the assets in my projects in the future.

  • Menus are hard, so I basically did not try to even explain the controlls ingame. Maybe I should add that....

 

Missed Opportunities:

  • Unfortunately, no multiplayer. Two cars on the same track would be very fun, shoving one another from the track, or blocking. The code base is too messy now. Maybe in a nicer remake of this game? (Who am I kidding?)
  • No interesting track segments: No looping, no steep curves. I could have done a lot more interesting things with the physics system.
  • Too few scattered objects around the tracks: One of the most fun experiences when playing with such an electronic race track in real life is knocking things over or simply bouncing off another object when you drive too fast. I showed the ball in an earlier video, but it does not even always work in the current game (see point two in the Bad-section 

 

That's it for now. Have fun playing the game!

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On 27.6.2017 at 3:09 AM, Travis said:

Just played through this and left a comment on itch. Nice work!

 

And I commented back.

 

On 27.6.2017 at 1:56 PM, infamous space turtle said:

Nice write up! 
I don't have a controller so I don't think I can play. I tried a bunch of keys but nay, no dice. 

 

That's really unfortunate . I haven't implemented keyboard controlls because I depend on the analog input of a gamepad trigger for the proper feel. I don't know any way to circumvent the problem. But thanks for the try!

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