Kart Racer Progress- November 2011

I actually did a lot for this month.

First, the aesthetics. 

SawShark Beach was in desperate need of a facelift. The environment [mostly the rock walls] were tweaked and distorted to give that 'wonky,' cartoonish look that made Diddy Kong Racing stand out. Ambient occlusion has been baked to the cliffs, tunnel, and road. The waterfalls were also given a much better texture, and mist spawns where they hit the water.

To make the tunnel stand out more, I tried overlaying a custom gradient over the rock texture. This is essentially "painting on" the lighting, and this technique was used extensively in DKR as well. I'm pretty happy with the result, and I'll probably incorporate it into the cliffs as well.

Next, there's been significant progress in the [usually under-looked] audio department. I've composed a track for SawShark Beach. I tried to tie in elements of Dave Wise's work from DKR [namely the tracks for Crescent Island and Whale Bay] while still keeping it original. I think I did a decent job.

The water falls now emit the sound of- well, falling water. The kart also has an engine sound now- I've tweaked a script that changes the pitch of the sound dependent on the kart's velocity. And the sound I used for the engine? It's a processed vacuum cleaner. No kidding. I couldn't find a decent engine loop, so it works.

I've made some technical progress as well. 

First up, I wrote a script to give a random rotation to the waterfall mist planes. Before this, they all faced up, and it was noticeable. This gives it a bit more variation.

Next, I created a script that manages tire debris [when you drive in grass, green clouds emit from the back tires, sand emits yellow clouds, etc.] I want them only to spawn when the kart is moving, but for some reason it keeps returning errors. I'll figure it out eventually.

Finally, I went back to the Vehicle Wrapper for some tweaks. I found out that I accidentally assigned the emergency brake to the down arrow key. I wanted to swap this out for the regular brake, then get rid of the E-brake's funcionality, as it was not needed. Easy, right?

Wrong.

Now the same button that is used for braking is also used for reversing. Long story short, you can't back up. Big problem. I had to rearrange a lot of 'if' statements, and it got confusing fast. I think I eventually got it to work, but it only backs up on grass or sand. It won't reverse on the road. And I have absolutely no clue as to why. Again, I'm still working on it, and I'll fix it soon.

Alright, it looks like I'm finally up to speed. Future posts won't be nearly as long, as I just wanted to sum up what I've already done. I've already done six months of work, but this project is just getting started.