Day 2, Sling Bot Racing.

Toy Build #2  "NOW WITH 100% MORE FLIPPING!!"

Actually so, and not only that, an entirely revamped camera follow routine.  It's much more like an actual "follow" camera now, as in it follows you and faces you, but doesn't always point the same direction the player does.  You'll see what I mean.   It makes it a little more challenging to navigate sometimes, but most of the time the movement is exactly how I want it.  I'll be working on refining it more, and maybe adding some other camera angles for a more freestyle play option.. e.g. I don't think this camera would work very well for half-pipe trick competitions, but it will work great for time racing and running "courses" which is the main game-play I'm targeting right now.  As a side effect you can now ride "switch foot" on the board, you just turn and switch to reverse thrust.   I haven't intentionally tried any flip-twists yet, but I know the controls should work for that as well.

Next on the list, well besides the Android Toy build, I will be working on setting up courses and rewards.  Working on some custom animations, these are all reused from standard assets, and I discovered the Idle animation was killing about 10FPS, ugh... I guess I should have paid closer attention to what the animations were doing to my frame rates.  Probably wouldn't have noticed this in my main project(which uses the same idle animation), for some time yet..  When I get back to that I'll be able to make some direct improvements thanks to this detour.

Moving forward with this..  I'm thinking about going classic 90s, using some coins and speed boosts and stars and what have you, something like the good old classic snowboarding games mixed with some Hedgehog type speed-action.   I was gonna go a slightly different direction with this one, but programming semi-realistic boarding action seems to be more within my skill-set than I though it would be.  So I'm gonna just make a cool robot-rocket-snowboarding game instead.  The sling part will still be there, up on the plateau there will be some catapults and various other contraptions that I've not yet imagined, which will sling the player into action following one of the many courses that I'll try to setup before Christmas... haha..

You should find the .zip file attached, Build #2 for your entertainment.  Still no barriers, so if you leave the terrain, I guess you lose.

Enjoy.

*see next blog for latest build. ;)