Prototype Creation

Today I've made a baseline prototype for my game, a sort of 'play room' or 'test chamber'

I spent a couple weeks trying to work out details of how I wanted the game to function as I was busy with other work and didn't have the time to dedicate a full day to coding as I wanted my initial session to get as much done as possible so I could get a firm grasp of where I wanted to go. 

Despite my original plans, due to the unplanned lack of time I have ripped an asset for the player that can be found here https://spikerman.itch.io/space-bike

If time allows I will create my own assets as planned. 

With the sprite in hand I managed to rapidly prototype the game into a playable state where the controls and camera feel clean and enjoyable. At time of writing I have implemented the following.

-Acceleration / Deceleration (and braking), mapped to the W & S keys

-Left and Right tilt controls, mapped to A & D 

-The core gameplay mechanic, the 'gravity button,' mapped to Spacebar

-A basic cinemachine camera that tracks the player. This was initially using 'lookahead' but it didn't feel nice to me, may ask play testers for thoughts.

-A 'driver' that is a child object of the bike, causing game failure if they ever make contact with the ground. 

The anti gravity feature is my main gameplay draw and required a lot of work to get it to the place it is and I am still not fully happy with it. I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to learn how to get it to trigger on and off on press rather than hold.  There are parts of my code I'm not even sure are still necessary but I'm to scared to remove.  I spent quite a while learning how to use features I cant remember in the tutorials. Namely the 'torque' and 'clamp' features that are responsible for making sure my tilt controls don't turn the player into a beyblade. 

The gravity and rotation controls still require some tweaking to feel smooth, but at the very least they are 'fun' in their current state. 

I also learned to use Headers for better organisation when testing out making small changes in the inspector view for scripts. Such as my maxspeed or rotation force values, as I was changing them frequently to get the game to feel right and kept changing the wrong boxes.

Current To Do List

-Continue to tweak rotation and gravity controls

-Implement levels

-Implement a timer and scoring system based on said timer

-Add a goal asset that completes the level

-Possibly adjust camera for better view

-Add a script to track player 'flips' (360 rotations) that will decrease the in-game timer by flips performed to encourage silly gameplay

-Give the driver a smiley face :)

Attached to this devlog are an image of the testing chamber, as-well as two gifs of the prototype at different stages of progression as I was learning to implement the gravity functionality. Additionally I've included a screenshot of my controller script in the inspector view as I'm unreasonably proud of my organisation and discovery of headers.