Hey y'all I'm back! I'm gonna make this one real quick because I have 10 minutes and I really wanna push myself to be on time. Today was once again a day where I didn't get started until pretty late, and even then I got distracted and fixated on details when I wasn't. Nevertheless, I am not one to call a day wasted for any reason, and I continued to make just a bit of progress! (Progress on my work ethic as well as the level~)

After a bit of pondering, I decided to make the "assisted jump" to the off-ramp extend all the way to the ground, meaning you don't even need to notice the track to go the right way—and I'm pretty sure you'll notice the arrows! After testing it a bit, I found that there were too many cases where you could miss the jump in some way, and it didn't make much sense to have something so simple be easy to miss. Unfortunately, heading into the jump at full speed tended to hurl you into the arch light I'd already set up. Rather than reuse the lamps from before, I simply used a downward ForceZone to lock the car into place. I'll need to indicate it somehow, but you can see the schematic below.

Other than that, I just finished up the off-ramp and added the other highway that you'll land on next. It's just a bit smaller than the one you just came off of. If you're familiar with US roads, it's more of a "US highway", whereas the first highway is an "Interstate" and the road you enter the city on is a "state highway".

Hope you enjoyed tonight's post! Despite the fact that I probably won't reach a full playable track by the end of this week, I'm still excited to finish this first sprint out. See you tomorrow~

Hey y'all! I took another day off last night—it was already late by the time I got free time and was in the mood for level editing, and I decided to catch up on sleep instead of trying to burn past my deadline again. While I didn't exactly make up for my missing submissions today, I still played with some new things and learned a bit!

Tonight was the first time I actually tried to set up a particle system in the Distance editor, so I basically took a crash course through the numerous options to get what I wanted. This guide to particle properties by Galen (snowstate) was quite helpful, once I remembered it existed. It especially helped me untangle the "quantize" and "repeater" settings. Fortunately, it only took 10 minutes or so of tweaking to reach the desired effect!

I created a field of lightly-colored arrows moving upward (derived from the ThisWay preset). I needed it to indicate the zone in which the car would be forced upward towards the off-ramp. If you read my notebook, you know that the on- and off-ramps on this "highway" are suspended above it, meaning you have to jump to reach the off-ramp. To make this easier (and make more sense in-universe?), I just set a ForceZone to push the car upward, that you have to jump into to activate.

The other neat thing I got to do was use a point light on an object that wasn't explicitly a light. In this case, I placed a big detour sign to indicate the off-ramp is the only route to take (the sign even points towards it!). If you place an emissive sign in pitch darkness, however, it looks pretty odd. Adding a simple light to the center of the poster really sets the scene properly, complementing the poster itself and making the surrounding area more visible at the same time. You can see the difference below; it's really impressive how far one light goes!

Unfortunately, I fear this off-ramp is hard to identify on approach, obscured by the highway arches among other things. But I'll have to confirm that in testing, as I really should keep moving through the rest of the track at this point. Lay down, light up, move on.

I'm submitting on time this time! This only took like, what, 15 minutes to write? Sweet. I'm proud of myself, and excited to keep this going!! See you next time~

Hey all! Sorry I dropped the ball last night, I managed to get sucked into something that lasted a full hour past my deadline, and by that point I just wanted to sleep. I did do some sketching, though! You can see that below, as well as tonight's notes.

My game plan for the next couple of days is to go full-on into track design. I'll scatter some lights and buildings, but I'm leaving the heavy detailing until later, so I don't get hung up on them. I think at this point I'm just going to do a rough sketch of the level layout all the way to the end, before starting a track-creation sprint in the editor. (I'll probably leave some more detailed layout sketches of certain sections for until I get to them in the editor.) I've been a little haphazard with my design so far, though...maybe I should check back on my outline pages to reflect on the track's purpose.

I'm really excited to implement the traffic lights I've drafted here! On tonight's page, you can see how I'm aiming to establish their meaning to the player, so that they understand them prior to actually making decisions based on them.

That's about all I have to say for now, I think. Until next time!