Milestone Update

Here is a screenshot to mark the milestone!

As of now, everything is working 100%
All the previous issues with AI, navigation, light baking, phyiscs, terrain and fps drops are fixed. After the recent migration to the newer scripts and editor version, new things were added and yet it broke a lot of things too.

Anyway, it's ready for testing now.

Engine Update: Issues

So after my previous post about the update fixing most things, it did infact break something too. The AI yet again. No idea why, but it had something to do with wheel collider physics, it would cause the game to drop to < 8 FPS while it checked the AI's wheels at a specific point.
But, after much trial and error, this has now been resolved again. Creating a new basic project and re-adding elements incrementally has yeilded great results!
The game now runs at a pretty solid 60 FPS at all times, on the same track I built and with more than 5 AI cars.

So all that's left to do to get it to a testing standard is to re-add my Rocket vehicle, UI and other gameplay elements.

Other than that, it works great again!

Engine Update

The base blueprint/engine I was using for the engine has been updated!

This has had many pros and cons on my project. Most importantly though, it has resolved my terrain issues I've had over the last few days. Now AI is no longer affected by it and they race as intended.
The fixes I implemented in the previous post are still in affect, so movement over certains parts in now smooth instead of bumpy.

Vehicle gameplay has changed. I'm having to re-tweak the car to achieve the same behaviour. I've had to create an entire new project so I can use the old engine as a backup, should anything go wrong.
However, this has fixed the complaints I had with the previous engine. Many times the car would bounce really far upon impact after a large ramp. Now it lands spot-on. It still has the possibility to roll depending on if it hits something or if the player uses the flying mechanic in-air, but these are as expected.

Other support has been implemented too, such as native Xbox controller support. This is great because in the old version I had to specify and setup my own inputs. now everything is all ready and I can reference these through scripts easier.
Another welcome bonus is handbrake turning. Whilst it's not needed, the player can now better turn sharp corners.

Next I need to re-setup the UI and then it's back to where it was previously.

Track Testing Issues

Still on the topic of terrains; it turns out that part of the issue is the track model. Some polygons were quite large and so when the mesh is triangulated it causes "bumps" as can be seen in the test video:

To remedy this slighty, I've added in more edges increasing the effect of smoothness:

It still has an initial bounce, but the effect is much smoother now, hopefully this will fix terrain collisions further on.

This was also an issue during car tweaking; if the player passes this point with enough speed the car would swerve into the banking. Though this was almost elminated through a greater mass and downforce.

Terrain Collisions vs AI

For the last couple of days I've noticed that the AI opponents have started to swerve on the first bend, sliding off onto the terrain. I had no idea what it was, I tried re-baking navigation meshes, toggling static objects and even reimporting the level models.

It turns out that the terrains height value is to blame. The terrain was made from a script to convert mesh to terrain data. Doing so seems to ignore height information. So even though I've edited the terrain to match the curvature of the track, the AI is still in collision with it.

This is a problem because I've put a physical material modifier on it to simulate slippery grass. So if the player explores it, it feels as expected.

There are 3 options:

• I either remove the physical properties so neither AI or player will interact with it properly and will just stick to it.
• I re-create the terrain by hand instead of automating it.
• Or Instead I use the mesh again but improve the quality via 3D Max.*

*One thing to note is that the third option will disable the use of nice looking grass placement, due to the object no longer being a 'terrain'.

I think I will just have to spend time and re-create it by hand (which might be beneficial as there are 2 other smaller areas that need terrain too).

Terrains!

I was using a mesh I created for the grass / terrain from the original game, but to add more detail I need it to be a terrain ideally. By using a terrain this will allow me to add grass sprites, easier tree placement and more texture detail with layers to this area:

The area was very rigid-looking and needed more. It still needs tweaking by raising the terrain height and better grass placement and variation, but it looks better straight away.

Secret Route Testing

I've been trying to get this particular hidden route working for a while. As it's very late in the stage it can be hard to find, so I havn't spent a lot of time on it yet. I figured I'd add a little access so I can start testing it.
Due to the recent car tweaking and physical material setup it now works... better.

The car can still fall if not ideally fast enough, might need to research into speed pads to provided continous movement or temporary force direction, like in mario kart 8.

I still need to add a respawn triggerbox incase the car fails, other than that it looks pretty cool!