Okay, so I’ve been wanting to mess around with creating a racing game, you know, like those classic kart racers. I figured “formula racer mario kart” would be a good starting point for inspiration. Here’s how I went about it.
Getting Started
First, I needed a game engine. I’m not made of money, so I went with Unity because it’s free to start and there are tons of tutorials. I downloaded the latest version and installed it. Took a bit of time, but no biggie.
Finding Assets
Next, I needed some, you know, stuff to put in the game. I’m no artist, so I hit up the Unity Asset Store. I looked for some free 3D models – a basic kart, some track pieces, maybe a few trees and stuff. Found a decent low-poly kart pack and some simple track building blocks. Downloaded those, imported them into my Unity project. Boom, ready to go.
Building a Basic Track
This was the fun part. I started dragging and dropping those track pieces into the scene. I made a simple loop, nothing fancy, just to get a feel for it. It looked a bit wonky at first, like a kid’s drawing, but I kept tweaking it, moving pieces around, rotating them, until it looked somewhat like a race track. It’s not perfect, but hey, it’s a start.
Making the Kart Move
Now for the tricky part – getting the kart to actually, you know, move. I’m not a coding whiz, so I watched a bunch of YouTube tutorials on kart physics in Unity. Found some scripts that handled basic movement – forward, backward, turning. I copied and pasted those scripts onto my kart model (don’t judge, everyone does it!).
After some fiddling, and a lot of head-scratching, I managed to get the kart moving. It was jerky, the controls were weird, and it kept flipping over, but it was moving! I felt like a genius, even though I mostly just copied someone else’s code.
Adding Some (Very) Basic AI
A racing game isn’t much fun without someone to race against. I wasn’t about to build some super-smart AI, so I went for the simplest thing I could think of: making another kart follow a set path. I placed some invisible waypoints around the track and wrote a super basic script that made the AI kart move from one waypoint to the next. It looked dumb, but it worked! I had another kart on the track.
The Result (So Far)
So, what I have now is a very, very basic racing game. It’s got a wobbly track, a kart that drives like a shopping cart with a broken wheel, and an AI opponent that’s dumber than a bag of rocks. But, it’s mine. I built it (well, mostly cobbled it together from tutorials and free assets). And that’s pretty cool.
What’s Next?
- Better controls: The kart handling is awful. Needs a lot of work.
- Smarter AI: My AI opponent needs to, you know, actually try to win.
- Prettier graphics: Everything looks very basic. Some nicer models and textures would be good.
- Sound effects: Right now, it’s completely silent. Engine noises, tire screeches, the works!
- Power-ups?: Maybe some speed boosts or something, just like the real deal.
It’s a long road ahead, but I’m having fun messing around with it. Maybe one day it’ll actually be a playable game. Who knows?
