Project Cars Unblocked

[Shameka Cretsinger]

Gettingblocked on a project or task at work is inevitable, and the likelihood is usually inversely related to the amount of direct control you or your team have over it. This guide provides multiple strategies with varying levels of intensity to get you unblocked quickly and help you escalate early and often.

These strategies may be a bit more complex or effortful, and most are based around taking action despite not having full control over the situation. These approaches can be very effective in unblocking important work and often result in the team improving their skill sets and becoming more independent along the way.

Sure, you might have to learn something new, and the work might take substantially longer, but this is often better than the blocker never getting resolved and your work being on hold indefinitely. You'll need to be considerate to the owning team, respecting their conventions and practices, and likely get their review and approvals on any changes you make, but investments like this help establish away teams that enable businesses to scale rapidly and are a forcing function for developing extensible platforms and systems.

It doesn't matter whether it's in-person or virtual; if someone is delaying making a decision or kicking the can down the road, schedule a meeting for the soonest available time on their calendar, give them your elevator pitch and any supporting data, and ask them to make a decision. If they can't make the decision, ask questions to understand why: are they not the right person to make the decision? (then ask them who is, and repeat), do they need more data? (which data? then provide it to them as soon as you can), do they need more time? (can they give you a date?). And sometimes, the decision might not be in your favor and they're simply uncomfortable being direct about it. It's difficult to know this is happening unless you ask, so if you aren't getting a straight answer: ask!

Many companies review their programs, projects, and goals on a regular cadence, which provides opportunities to escalate to company leaders or other teams when important work is blocked. You might not always be invited to these reviews, but someone else on your team, or your manager, might be. If so, give them the information needed to escalate on your behalf, and offer to accompany them to offer additional details or answer questions.

Sometimes, despite exceptional effort, you simply can't get your work unblocked. In these cases, don't immediately abandon the work: even if it's time to stop trying to get unblocked, you should do so deliberately and thoughtfully.

If you're blocked on one part of a project, try to be creative and find other areas where you can make progress in the meantime. Maybe there's some required documentation that you were going to have to create eventually, or some testing that you've been putting off, or perhaps there are parallel workstreams that don't share a blocking dependency, or maybe you simply haven't taken the time to plan out the other parts of the project yet. Now is your chance. If you can buy yourself some time to wait for a blocker to be resolved while remaining productive (on valuable work; don't make random work for yourself!), you may be able to minimize or even completely avoid schedule impact.

Perhaps you're waiting on a team to provide you with some data or an API so that you can build your part of a system. Rather than waiting, why not mock up some representative fake data or API and continue developing your feature as if it were the real thing? In my experience, I've often been able to align with external teams on data contracts or API signatures way before the real thing was available, and that allowed me to keep building and simply flip them over to the real thing once it was ready. For example, imagine you are building a feature that needs know the next 14-day weather forecast, but the system that provides that data won't be ready for another month. In the meantime, you could build a fake version of the API (like a simple method call with a similar API signature) that always returns 68 F and sunny for every day of the week, build out your part of the feature, and then replace your fake API with the real one once it's ready!

Do you know when the work will be unblocked, but it's several months in the future due to higher priorities? Meet with your stakeholders and see if you can align to pause the work. You may need to wrap up some loose ends to pause it responsibly, and be cognizant that unfinished work can sometimes atrophy and will definitely become increasingly difficult to restart the longer the delay, but it may be better to pause the work than spin your wheels and potentially distract the company if other work is higher priority. If you do pause the work, make sure to establish a clear mechanism to track the blocking issue, like a ticket with the owning team, a recurring check-in, or similar.

@Drift That feature is too specific to each final project. That would explain why no other car assets include it. EVP offers complete flexibility for you to implement the optimization in the way you want: you may disable every add-on component except physics (damage, audio, visual effects), or even disable the physics and move the vehicle yourself, then re-enable physics.

I brought the Curvy asset from the unity asset store. I know how to use the API from curvy but I have no idea how I can code a car that use your vehicle physics to follow a path. The API contains nearestPoint(obj, path).

Dear Edy,

Would it be possible for you to include a SUV, hatchback, or sedan in the demo? This would make it so that I, and others, could really understand the diversity and potential of your product.

Like the turbo blowoff sound XD.. engine sounds could be improved.. so basic.. But overall nice physics. I play Live for Speed, the the physics on that game are more smooth. This one is a bit stiffer if you know what i mean. Both are very realistic tho XD. Pls add working dashboard for sports coupe. Good job Edy!!

no disrespect but i could buy a call of duty game with 60 dollars so why is the official game 60$ when the graphics are not the best it still has the same cars as the demo or at least that is what i see in the pictures of the game sooooo ya

hey Edy, can you make the pro version available on chrome OS, or is that just because of unity. also, can you put the pro version on here. i would love to play it and maybe even share it with me friends.

am i allowed to use vehicles to damage other vehicles to get the record. also if you could add the pro version on here i think that would be great. i only have a chrome book and cant open it on the website to save my life. also i think multiplayer would make this 100000 times better. and if you could and a little oval race track and make a car like a nascar or just a race car in general. if you do at least the race track and the car i would be happy, but if you want to you could also and the rest.

BeamNG is not a car simulator, but a car crash simulator. Crashes look realistic, but the actual vehicle dynamics are very poor. In addition, their beam/node system requires a physics solver running at 2000 Hz (!). As comparison, EVP works at 50 Hz and most AAA simulators work at around 350 Hz.

This is a great game! But it has some issues like the first person camera but what is there an Airspeed indicator and attitude Indicator? Pleas and a Kenworth C500 and a larger off-road track also please a supercar or hyper.

Also the damage is quite weird with pointy spots.

(This is NOT a complaint)

I like this demo very much and all that but its funny because if you spam enter hit tab then move you car under the vehicle before it slams you, you can get sent to the under relm

Hey, are you ever gonna upgrade the demo so that we can use the new features free, because I would like way more cars, longer freeway, better offroad track, and the pickuptrucks defenitely need some upgrades.

hey edy, please add togglable safety systems back because i never got to experience it, but i played an old version from when the coupe was white and there was only one varient -the race one- and the sport trim truck (blue) had no abs and it was fun to drive, and i want to experience it here

Everyone should learn to respect everyone for who they are. Even if they are a big fat bitch, they should not be disrespected for that. Self love and community love is everything. Stay positive everyone ?

hey @Edy I think it would be great if you could add one or more npc street cars like you have with the offroad vehicle driving where ever but maybe theese road cars have a more a predictable route, go slower, are only allowed on the street, and maybe if its not too hard make it stop at lights and intersections (follow traffic laws) I think this would add something really fun to play with but what do you think?

hi edy if you still use this thank you for this game it helps me when im bored but if you could (i play on a school laptop so) please please pleaaaase add the full version to play and not download please so i can play. and if you could make it so i can move my head or somthing in the car or change my seat (like on the bus) please and thank you

can you add dirt cars and NASCAR and the tracks? and drift cars to the game plz and police fire trucks were the sirens and lights work thx and nascar and dirt cars need to be were when you crash you cant move oh and more schools police fire dept tow stesions and and homes and trailers thx ed

Hi edy my name is gabriel bryson and i live in amarillo tx and i was thinking of you adding a demolation derby arena to this because i like a demolation derby arena in this demo. can you do it please?

hey @Edy I think it would be great if you could add one or more npc street cars like you have with the off-road vehicle driving where ever but maybe these road cars have a more a predictable route, go slower, are only allowed on the street, and maybe if its not too hard make it stop at lights and intersections (follow traffic laws) I think this would add something really fun to play with but what do you think? This you a great demo and this could really get some great testing for people looking to get the full version. This is a repost from a while ago because I didnt want this to get lost.

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