Okay, so today I’m gonna walk you through my little “minibus tarkov” project. It’s nothin’ fancy, just a fun way I messed around with some game dev stuff.
First things first, the idea. I was playin’ a lot of Tarkov (Escape from Tarkov, for those who don’t know), and I always thought the whole extract thing was kinda cool, but limited. So I figured, why not make my own little version, focusin’ on a minibus as the extract point? That’s where the name comes from.
Next up: Gettin’ started. I used Unity, ’cause that’s what I’m most comfortable with. Fired it up, created a new project, and started messin’ with the basic scene. I needed a ground, a minibus model (found one online, wasn’t great, but it worked), and some placeholder player character.
The Minibus: This was the core. I wanted it to feel like a real extract. So, I slapped a simple script on it. The script basically did this:
- Check if the player is within a certain radius of the bus.
- If they are, show a prompt, like “Press [E] to Extract.”
- If they press E, start a timer.
- If the timer reaches a certain point (say, 15 seconds), the player “extracts” (which, in my case, just meant they disappeared and a “You Extracted!” message popped up).
Pretty basic, right? But it worked!
Adding some tension: Just standin’ around a bus wasn’t gonna cut it. I needed some kind of threat. So, I added some simple “AI” enemies. These were just cubes with scripts that made them move towards the player and “attack” (again, just meant a message popped up saying “You Died!”). Nothing fancy, but enough to make things a little tense while waitin’ for the bus to extract.
Tweaking and Testing: Spent a good chunk of time just tweaking the numbers. How close did the player need to be to the bus? How long should the extract timer be? How fast should the enemies move? How much “damage” should they do? It was all just trial and error, playin’ around until it felt right.
The “Final” Result: I put “final” in quotes ’cause it was never really done. It was more of a proof-of-concept. You could run around, try to avoid the enemies, get to the minibus, and extract. It was clunky, buggy, and ugly as sin, but it was my clunky, buggy, and ugly sin. haha.
What I learned: Even a simple project like this taught me a lot. Stuff like basic scripting, collision detection, rudimentary AI, and the importance of playtesting. It also reminded me that game dev is hard work, even at a small scale.
Would I do it again? Definitely. It was a fun little side project that scratched my creative itch. Plus, it gave me some ideas for bigger, more ambitious projects down the road. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll make a real “minibus tarkov” game. But for now, it’s just a fun memory and a little piece of code on my hard drive.
