gnar world devlog #5: making carnival rides and working on the beach district

sewer, beach, nature, china, art district, the zoo, and the casino.
those are the districts in gnar world. each needs to be unique, and requires a lot of attention and time.
one by one i place roads to generate the basic layout of the space. its not hard, but its not easy either because there are lots of things to consider, such as, will this work?

essentially i am making a giant maze or path that the player will go through to experience the world i am making, while playing as the un named hero on a skateboard, who will will refer to as "gnarman"

the carnival area needs work. right now it is mostly blank aside from a lone ferris wheel. i made some other rides in crocotile so i should probably add them to the game and animate them using the Animation Player in godot.

animating them is quite simple. you make a Node 3d with the name of the ride, then add the gltf models to the scene and nest them in that node. you then nest the moving parts to the parts they are connected to. for example, the chassis (the part thats connected to the ground) is not animated, and the wheel is nested inside the node of the chassis.

an Animation Player node is then added to the Node3d that is the name of the ride, under which all the other parts (nodes) of the ride are nested.

rotation is basic, and easy to do in godot which is convenient for me since thats how most carnival rides work.

i have yet to learn how to animate objects to move along a path which is kind of what i needed to do for the zipper ride. but its fine without them moving. these are just background objects.

i need to keep building out the fairgrounds district to look like this photo reference i found. i will need to master the use of ProtonScatter plugin in godot to do this, so that i don't clutter up the scene tree with all the decorations.

getting to know godot is hard but its beginning to become magic where i just get into a flow state and buuuuiiilld!

The beach district updates are mostly roads which i find i just need to intuitively lay out and then add rotation points (so the player can turn 90 degrees) and test them out.

i added routes from the beach to the casino district and the art district

ill have to figure out how the player will be able to access these routes and at what times in the game according to what he has unlocked.

i had a fun time using CSG combiner node to carve a tunnel underneath the fairgrounds

this is where you pop out of the tunnel. this is where i left off last night and i am going to add a road here that leads to somewhere. right now its important to just get these districts populated so that we can play with ideas of how to navigate them. it takes time and patience and it will hopefully eventually get done. i will use these dev logs to track my progress and try to get a proper update written up at least once a week hopefully 2 times a week.

have you started messing around with godot? let me know! its fun stuff. cheers, and, may the force be with me as i take on this never ending project haha!