Game development can go in some unexpected directions at times. This past week saw a lot of progress towards the combat campaign, with new parts that make it easier to control vehicles from an overhead perspective, a few much-requested part additions, and some new racing AI that went more smoothly than expected. Here's the full highlight video:

Here's the full changelist for those who prefer reading:

• Added new logic part: Relative Controls (up/down/left/right output based on camera direction and input)

• Added new part: Repulsor Drive (apply force/torque based on camera direciton and input)

• Added new part: Hover Drive (apply a stabilized upward force when near the ground/water)

• Added AI for automobiles: Place target markers in sequence to make them drive in a loop (AI chooses the closest and keeps going)

• Replace 4 variant islands with tracks for racing fun, available in Sandbox mode

• Added relative control option for limited pivots and pistons

• Changed fixed bomb controls so you can drop them without a release connector

• Added engine sounds for automobiles

• Updated follow camera for entities

• Updated automobile handling (more wheel friction)

• EDITOR: Made it easier to expand/contract markers (shift+click changes by 5)

• Fixed not all vehicle unlocking at level 20

• Increased global volume falloff a bit

I didn't write everything down as I did it, so that might be missing a couple minor things, but the big things are the 3 new parts, the relative controls option for pivots/pistons, and the 4 new maps with AI-driven racers on them.

RACING IN A DESTRUCTION GAME?

Instruments will not be turning into a a racing game. But the AI for racing was relatively simple to add, because of the incremental features that I'd added for player controls and relative controls, and the experience I have from making a racing game semi-recently (Speed Demons on Apple Arcade). This AI is not complex or particularly good, but it is efficient at adding some interest to racing around small tracks.

There's no logic for doing actual races, but instead the AI just does laps infinitely. You can add as many cars as you want to the race, and I've done up to 200 in my testing, and the game still ran above 60 FPS. The only optimization I had to make was changing the colliders on cars from meshes to boxes (2 boxes for the truck) to get the framerate up. As before, just Shift + right-click to take over a vehicle. Or use your custom built vehicle.

I don't plan on doing real game logic for races anytime soon, as this was just a little detour on the way to the combat campaign. Up next is adding some real destructibility to entities. It's something I've avoided so far, but cars need it, and what comes after cars will need it. So you'll be able to destroy parts of a thing, and it will look damaged and smoke/spark/etc. I'll add more final explosion stuff as well, though that's the easiest part (it still takes time to do, but there's nothing technically difficult).

What comes after damage to objects is animated enemies, meaning things like a walking mech, a small spider tank, and turreted vehicles, among other things. I've put off learning IK/rigging/animation tools in any real way for a while, but I want to try doing more with Instruments and future games, so that's what I need to learn. After some destroyable enemies are in (along with a couple more combat-related parts), the game will go silent for a bit as I figure out how to fit all the new stuff together. I have a plan, but plans always change/evolve as you work on the actual thing.

[REMINDER: Excavator Featured Vehicle submission deadline is a week away.]

That's about it for now! -Luke