Vehicle physics

So in order to have the game ready for the initial round of the Independent Games Festival I've created a itemized list of everything I need to do to get the game where it needs to be in the next 2 months. I've alloted myself a few days to get the vehicle physics up to par, and tommorow is my last day. Thankfully it came together quicker than I expected...the vehicles look amazing in motion, hopefully I'll have some videos or something of them in a little while.

Tommorow I'm going to add all the flashy stuff to the vehicles...skid marks, smoke clouds/dirt clouds depending on what material the vehicle's wheels are over...also I'm planning on getting the particle system started, and emitting sparks when a vehicle collides with another object, just to test the system. Also I'm going to simulate a gearbox/transmission which is always fun. I think I'll give the player the option to shift gears manually....so they can rev the engine up, and throw it in 1st and do a nasty burnout ;-)

I've already got screech sounds playing when the car looses traction....it sounds pretty cool, and isn't annoying...it fades in/out based on the lateral speed of the vehicle.

Here's some images of the police car turning sharply....I've still got some tweeking to do in terms of the suspension stiffness and things like that...this is the 3rd (and hopefully final) time I'll have to integrate a physics engine into the game...it takes so much damn tweaking to get it looking right, I hope this one works out. I've heard that they're overhauling the vehicle functionality in the next release of Newton and it's supposedly going to be much better, so I'm looking forward to that.

- Dan