eternal apex

update 2020-12-16b: revised version with full camera controls (distance, aperture, and focal length)

////////////// eternal apex // an ambient (no goals, just cruising), high speed, futuristic tunnel/megastructure endless racer prototype

Designed to just sit back and enjoy the visuals and the soundscape, or interact to adjust speed (and modify sound), or even play the synthesizer in real time on a PC keyboard (see controls below).

EPILEPSY WARNING: at very high speeds with boost enabled, or at any speed with camera angled up at overhead lights, rapid flashing patterns can sometimes occur

This is an early prototype: while playable and stable, there are no in-game settings for quality/performance.  It will default to running in a 3:1 aspect ratio (extremely widescreen) window, filling the width of your primary monitor's resolution.  You can click the window edges and drag to resize the window, or hit F11 or Alt+Enter to toggle fullscreen mode.  F6 toggles letterbox bars.  The game should automatically adjust rendering quality based on your system's performance (you'll notice the image getting very blurry/grainy on low spec systems).

Cinematic 24fps: the game is locked at 24fps by default to give it a more cinematic feel.  Inputs and motion are tuned to work well at this framerate, however, you can uncap the framerate by hitting the backtick/tilde (`/~) key to open the console, then type "t.maxfps 0" and hit Enter.  You can also disable vsync in the console by typing "r.vsync 0" and hit Enter.  Note that your framerate may be lower than expected since the game attempts to use supersampling to improve image quality as long as your framerate is above 24... to manually reduce supersampling and increase uncapped framerate, hit the minus (-) key, and use the plus (+) key to increase supersampling, or hit zero (0) to return to automatic supersampling adjustment.  Be aware that motion blur and other effects are tuned to look correct at 24fps, and things won't look as intended at higher framerates.

More details at Unreal Engine forums: https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/work-in-progress/1494046-eternal-apex-ambient-cyberpunk-megastructure-endless-rider

This game started as an impromptu game design challenge in Unreal Engine over a few late nights to better wrap my head around:

- World origin shifting to seamlessly offset player and world geometry every 100k units in direction of player movement indefinitely

- World position offset in the materials for road, walls, and ceiling (including emissive light bar) to curve tunnel into the distance; updated offset target over time depending on player velocity to gradually change curve; used same formula in blueprint to update position of ceiling point lights to match emissive light bar mesh

- All audio procedurally generated at runtime by in-engine synthesizer (and playable on PC keyboard)

- 24 fps gameplay: this topic is contentious, but I'm a cinemaphile and love the 24fps cinematic "look" -- however most games feel very jerky and unresponsive at such a low framerate, so I designed motion and input from the ground up to look and feel smooth and natural at this more film-like framerate

controls
accelerate / brake	arrow keys up/down gamepad right/left trigger buttons (R2/L2) gamepad D-pad up/down left mouse click or drag top/bottom half of viewport
steering	arrow keys left/right gamepad left thumbstick left/right gamepad D-pad left/right left mouse click or drag left/right half of viewport
boost	space gamepad left bumper (L1)
camera orbit	gamepad right thumbstick right mouse click or drag ctrl + left mouse click or drag
camera distance	insert/delete
camera aperture	home/end
camera focal length	page up/page down
letterbox	F6
fullscreen	F11 alt + enter
performance/quality	+/-
auto-performance	0 (zero)
spawn opponent	backspace gamepad A
screenshot	F8
high res screenshot	F9
pause	enter gamepad start
exit	esc backspace gamepad back

// synth note input
    _____ _____       _____ _____ _____       _____
   |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
   |  c# |  d# |     |  f# |  g# |  a# |     |  c# |
   |  W  |  E  |     |  T  |  Y  |  U  |     |  O  |
 __|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|__
|     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
|  c  |  d  |  e  |  f  |  g  |  a  |  b  |  c  |  d  |
|  A  |  S  |  D  |  F  |  G  |  H  |  J  |  K  |  L  |
|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|
octave down/up:       Z/X