Actual Driving: Development 1

The most realistic graphics of 1993

I decided that the first thing to do to improve Actual Driving would be to give it a graphics overhaul. 

I started with a sky box which was simple enough, one of the actions that comes with the With3JS Extensions is "Create 3D scene" I was already using it to make the 3D effect work but had neglected its skybox feature. When setting up the Create 3D scene action I just had to include a background image with an image ratio of 2:1 (1024:512 for example).

The important part here is the background image section, "NewSprite4"

Despite how simple that is this took me way longer than expected because I just could not get it to recognise my image, I added it to the scene and named it HCLDSKY2 ( I don't remember why to be honest), you may notice that in the above image I'm using "NewSprite4" though. That's because the name of the image in this case doesn't come from the name you gave the thing yourself but from what its name is under Resources, they don't tell you that and even if they did it took me a while to find the Resources tab, but eventually I did, its here. 

(the arrows point at the button and the line shows what it opens if that's not clear)

With the skybox in place, I set myself on the task of redrawing the car overlay / UI. You saw the final output of this effort at the beginning of my post, and I have to say I'm rather proud of it. I went looking for art that felt crude and rough, in a way similar to how some indie games use throwback graphics from the PS1 or N64 to conjure certain feelings. I wanted my game to feel like in belonged on Adult Swim or  in a Michael Cusack (ciggy but brain) animation , maybe from a Ralph Bakshi film (an artist I really admire, Check out his lord of the rings movie). This is how I came to Rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is where you take real photos (or videos) and animate over the top of them, the car and hands in Actual Driving are my real car and hands. I think the art for the car came our perfectly, its perfectly janky and grungy to get the feeling of the game across instantly.  

With the new art assets, I went about adding to the gameplay, I did some small things like give the car a lower maximum speed when driving on grass and tweaked some hitboxes to make hitting the trees feel better. The main goal I wanted to get done though was Implementing the Freehand mechanic, letting flip off people as they pass and adding an FPS element over the top of the core Racing experience. Obviously as I was giving the game a graphical update I started with graphics for this feature. 

Isn't it Glorius? 

Now this feels like Actual Driving, no more squeaky clean Gran-Turismo. Currently while you can aim and click to fire off the middle finger there is no further mechanical support. Hopefully in the next post I will have master the bird.