Recently I’ve been playing Yakuza 0. Though there were a couple of things I didn’t like (the occasional unskippable cut scene!), in general I loved it. As well as an absolutely world class story with fantastic voice acting, the game provides a wealth of content. Content that includes making a custom Pocket Circuit Track in a RC car racing mini-game. As a design exercise I thought this would be fun to do!

The track creation tool is fairly straightforward to use, and making tracks was fairly simple. Saying that I failed on my first attempt as I maxed the route length!

Slope City

For my first Pocket Circuit Track I started with an image in my mind which I drew.

First I made the basic shape. Seeing it in 3D I felt a desire to add lots of slopes to emphasize the windy nature of the track.

ZigZag Shroom

This Pocket Circuit Track was inspired by a picture of mushroom, though looking at the final version I went off-track (haha…). In this track I added in zigzags for variation, and loop.

My first attempt was as follows.

The above version I decided was too condensed, and didn’t give a nice view of the cars as they raced, which watching is half the fun! So the first change I made was spacing out the track.

With this iteration one trouble I had was in playtesting. The RC kept falling off the track.

Iterations to my car included optimization for jumps, high grip, and corner attributes.

Face Race

My final Pocket Circuit Track for this post was the result of a thought I had when going to sleep. A track inspired by the shape of a face. The first iteration of this track was:

My next iteration for this track involved:

• Add a start signal.
• Remove the curve that faces towards the camera as it obstructed views of the cars (fun to watch the cars race!).
• Add an upward and downward ramp at the bottom of the track to break up the large amounts of zigzag.

This tracked requires a good deal of customization which the computer didn’t do instead opting for speed. The result being all the bot’s flew off the tracks, and lost to me who took it slow, but steady!

Conclusion

Overall creating a Pocket Circuit Track was a straightforward, and fun exercise. This was one of many activities in Yakuza 0 so be sure to check it out! I had lots of fun!