Speeding Up

A couple of weeks ago I decided it was a good idea to develop some tools to help increase content production as I focus more and more on that as development progresses. Although the order and configuration of tracks are randomized, the tracks themselves are static. Making them proved to be a time-consuming process so I set out to streamline the process.

The first thing was making it easier to make the track itself. I started with an instanced static mesh spline, and began adding more and more features to make customization of a track surface an easy process. Keeping in mind in the future art assets will change I made the system very flexible. Being able to change the mesh, size, rotation, and optional looping cuts a lot of time off the process.

Secondly, came the need to speed up the making of track walls. This was a long process done manually and also a painful one. Previously we would use a basic spline mesh and manually add points and manipulate tangents to create the wall around the track. I took a programmatic approach instead and created a tool to generate a selected wall around a track with a click of a button. Once again I coded it with flexibility in mind making it fit all tracks with only a handful of tweaks fully accessible in the editor.

Now what used to take a day to make, manually manipulating everything. Can now be done in an hour or less. From a blank level into a playable event that can be added to the game. This opens the door for speedy content generation and in the future allows much more focus on the visuals, atmosphere, and feel of each track.