Chapter 2 - Reconciling Theme and Gameplay

"Miss Evangeline just doesn't get it!"

Phillip Morris, age 8, is waiting by the Principal's Office sinking in his chair, holding his dear toy car in his hands firmly.
He can't fathom the reason why he's been sent here... again.
3 days prior, his dad gave him a car, a real car! And ever since, the teacher has been sending him to the principal's office for 'no reason'.

"She just can't understand that the car needs to reach the end of the track... It asked me!"

Gameplay & Theme reconciled

It sure took me a while to reconcile the 'Only Sane Man' approach with a somewhat topdown racing game, but I've made it.
The game is really just about one kid in school obsessed with his toy car. He needs to bring the car to the end of the circuit, it compels him.

Of course, there are many hazards along the road and should the car hit the ground, it's game over, and an almost certain visit to the principal's office!


Plans

One of the main lacking features at this point is the inclusion of a Countdown timer: Currently, the player loses if he falls from the track, but nothing compels him to 'go faster'. Rushing it is what will force players to make decisions on the fly, and I feel that a countdown will really help (possibly with toy-fashioned collectibles along the way to increase the timer).
I'm hoping that this could even compel a few people into challenging one another for best time!

Another feature I'd really like to sink a few hours in would be some kind of basic AI-governed traps to keep things fresh as you move. One such thing could be a stapler which forces you to time your approach carefully and move through between two hits (failure would result in severe collision/slowdown or possibly bump you out of the track).

SFX and Music are yet to be done, and I'd like to get some out of the way before Friday so that I know these won't be a problem I need to worry about at the end. (One can always dream!)

I've been toying with the concept of car physical integrity: On the one hand, I think it could add an interesting layer to the game to manage a new resource (life) and possibly have a direct impact on how hard/easy it would be to pilot the car with damage received, but I also like the fact the car feels invincible, which is probably how the kid thinks of it anyway.

I'm also toying with the concept of different surfaces. For example, a book cover or sheet could be harder to decelerate on than other surfaces. It could add a bit of depth.

I'd also really like to bring something similar to Scarecrow's gameplay in Arkham Asylum, where the teacher would throw her glance at specific areas of the track from time to time, and that ending up in her crosshairs would be another direct 'game over' sequence. Probably won't have the time for this though.

Lastly, I'd like to implement some form of jumps. Since I still need to fix how the game reacts to 'falling' and recovering from that, I could also implement jumping at the same time if it proves simply enough. It wouldn't allow the user to press a key to jump, but rather, would allow certain gameplay ingredients to increase the car's height based on its velocity. Could be very cool now that I've paired height with scaling!

If possible, I'd also like the landscape to evolve from a quiet school setup down into something more imaginary (a clear representation of the 'flow' of the kid, and how focused he gets in the process).


Unity stuff

Once again, Unity surprises me by it's simplicity. Looking back at my code from yesterday, I've noticed that there was a MUCH easier way to do car rotation. What started as a means to resolve a bug turned into a very profitable optimization (all thanks to 'addTorque'!)

I had a bit of trouble wrapping my head around how events work in Unity (they differ a bit from Dart) but after looking up the appropriate syntax, it was rather easy to implement a falling animation for the car (still needs some tweaks, obviously).


Closing Words

There are several great ideas currently being made by other contestants, and I don't believe that my gameplay will really come close to top contenders in this competition. I just hope that my rendition of the theme will help a bit.

Since I'm doing everything on my own from scratch (although, I still get to use Unity!), I'm finding it very hard to produce half-decent art and still progress with the codebase. I'm concerned that the end result might fall short from having any 'real' gameplay.

Oh, but I'm veeeery proud of that desk texture! Probably looks too rich to belong in a school, but meh: it looks right!