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[Mightymcc21]

Hey, everyone.

I'm currently developing a 2D top-down racing game in Unity and I've come across a hurdle I can't seem to get over. I'm trying to figure out how to calculate the placement of the player and CPU opponents (I.E. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) but so far my attempts have failed. I was wondering, is there a known, accepted way to find the place of an object in racing games and if so what is it?

[Ashedragon]

If I were to make a racing game I would give each vehicle a "distance" variable and add to that distance when they're moving forward on the track, and then simply compare this variable to determine placing.

[Cheesegrater]

You should be doing path finding between the racers and the finish line - just sort them based on the remaining distance along the path. Checking the docs, unity makes that accessible as remainingDistance on a NavMeshAgent component.

[Mightymcc21]

Ashedragon - That's what I originally attempted but my opponents are prefab clones and I was having trouble reading their variables in a separate code.

cheesegrater - That sounds promising, I'll look into it.

Thanks to both of you for the help.

[diegzumillo]

Cheese's idea is the simplest I think. Another way is to treat this is a math problem; define the track as a curve c: t-> (x,y) (t=0 gives the start of the track and 1 the end of the track) and during run time you calculate the closest point inside the curve to each car and define that as the car's position in the track, then compare the positions. Might require some algebra knowledge but it's easier than it sounds.