click for youtube video:
(audio is important, and try to watch in 4k fullscreen
even if you have a 1080p monitor -- the 1080p and lower video is chunky)
(audio is important, and try to watch in 4k fullscreen
even if you have a 1080p monitor -- the 1080p and lower video is chunky)
eternal apex //
an ambient (no goals, just cruising), high speed, futuristic tunnel racer prototype
an ambient (no goals, just cruising), high speed, futuristic tunnel racer prototype
An impromptu game design challenge over a few late nights recently to better wrap my head around:
- World origin shifting to seamlessly offset player and world geometry every 100k units in direction of player movement indefinitely
- World position offset in the materials for road, walls, and ceiling (including emissive light bar) to curve tunnel into the distance; updated offset target over time depending on player velocity to gradually change curve; used same formula in blueprint to update position of ceiling point lights to match emissive light bar mesh
- Single instanced static mesh for all towers and overpasses, procedurally sized and positioned at runtime
- Tunnel segments procedurally placed at runtime randomly chosen from preset patterns (fully enclosed tunnel, open-sided tunnel, open-roofed tunnel, arches, etc)
- 24 fps gameplay: this topic is contentious, but I'm a cinemaphile and love the 24fps cinematic "look" -- however most games feel very jerky and unresponsive at such a low framerate, so I designed motion and input from the ground up to look and feel smooth and natural at this more film-like framerate (although it's still possible to play at 60fps or higher with a toggle)
Sadly my modeling and texturing skills are lacking, so for the sake of rapid prototyping:
- Motorcycle and all level geometry were made in blueprints from stock spheres and cubes
- All textures and materials are very basic, using stock concrete texture and simple road stripes overlaid
- Headlight and taillight are just point lights using in-engine IES profiles
Desktop looks and feels very good, but I'm still working on mobile support for the learning experience:
- even on my "high end" mobile device (Android), dynamic lighting support is very limited, so I'm currently attempting to find a way to "paint" the headlight and taillight beams into the road/wall/ceiling materials
- postprocessing is very limited, so motion blur, bloom, depth of field, etc are worse or nonexistent
However, performance is good, and touch/tilt/cam rotation controls feel very good.
More to come...
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