I’m sharing a project I started a long time ago. The base was an old file by Martin Uptilis. What’s finished so far is a large part of the HUD and the vehicle physics for both the AI and the player. For now I haven’t solved the issue of hitting obstacles like trackside barriers — the vehicle doesn’t slide. On the other hand, the AI has built-in slowing before corners if they’re too sharp and it can avoid obstacles.
Edit:I modified the track and added a few effects. Everything slows down a lot when drawing the trails, so I need to do something different. The HUD uses BGUI to draw everything — we have speed, position, lap time, best lap time, etc., all drawn every frame. Some of the values are calculated by another script that checks the ships’ positions, counts time, and so on.
The AI slows down before sharp turns, avoids obstacles, and also has a built-in system to return to the track if it hits the barrier. There’s one script controlling all of this, and all the parameters (such as mass, engine power, air resistance, etc.) are defined on the vehicle.
Unfortunately, it’s starting to slow things down, and I’m wondering whether I should split the script into modules and call them only when needed. Right now the AI code is over 330 lines long and does quite a lot of calculations. I’m not sure whether a modular structure is a good idea — do you think it would be faster than having one big script?
330 lines is not that much.
But line count doesn’t tell what is happening.
Does it really take much time in ms? How much?
Better than splitting is optimizing bad iterations eg. over vertices or objects etc.
Unfortunately, the trail system wasn’t very good, so I replaced it and gained a lot of fluidity. The AI now has a built-in system for avoiding obstacles and also changing flight paths when another vehicle flies in front of it. I tested 18 vehicles on the stage and it runs quite smoothly. Now I need to look at the visuals and see what I can do to gain some power, as I plan to expand the track quite significantly.
I’ve made a few changes to the HUD, designed a new, more challenging track, and added a pseudo-3D sci-fi city along the track. Ship jumps have been added, and the speed of descent onto the track can be adjusted by weight or a factor.
This is pseudo parallax, in fact it is 10 planes, the bottom one has a city texture with streets, the next ones are in alpha mode but without streets at a short distance from each other, this causes a pseudo three-dimensional image, at these vehicle speeds it is probably enough to make it look real.
Wow, that project looks great! At first I thought how the vehicle reacts when it touches the walls was of, but then I remembered that the original has the same behavior.
Does anyone know how to program the vehicles to stick to the floor , even if you are upside down? I would like to do something similar.
I’m pasting a link to a very early version of the game I’m working on. It’s not optimized or well-organized yet, but it is playable.
Controls: arrow keys to steer, C to change the camera.
There is no game mode yet — you just start and can race against 14 AI-controlled ships.
You can practice and try to achieve the best possible time.
The game can only be opened with Blender 2.79b. I included the entire folder — everything is packed together, including the music, which is why the file size is relatively large. I forgot to turn off the Framerate and Profile overlay — you can disable it, because it covers part of the HUD.
I had to remove a few elements because my frame rate was dropping.
I also intentionally didn’t provide a standalone build, because Blender’s internal player offers better visual quality than the standalone version. Additionally, you can inspect everything inside — maybe someone will find inspiration there.
I’d really appreciate any feedback or comments.
