DRIVR Part 1: What we're building

You remember that episode of Rick and Morty where they find all the Gotron ferrets to make a Gotron, but then Rick isn't satisfied and they find more Gotrons to make a Gogotron, and then a Gogogotron, and eventually the whole operation gets sabotaged. Well that's what we're doing except we're not getting greedy, and also we didn't snort a bunch of detergent before we came up with the plan. RATHER, the similarity is that each step of the progression that we present to you should result in a product that has its own merit. We are not building something that is only useful if the final step is reached. Furthermore, the product that we create along the way should help fund the additional development, allowing us to be profitable from very early on. But that might just be the detergent talking...

Pit Stop #1: The single-vehicle experience

To be honest, this was never supposed to be about go-karts. But here we are, so let's *roll* with it. The first task was to prove the feasibility of mapping a real vehicle's movement inside a virtual world. Then we wanted to find out if this was A) comfortable, and B) fun. In the beginning it was neither, because I spent all my time testing the game with simulated estimation data (which was perfectly smooth), so when we got onto a real vehicle with real uncertainty the gameplay was terribly choppy. By separating the states used by the estimation and the display and adding a filter between the two (hey, game developers, can you sense the gigantic void of expertise that you could fill here?), the experience improved dramatically. From there we improved the game environment, making better tracks with prettier scenery. We also made it much easier to get in and out of our go-kart made for ants.

And that's where we're at now. The demo video you watched represents the current state of development. What it doesn't show is how unruly the vehicle looks, and how uncomfortable it is to drive. Also, you may have noticed that the game itself has no objective other than to maybe stay on the track because you feel like it. Our next goal is to make this a real game, complete with lap timers, scores, and a drive-by-wire system to ensure that a vehicle never leaves the designated driving area. But why would this type of experience be any better than the go-karts you've driven in the past? That's coming up in the next blog post. The point is that when we are done with this stage, we will have a game that is so fun that you might even pay real money to play it.

Did I mention that I'm still looking for people to help build this with me? Let's chat!

-Greg

The story continues with Part 2: Why it's fun