Custom Gravity System

Atomic Overdrive’s tracks are built with Dreamtek Splines, so I created a gravity system that extends directly from those splines and generates dynamic gravity zones around them. These zones support multiple modes—flat surfaces, tubes, and custom falloffs—so the player can follow curves, banks, and inversions naturally.

The system blends gravity sources smoothly, keeps a stable up-axis, and includes debugging tools to visualize forces in real time. Because gravity is spline-driven, designers can reshape tracks or switch track types without breaking movement.

This approach improved traversal stability, gave designers more flexibility, and strengthened my experience building spline-aware physics systems.

Decoupled Player Physics from Player Visuals

Atomic Overdrive uses a physics-driven controller, but the character’s visual presentation is fully separate from the Rigidbody. The visual layer handles its own smoothed rotation and manages all animations, VFX, SFX, and model orientation independently from the physics logic.

This prevents jitter and rotation artifacts, keeps the camera steady, and makes feedback clear even at high speeds. Since visuals are completely decoupled, the team can drop in a new model without affecting gameplay or movement behavior.

Additionally, it also handles replicating the players visual state to other clients across the network with little to no code intervention when integrating new animations or feedback.

The result is a cleaner, more maintainable system that improves readability and supports rapid character iteration.