New Life to Old Track Concepts
I have been using Blender to try to 3D model. Let me explain something about past courses I made that I want to revive and bring to a modern world.
The Backstory of my Older Courses.
A number of older race courses I designed for games were mostly for a non-racing game. What game am I discussing here? Duke Nukem 3D. Since circa 1999, as I was learning more and more about motorsports, I wanted to take a concept of racing into my work. I would mostly set up bot multiplayer matches in Duke Nukem 3D (called DukeMatches). The only "racing" was that it was me going around the tracks defeating as many of the bots as possible. There were also competitions to try to score the most points during the course of a race. Races were limited to score counts or time. There were also pit stops for which to try to avoid being defeated. Since I was the only intelligent being against bots, I utilized pit stops to stay in the race.Time is of the Essence.
On the basis of time, I have always been a fan of GT/Sportscar/Endurance racing. So I looked into a way to implement a sort of system to where time would change every so often. What I ended up coming up with is an animated sky that simulates time changes. To set the time distance apart, I had to make the time between frames rather long. I made two sets of animated skies- clear and cloudy. I also developed one set of skies for a 24-hour setting and then an "all-night" setting, which lasts from early evening of Day 1 to sunrise of Day 2. The cloudy sky animations were meant to simulate endurances either for cloudy days or for rainy (and even snowy) days. Because the animations would be a bit tough to follow, I set up timing gauges to let me know how much time is left in one phase of the day before going to the next.Believable Race Tracks.
I was not very good at designing believable tracks, so a lot of my 3D modeling in Duke Nukem 3D was fairly basic. I did not utilize proper-looking curves in 3D modeling. A lot of the corners were mostly fake true curves. I had a lot of sharp corners also. The reason why tracks seemed so long was because I wanted the tracks to remain deathmatch-style courses. So to try to get away, blocking bits were used in trying to prevent the player to go out of bounds or to try to evade attackers.Why NOW Trying to Update Past Concepts?
I felt a lot of my past race tracks designs deserve to be used for more modern applications and games. Also, I have had a tough time trying to play Duke Nukem 3D, my all-time favorite game, on a modern Windows 10 system. Rather than let old memories rot and die, I felt it was time to make my old concepts come alive in more modern forms. I also needed some practice to improve my 3D modeling skills.I feel this is an opportunity to work closer towards one of my many different creative goals. It is just sad it has taken THIS long to realize this goal.
The Challenges Ahead
I now will share some of the things I am learning and hope to accomplish in providing these old concept tracks from Duke Nukem 3D. Please note that I am using a combination of Blender 3D, Unity3D's Skycar, and Edy's Vehicle Physics Pro (Community Edition).
The 3D Modeling.
All courses start with just the main road or roads. So when they are tested on, the challenge is to try to keep the car on the road and not fall forever if I drive off the main road. I am therefore careful driving my courses because of this situation.The Realism Factor.
Many of the courses I created had a bunch of elements playfully added in. These even included a bunch of foolish-looking models and effects in levels. Essentially- eye candy. Because I have simulation racing games in mind, I have to think about how to make certain past ideas flow better in a proper sim racing game. It required me even to modify configurations to make them more believable. For one thing, some of my past courses had incredibly unrealistic elevation changes that would not even be completely possible in even the most decent simulation racing games.One thing I want you to realize is that this not exactly a legacy project, but rather modernizing old concepts while not veering too far off course from previous styles. I had to lengthen old courses as well as add extra sections for multiple layouts. This was to provide much more usability and offer a handful more options for any player.
Another thing I was thinking about was trying to make tracks of a realistic scale. When I learned of unit scale in Blender, it opened my eyes to making my small-scale designs more realistic. What I did was put my measurements in Metric and used Meters. I found that using a unit scale of about 100.000000 was enough to make the roads wide enough and the overall map not feel so small without needing to scale up or down.
While this was great, I was still unsure as to how to properly measure my courses. One method I took was to make edge loops around sectors of my tracks. I would measure the distance from the start of one sector to the end of that sector. There are three sectors to courses I design. I would later take the sum of each distance and add them together to learn how long the courses are. However, most of the results I got seemed unrealistic. I felt my courses would have to be much longer than some of the unrealistic scale numbers I got. Basically, I felt like tracks long enough to host FIA Formula 1 or World Endurance Championship races were about as long as go-kart tracks from my measurements. For the most part, the tracks had the proper width and length of what I want to accomplish.
Though not a critical factor, I also found it important to try to set up each course in terms of the time of day. This was great in trying to make realistic conditions. However, it made some environments tough to drive in, especially courses meant to be done at night or with not as much sunlight. The VPP cars also had very weak lighting systems. You basically need to make your own spot lights on the car to illuminate the way. Either that, or add lighting around your course.
The Driving Aspect.
I needed a decent way to test my designs, so what I did was use the Vehicle Physics Pro asset for Unity. The provided asset for Unity for racing and driving is good for prototyping, but I needed a realistic solution for my simulation-type racing tracks. So I was fortunate enough to pick up the Vehicle Physics Pro asset (the Community/Free one).Because I am using on-road racing, I am not using a model for off-road racing. The VPP asset from Edy features a sports coupe for on-road racing/driving and a pickup track tuned for off-road racing/driving. The default settings for the sport coupe are more than enough for performance driving, though the car seems pretty slow often times. The sport coupe's default settings max out the torque at about 220 Nm of torque (or about 162.32 lb. feet of torque). Granted this Unity asset doesn't drive like Gran Turismo, it is still a great way to get an idea of my courses in a simulation driving environment.
The Racing Aspect.
To test the tracks of mine in a performance environment, I set the car close to the Start/Finish line and then set up a stopwatch. I used a Clock application on one of my old smartphones to time one lap around the course. If my car flown off the track and falls forever, the run ends. I've done that multiple times. Sometimes, I had to re-do my sessions because the stopwatch function would not stop when I requested it to. I only tested in the normal direction of tracks.Here is a progression in the tests I run:
• Hotlap - from a standing start, complete one lap around the course. These one-lap tests take place on each offered layout of each course.
• Two-Lap Sessions - from a standing start, complete two laps around a course. There are different two-lap tests for different variations of a track.
• Three-Lap Challenge - from a standing start, complete three laps around a course. A three-lap test is the default for a lot of races, so this is a test of a course in a basic sprint race.
One thing to keep in mind is that there are no AI drivers to contend against in these sessions. The purpose is to get a realistic driving sample for each course. With more experience and confidence, I may also pull longer tests- such as five-lap tests ("Grand Prix") and ten-lap tests ("Endurance").
A look at what you can expect is coming up, so visit the next section.
What You Can Expect Here
Any created track of mine that I complete will be made available across a number of 3D modeling stores online. I possibly will allow for my creations to be used in commercial racing/driving games, but reselling or selling modified versions of my courses will be disallowed or may require permission. This is a chance to finally share some of my most personal works with the world and make them available to the masses.
In Case You're Wondering...
If you are wondering about the vehicle controller I am using for my racing/driving tracks, I am using Edy's Vechicle Physics Pro (Community Edition), which you can find here: Vehicle Physics Pro - Community Edition | Physics | Unity Asset Store.Again- I have nothing at present to share, but I will highlight more of my works in the future. So be sure to stay with "John's Creative Space" for more details. Thanks for visiting! If you enjoy my work, please Subscribe/Follow my blog(s) in any capacity if you love my work and want to support me any way you can. Share my blog post(s) with others if you enjoy my work. Thank you for reading! Take care and be well.
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