Now to finally dig in to Unity and get a working prototype happening. One of the first choices to make was if I was going to use the built in Unity physics engine or try to create my own. For something like a 2D platformer I had some experience with making my own thanks to my Multimedia Fusion days. But for this game I wanted a very smooth feel to the multi sectioned rover going over the terrain and hitting obstacles. Something I wasn’t going to be capable of making myself currently.
Using the designs I’d made for the mockup and attaching them to Unity’s wheel and rectangle colliders I was able to get the vehicle moving and even jumping pretty quickly.
Several issues quickly became obvious though. The wheels needed to be much larger for clearer readability, the barrel of the weapon was way too small, the vehicle as a whole needed way more ground clearance and the front wheels couldn’t be partially covered as they kept clipping through.
Instead of designing all new placeholder assets I simply blacked out the existing ones and scaled them to more fitting size. Something that came close to being a design choice later on.
It was alive! Things were a bit shaky at first, and I still had much to learn about optimizing the physics objects to accurately recreate wheel suspension, but it was already looking like a game.
Recon Auth Signing Out