Race in Space

Hey guys, my next project that I wanted to work on this semester was build a single racing level and get my space racer to fly around on it.

Why a racing game you ask? Growing up I have a lot of fond memories playing lots of Mario Kart, 1080 Snowboarding and Star Wars: Pod Racer (all for the Nintendo 64) with my friends. I wanted to create a crazy combination of some of those games and create something new and fun for others to play.

I wanted to use the sci-fi track models and the spaceship that I had modeled before and try to make a playable level. I wasn't able to completely finish it as I would have liked. I got some of the controls working, but not smooth enough for me to let others play. Anyways, here is what I did with this project.

This is where I left off last semester:

It was a good start, but it was lacking more dynamic lighting and some of the seams were showing. So I built another model (an archway) to hide the seams. Also my professor graciously supplied me with the pro version of Unity 3D so that I could mess around with the HDR lighting.

This is how the spaceship looked in Unity. I was able to get a propeller animation working two using expressions in Max.

Here is a brief video showing it flying around the track without proper animations and physics.

I modeled a simple archway to help hide the seams, UVed, and textured it and then brought it into Unity 3D.

Here is the whole track with added hdr lighting and a cool space skybox.

And here are a few shots of the track from the game view.

I was asked by one of the judges (senior show presentation) why I choose to use green lights for my race track. It was an interesting question to be sure, but I guess I choose it because it looked visually appealing to me and there were parts of the texture like the glowy-looking circles on the track that were also green. I was told that I should try playing with the lights a bit more to create more interest (example: blinking lights or different colored lights around the level).

This is what my race track looked like by the time senior show rolled around. I do agree that I need to set dress a bit more in order for it to start becoming a better looking level. I also need to work on game mechanics a bit more. I will soon post a blog labeled "Demo Reel" that will show some of the animations I worked on with the space ship flying around the track. 

Ooo one thing that was pretty cool, that I forgot to mention, was that my Game Programming class got to use these models for one their projects. I have been trying to learn more programming every semester (every since I found that it was crucial for a career in level design). I did have to drop the class near the end of the semester, but I did learn more about Unity and programming. My teacher told me that he was going to try to put together a compilation video of all of the students' race tracks and post it on our school's website. If I find the video I will post it here and show you all. After sitting in on their final presentation I realize that we have some talented programmers here at OC.