Offroad Speeder

June 25, 2012 by

I’ve experimented with an offroad vehicle, based on the experiences gained with the truck. The basic setup wasn’t too difficult and even jumping and speeding over the rough terrain was pretty nice, but trying to point the car in the right direction or even getting it through the poles grew into quite a challenge because the car slips away much to easily. I’m not sure this can be fixed with simple adjustments to the wheel friction curves.

In it’s normal state the car reacts wonderfully. It accellerates, with little wheel spin, the suspension reacts accordingly. When going into a turn the car begins to slip smoothly outwards, drifting nicely. When going on rough terrain the car jumps an, naturally, is unsteerable while the wheels are airborne. The trouble starts when the car slams onto the ground or is pressed onto the terrain, as it increases its pressure. Somehow the wheel friction curves lose control and the back of the car brakes away violently – sometimes even instantly. I do guess that this is an intended behaviour, but the result leads to an uncontrollable car (most of the time – if a certain speed is reached) and this is not what I had in mind for a fun offroader.

Another challenge was proposed with the following camera. The usual smooth following camera script has the problem that the camera is unable to maintain a fixed distance to the vehicle. My current attempt locks the camera behind the car and smooths out the vertical position. It’s nice but the camera tends to lose the car from view if it goes into a dip… ah well, that’ll also require improvements.

Speeder v01

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