RAD Kart Racers

Embarking on the journey of game development is an exhilarating endeavor, and for college students delving into the realm of Unity, integrating local multiplayer functionality can be both thrilling and daunting. While you might not be an expert yet, facing the challenges of local multiplayer head-on can provide valuable lessons and insights. 1.  Networking Adventures: Don't let the term "networking" intimidate you. It simply means making sure your game runs smoothly for all players. In local multiplayer, you'll need to figure out how to sync everyone's actions on the screen. Start with Unity's tutorials on networking, and gradually build your skills. 2.  Controller Confusion: Understanding how different controllers work and making them play nicely together is like solving a puzzle. Start small by integrating support for a couple of popular controllers, like Xbox or PlayStation ones. Unity's Input System can be your friend here, simplifying the process. 3....

 Learning From Past Mistakes and Moving Forward By: Pedro Colon Hello all, Pedro here from Crystal Eyes! Now you may be wondering what this blog would be about but do not worry, the beta month has went well super well in comparison to last month. Communication was much better and tasks were done in quite a productive manner. A lot more tasks were done than before I feel and I feel the current build of the game is coming quite a bit. However, there are still some issues with the build to where next month, we are really going to pull over selves to full gear and really make it the best we can. So what went wrong and what went right? What Went Right: Honestly quite a bit. Our communication as a team is much better I feel. As a team, we knew what our tasks were and what we are supposed to do. And we got quite a bit of tasks done, so much so it felt like we were a cohesive unit. The only thing I lament is not being able to do more meetings but this will be fixed next month (will talk mo...

 Fixed 2 bugs in one function     For a while I was having trouble with both having the kart not move towards the node while in the air and resetting the AI after being stuck for the 3 seconds. At first I was trying to do an OnCollision check for the AI. If it's colliding with the track and if not set a bool to false then turn off the movement but it didn't work and it would just stop in place. For the kart resetting after being stuck took the longest. I tried resetting the position if the kart is stuck at a certain rotation but then I was using the wrong variable to get what I want and there was a time the AI got stuck in an infinite loop in the air.     After a weeks of research, trial, and error I managed to fix both bugs by putting them in the FixedUpdate() function. I was already trying to make the kart not move if it's in the air but I guess I was doing it at the wrong spot for it to work properly. For the reset I didn't need to do so much work than I thou...

 AI bugs coming from one problem      Again I have bugs to fix related to how the nodes are positioned but it's not as bad as before. There would be nodes that I accidentally miss that I didn't notice until I already pushed. The other night it turns out there was a node that was inside the track which wasn't there before. I think I still notice the AIs doing a little hop because the node it's trying to get to is a little too high. The nodes still needs polishing so the AIs can look like they're actually driving.     I already have good understanding on how everything works. So what I can do to make the AIs look cleaner is again keep working on the nodes and adding even more. I can't forget about having brake zones but adding too many will have the AIs have trouble keeping up with the player. It's probably best to have them at corners and such to make it more believable. 

 A Revision of The Hud Pedro J Colon HUD has been a video game stable for quite awhile. Heck, some entire games are entirely HUD focused. One way or another, HUD will come into play. Because of this, we need a HUD that is able to detail information necessary for the player. So lets deep dive into this: Previous HUD: The previous HUD used prior was a placeholder. For a long while, we had used it since it would allow us to have something in the screen and get some functionality working for the HUD. However, there was quite a few things off about it. For one, it looked somewhat clutter. Not all the boxes are being used as they should and even then, we probably didn't need most of them, such as player icons to the left. While it would be okay-ish if we used them, in the end, it could have been improved upon. After all, this was placeholder. So what did change? New HUD: What did change was this: For this, we simply got rid of the stuff we no longer needed, cleaning up a ton to allow mor...

 The Pros with Singleton and Scalability Pedro Colon A Different Kind of Blog This blog is going to be a little different. Rather than talking about a problem, we are going to talk about the pros of a good foundation can give us when adding in new tasks within the project. And that good foundation is our singleton for the Audio Manager. But first what is a singleton? To be quick, a singleton uses a public static instance to allow it to be called by other scripts without having to get a reference. I will say, this is not the go to pattern to use (granted no pattern is the go to but singleton can easily make things go haywire fast), but singleton works really for objects you don't want to be destroyed and carry over between scenes. One thing I have used it for is the Audio Manager. While I could just place a new Audio Manager between every scene, I found it would be redundant and more than likely another object needed to load and would just waste time with the engine to always load a...

Fixing A Game Breaking Bug or How I Learned to Love The Observer Pattern By Pedro Colon  Wooooo boy, this took a bit. Technically-as the time of this writing-I am not completely done with fixing the game breaking bug BUT for the most part the system is working as intended (for the most part), just need to start placing it around the current tracks we have for the game. So what was- The Problem! The problem is honestly quite simple. When the player starts, they are able to turn back and hit the lap three times to end the race in seconds. This is obviously not great for a kart racing game as this would just be game breaking as seen below: This is bad, like just bad. Absolutely unfun and unsatisfying for everyone involved.  So now the question is, how did I manage to get the bug fixed? The answer is quite simple: A design pattern known as the Observer Pattern. Observer Pattern is The Best! I am not kidding when I say that the observer pattern is awesome. I remember in one of my c...