How JellyCar got its antenna
06.03.2026 15:31
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How JellyCar got its antenna
Recently I got invited to join the new Godot UX team. When I have time I will be helping testing editor PRs and make Godot more usable for everyone.
What are some of the most annoying things about Godot UI/UX that you think need attention?
If you drag a scene from the FileSystem into the scene, the item in the file system still has focus so when I hit F2 to rename my newly placed node, I end up renaming the source scene in the file system.
It’s a simple little physics setup but it’s still exciting when it works like you hoped
What you DO in my game 4x4 in a Furniture Store
I think this one (World 4) is where I started to get a little better at making the flipbook intros for JellyCar Worlds
🚗🆚🛑 “Grow”
Every world in JellyCar Worlds opens with a hand-animated and voiced flipbook cartoon
Ok perhaps a bit more patience is in order 😬
Did you know I added a 2P co-op world to JellyCar Worlds?
yes! although the demo is quite generous so I haven't finished it yet. I can imagine a crafting mechanic would obviously lead itself to selling / running a business / etc, but the framing here of people helping each other out is a great replacement.
The demo is fantastic! Really sucked me in with the writing and pacing.
Level design is my passion
basically yes. the small parts round the edge have a spring orientated toward the center of the main tire body. it gives the tires some ability to deform / conform to the terrain
when you activate a mission, there is a passenger in the car, so the game physics just simulates 2 people constantly (to keep things balanced as you indicated), but I want them to react differently to actions (such as shaking the car), so there is 2 instead of 1.
I haven't done a lot of dynamic, runtime connections between bodies though, so there might be some surprises related to how and when the joints decide their relative transforms to each body, etc.
yes, you can create a new joint, and then set the node_a and node_b to the *path* to the bodies involved, usually using something like joint.node_a = joint.get_path_to(body_a) etc.
you can also position and orient the joint first so that the relative axis, etc is how you need it.
Yes I have a debug script that hides all visual meshes and then creates and enables meshes made from the physics colliders.
The mattress mesh is a single mesh with a grid of bones for the top and bottom layer, and I have a script that maps the positions of the boxes to the bone positions to update it and make the bendy visual.
Not yet surprisingly. This is using Jolt on Godot 4.6, current build runs smooth on Steam Deck at least.
the tires are also rigid bodies (multiple per tire), so all of the reactions are the direct result of contact between the rigid bodies
Here's a look at how the mattress physics look using my debug view. A mattress is essentially a 3x5 grid of rigid bodies connected with joints to flex, and then stacked on another grid kinda like 2 pieces of bread, with springs between them for compression
This is the game btw, you can see some mattresses flying for a brief moment in the trailer on Steam as well store.steampowered.com/app/4135570/...
“30 RigidBodys Well Spent” 😅🤓
I’m working on missions 4x4 in a Furniture Store right now on twitch.tv/walaber, come say hi!
Basic mission structure I’m planning for 4x4 in a Furniture Store
My god that skill tree is GIANT. Good luck with the fest!
Mermaid cats?!? Amazing combination. I can imagine your struggle with meaningful systems that don’t tax the player with too much information. How did you solve it? Dole out the complexity slowly, or just hide some of the details from the player? Something else?
UFO tractor-beam basketball 🏀 is such a great idea, looks fun!
Congrats on finishing a project, it is indeed a LOT of hard work but hopefully you feel accomplished as a result!
Yes it seems that most games have to adopt a slight gap between the real math, and how that math is communicated to players in order to bridge the gap of expectations / intuition about randomness
Yes that is super tricky! The think with popups is, they represent the game (designer) *guessing* when is a good time to communicate something. It almost always comes at the wrong time which makes players even less receptive. How did you solve it for your game?
