[General] IDEA: How to make position in race function?

[stan0033]

The idea is to put in a racing game a function that checks what is the postion every racer unit amongst his opponents on the racing terrain. Is he 1st,2nd,3rd..? And display a message what is the postion of your racer every time he gets outdistanced or outdistance another racer. Any idea how this will happen?

 

[Wietlol]

The easiest way would be to define a path that your racing track follows.
Then loop through all racers and find the closest point on the path for each racer.
For any given point on the path, you can get the total length until the start/finish line.

Then you have a value that you can use to sort the racers.
Then you just have to apply some sorting algorithm to get the racers' positions in the race.

 

[Kazeon]

Making a race map is a terrible idea. It's hard to make yet no one will play it.
And the system you are asking is not easy at all to be done properly.

 

[Wietlol]

If you take a look at Forza, Need 4 Speed, etc, you will see that it is also not perfect in every situation.
But if you have a 95+% accuracy on it, its good enough. (Apart from 100% accuracy on who passed the finish line first.)