UV Layout

  UV Layout, here we go

I think I might be missing some pieces...but int he mean-time...I've got this

Stunt Concept: Revisited

According to a good friend of mine, "The car has gotten stripped off its skin and is now free of the stultifying sins that chained it to its vroomvroom rights. The faces of the skin embodies the seven crimes it has committed...and sakuras welcome its crossing over to a better future as the driver transcends the nihon land through the temple!" Thank you, Bene

I still don't know how digital painting works! But here's my concept painting (the colors sure look different, no.....) illustrating my stunt....which is essentially cursed stones descending down on to unsuspecting players!

Sketches and vector map

Here are some thumbnail sketches I was working on

a slightly more refined sketch...mostly practicing digital painting...I'm not satisfied with the lighting

I like this one a bit more, the light makes...a little more sense, I think?

Vector map for my level

Re-do and work in class

I ended up restarting the car since I had been using pretty awful top views of it. Found a much better top view (blueprints, yeehaw! Big thanks to Matt) and the other was getting...pretty messy. Wish I had gotten a big farther, meh.

Theme

My level is based on Tanabata-- a Japanese festival celebrating the meeting star-crossed lovers: Orihime (Vega) and Hikoboshi (Altair) separated by the Milky Way (a river made of stars in this case). These festivals often take place outdoors after the stars have come out at night-- and I'm planning on making mine by a small village at the edge of a valley, surrounded by mountains, making the roads mostly made up of stone and dirt. My concept statement is "Lose not yourself in a far off time, seize the moment that is thine."

Ideally, there'd be plenty of trees around from which to hang paper cranes, paper kimonos, paper strips with wishes written on them and streamers. The main row would be lit up with paper lanterns.

This is the color scheme I'm going for:

Map & Stunt:

For my stunt, I'm going for an area of bamboo that's being pushed over by falling demon rocks from the valley. Also a ramp at the very end of the track that gains the player big air time and lands them right back on the start.

Modeling START

Here are my beginning attempts at modeling THIS:

Bizzarrini 5300 GT Strada

Still looking for a top view. Why......

Ah, it's a start!

Plopped it into UDK and um that's kind of small, isn't it? Must make it bigger...

Stunt Designs

I was thinking back to Psychonauts and the levitation level-- which made me think that it would be pretty neat to have a racing game in which you had to work your way upwards via ramps or objects that made you bounce / glide in the air.

So-- essentially a spiraling an escalating race to the top with various ways of getting ahead of your opponent. 

I was also thinking back on Snowboard Kids-- and how in order to reach certain shortcuts, it's usually easier to fail right before getting to said shortcut. Whether it's by purposely missing the jump right before the shortcut or letting rocks hit you to slow you down just enough to get it--  It would be pretty neat to have some sort of grotesque heads try fall and having to actually get hit in order to roll into the shortcut. Otherwise-- you're probably going to fast to catch it and/or not in the right direction.

To add to that-- it would be interesting to also have the same path set at different heights-- and with each height comes a different challenge. Whether it's going through a narrow and barely lit tunnel to having to maneuver yourself in order to catch a bunch of speed ramps and make it to the next level-- that might pse an interesting challenge.

30 min sketch - Shileska

Trying to get used to digital painting.... Still looking for settings I'm more comfortable with.

Stunt Time

In my search for car / racing / vehicle stunts (there's so much stuff out there, it's crazy), I've stumble upon a few Chevy Sonic Stunts. Here they had a campaign in which people could click to push a car attached to a bungee cord off a makeshift platform. I like the idea of having the player have to mash buttons or something in order to either make something happen (charge?) or to avoid a disaster (pulling away from something that caught you that will throw you to your doom!)



That's just neat. Might be interesting to have some sort of bungee jump styled action that actually releases the player (cable snaps?? grabbed by an invisible entity??) as they get closer to the track from a very high point.

Speaking of being released-- the fast and furious has some examples of crazy drifting-- but what I really like is how about 18 seconds in they barely bust out from a garage. Close calls are always exciting.

Snowboard Kids is a racing game that makes use of a lot of shortcuts that are often a little harder to navigate than the regular path BUT the type of "ground" is one in which your snowboard will move faster in).  48 into the race, the player takes one of the many shortcuts in the Night Highway.

Not a racing game but some of these stunts are pretty crazy. There's a lot of air time in these videos-- so much it's rather insane. 2:47 into the video, they go through a neat loop ramp on top of a building. The loop also seems to be suspended in mid-air????

Megaman X4-- while not technically a racing game, I do remember that you had to ride on some sort of fancy motorcycle thing to get to the boss. There are numerous times in which the player must jump over bombs and shoot down crates in order to get by. The path also tends to split into an upper and lower area-- with the lower area usually consisting of said bombs and crates blocking the path and the upper level is mostly ramps you have to jump onto in order to avoid said bombs and crates.