Drift King | Christoffer Persson

Project Info

4-5 Weeks

Unity

Introduction

As part of my diploma project in IT at Pauliskolan Gymnasium I developed a game called Drift King in Unity.

Drift King is a top down car game featuring a custom made track, which I created in Blender, along with custom VFX such as car smoke and skid marks. This project was also my first experience designing a fully functional main menu.

The objective is to reach the finish line as fast as possible while trying to stay on the track and collecting pickups to earn points.

Gameplay

Car Movement System

The car follows the mouse cursor using a raycast to determine direction. Acceleration is controlled with the left and right mouse buttons, applying force via Rigidbody.AddRelativeForce(). Steering is smoothed with Quaternion.Lerp(), and side slip is calculated by tracking movement between frames. This creates responsive and dynamic handling.

Drift Mechanic

The car’s drift is determined by tracking how much it slides sideways while moving. Each frame, the game calculates the difference between the car’s current and previous positions, then converts that movement into the car’s local space. The sideways movement value (side slip) indicates how much the car is drifting, making the handling feel more dynamic and responsive.

Scoring System

When the player drives into a pickup a sound effect plays and the score increases by 50 points. The score is stored in a central system and updates in real time on the UI ensuring that the player always see their current points.

Respawn System

An invisible game object serves as a boundary triggering the respawn system when collided with. The player will instantly be repositioned at a checkpoint by updating their transform keeping gameplay smooth and preventing them from getting stuck.

Finishline

When the player collides with the finish line trigger it first checks if the tag matches "Player." If true, it then loads the next scene by incrementing the current scene's build index and advancing the game to the restart menu.

Top Down Camera

The top-down camera tracks the player by calculating the target position based on their movement and height. The camera smoothly follows the player using interpolation and adjusting for velocity and ensuring a responsive experience.

UI

Main Menu

I implemented a main menu with three options: One to start the game, one to adjust the volume via a slider and one to quit the application. Scene transitions are managed with SceneManager for smooth navigation.

Countdown

The countdown system triggers when the race is about to start. Using a coroutine the countdown decreases in increments and updates the UI text element. Once the countdown finishes it displays "GO!" and then hides the countdown display

Timer

The real time timer updates every frame, tracking and displaying minutes, seconds and milliseconds. It uses Time.deltaTime to ensure accurate time progression and the UI text is updated accordingly.

VFX

Skidmarks

I created a simple smoke and skid mark effect using Unity's Particle System. The system is triggered based on the car's side slip. When the car drifts with enough intensity it spawns skid marks and activates the particle system for smoke effects. If the drift intensity is low or the car stops drifting the effects are disabled.

Environment

Race Track

I created my race track in Blender using Bézier curves to design the layout. I then extended and refined the curves to shape the track. The track was then imported into Unity.