Jumps

In the quest to make the tracks feel a lot more alive, and to also replicate real life rallying with huge jumps, we decided to spend a bit of time making the jumps work a bit better with the procedurally generated tracks. We already had the ability to place jumps, mainly on straights, within the game. The problem I had with this thought was that I always felt like when you hit them it was luck if you landed them well or not.

Add to this the more complex topology of the track and we have an even more challenging track when we add jumps. The first issue was actually seeing where these were, which was easily fixed by simply adding a new jump banner asset. Now you cannot miss the jump launch point, and can set the car for the jump much more in advance.

The other helper I decided to add was to slightly lower the cross section topology multiplier (to make the track a little flatter on landing), but also to enforce a wider landing area by widening the gap between the side detail (ditches/mounds) and the track. As a player, the jumps now feel much less daunting when you hit them as you have a little more room for error.

If you look at the screenshots below, you can see that the jump is almost hidden after coming around this corner, but with the huge banner in place, it is pretty obvious that something is there. That joined with the co driver really helps the player prepare for the jump. The last screenshot below shows the very subtle widening of the landing area (on the terrain) which really helps.