Kario Kart
This independent project was an opportunity to expand my Unity 3D Gameplay programming knowledge through exploration and experimentation. The focus of this project was not on design, but rather, on implementing technical solutions to achieve an existing design (in this case, Mario Kart). As this was developed individually, limiting the scope and having well-defined goals was critical to completing and releasing this project. Holding myself accountable, pushing myself to learn new things, and discovering creative solutions to complex problems was challenging, but worthwhile.
At the moment, I've reached a natural stopping point where a solid chunk of the features I set out to add have been explored or completed. Not all aspects of the game are as polished as I would like them to be, but failing has been a huge part of the experience! The current version of the project includes one course with two game modes: a time trial mode where you race against the clock, and a race mode where you compete against 3 AI racers. Some key areas that I've gained new experience in throughout development include:
- 3D Character Controllers
- 3D Cameras (Cinemachine)
- Generalizing behaviours through polymorphism
- Designing and implementing responsive, juicy, gamepad-friendly UIs
- Designing and programming believable racer AI behaviour
- Surface-level knowlege of shaders and particle systems (URP)
- Utilizing event-driven patterns to reduce coupling and improve performance
- Reducing/limiting the need for singletons (a problem in pervious team projects)
- Audio programming (a weak area for me)
- Scene management and navigation
While I'm stepping away from this project for the moment to explore other areas and grow different skills, some features that I am interested in revisiting in the future include implementing more items, improving the AI racers to be more sophisticated, adding more juice and life to the UI, and cleaning up some of the tangled code.
** Note from March 2023: Some of the UI has been reworked, cleaned up, and upgraded to be less generic and more responsive!
Tools and Technologies:
- Unity 2020.3.43f1 LTS
- C#
More information about the project, including Windows and Mac downloads of the current build, please visit the Kario Kart itch.io page. You can also view the source code on GitHub.