Alright, so let’s talk about this little project I did – I’m calling it “randy orton race.” Don’t ask why, it just kinda stuck.
So, it all started with me wanting to mess around with some basic game development. I figured, why not make a simple racing game? I ain’t no pro, but I like to tinker.
First thing I did was fire up Unity. I’ve dabbled with it before, so I wasn’t going in completely blind. Created a new 3D project, and boom, empty scene staring back at me.
Then came the fun part – creating the track. I didn’t want anything fancy, so I just used a bunch of cubes and stretched them out, twisted them around, and made something that vaguely resembled a race track. Think beginner’s Mario Kart, but way uglier. I didn’t bother with textures much at this point, just slapped on some basic colors.
Next, I needed a car… or something like it. Again, keeping it simple, I used a cube and a cylinder. Bolted the cylinder on top of the cube to make it look car-ish. Added a basic material to give it a bit of color. Crude, but effective.
Now, for the driving part. This is where I had to actually write some code. I attached a C# script to my “car” and started messing around with `Rigidbody` to get it moving. I basically just wanted it to accelerate forward and turn left or right. After a lot of tweaking with the `AddForce` and `AddTorque` functions, I managed to get it moving somewhat realistically. It was super sensitive at first, spun out of control all the time, but eventually I dialed it in to something manageable.
After that I wanted a finish line. Again I used cubes,stretched them to be wide and I assigned to it a script that can detect when another object crosses this Cube. After that I created a new canvas, and added a text field that displays “Finished!”, and on my car’s script I added an OnCollisionEnter method, that if it collides with the finishline, then set the textfield to true.
Then I wanted to spice things up, and I added two AI’s, these were just duplicates of my car, but their C# Script were edited to follow the racetrack by shooting Raycasts every few seconds, this made them follow the road. After a while of tweaking the Raycast distance and the AI speed, I had two working AI’s that followed me around the track.
Finally, I added a basic camera that follows the car. Just a simple script that keeps the camera a certain distance behind and above the player.
It’s not pretty, and it’s definitely not winning any awards, but it’s a functional racing game. You can drive around a track, complete a lap, and race against two braindead AI. And honestly, I had a blast making it. It’s all about the process, right? Plus, now I have a “randy orton race” game to show off to my friends. They’ll probably laugh, but hey, at least I made something.
