First Week of December

This week I began work on the physics system for the game.

When switching from one form to another, the way the vehicle handles, and also responds to the environment will change significantly.

I began by getting the feel for the track section right, because cars have direct contact to the road and high torque sports engines are designed to provide alot of low end power, the acceleration would probably be highest among all the vehicle types.

Also, because of the direct contact to a specially designed racing ciruit it will have a good turning grip, however the disadvantage is that the tyres are specifically designed for tracks, upon hitting the grass the grip will be lost and the car will slow down significantly.

The boat will have slightly less speed as the direct traction of tires cannot compare to an induction pump system, unless significantly more powerful, which in this situation I chose not to make this adjustment.

Also, the turning is much slower as boats cannot use friction to turn the same way a car does.

The plane will be the fastest form, this is inevitable as the process by which it maintains flight requires fast continous speed. It also has good turning due to planes being able to bank corners whiel airborne.

The off-road vehicle will be faster than the boat, but slower than the track car. It also turns slower than the track car, but not a significant detriment.

I have also changed the collisions so that it should be impossible to travel over the stands, and there is now a ring around the lake rather than a distinct path, this means that the player can take any path they choose, so long as they pass through the checkpoints.

The ring around the edge, rather than just slowing, records the direction of travel, and rotates the boat swiftly until it points back towards the center of the lake.

I also removed the collisions on the plane, so that it can travel anywhere on the sand, however it must still pass through the checkpoint in order to make the transformation to off road. If you try to leave the sand, a collision similar to that around the lake forces the plane to turn back.

Fourth Week of November

This week I finished the work on the airborne and off road areas of the course, the airborne section was especially hard to draw in this perspective, but I think I have achieved this effect reasonably well.



I used a darker colour from the background to try and show depth and direction to the walls of the canyon, overall I think the effect works and gives the correct impression when you fly over it.



This area show's the narrowing of the canyon as the base raises up to meet the rest of the surface.



Here you can see the off road area, which I have tried to decorate with rocks, plants and a more suitable ground material

Third Week of November

This week I began work on modeling more permanent images for the differant vehicle forms, the four I would be using are the road vehicle, waterborne, airborne and off-road.

To make the transformations convincing each form should share colour theme and general style to maintain some element of continuity.

Below can be seen some examples of the differant vehicles.

Second Week of November

This week I completed work on the waterborne and airborne stages of the game.

This involved completing the first transformation which I achieved by adding the transformation as later frames on the vehicle movieclip and including a hit test collision at the point I wanted the transformation to begin. While I was testing the transformation I animated a "smoke cloud" effect to hide the vehicle while it changed, this was originally only intended to be a placeholder graphic until I had the time to animate something more complex and visually impressive, however the reacing is fast paced and the transformation over in a fraction of a second, I'm beginning to think this animation might be appropriate for the flash demo :)



This is the ramp leading up to the waterborne stage, beneath it is the first hit test marker which will initiate the transformation to a boat.



This is the "smoke cloud" aforementioned, it's only visible for about 10 frames (0.3 seconds) and during most of that time it's fading out, to mimic cloud dispersion.



And here can be seen the final stage of the transformation, the boat hits the water, however at this stage the physics doesn't change, so driving the boat feels unatural.



Here you can see the waterborne area of the race, I tried to define an area in which the player would have to remain, however maintaining the same collision paths that the track area had on either side of the course is unrealistic and doesn't work.



Finally the transformation to airborne, as you will notice, this area of the race track isn't completed yet and still needs creating.