Zeepkist Devlog
Hey everyone!!
If you've been following along on the Discord you may have been keeping track of some recent developments!
You may also have read the previous devlog and been waiting for more!
Well, I've been cooking this one for a while now! It's time for devlog 3!!
Monorails
The keen observer might have noticed something, once or twice, in the background of Zeepkist's main menu.
Look at the very top of the image, behind the glass:
I've always been fairly secretive about the whole affair. It's been something I prototyped long ago and since then never had the time to actually implement.
Here's what it looks like in the Unity Editor:
For v16, I figured it was time to add this for real :)
IT'S MONORAIL TIME
Monorails!
The ideal form of public transport!! Tried and tested in real life, their swag outperforms trains, their grace makes them preferable to airplanes, and their passenger-carrying capacity makes them an obvious winner over automobiles.
Zeepkist could not do without, of course.
Monorails
Monorails come with dedicated monorail station blocks, which allow for easy access to player-enterable monorail cars.
Upon entering monorail cars, players can brake and a little anchor icon will display in the bottom of the screen. The anchor icon means that the player's Zeepkist is connected to the monorail car beneath it.
This mechanic makes it possible for players to hop onto monorails, connect, and go through curves and over hills without any fear of falling off!
I've also decided to retrofit this new mechanic to sleds, which were a perfect candidate for this "connection" mechanic! No more falling out of sleds for you folks!! :D
Tunnels
Next, I wanted to make sure that the new monorails meshed well with already existing Zeepkist blocks, so I made sure the following was possible:
Monorails can use bobsleigh tubes as tunnels!
Special Blocks
Monorails also come with a couple of special blocks!
There's a "horn" block which lets the monorail toot its horn.
And a buffer stop which will, naturally, not allow the monorail to continue.
Bankings
Monorails also come with a couple of banked blocks!
These are especially useful for making it easier to dismount monorails. Zeepkists will easily roll off of tilted monorails!
On top of which, banked monorails are extremely radical to ride on!
Insanity
Finally, monorails can go up and down!
And they can go further up!
...and down! Really, you can do whatever you want with monorails!!
One Warning
However! And I cannot stress this enough! All of these monorails are 100% physics based. They are not following any invisible splines or whatever. They exist in your level as rigidbodies with colliders, some forces applied, and nothing more!
⚠️ This means they can derail! ⚠️
They can even derail on perfectly regular looking track pieces, if you set their speed too high!!
⚠️ Their default speed, 100, works very smooth and stable, and should not cause any problems under regular use.
⚠️ However if you feel like fiddling with their speed values and decide to send them through too tight corners, they will absolutely derail in any manner of unpredictable ways.
⚠️ And even then, Unity's physics aren't perfect, so even completely fine monorails might sometimes decide to break and derail!
⚠️ So be careful of that!! :D ⚠️
The End
That's it for this devlog!! I hope you enjoyed the little behind-the-scenes insight and I hope all of you are as excited for Zeepkist Version 16 as I am!!
If you want to be even more up to date on Zeepkist development, you can join the Discord!
Happy Zeepkisting!!
CHOO CHOO
