Turbo-Charged Racing!

I created this project as part of my second year 'Native Programming and Compilation' module. We were given the task to create a game which could run on the Xbox One and be put onto the Microsoft Store. This involved making sure the game could run as a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app.

I decided to work on a genre I didn't know much about for this project in order to expand my knowledge base about different kinds of games. I landed on a simple racing game with 2 different modes - A 3-lap race between the player and AI opponent & a 5-lap time trial.

The game was designed with an Xbox controller in mind and therefore is unable to be played with a keyboard at this time.

TimeTrialTCR

1/5

The 3-lap race against an AI was quite challenging as it involved getting an AI to follow a set of waypoints which would allow it to look like it was driving around the track. This had to be balanced so that the player still had a chance to overtake. There were some overarching problems that even now the game still has due to time restraints, such as the AI getting stuck in places. I fixed this by allowing the AI to teleport to the next waypoint when they get stuck however this caused issues when the player noticed the teleport happen. This is something I would go back and overhaul so that the experience was smoother. I also incorporated a mini-map within the game, something I had not known how to do previously. For the boosting mechanic, I decided to take inspiration from the 'F-Zero' game series. In these games, boost is gained by completing laps.

The 5-lap time trial was an additional mode I decided to add for completeness. It uses Unity's player preferences system to save the best time even when the game is closed and reopened. I added this mode so I could demonstrate my knowledge of different kinds of racing games, and so that there was variety in the gameplay which otherwise could have been quite samey.

In this project I was able to demonstrate a lot of different skills while learning about a genre of game that I would not normally be interested in playing. The feedback gained for this project from my peers was mostly positive with the majority saying the game felt smooth and enjoyable to play. As such I am quite proud of the product I was able to create.