Have an questions for Sam Bass that we didn’t get to in the live stream? Drop them here!
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Thank you Sam! How would you approach with rapid prototiping for a vehicle racing game?
Honestly, it really depends on what kind of racing game you want to make. It could be a fast action one, a driving simulation or somewhere in between. More than anything else, feel is important in a racing game; if the vehicle doesn’t feel right to drive, nothing else matters.
UEFN isn’t a bad place to start in terms of overall structure - you can use the various racing devices, track props and vehicles to knock together a high level version of your concept. However, you’re probably going to be a bit limited in how you can tune the experience.
If you intend to make something fast and action oriented, you could stick with UEFN and the existing Fortnite physics setup and tuning options. Knock out a quick oval track with the track assets, try out different vehicles and see if you can get the feel you want, then go from there - try out more complex layouts, powerups, different mechanics and so on with that prototype as your base.
However, if you’re not getting what you need from the UEFN version, or want something more physics / simulation oriented, then I would recommend taking a look at the Unreal Engine 5 Vehicle Template (it’s one of the games templates when you create a new project in UE5).
In Unreal, you can really dig into the underlying physical simulation of the vehicle and understand the work required to get the feel you want - for that, I’d build a simple oval track with modelling tools or marketplace assets, then start driving the car and see how it feels to move / turn / collide with static or moving objects etc, saving different versions with different tunings to compare and contrast.
If you can get that feel where you want it, go from there.
If not, it’s totally fine to scrap it and try again or maybe even build your own prototype car instead. The key is to not spend your time on the stuff that’s not important right now - the track can be ugly as heck, the car can be a triangle with sphere wheels - just focus on how it feels and you want it to feel.
Long answer, sorry 
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