What's the secret to a good drifting mechanic in video games?
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in reply to @hthrflwrs's post:
This is really vague but the feeling of control over inertia...?
This is why I feel like the physics in modern NFS games are really unsatisfying, in NFSU2 the drift physics felt (to me) like you could maintain whatever angle you were at easily, or change it fairly easily, but straightening out was difficult - and I think it's sort of like there's a tendency to start increasing any slight angle you have when increasing power instead of staying straight.
In the modern games like Unbound I feel like it's doing something similar but effectively way worse - rear really wants to stay at whatever angle you are at INCLUDING straight, so it takes effort to get angle, and it's easy to straighten out again
Similar good example in nfsu 1 gba where it's hard to straighten out fully but easy to increase angle once you have any
I truly hope u were asking about car drifting and not something else
You must be able to drift while riding boars, like in Nier. This is the number one key to good gamefeel with a drift mechanic
ahhh, so THAT'S why Nightmare Kart has gotten so popular
this is not what most games do... but i like it when entering/controlling the drift is hard like in real life like aseseto corso or grand tranismo. and ya like @masklayer said inertia and weight is really important.
like if you can enter a drift with a feint, hard brake, e-brake, or power over like in that drift king drift tutorial video.
this is mostly from the perspective of an ex drifter who was trying to get better at real life drifting through video games though lmao. drifting is so fucking hard
but yeah weight and it shouldn't be like one button easy to control, you gotta be sliding.
Skim this document and implement just the stuff that sounds fun
https://www.asawicki.info/Mirror/Car%20Physics%20for%20Games/Car%20Physics%20for%20Games.html
i know this is not about goat game, but what if.....goat drifting
it needs to be just hard enough to control that sometimes it goes too far outwards, sometimes it goes too far inwards, and you're fighting the physics to get it to do exactly what you want. Its control should depend on a lot of chaotic factors that you can slowly learn over time. It needs to be easy enough that you can do it a lot, but hard enough that there's that 1% tinge of failure, thinking "i hope it doesn't screw up this time", terrified during the entire drift. That's what makes it thrilling!
other small things i like are, very occasionally your car should drift when you don't want it to, so there's the panic moment where you're extremely rewarded for keeping your cool and having your training pay off. Having a nice "pop" when the drift ends is great too, either in a cartoon context where it gives you a literal boost, or just a slight jolt from your tires making full contact again.