Checking Last Known Good Position For A Car In The Track

An article by mgear    No Comments

Working on a small StuntCarRacer-inspired game with a friend.
Some note here about how to get car to return last known good position in the track.

Problems and Requirements

– Player gets stuck hanging in side of the track (1 or more tires hanging outside, cannot move)
– Player falls off from the track
– Should allow respawning into last known good position on the track
– Should reset player rotation towards correct direction

Solutions

•  Trigger Checkpoints
  • Everytime you enter a trigger, record this as a last good position
  • Should work very nicely, but either need to manually place the triggers or have some logic to automatically do that, which could become difficult with complicated tracks
    • You could manually place dummy objects in 3D modelling tool while making the track, to mark the trigger positions
  • This would easily solve correct rotation (take from trigger forward)
• Take Closest Track Position
  • Could raycast around the car to find closest track position and lift car to the track on that point
  • Cannot be used, because if you fall of the track, driving in the ground is allowed (so you could take shortcuts then)
• Take Last Hit Point From Track
  • Kind of works, but often that point could be already barely touching the track and player then falls off again
• Record Last Known Good Hit Point *Currently using this method
  • Every few seconds:
    • Check that every tire hits the track
    • Check that every tire slope angle is below threshold (like 10° to avoid re-spawning in steep locations)
  • Only issue is that correct rotation is difficult to get, if player was driving in wrong direction, he will be respawned towards that direction also