After creating a race car and making a track, we must make a HUD using Unreal Engine 4's HUD making software. Since my car is modeled off of a GAZ-69, I decided to start there, and took at look at the original dash of the GAZ-69

 

I love the rugged and neglected look, so I looked at other old war vehicles and found some awesome dials and knobs and stuff!





I loved this tachometer, and would love to incorporate something like it into my HUD. I also took some elements from other dials I thought looked cool, and tried to add some different functionality to them. I like the general layout I have at the moment, but I feel like it might get a big too cluttered. Therefore, once I start testing it in-game, I will tweak it, I'm thinking I could move the Gear indicator and incorporate it into the speedometer, saving space. I would do it in the style of the tachometer above, with the dials within dials it has for temperature and fuel levels. The weapons indicator would be a light up bulb that will reinforce the notion that the player is armed and ready when they pickup a power up.




Progress on the explosive barrel. Mostly worried about the mechanics at the moment. I created a barrel that floats in zero gravity for my space level, with a pulsing green light to make sure players notice! If it is hit lightly it will release a particle effect for a couple of seconds before exploding! Here's a little teaser of it in UE4.



Here's the code - As you can see there are four main groups. The first group is to make the barrels spin around and make them more exciting that static floating barrels. If they were not moving then maybe it would look like they were a glitch.

Then, there is the hit registration area, that listens for hits hard enough to initiate either a damaged or destroyed state. The damaged state fires off a particle and after a couple of seconds then initiates the destroyed function. This function shoots off an explosion particle, a radial force AND damage actor, and then terminates the blueprint.

I also added in an event to initate the damaged function whenever a coolant cell is damaged. Looking forward, this will allow the cells to interact with any kinds of damage, be it from a collision with a car, to other coolant cell explosions, or even weapon damage from the cars weapons.




For my racing level, I am planning on making the race-way a sort of magnetic highway that the inhabitants of the space station use for travelling to different asteroids. I'm planning on making a destructible asset that fits with this theme, mainly to fit in with the theme of this powerful magnetic highway. Therefore, I'm thinking of making a coolant cell type of obstacle that will make the race much more interesting. I picture this coolant cell looking very similarly to a fusion coil from Halo 3



These sure livened up games of slayer, didn't they?

However, the explosives I wish to create will be rooted to the track, and pop up randomly throughout the race. An observant player will not only be able to dodge these - they can also use their mounted weaponry to shoot cells as enemy races fly by, maybe taking them out in the process.


It's a pretty similar design, but they will be larger, and act differently.

I'd probably place the spawns for these cells manually around the track - keeping a higher concentration in the center to encourage players to drive along the sides of the track to stay safe. 
After looking at a couple of racing intro sequences, I feel like this short but sweet example from Mario Kart DS's Cheep Cheep Beach map.




I think it's pretty cool how they used both of the DS's screens to show off the map, while also making it not extremely disorientating. Basically, in the first 10 seconds of this video, the player is introduced to three major landmarks of the level in order of how they appear. The first is the rock arches - the second is the winding beach with the light house, and finally, is the home stretch to the finish line. We are shown these landmarks from an angle far away, so once the player races through these landmarks, they will understand what the area looks like from afar, and from up close, helping them remember what to do. In the case of the rock arches, the intro shows us it is a large, wide turn, helping players who might be confused the first time around without seeing it from afar.

I will be working with one screen so the multi-screen layout of the DS probably will not affect my intro sequence, but maybe I can set up a script so if players play split-screen on the computer, it can show the track with slight differences in views?
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