design doc tech house turnpike

Tech House Turnpike Design Document Contents

• Overview
• Design Process
  • Initial Plan
  • Major Design Changes
  • Other Important Information
• Future Work
  • Needs Fixing
  • Stretch Goals
  • Problem Areas

Tech House Turnpike Design Document

Overview

• Track Name: Tech House Turnpike
• Cup 1-3
• Difficulty: Unique
• A rip-roaring multi-floor adventure through a computer lab.
• Link to One-Pager

Design Process

Initial Plan

• Adapt RIT's Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences building into a race track.
  • The general layout stayed the same, but the name changed to avoid potential legal issues.

Initial Sketches

Initial Build

• Much too large to be used in the game.

Major Design Changes

V1.2

Sketches

Model

Change Log:

• Much smaller than the initial version. However, it was a massive overcorrection that ended up being too small.
• Initial greyboxing was added, ceilings and floor have been hidden in the image to prioritize track visibility.

V2.3

Model

Change Log:

• The height of banked curves was significantly reduced.
• Several sections were made longer.
  • The greyboxing was scaled and moved accordingly.
• The outside loops were reduced from two to four, and stretched to ensure they still reached the bottom.
• Ceilings were raised, and tracks lifted accordingly, to prevent racers from hitting their heads.
• Changed the 3rd floor to have a jump over the second floor. Ramps were added in Unity to get the player up there.

V3.2

Change Log:

• The straight sections of the track were lengthened again to allow for more boosting.
• The third floor jump was merged into the rest of the track, and no longer uses Unity ramps, but track instead.
• Part of the outside spiral was straightened out to allow for drift boosting.

V4.2

Change Log:

• The outside spiral was replaced with a big turn that slopes downward.
  • Reasoning: the spiral tended to bottleneck speedruns, and the track that comes after in the Grand Prix had a smoother spiral.
• Floor and ceiling pieces were combined by material type to scale Unity materials more consistently.

Other Important Information

• The track is made of 3 road pieces in Blender so they are easier to move around if needed.
• All of the doors and windows are to be replaced in the Unity Editor. They can be copied from an older prefab if they still fit.
• There are a few colliders that act as invisible ceilings to prevent players from using the tier 3 boost to launch up hills to later sections of the track.

Future Work

Unfortunately, not all of the work for the initial release of the track was completed on time. The track is perfectly playable, but has some easily identifiable problems.

Needs Fixing

• The mini-map is not scaled properly, the character icons frequently leave its bounds.
• There are no starting markers on the track.

Stretch Goals from Summer 2025

• Submit a new image for the map select screen.
• Pose the squirrel models once the skeleton is updated.
• Easter Eggs:
  • Hide photos of summer 2025 QA lead
  • Add secret room with summer 2025 team photo through second floor double wooden doors

Problem Areas

These are sections of the track that are not broken, but can still be improved.

• All floor transitions could use smoothing out.
  • 1st floor to 2nd floor has a lip where the two roads intersect.
  • 2nd floor to 3rd floor slopes up too quicky and gets close to the ceiling.
  • 3rd floor to 1st floor is a little steep towards the inside of the curve.
• The ramp on the 3rd floor has very sharp edge that sends racers upwards, but not enough to get an air trick boost.
  • This section should either be rounded to avoid sending the player into the air, or sharper to allow for enough time for an air trick.
• There are a lot of checkpoints, making the Warp Boost weak on this track. Try to reduce the number of checkpoints.