Welcome back! These past few weeks have been spent adding quality-of-life improvements to the game. Here's a list of them all!

Dynamic Camera

First off, I've added a camera that smoothly interpolates to a set position instead of sticking to a fixed place behind the vehicle. This makes the gameplay much smoother and less obtrusive. It did take a while to smoothen out the interpolation, however. You can see how this new camera works in the video above.

Models

Next up, we have models! My game is supposed to have a steampunk aesthetic, but the original vehicle models didn't really take advantage of this. To fix this, I researched other interpretations of what a steampunk vehicle would look like. Immediately, two things were crucial to add:

• Large and visible smoke pipes
• Exposed machinery (Gears, screws, etc.)

I utilized these new findings to add a gear mechanism that can be found near the top of every vehicle and large pipes on the sides. Here's the result:

Collisions

This was, by far, the hardest to get right. In the current version of the game, I noticed that touching other racers would cause the player to go flying, which was not optimal for a semi-realistic game. To solve this, I would need to implement two things:

• Physics placement instead of deliberate transformation
• Bounce control

Fortunately, the Unity physics material asset makes this task slightly easier. After tinkering with the parameters, this problem is lessened. However, I still wanted to have fun with physics, so I kept a small amount of flipping if the player interferes with opponents too much.

Effects

Lastly, to give the game more oomph, I needed to introduce effects. Using Unity's S-tier particle system, I created impact effects for when a vehicle collided with an object and constant smoke for the pipes.

With these changes, Rotor Drift has more life, character, and stability. I was quite busy the past few weeks with my game jam, so I didn't really have much time to post devlogs on this project. However, I'm back to give more updates!

Now, scram.