I started working on an off-road arcade game of mine from 5 years ago called Derbytown. I’ve learned a lot about programming since then so I’m ready to give it another shot and take it in the direction I wanted originally.
I added a yellow derby truck sprite I’d made with Sprite Stack and MagicaVoxel over a year ago, and it looks pretty good! I’m curious how it’ll look after the sprites are all cleaned up by hand. Thinking about whether I want to render it with prominent baked shadows and lighting (like many pre-rendered 3D games did) or stick with the more cartoony, self-lit 3D style (ex. Mega Man Legends) that I know I like. It’ll be much easier for me to edit later if it has simple shading so I’ll probably stick with it.
I’m starting over with the game so there’s no track yet. It’ll have a single-screen track rather than a large one like I’d done back then. I don’t like how turns and other drivers were off screen because the camera was so zoomed in. I may end up with a slight camera follow though because I think it might feel a little better that way.
Dec 21, 2020
It’s kinda fun to see the truck rendered as a blocky model in Magica Voxel. After drawing it as stacked sprites, I used this tool for a little more tweaking before exporting all the pre-rendered sprites. The workflow is a little rough because the tools don't do quite what I want. I have some ideas for one that would make my life easier, though. Maybe I'll pick away at that soon.
Dec 24, 2020
I animated dust plume trails. They were too much when I put them in game, but it gave me the idea that they could be water plumes instead. Now they’re used for when you drive over shallow water.
Dec 26, 2020
Ayyy my first ray cast. I’m working on the racetrack now. Checking if a point is inside a polygon by counting line intersections. Odd = inside and even = outside.
Thank you to this goldmine of an answer on stackoverflow about point vs polygon methods.
Dec 29, 2020
*click* *click* *click* *click* *click*
I’m making a track editor now to get things going, and then I'll use it to generate tracks. That's the plan anyway! I learned more about arrays, and looping through them to do useful stuff. I needed to learn how to get information from a list that will change size whenever you add new points and lines to it by clicking. Arrays are data structures, one of the fundamental programming concepts, and they're super useful for things like this so I’m happy to finally learn more about them.
Dec 31, 2020
Sketch - I’m exploring the Derbytown world and who might live in it. I want it to be unique but still familiar. Possibly inhabited by animal-people, and maybe other humanoid types as well. Just kind of exploring the atmosphere of the Derbytown universe and what feels right in this world. I wonder if Maro could make sense…
I want to get better at drawing characters this year. I really want to push them to have personality and memorability, so I need to keep practicing expressions and poses, and do it more often.