Physics car
A small project about learning something specific in game development
May 2024 - June 2024
Project discription
For this project at school we needed to chose something specific in game development, for example gravity or input and then make a game about that.
The project that I made was about learning the physics of unity by making a car collide with anything in the world hence the name physics car.
As you can see later in one of the images, we had a total of 7 lessons to make this game (every lesson is 3 hours).
Review
At first i thought this project would be fun and easy to do, but the tables turned 180 degrees and the fun factor into the minus. Why was this? It is because working with physics is just that confusing, but after I finished this project and looked back at it I had still enjoyed making it.
I have absolutely learned some things about how to work with the physics in unity, but there is still more to learn for me
Process
Day one
I started with trying to find out what thing I wanted to learn, So after some looking trough internet i came with the idea to work with physics. Then I thought of a way to work with physics and found making a car would be a good idea
I launched a new unity project and looked for things to work with, as in what colliders and how to make to car drive
When i found wheel colliders i thought it would be a good idea to work with that
Day two
Adding the wheel collider and the rigidbody I immidiatly noticed that working this was not gonna simple. As you can see in the photo above things were not looking the best
Days three to five
In these three days I was mostly trying all kinds of different things to make the car
drive normally
fall normally
not go through the ground
have grip on the floor
the wheels staying in place
accelerating at the right speeds
go at least a decent amount of speed
steering at normal speeds
not tumbling over when turning
Days six and seven
After finally finding a good way to have all of the requirements for the car (not everything but most of them)
I concentrated on refining everything so it would feel more natural to drive. After some testing and letting others play too I was finally happy(enough) with what I had.
Days eight and nine
When the car was completed I actually needed things to interact with otherwise it would have been useless making this thing.
So I added some balls with different kinds of weight, Some ramps, terrain walls to make to player not fall into the void and a small ui so you can see how fast you are.
I had some time left before the project ended to I also added a ball spawner which will have balls that live temporary and a spinning bar kind of thing so you would be launched but that did not work sadly.