Slipstream

Slipstream

Use up/down or W/S to move. Blue spheres speed you up!

This project was made for another Extra Credits game jam. Unfortunately, my laptop died within the last couple hours of the jam. I had another racer and another mode planned, but dead laptop meant I couldn't finish 'em in time. (Fortunately the jam organizers were understanding and allowed me to still submit late. Thank goodness for GitHub! Otherwise I would have lost everything.)

Dev Notes

This project was built largely using my variable objects package, which vastly simplified the individual pieces of the game. Rather than having to glue everything together via code, a lot of the logic can be controlled all within Unity.

There's a bit of clever visual trickery with the finish line. Whenever the player makes a full loop, they're teleported back to the beginning of the track. To make this less obvious, the game makes two copies of the track. However, this approach smears the movement trail, which looks pretty ugly. I have a whack that sometimes works, but it's not consistent.

In retrospect, I should have cloned the player model and then had that mirror the player's movements. Once the player finished a lap, they would suddenly "inhabit" this original body. This would fix the smear problem.

That approach would also enable me to add other racers. There would always be a "real" copy, and then a few clones before and after the finish line to maintain the illusion of a continuous track.

I also think I could solve this with render textures, something I wasn't familiar with back when I created this project.

Known bugs

• Trails look a little iffy when crossing the finish line. I can't fix this.
• Music doesn't loop correctly. This is a known WebGL bug. I'll fix this later, if possible.

Wishlist

• Other tracks.
• Other racers.
• Unlock requirements for characters
• A less boring background.
• More sounds.