Follow the Path

A slightly autobiographical bicycling game. Avoid other bicyclists and other obstacles as you attempt to speed along the past getting to the end as fast (yet also as safe) as you can.

Controls:

W - Accelerate

S - Brake

A,D - Turn your front wheel. Because this is the only way to turn, there is slight drifting involved in the movement.

Q - Move the camera back, so you can look behind you. It will reset when you stop pressing Q.

E - Ring your bell (no in-game function).

Playing as a rider-less bicycle riding along a top-down path to reach the lakefront. Avoid potholes, walls, and bicycles, all of which may cause you have to reset your position to an earlier location. You have a compass, speedometer, odometer, and timer to help keep track of your situation. This is meant to mirror my frequent bicycle rides, both in NY and Chicago. All the hazards are hazards which I encounter and have run into in the past.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to created a top-down game about bicycling. Because of that, the controls were mostly set in stone from the beginning. However, I originally had many more ideas that I ended up not implementing. At first, I had a list of other hazards and possible ideas, such as cars and geese, as well as a more refined NPC AI code. However, as time went on, it became clear that was out of scope, so I stuck to what I had. I still was able to make some things I didn't originally think about, such as adding the speedometer and compass, which were rather easy things to implement.

One issue I had early on was figuring out how to have the NPC bicycles follow along the path without running into walls. At first, I thought about making a rail for them to follow along, but that wouldn't give me all the freedom with their movement I wanted. So, over the course of 4 real bike rides, I thought up different ways to solve that problem, implementing each solution between the rides. In the end, I realized that I could use raycasting in front of/to the right of the bike to determine if it needed to turn or not, and from there, it was just a simple step of adjusting numbers so that they would work.