► Racing Game Template ◄

Thank you, I do appreciate you saying that. I'm aiming to deliver a good product that can be useful for developers, that I can be proud of and that can stand out from the other assets of a similar type on the store

I'll update IK Driver 1.7 based on feedback as I go, same as previous versions. Once 1.7 is submitted that's all I really need to continue with the remake - it was not really possible to continue without the right AI and optimizations in place, the updated volume sensors were actually developed about a year ago but properly implemented as a functional form more recently.

 

I'm pleased to announce IK Driver 1.7 is now available, enjoy and let me know what you think!

Tutorials and docs will continue to be updated throughout the week, there were a good amount of inspector changes to the vehicle controller since vehicles now use ScriptableObject profiles - let me know if anyone has any questions so I can prioritize that topic.

Here's a short change log and a link to the updated manual:

https://www.turnthegameon.net/manuals/ik-driver/1.7/en/topic/introduction

• Added AI vehicle controllers.
• Added avatar torso leaning and improved steering animation quality.
• Added ScriptableObject profiles for vehicle controller, ai and input settings.
• Scripting run-time optimizations to improve performance overhead and reduce garbage collection.
• Updated documentation to cover all new content, details of all prefab settings and features, ScriptableObject use and variable details as well as created new tutorials for AI. This is still a work in progress and will be updated daily until it's complete; let me know if you have a question about something that's changed or new if it's not updated yet.
• Changed asset category to complete project - required due to custom layers being used by AI sensors.
• Upgrading a project from a previous version to the new version is not supported, there have been too many changes to the prefabs, scripting logic and references.
• Minimum supported Unity version for IK Driver 1.7 is Unity 2018.1.6 - IK Driver 1.6.8d will remain available for previous Unity versions.


-- What's next?

The IK Driver asset itself has come a long way since it's initial creation as a drop in avatar for vehicle controllers with the Racing Game Template - In short it was at one point a very primitive asset. Since then I have learned a lot and recieved a great deal of feedback; with that time the animation quality has improved greatly, the vehicle controller has been refined and optimized to demonstrate a near high quality implementation of the avatar as a human driver for unity vehicles that does most all of what you might expert it to do like look, steer, shift, brake, clutch and accelerate with the appropriate body parts (there's still room for improvement, I'm still not done). A complete mobile controller has also been created and optimized to allow for high quality drag and drop vehicle controllers on any platform. This release marks a new milestone development achievement with the addition of optimized AI vehicles that can use multiple routes to allow for changing lanes for obstacle avoidance or new paths!

The 1.7 version cycle will continue to iterate and improve on established systems as well as be used as the default included player controller for the Racing Game Template remake. The changes made up until now have allowed me to create a modular vehicle asset that has all the functionality it needs to stand on it's own - this will allow me to focus on systems, menus and game types for the remake of the racing game project and keep the 2 assets separate from the beginning; making changes to a vehicle controller prefab will no longer require me to dig through menu systems to support that change. The approach for systems in the racing game project's remake will be designed in a modular way as well, since it won't require the included vehicle controller you will be able to swap out alternate physics or player controllers; although you will need your own AI for whatever alternate controller you would choose.

 

New tutorial to setup an AI vehicle on a route with IK Driver 1.7

 

Next IK Driver tutorial that picks up where the previous AI route tutorial left off, this covers using the Waypoint Junction Points to create additional route paths that AI vehicles can merge or change lanes into with the help of their detection sensors.

 

Hi, the Racing Game Template simulation looks really great and I would like to use it on my game.
But the problem is that my game does not need racing simulation but I want AI cars just runs around the track.

I'm sure there are other users like me who want the car to race around the road.

Yeah, I can just use IKDriver for it to follow the path but it's a bit too boring and Racing Game Template will be much better.

Could you please support AI mode where it can be used in a background scene?
In other words, I would like to set it up without UI and Player car but it looks like it requires both in order for the Template to work.


Thanks for your support. ^^

 

Hi Chris,

Yes, the template is a bit hard-coded together, and that's the main reason why I started over with 2.0 instead of continuing adding on to it.

IK Driver should be able to do all of what the template AI vehicles can do on its own - except participate in an actual race with position/lap tracking. They are almost identical code bases except IK Driver's vehicle controller and AI is redeveloped to be more optimized and have more customization options.

I'm not sure if by boring you mean the vehicles drive style / physics settings?

If so, IK Driver was configured by default to drive in a more stable/normal way to give users a good baseline for a default car. The drive style can be the same way as the racing template with adjustments - although it's not very apparent where to go in IK Driver or what to do right now to get them to be similar; I'm working on improving this.

The next update for IK Driver (1.7.3 still a WIP) will have a new demo scene and tutorial using a race track with separate pit areas for each car. Triggering a bool on an AI vehicle will cause the vehicle to navigate to its pit area and come to a stop for a duration then resume driving and make its way back to the track.

After that, IK Driver 1.7.4 will focus on adding wheel profiles. Part of this will allow you to more easily apply various wheel physics settings to each vehicle. Once this is in place I plan on setting up a few vehicle profile sets (AISettings, DriveSystemSettings, and WheelSettings) to create more types of available driving styles out of the box.

The main difference between the vehicles in each asset is that IK Driver wheel collider friction values are more stiff or provide more traction. Racing Game Template wheel collider settings friction values are looser, allowing the cars to have more of a slide to them.

One of the primary goals with 1.7.4 profiles will be to provide a few more available driving style options by default.

If you're thinking something else let me know and I can try to get there too.

 

Hi, thanks for the detailed answer, I'm just comparing the current versions. IKDriver seems to drive just along the path but RGT has the ability to drive around the other cars and go in reverse as well. Are you planning on having the two drive mechanics into one? If so, I can just use IKDriver for my project.

I just set IKDriver with two paths and it behaves a little better but there is one problem.
Sometimes the car seems to slow down a lot even though "AI Speed Factor" is set to 1.
I'm not sure what is causing it. I raised the path well above the ground to make sure the path doesn't penetrate the ground but it makes no difference.

Thanks for the help.

 

I have a lot of significant fixes made for 1.7.3 and some sound exactly like what you're experiencing. 1.7.2 has some fixes too, but I feel like it's been stuck in review for a bit now; at this point I feel like I'll finish 1.7.3 before 1.7.2 is approved...

One of the fixes specifically is the slow down (I had an AI Setting value inverted). I attached a screenshot, without scripting changes, you can try changing Caution Max Angle to 163; but that might not do the trick completely.

I think you've messaged me by email in the past, if so just ping me again with the invoice number and I can forward you 1.7.3 - just keep in mind it's a wip so something's may not be right, I still need to finish the pit feature and do a round of testing. In this version the random slowdown is fixed.

 

AI can't reverse in either asset, that might be an illusion... unless I completely forgot that I added it. I might try to add AI reverse to IK Driver at the end of development, but I don't have plans right now - I'd rather get the templates remake out first.

RGT AI rotates and tries to adjust the path line target offset to avoid, and only uses raycasts (thin detection lines with many gaps), this often causes undesired behavior.

IK Driver AI changes lanes based on volume sensor detection data and distance which will almost always detect what you need it to for the car to make an intelligent decision; I consider this a huge advancement compared to RGT AI.

With the right waypoint settings, and some recent fixes and improvements that will be available soon, I think AI from IK Driver can be much better than RGT's demo. Once profiles are ready from IK Driver 1.7.4, I can work to setup a more intense AI race simulation.

 

Hi, actually changing Caution Max Angle to lower value(1.0f) makes it much better.

Yeah, there is reverse in RGT when the vehicle cannot move forward. It's pretty cool behavior and we should keep it. ^^
It is already good and I'm really looking forward to the future update.

BTW, how expensive all the AI calculation? Have you done some benchmark test for many vehicles? It seems not so cheap since there are many sensors.

Cheers!

 

Cool, glad you got them driving better..

I'll put this request on the list, it will likely not be started until RGT 2.0 is out.

The 2 assets have the same amount of sensors by default, but RGT has more available total to improve the simulation but at a performance cost; IK Driver has 11 sensors, RGT has 11 sensors enabled by default (RGT has 5 additional forward and all 9 rear sensors - so 14 disabled, 11 enabled).

Both have a float value used to set the sensor update interval. So instead of every frame you can update sensors every 0.1 seconds for example. The more vehicles you have the more expensive it is, adjusting update intervals can help you do a bit more.

I have not stress tested on lower end devices yet (maybe after the next couple updates I can make a mobile demo); but compared to RGT, the AI scripts in IK Driver had a lot of attention to performance optimization (example of another major improvement is caching almost all runtime variables to prevent GC).

Overall, I expect IK Driver to be much more performance friendly. I'll try to setup a larger scale scene that can fit more cars soon.

Can I ask how many cars are you looking to simulate?

 

Hi, thanks for the reply again. You are really a friendly developer and I appreciate it. ^^

I have 4k terrain and there is a road going around the whole map, therefore more vehicles would be better to fill the void.
I guess, if there is a way we can lower the number of sensors and disable the wheel simulation when the distance is larger than a certain value, it will help, don't you think? Iike a LOD system?

Thanks.

 

Thanks, I appreciate your comment and the feedback too. You've provided some very useful insight.

I'll try to setup a feature to auto populate cars on routes soon.. which might be useful in a case like this.. I had not thought of a simulation that large of scale.

The wheel colliders are responsible for making the car move so those will need to stay on.. but perhaps having 2 new options to toggle off wheel meshes and the update to them that makes them in sync with the colliders based on camera distance for LOD is a very good idea. After the next set of features is complete I can look into that too. Audio processing may not be as important in your case either.. I can check on that too.

If your vehicles are never seen close up, you can toggle most of these systems off or remove them from your prefab (screen shot attached):

AvatarRig
Mirrors
Lights
Particles
Dashboard Canvas

 

Eventually I will have a simulation setup in this scene for Racing Game Template remake.

 

Cool! I already took it off. ^^

It's really fun watching them driving around the road.
Thanks a lot!

 

Thanks for the video. Please keep them coming and I'm really excited for v2.

 

I'm looking into purchasing your racing game template for a driving game I'd like to make. I watched the promo video and had a question regarding the "upgrade" menu. My game uses upgraded parts for off-road vehicles, like various doors (full door, half door, soft door, no door, etc), hoods, suspension lift, tires, wheels, etc. How hard would it be to modify that menu so that it shows these types of options, along with sprites for the different parts?

Your RGT looks amazing.

 

Hi there, thanks for the question and compliment!

The menu screens exist as part of the garage scene canvas, there's nothing dynamic or too complex going on with them, they are all basically hard coded UI objects in the garage scene that get toggled on/off. I attached a screenshot to give you an idea.

On the main garage menu window screen, you can add a new UI button, and make a script to handle your screen transition to the new parts screen, or use the built in UI button inspector options to toggle the main screen off and the parts screen on. From there just create any logic to handle your screen and how you want to save the data.

There's a bit of a helper API in the template to help get/set the variable data you'll need for the screen.

Code (CSharp):

1. int vehicleNumber = RGT_PlayerPrefs.GetVehicleNumber(); // returns current selected vehicle
2. int currency = RGT_PlayerPrefs.GetCurrency (); // returns current player currency
3.  
4. int newCurrencyAmount = currency - partPurchasePrice; // subtract part price from current currency
5. RGT_PlayerPrefs.SetCurrency (newCurrencyAmount); // set the new currency amount after a part purchase

 

Thanks for the quick response, that's very helpful info and thanks so much for the c# code! I can totally handle any coding so I'm really glad you offer full source rather than DLL's.

I was doing a little research regarding MP networking and I see that uNet is deprecated. Do you have any plans to update your code, or has this been done, or what's the plan for your asset regarding this; since I see you mention uNet in description? Thanks!

 

also...

My plan is to make an off-road game using my own tracks and my own 4x4 vehicles along with NWH Vehicle Physics: (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/physics/107332). I see you "work with" Edy's car physics, so I thought it should probably work with others no problem, but figured I'd ask. Second, since this is for mobile I probably won't have an IK driver(s), do you see a problem with using your asset without one?

 

I started with Unity, just like almost everyone else, using assets from the store. I ran into a lot of limitations from authors who only published a DLL. There were just so many small things I wanted to change and was unable, whicj severily limits what you can do with an asset. That's pretty much how I started publishing, since I needed to re-write stuff from scratch due to that limitation anyway. I believe all publishers should provide source without a customer needing to ask or without asking the customer to pay a premium for that version; especially if a user wants to maintain the project with Unity updates - DLL's using deprecated code simply do not allow this.

I was really excited when Unet was announced and extremely disappointed when unet was discontinued. I adopted the library into the RGT workflow when it was in beta and undocumented. Even early on after it's release there were some major unet bugs that required overriding lower level methods, and digging through their source code to get everything to work properly. Unet was a LOT of work to make happen in the template, I always hoped to build up from it, now that it's gone that dream is just dead; in the end I spent so much time and did not see benefits like increased sales. I'm not sure why unity introduced Unet, then killed it so quickly. Maybe sometimes big companies don't want you to know their short comings, which in my case resulted in me thinking it would be here forever.. I learned a huge lesson with utilizing a third party service, don't rely on them in your products as they may become obsolete.

Because of my experience with this, which was ultimately a huge waste of time (I truly thought a Unity branded multiplayer service built into the engine would be here to stay), so I have no plans to work with third party multiplayer services moving forward. There's just no guarantee that they will still exist in the near future.

Now I prefer to spend the large amounts of development time into features that I can keep forever, not features that are at risk to be deprecated by Unity or a third party.

 

NWH is not supported in the current version of RGT - though you can likely get it to work with some effort.

If you reference the EVP integration package scripts and prefabs, as they illustrate all the necessary rewiring done for that controller, then map it to NWH instead, although I don't know how much more might need to change for AI, and other things I might not be thinking of.

In the future, you'll be able to swap the player vehicle for any type of player controller in the remake; though the remake still needs a good amount of time before it's ready to be released.

 

Great decision on your part, and I couldn't agree more.

Makes perfect sense and certainly the best direction for your asset.

I will, thanks for including the reference to Edy's setup.

Do you mean much past late Feb/early March (which I thought you mention in a previous post)

Thanks for the support Stephen.

 

I still don't have an ETA; My current focus is cleaning up IK Driver and working on its latest feedback for AI features which just released.. IK Driver has been where all the work over the past year+ has taken place. Once AI is polished, it's pretty much done, then I can get back to the template. I'm wrapping up a pit stop feature right now, then will do some lite work on the vehicle's profiles (specifically wheels) before I move on.

IK Driver will be the base of the remake, a lot of limitations of the vehicle controller and AI from RGT were being resolved in that asset. A proper demo environment for the remake has already been made, this will allow me to create more types of examples for the template.

This pretty much leaves the reaming work for the template remake as: designing new UI, designing new race modes, configuring examples - all the fun and easier to accomplish tasks in my opinion.

The remake will allow most everything to be modular, meaning that vehicles will likely only need a component attached to them to be a player vehicle. So to use any other physics package's vehicle for the player will be trivial; AI will be more complex, I don't think I can write a one size fits all AI solution with the level of AI functionality that I've built - there's just not enough time in a day for me to accomplish it.

I do work a real full time development job which is pretty taxing on my brain, and I do the Unity Asset Store work in my spare time which is not much.. but I make of it what i can, working on the most important foundation pieces first. My primary goal is to finish this project so I can actually work on my own game .

 

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions Stephen. I know how hard it is to finish the asset when you're working full-time. I'll keep this asset at the top of my list, will possibly purchase sometime in the near future. I just don't want to commit when I know it takes a long time to develop next release.

 

No problem, I'd prefer that no one buy my assets based on what they think I will do in a future update if the current version does not help achieve any goals.

 

Hi I just looked at the edys phyics video like you said to do. I got everything done except when I hit play and went to free roam the car didn't move. It gave me this error.

UnassignedReferenceException: The variable wheelCollider of RG_SyncData has not been assigned.
You probably need to assign the wheelCollider variable of the RG_SyncData script in the inspector.
RG_SyncData.Update () (at Assets/TurnTheGameOn/Racing Game Template/Scripts/Multiplayer/RG_SyncData.cs:49)

I can hear the sound of the engine and see the tires moving the car itself just doesn't move. Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks so much.

 

Hi @Shigidy,

I just tested in a fresh 2018.3.0 project and followed the steps from the video, I don't have any errors. I'm able to load into free roam and the city race, the car's driving fine on my end.

 

Hi, I tried again with a new project and got the exact same results with the same error. Have you ever heard of team viewer. It's a program that allows you to share my computer and you could make the change it needs to fix it. Sorry I'm having issues. Thanks for the quick response earlier.

 

I'm not available for connecting directly to provide support.

I was able to produce some errors if I omit the step from the video at 2:07 (Opening Player Cars menu)

I think all you need to do is make sure to open the Player Cars menu and verify that EVP Support is enabled.

I believe this flag's event trigger is not being auto initialized, causing integration settings to not be accurate.

 

Here's how to adjust waypoints:

• You can open the Waypoints menu from the race scene's Scene Manager object RaceManager script.
• Enable Configure Mode
• Set the TotalWaypoints to the amount of waypoints you want.
• Disable Configure Mode

I attached a screenshot and video tutorial, at around 10:30 in the video tutorial I demo how to adjust waypoints.

 

Thanks so much man, I've got one another question? I go to lobby manager, garage ui, and then to race windows. However, I can't find the race window button for circuit hills. I'm trying to find it, but all I see is this.



Please help me again. I changed the review on the product page. I really like your product and I really like your service and I really like you.

I can't find a way to change the race name text and the race name picture. It's not like it was in the video.

 

I demonstrate how to do this in the "Adding New Race Tracks and Waypoints" video I linked above, it's the first thing I do: changing the race name, image and scene is covered between 0:00 and 3:30.

 

IK Driver 1.7.3 is almost done, just need to do some final testing and cleanup new variables inside inspectors a bit then I can submit..

Here's a preview of the new pit stop feature in the AI cars on race track with pit lane demo scene:

 

RCC support?

 

No, EVP is currently the only alternate controller that's supported.

 

Hey, I'm trying to follow the add your own car tutorial and I can't figure it out. I'm using the rocket bunny car from game ready 3d. I've tried following the video but can't figure it out. Is there any chance you could help me out or possibly make a new updated video. Thanks a million.

 

Nothing has really changed to require a new vehicle creation video, all steps would be the same. Have you tried the latest video? That uses a Game Ready 3D model.

 

A new AI cars tutorial is now available: Configuration Breakdown - AI Cars on Race Track with Pit Lane Demo

 

Hey man, I think I've added a car like the tutorial teaches but I can't figure out how to make it in the garage. Is there anyway you could possibly teach me this. Also I couldn't figure out how to get it to actually work in the game scene. When I hit play it uses the same car that I had pre-selected in the garage scene. Thanks a million.

 

I probably should have listed video 3 in this list for you too, sorry about any confusion..

1. This video walks through the entire setup process in detail for customizing the vehicle and get it working:

2. This video shows a faster setup process using the configuration workflow improvements (the 'Update Additional Wheel Settings Button' which automates positioning the wheel colliders and meshes):

3. This video shows the final garage/game scene implementation using the RGT Project Editor Window:

If you did everything in the last video link I posted (video 2 from this list), then you should only need to do the final configurations done from video 3 to complete your setup.

 

When does version 2 come out?

 

I'm currently wrapping up minor updates based on feedback form the latest AI update to the base vehicle package.

The next step is to start using it to write the new gameplay modes and create UI to use them.

I don't have an ETA yet, I'll make a post when it's getting close to submission.

 

Hi is there a photon pun racing template that I can add to this game kit ?

 

Hi, sorry there is no PUN support.

 

IK Driver 1.7.4 is now available.

• Added IKD_WheelSettings profiles. These profiles allow you to easily configure custom skid trail prefabs to be used for different vehicles and ground surfaces. Documentation link
• Fixed a bug where calling stop driving on ai vehicles would not work properly if they did not use a pit stop.

This marks the completion of planned updates for AI & Player Cars with IK Drivers.

The next asset update/release will be the initial version of the full remake for Racing Game Template - I don't imagine this will take me too long in comparison to the vehicle controller work I've done over the last year; I just need to make UI screens, setup game modes and some logic for that and use the city environment and player and AI cars I've worked on. Everything is starting to come together now.

The biggest point of negative feedback I had for the original template was lack of out-of-the-box controller support for the UI - that will be sorted out from the start. I just ordered an xbox one controller for windows development and testing so that will be supported out of the box this time.

3 additional assets will be included in the new template remake to help add more ways to create gameplay without needing to code:

• AI & Player Cars with Procedurally Animated IK Drivers - used as the default player and AI controllers.
• NPC Chat Dialogue and Event Trigger System - used to provide trigger areas in open world scenes and game dialogue/instructions.
• Timers & Clocks - used to create custom timed events.

I'll post more details as I make progress, feel free to ask questions or provide additional feedback as this is the best time to do so.

 

Notice:

Unity 2019.1 no longer supports Unity Networking (UNET). Because of this, the current version of the template is only supported in Unity 2018.4 LTS or earlier. A remake is in development to be used with Unity 2019.1.

I changed the Unity version target to not include 2019.1 - this should prevent 2019 users from trying to import the package, but I'm not sure if it actually works.

The remake is my main focus right now, I hope to have it available in less than 60 days. It will be a free upgrade.

 

Hi,
unet is no more available in Unity 2019 and up, so will you plan to add Photon racing system support to RGT in version 2.0?
Will RGT v2.0 work with RCC 3.2?
Thank you

 

Hello,

No, there are no plans for photon at this time; I'm very sad UNET is deprecated because I spent so much time figuring it all out and getting it working only for Unity to shut it down; I thought it was safe to invest time supporting a Unity service, but I was very wrong. I will no longer support any services due to that risk.

The way I'm setting things up is to have the template not rely on included vehicle controller scripts at all, as an example, the remake will use an intermediate script attached to the player controller prefab to handle anything that needs to be updated at runtime based on settings, etc..

If you want to use your own player controller (like RCC) you will need to code a little by editing the player script accordingly to work with that controller.. This script will have all the events, etc go through it for the player, you'll just need to point them to the proper variables/methods on your controller instead. It will be much easier to swap player controllers in the remake due to this design change.

I don't have a way to setup my AI with other publishers controllers due to the complexity of it, but this prefab will be setup similar to the player controller - everything that RGT does with the AI car will go through a top level script on the prefab. You'll likely need some good scripting/unity experience if you want to replace AI.

 

AI and Player Cars Version 1.7.5 is now available.

Many changes were made with this update as I prepared the player controller to be used in the remake of Racing Game Template. The initial platform I'm focused on building for is Standalone, with the default supported input being Keyboard or Xbox One Controller - control with both input types is now fully defined and available out of the box with the default input setup.

Some other misc fixes, features and optimizations have also been made, major changes are listed here:

• Moved current asset package into Unity version 2018.4 LTS
• Remove asset from complete projects section - added various packages that can be imported to configure required input and tag/layer settings.
• Fix missing delegate in RCC support script that caused an error when imported.
• Update some default vehicle settings through testing while configuring them to be used in the racing game template remake.
• Add 'Drag Override' option to 'Vehicle Settings'. This option allows you to set min and max drag and angular drag values for the vehicle - while the vehicle is accelerating the min drag would be applied and while accelerating the max drag would be applied. The purpose of enabling this option would be to allow the player car to slow down a bit when the acceleration key is released to provide greater control of the car to the player.
• Disable neon light by default.
• Adjust collider transform position and scale to better fit the car.
• Improve IKD_PlayerInputSettings, all inputs are now defined by string names and mapped to project input axes. Enum to select ui type (none, standalone, mobile).
• Player vehicle can be fully controlled by Xbox One Controller.
• Added keyboard and xbox one controller InputManager packages.
• Added AvatarSettings ScriptableObject to control profile settings; create and configure appropriate profiles for each prefab type.
• Added simple camera rotation to chase camera, allows the player to pan camera around from left to right side vehicle.

Some inspectors have changed as well, documentation will be updated over the next day or so..