Ringworld meets Wipeout - an experiment in acceleration

UPDATE:

Since I get an email about once a month from different people requesting info on how I did this, I've decided to upload the project so you can try it out for yourself.

Please note that this was one of my earliest projects and so it is messy to say the least. I tried to clean it up for the sake of clarity, but you are on your own figuring out how I got this to work. I honestly don't remember. Good luck, Wipeout-cloners!

Oh yeah, you guys are free to use the assets however you want. Track, ship, whatever. Just give me some credit if you think of it. Maybe a link to my site: http://www.sethburnette.com/

http://s93485377.onlinehome.us/UnityProjects/HoverShip.rar

NOTE: This is hosted on my personal site so if it disappears, blame the Unity forums. I've tried more than 5 times to attach the 23 mb rar file but the forum site here keeps crapping out.

 

The ship falls through the track after moving for a little while and the camera gets extremely wobbly. I tried the web player and the same thing happened there. However, it gave me a better view of the "lower track", which looks great. Nice job on the texturing.

 

Thanks for the feedback, Tim. I appreciate the compliment on the texturing.

Yeah, the camera is very basic compared to how I used to have it set up. Right now it's just parented to an empty game object that is attached to the ship with a spring joint.

As far as getting off the track, I'm curious, did you actually penetrate the geometry or just go over the edge? For some reason the camera does indeed go pretty crazy once you are off the track. I'll probably fix that with invisible collision or a teleport script that puts you back.

 

It sinks right through the center of the track whether I use boost or not. I somehow managed to sink through the lower track one time, too.

 

Ouch, I hadn't seen that on my intel chip mac or my low end pc. Are you using a PPC mac perchance?

 

Indeed! I am using a G5 PPC. Hmm...

 

not having that problem here (intel imac).

i really like the idea of having it on a giant halo - you get a great sense of depth space being able to see that far. will also be cool when you can see what obstacles track shifts are coming plan ahead.

few small crits:

- the spring camera effect should be more subtle slower. i think it travels too much is a too hyperactive.

- IMO the speed should be at least twice as fast for this type of game.

well done so far : )

 

Tim, if you would indulge me, see if this one works for you. Just added back in that script from the wiki that is supposed to prevent collision pass-through like that.


And thanks, drJones. Now you can see what I was going for with the camera FOV shift. Faster, eh? Why not.

 

Unfortunately, that did not help. I think the ship sunk through sooner, if anything.

 

Weird. Well, thanks for helping me narrow it down. If anyone else reading this knows, could it be an update order difference in the chipsets? I think I have all my physics based scripting set to FixedUpdate, but could that be bad? Or has someone else run across penetration issues like this that show up in PPC macs but not Intel macs?

 

That's how you're generally supposed to do it, so no. Haven't seen anything like that on my PPC Mac, sorry.... (But yeah, this does the same thing here so it definitely seems to be a PPC issue.)

--Eric

 

I am using a PPC Dual G4 and this error has showed up every time i played except the first time, in V1, V2 all times.
Camera don't go crazy when i fall down, it just works normally except for when i try to go on thoose big walls at the sides...

Filiph

 

Interesting. Thanks for the feedback. I'll cut a few things out script-wise, and share the 'neutered' variants to see where the offender is. Then I can go from there.

 

Ok, here's a UB build with no faux gravity scripts active. I just wanted to see if those are the culprits. That will help narrow it a bit either way. If someone with a PPC mac would be so nice as to check it out I would be very grateful. You should collide properly with the track but you'll notice that you don't stay oriented with it as you go up. Or you'll just go through like before. Either way, please let me know.

Thanks.

 

Tests were unsuccessful - the ship went nearly straight through both tracks. It noticeably collided with the lower track once and then afterwards sunk through.

 

Thanks again for testing, Tim. That really helps. Now I know it's something in one of my custom scripts or game objects and not the faux gravity.

I appreciate it.

 

Here's a question unrelated to the PPC issue.

Is there anything I can do about the depth sorting issues that seem to show up when playing the web player in windows as opposed to OSX? See the attached examples. Beyond a certain distance the "shades" that rotate around the interior of the ring seem to be somewhat transparent in XP but nice and solid in OSX. I have fog on in the environment settings, dark fog that helped to give a little more depth, could that be the culprit?

Thanks.

 

That problem was discussed in another thread under "Unity Support", but no solution found yet. I am also waiting on a fix or comment about what to do.

Frank

 

Thanks, Frank. Fine news for me. That means it's not something stupid that I did.

 

I am currently creating a space shooter. And i have some torus or doughnut shaped asteroids... those are the only objects where the effect occurs... all other objects display as desired.

 

Ah, so maybe if I segmented it into separate objects... I'll experiment and let you know.

 

That would be great, but its definitely a bug that needs to be fixed.

 

I am also seeing a PPC/Intel divide in terms of collisions in my game... are you using configurable joints?

 

Whoa. Making it fullscreen, putting my head very close to the monitor and closing one eye, the sense of depth and speed is overwhelming.

Rune

 

Glad you like it, rune.

For smarcus: I don't think I ended up using a configurable joint. I'll have to open up the macbook later on and see for sure though.

 

You have recreated Ringworld. The fictional creation by science fiction author Larry Niven. Awesome!

 

Woot nice to see my script being used for something as nice as this.

I'm not sure exactly how you're using this, but you might like to look at the spin gravity thread:

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=13934

Seem to be that "up" is gradually drifting in the wrong position and the camera is getting misaligned.

I think some of the collision issues may simply be a result of your object moving *through* colliders between fixedupdates, so changing the fixedupdate rate may fix things.

 

hi

I'm looking to create a similar effect in a zero-g style racer. I tried your scripts podperson, but it seems to be pulling to position 0,0,0 rather than being attacted to a track. I'm sure I need to modify the script but can't see where. Has anyone had any joy with this kind of hover/rails racer style?

 

Since I get an email about once a month from different people requesting info on how I did this, I've decided to upload it so you can try it out for yourself.

Please note that this was one of my earliest projects and so it is messy to say the least. I tried to clean it up for the sake of clarity, but you are on your own figuring out how I got this to work. I honestly don't remember. Good luck, Wipeout-cloners!

Oh yeah, you guys are free to use the assets however you want. Track, ship, whatever. Just give me some credit if you think of it. Maybe a link to my site: http://www.sethburnette.com/

http://s93485377.onlinehome.us/UnityProjects/HoverShip.rar

NOTE: This is hosted on my personal site so if it disappears, blame the Unity forums. I've tried more than 5 times to attach the 23 mb rar file but the forum site here keeps crapping out.

 

I'm just bumping the thread to make sure people see that there's a free project available before it sinks into the unsearchable netherworld of old topics.

 

Hey thanks for sharing, man

 

Glad to be of service. I realized that it was a dead project that I would never touch again. So why not just let people enjoy some simple assets and maybe make something cool from it, right?

Plus I couldn't remember well enough how I got it working to adequately answer the occasional Wipeout clone email request. Easier to just say "Here you go. Have at it."