Truck Ride PoC Retrospective

Reminder, Trick Ride PoC was just a Proof of Concept.  It was intended to end and not be base code.  Here were some of the good and bad's along the way:

Good:

• Unity's 2D Wheel components (Wheel Joint 2D) were easy to implement and get a wheel started.

Bad:

• Terrain modulation was tough.  I didn't come up with a full solution for this as the proof turned to pixelation, but trying to smooth out the terrain like hill climber was tough to do.  I have ideas, but not that include handling the pixelation.

• Unity's 2D Wheel Components had no natural way to separate them.  Each wheel is connected to a separate script.  Each script has to be connected to the rigid body of the vehicle.  So if you have a script that's going to control front and rear wheel separately, then you have to base it off position, which doesn't work if you start the vehicle upside down or tilted greatly. Unity's drag/drop solution won't work.  
• The Joint was a little too hard to use.  it didn't seem to have a "flex range".  Something to stop it from moving too far from the wheel well.  I had it move over 50 away from a vehicle that was only 3 long.  Made no sense, and was hard to control.

Fun:

• The game peaked in fun for me as I was climbing steep terrain, with awkward grip that worked really well to reach around to the other side of a block and then pull me over.  It felt like something was there, but I couldn't enhance it any more.  I think I was a little too focused on getting the physics to work better for speed, and could have gotten more out of the climber if I let it focus on slow movement with challenging terrain.

In the end, I'm glad I tried this, but its time to try another proof.  Something quick and easy to expand on, until I get caught up in something insanely fun.