The HoverCrafter is a flying car racing and crafting game that I am currently solo developing via the Unreal Engine and C++. It features high-speed, six degree of freedom racing against AI controlled opponents, and an elaborate crafting and customization system inspired by Gran Turismo. It is being developed for PC and plays best with a Steam Controller, though keyboard play and other video game controllers are also supported. Development began in early March of 2021, and a demo is planned for release on Steam in early summer 2021.
The player character is an amateur hovercraft racer who inherits a hovercraft shop from an uncle, and uses it to go professional. The shop features robotic fabricators and 3D nanoprinters capable of producing and assembling hovercraft components, with diegetic menus presenting crafting, barter, and customization options to the player. The hovercrafts themselves consist of a chassis and seven categories of subcomponent. With approximately six variants available in each category, the game will have in the ballpark of four million possible craft permutations.
Other novel features include a subcomponent-based damage system inspired by Dragon Age: Origins, where individual components can fail if damage from a crash makes it past the protective force field and chassis. The shop and race courses use a lighting system that allows for different times of day, with players being able to choose the time of day in their shop, and randomly generated race times effecting winnings. The vehicles are also capable of moving over water, with convincing craft/water collisions being simulated via variable, directional quadratic drag.
The AI is implemented via checkpoints and what is apparently called Menger Curvature (I had a hunch that there would be an equation for the radius of a circle drawn through three points, and fortunately that is the case.) The radius of the circle drawn through a hovercraft's current location, and that of the next two checkpoints, is used to determine an acceptable speed. Unlike true hovercrafts that slide sideways when turning, the vehicles in The HoverCrafter track though turns via an Impulse Converter subcomponent that applies a force normal to the forward velocity and proportional to the rate of rotation.
