date: 2013-08-05 12:00
subject: Raycasting Racing Game
tags: game-engine-dreams, procedurally-generated-terrain-dreams, minecraft-dreams

Raycasting Racing Game - 2013-08-05 12:00 - Entry 1326 - TOGoS's Journal

In the first dream of the night I was hanging out with Reknee.  She
was robbing stores.  I think I decided to let her go do her thing and
I went elsewhere.

In the second dream I was working on a racing game.  I'm not sure it
was intended as a racing game, but that's how we were playing it.  It
had spaceship-like controlls in that you moved by freely accellerating
in any direction.  You could accellerate as long as you wanted, but
that would make it harder to hit the finish line (which at least in
one level appeared to be a blue sphere).  I was testing it out with
Fizz and some other people.

Levels 1-3 were highways with over/underpasses.  At one point the
highway resembled the beltline where it crosses hammersley, and
instead of following the road I flew up over the trees to the north.
The game had an interesting alrorithm for drawing complex
procedurally-generated foliage.  From underneath I could see
silhouettes of branches and leaves, and from above it looked like a
field of [very] tall grass, swaying in the breeze.  The grassy field
effect repeated on a grid.  I found this acceptable.

Level 4 was 'A-Day's level'.  I'm not sure if he had designed it or if
I had designed it with A-Day in mind.  It was a maze of canyons and so
was difficult to shortcut through by flying over the top.  At the end
of the level there was a rock arch that you had to turn right to pass
under to get to the area with the finish sphere.  I tried bouncing
myself off some pads to the left so that I wouldn't have to lose as
much speed, but this sent me spinning and left me very disoriented.  I
managed to hit the sphere after a few seconds but it wasn't obvious
that I had saved any time.

Level 6 was plains.  I had come here from a place in Minecraft where
Jordan and I had been exploring together before I started dreaming
about the racing game.  We had been on dates with a couple of girls
who were both way too tan, and I had been trying to slap some boats
together to get us across some river before deciding to just walk
across.  Anyway, level 6 was the most recent one I had started working
on and it was mostly empty aside from procedurally generated hills and
grass.

Level 5 was supposed to be a scary desert with cow skulls and stuff.
I had been trying to add enemies but that requrired engine work and
for now they were just upright cows that I had drawn in MS Paint that
couldn't attack or be attacked.  While testing I was thinking that I
should work on sprite rendering and use it to draw forests, thinking
about how that would interact with the ray caster (which drew the
ground).  At the end of the level there was an old man standing under
an arch with a grating in it.  He didn't know that there was a dragon
about to pop out (but since monsters weren't working yet, maybe it
didn't matter).  There was a light source on one side of the arch and
the ground under it was lit accordingly.  I didn't think my engine
allowed that (because Portally sectors can only be one solid color).