January 2026

I did a little more of the track, and then we started making mood boards and Trello boards.

For the track I sometimes snap extruded verticies to the road to give me a line to create a face.

I finished (for the most part) modelling the terrain. I then applied materials to different parts, thinking about what textures could only need horizontalness and therefore I could stack vertically. I also fixed some N-gons by selecting "Faces by Sides" "Greater Than 4".

I still need to UV map the future textures to the walls and such, but I'll do that once the textures are available. I will also need to have some planes to hide the back-faces instead of topping them off, to make it more N64 than Wii.

I also briefly made the grass texture with hair particles on a plane, and an area light in a lightless void. I think I'm going to need to change the lighting because it is lighter in the middle; so, kind of a donut light would be better.

I also added a bunch of specific tasks to Trello to coordinate my team; a list of various assets.

I started by making the grass more tessellate-able. First I tried to put all of the colour variation in the centre and "bleach" the edges; but that didn't help much, it was still an obvious tessellation. Then I had a look a what "Mario Kart 64" and "Beetle Adventure Racing" did; it wasn't clear at first, but then I broke it down to there being more "white noise" and less shape in the textures. So I made my material more noisy, and made the two noise textures be the same scale at different locations for randomness. To finalise the material I reduced the contrast between the two noise texture to create a softer grass texture. I then exported the PNG at full (lossless) compression and 8-bit colour depth; I chose 8-bit because although it's a 64-bit processor I want the textures to be less advanced; I reckon there's no perceivable difference though.

I decided to finally build the vehicle mechanics. So I looked for a tutorial on making a race-car, and after a few attempts I found a tutorial series by a YouTube channel called "Ryan Laley" where he builds a vehicle from scratch. (Unlike all of the other tutorials that use the vehicle template). (It was a pretty good tutorial series too, he didn't explain things as if I've never used a computer before).

First we made a brick that hovers with ray-casting. Then we added acceleration and reverse-acceleration. After that we added steering, and this is where I started adding things that weren't specified in the tutorial. 

I didn't like the tank-steering (I was fine with the vehicle rotating on the spot, but I didn't like how it steered backwards) so I added some node logic so that if the acceleration was less than 0, the steering would invert. For the steer-inverting code I ended up just copying everything for each output of the branches, because you can't do math directly with branches; I know there's a better way of doing it, but for now this works.

After that I started tidying up the code a little, adding message containers explaining what the things appear to do so that I could remember in the future, and to hopefully make Troy's life easier. I also added variables in some areas for ease and maybe future utilisation in external factors.

Then I decided to try and make a drift mechanic, and after some time trying I made the vehicle steer three times more sharply and slow down significantly faster when holding a drift button. There was one bug during that process where if you started drifting your steering controls would invert, so to fix that I added some logic that sees if the input acceleration is negative, and then sets the input acceleration to 0 if it is.

After all of that I imported the big track into a level and tested out the vehicle in a "real-world" setting, tweaking things that I didn't like.

In the future I will need to fix a bug where the acceleration doesn't hit 0 when you hit a wall, the vehicle slows down way too much when not touching the ground, and it easily rolls over when driving up steep slopes (maybe there's a way to clamp the rotation).

I continued to follow the tutorial and added a boost pad system and a simple AI system for opponents.

The boost pad was quite simple, and the AI can sort of drive on the crude spline that I had mapped out. Often the AI vehicle will drive into a wall and not reverse, but I think that's a future tutorial. For the boost pad the tutorial even briefly covered how to make a scrolling texture.

I had also learned how to clamp things using the nodes with a little help from a YouTuber called "UE BP GURU"; I clamped the X and Y rotation to prevent the vehicle from driving up the wall and into space, making it more stable.

One issue that I had with the AI is that it would often get seizures when hitting bumps or going round sharp corners. First I debugged this by measuring the player rotation values with the Print function and measuring the AI's rotation values; as the tutorial mentioned before, I found that the rotation was way too high, so I clamped the maximum and minimum AI steering value to ["Player Rotation Speed" X 1,000,000] and [-1 X "Player Rotation Speed" X 1,000,000] which stopped the AI from over-steering and freaking out.

I also added a little code that tips the nose of the vehicle down when it is not touching the ground to prevent flight; I did this by detecting if the vehicle is touching the ground and then shifting the centre of mass to what I assume is the back, which for some reason tips the vehicle forward.

There is still the issue that the AI isn't very good and that when you hit a wall you tend to start spinning out, so in the future I will need to fix that.

Today I added some hacky code that doubles the gravity if the player flies up too high, the gravity feels a bit harsh at times and feels like the wrong solution, but it mostly stops the player from flying into the atmosphere.

I also tweaked the suspension to sit lower to the ground and be softer.

After that I set the rotation inversion code to compare the acceleration input with  -0.05 rather than 0; this allows the player to rotate on the spot in the correct rotation, since no small negative numbers invert the controls.

After that I spent quite a bit of time trying to make the AI handbrake turn in sharp corners, which works perfectly at slow speeds, but the AI doesn't follow the spline but rather its rotation, so it often crashes. The AI also uses the handbrake too much, slowing itself down. Maybe I need to lerp the values so that spikes in data don't enable the handbrake?

After that I tried adding a frictionless physics material to the collision box, doing a surface level google search to learn what "Restitution" means, and then setting it to 0 with the combine mode being set to "min". This stops the vehicle from spinning out from collisions with walls, as restitution controls how bouncy the object is.

Today I improved some major game elements, and in the future I am going to need to fix the AI and allow the player to reverse immediately after hitting a wall.

I added a variable for completing all the laps, and I added a variable that can change the number of total laps.

Then I spent the rest of the day making spark effects for when you scrape stuff. I initially got line traces for the ground distance that would enable the visibility of the particles. Then I did the same for the sides, but by doing so the ground ones stopped working. There was something like a limit, so I tried combining everything into one function; but that still didn't work. So now I am trying to use collision boxes instead, but they hardly trigger/ stay triggered.

For the particle system I made a one-pixel texture and followed a tutorial on how to make spark particles. Then I found out how to make the colours change with time from a thread.

In the near future I am going to need to have the AI fixed, the item boxes functional, and the sparks functional.

Today I UV unwrapped all of the building material.

Initially I was just scaling and straightening the UVs and then moving the sides to match up with the edges of the texture. Then I realised that it would probably be best to straighen out the diagonals so that the textures didn't seem so warped; then I realised that there is a pattern at regular intervals of where all of the edges are, so I decided to merge them; after that I realised that the edges of the texture didn't alighn with the texture borders, so I applied a known symetrical texture and set all of the UV vertices to points of 0.5.

I have also decided tha maybe it would be easier to reuse textures for potential future models if I don't combine them together for performance, so I decided to separate the metal wall texture from the guard rail texture and UV the metal walls.

After that I then added some dead  ends with their own material.

In the future I am going to need to UV the roads, fences, and guard rails; and help out with the textures by making the chain-link fence and possibly creating a building template/ example to help make better materials.

Today I decided to create a second building model.

It is essentially a subdivided, inset cube with an empty interior containing one floor that has an emissive texture on the back wall. The door was just another subdivided, inset, extruded cube; technically two cubes that came from one. I also created more brushed metal materials with noise and displacement maps. One issue I faced was that the metal wall material looked really flat, so I added a subtle wave texture to make a lighter section in the middle and a darker section on the top and bottom. It is much more simple than John's  model, but I think it still works; hopefully my art style won't clash in the game.

I also did a bit of work on making a road material. Basically just squares and brick materials; at least so far. I often refer to the sci-fi mood board to get the feel for what something should look like.

Tomorrow I will either continue with the roads, or try to fix the AI; but I kind of want to do something more visually creeative.

Today I spent time working on the signs that block exits.

First I imported the current level into Unreal Engine and applied the materials. I didn't like how different faces had different shading from the directional light, so I set the light to 0 and added emission to all of the materials in order to see them; that seems like a janky way of doing things, I may need to consult Curtis.

John sent me what he had modelled for the sign, and I added a few pipes to it using curves and a "Curve to Tube" modifier. Then I cleaned up the animation and added an invisible cube for a boolean modifier in order to cut off the arrows on the edges; one issue that I encountered was that the animation would briefely stop at the end of the loop, but eventually I realised that I need to move a keyframe forward by one because I essentially had two identical frames at the start and end. After that I rendered the animation into 20 frames. Then I tried to bake the complex mesh into a diffuse texture, but it turns out that it only works with normals, so I rendered each significant side and spliced it together in GIMP; it is incredibly janky, but luckily it is low resolution, so it is not as noticeable and looks quite good. I tried to add the road barrier to Unreal Engine, but UE doesn't support GIFs and also doesn't support it's own image sequence and media player; it's bugged and I'm going to need to fix it.

Today I rendered the street light, created the tree fluff, and UV unwrapped/ moddeled all of the tree fluff into the track.

For the street light I downloaded the file from John, angled the camera how I want, added a light sphere, added a plane of glass material to catch the emission material's light, and added a box around that plane to stop the sphere light from bleaching the glass into a solid white. After I rendered the image, I placed it into GIMP and gave it a proper alpha by pipetting the colour and drawing each pixel of the post as a solid, and then making the light translucent and not black. When I first exported the image, I discovered that it had a lot of bright blue pixels in places that it shouldn't; so I added a black background for visibility to my project and made those pixels much more translucent.

Then I made a tree fluff texture with geometry nodes, like I did with the tree wall texture.

And then I started adding the fluff parts to the tree wall parts of the track. I did this by hiding every material that wasn't the tree wall, selecting all of the top edges of the tree wall sections, extruding them up three metres, cutting them out of the main mesh with "P"-"Selection", and then spending the rest of the day UV unwrapping and angling those new sections. At some point I also took some reference to see how fluffy the shrubbery of "Beetle Adventure Racing" is, after which I did some tweaks to the texture.

I really need to get back into coding the mechanics and fixing the AI.

Today I started by making an industrial building texture, and rendering all of the buildings with a top half, for the higher walls. I used the curve tool for the pipes, and a wave texture through a colour ramp into a displacement for a garage door material. When I rendered all of the textures, I stitched them vertically together in GIMP.

Then I finished UV unwrapping all of the dead-ends, re UV unwrapped the walls by moving the vertices down to n÷6. Then I selected the faces that I wanted to change and moved them up by 0.333  or 0.666.

Then I started cutting out the first level's mesh, removing any faces that wouldn't be seen by the player; looking down the roads to check.

After that I duplicated the mesh, removed the materials, and changed the mesh to act as the collision. Then I added a roof to the road collisions and used it as a Boolean that I inset into a cube; then I crudely retopologised the cube. The cube should hopefully stop players from accidentally clipping through.

In the future I can start building the first official level. But I also need a sci-fi warehouse and cathedral asset.

Today I 3D modelled a controller in order to annotate the buttons and inform players of the controls. I used reference images in Blender to trace a cube into the correct shape, added buttons and triggers by using cylinders and cubes, coloured the controller with the colours of an N64 controller, and then rendered it with spindles. I made the triggers larger in order for them to not be hidden by the bumpers.

I am happy with the controller; I think it looks cool. In the future I need to make the UI stuff, and obtain John's assets, among other things.

Today I created a roundabout asset, modified it's collision to not throw players in the air but me a noticeable bump, and added trees to mimic the roundabouts of real life.

Then I rendered John's start line and added it to the start blueprint, and added code to flip it through the colours of the traffic light. Later my friend Harry suggested that I add the checkers like in every other racing game in existence, so I quickly made an asset and added it to the blueprint.

I also tried building the game, but initially it didn't work. I asked Will and he reminded me that people fixed it by disabling the Diversion plugin.

I really need to make finish lap UI, I should just do it.

Today I started off by creating a "Sensitivity" variable that controls how much the player turns; I did this by just multiplying the math by the variable.

After that I modified John's boost pad model, rendered the animation, created a mesh, imported the stuff into Unreal Engine, and added it to the boost pad blueprint.

I also added taillight trails for when you boost. I tried to finterp the world rotation of the taillights with the world rotation of the body, but Unreal Engine didn't allow it to work properly despite the very simple task.

Then I created a simple finish line UI with your place and a button to restart (which works) and a button to quit to the main menu (which isn't functional yet); the UI pops up when you finish a race. I might ask Troy to hook everything up properly since he has more experience with UI by this point. The mouse isn't visible and the UI doesn't support controller, so that will need to be taken care of.

Then I fiddled around with some nodes to make the player vehicle into an AI when you finish the race, and I made the camera look back indefinitely to show the front of the vehicle.

After that I watched a short tutorial on how to make a "blob shadow" using decals.

Then I finished by adding variables for "EngineVolume" and "EffectVolume".

I want to start making more levels, but I'm worried that Troy may need some help. I also need to make a video showcasing the game at some point as well. Maybe find some royalty-free rock music as well. But the game looks good, and the list of necessary tasks seem to have shrunk to a manageable quantity.

Today I made the player vehicle 3D model from John's concept art. It was quite a complex shape and had a lot of difficult details, but I managed to make it fairly similar in the N64 style. This really put my current skills in perspective, because although I am able to make 3D models fairly easily, I found that I struggle to recreate shapes from a source.

After making the vehicle and texture, I then put all of the assets together and made a main menu background. To make the headlights emissive and not the body, I put the texture through a colour ramp that I could adjust, and then plugged that in to the emissive output. After placing objects, lights, tweaking materials, and adding geometry nodes that I took from my texture creating project; I rendered the scene at 480p to emulate N64 resolution.

Then I put these assets into Unreal Engine, making the player vehicle spawn with the vehicle mesh, and having the textures in the textures folder. I tried to fix the widget by having the level set the retry button's level-to-load, but when I tried it, it still sent me to level 1; I even tested to see if the variable is "Level 2" when it loads, and it is, so the issue is not with my code.

In the future I am going to have to make a video for the itch.io page.

The first thing that I did today was create a mechanic where if you press [Tab], the camera switches. The purpose of this was to allow me to get multiple cinematic angles of the vehicle for a trailer/ video that we have to make.

Then I opened OBS and recorded three laps for each camera angle.

After that I opened the Blender video editor, added all of the videos in, cut out the unuseable bits, and started stitching something together. So far the video looks awkwardly stitched; hopefully something good comes out of my efforts.

I am going to need to finish the video and Itch.io page by Tuesday. And I really hope that Troy manages to meet the deadline with something workeable.