How to Make Your Own Police Car Games
Police car games have been a source of constant fascination for gamers. No matter how straight-laced the player may be, there is always the allure of playing out the fantasy of escaping the cops or chasing down the criminals from the inside of a police cruiser. Making your own police car game is a tall order, but if the success of games like "Grand Theft Auto," "Hot Pursuit," and "True Crimes: The Streets of LA" tell you anything, it's that people respond to the genre and it is well worth the effort.
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Instructions
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Define the goals for the players in your game. The player must know what criteria they have to fulfill in order to win the game. A game that continues a chase indefinitely with no clear rules is both hard to understand and infuriating to play. For example, when the player is out of the line of sight of the police car for more than 60 seconds, they have eluded the police.
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Design the 3D models for the cars in your game. Add primitive shapes to the 3D landscape. Move the square, circles, and triangles around until you have a shape that resembles a car. Adjust the vertices to refine the shape. Vertices are any point in 3D space where two or more lines meet.
Players appreciate a variety of vehicles that handle in different ways. If you are not proficient at designing car models, look at the styles of current real life cars and use them as inspiration.
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Choose an environment where the police car chases will take place. The setting for a chase could be in a dense city or a sprawling countryside. It is not necessary to create environmental assets from scratch. Download procedural city and landscape generator add-ons for your 3D modeling software.
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Assign a control scheme to the player controlled vehicle. Pick a control type from the preexisting versions available with your game engine. Make adjustments to responsiveness for different vehicles. A dump truck turns a corner in a dramatically different fashion than a sports car.
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Adapt an artificial intelligence system for vehicles that are not controlled by the player. An artificial intelligence system is a sequence of commands that determines how an object will move. Game engines have A.I. systems built into them. Select the object that you want to move and then select the type of A.I. movement you prefer. The simplest A.I. systems for car chase games just avoid obstacles and head toward the player while the most advanced forms flank the player.
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Play your game and take note of any mistakes that you made during the development process. Make improvements to your game based on what you learn from play-testing.
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Tips & Warnings
Some game engines have basic game designs that you can download and them build from rather than have to develop from scratch.
Try to balance game play with the amount of violence present in you final piece. Too much violence may turn some players against your game.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit police car speed, toy model car, chase criminal image by alma_sacra from Fotolia.com
