# Godot racing templates give you two different answers to how a car drives

The racing starters in Godot split along one line: a car that moves the way it feels good to move, or a car with real wheels and suspension. Picking the wrong side is the expensive mistake in this genre, and it is the first decision a template makes for you. Flockbay ships two racing templates of its own, Rally Racing and Arcade Racing, free under New from template. Flockbay is free, AI included: free hosted AI every day, or your own Claude, ChatGPT, agent or API key. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, on the official Godot engine.

Source: https://flockbay.com/templates/godot-racing-game-template/ · Updated 2026-10-01

## The Rally Racing template in Flockbay

A cel-shaded rally game on mountain roads in spring and autumn, with a campaign, time attack, six AI rivals and replays. It is a 3D Godot 4 project in GDScript, open source under the MIT licence, and free like the rest of Flockbay.

One open world with two stages and the road between them, and no loading screens.

A campaign, Time Trial, a two-lap race against six rivals and Free Roam, with medals and saved records.

Custom car physics on Jolt at 120 Hz: suspension, a slip-based tyre model per surface, a six-speed gearbox, turbo, AWD or RWD, and forgiving crashes.

Two cars with several liveries, a trained AI driver that races the rivals and can drive your car, ghost runs and a replay recorder.

## Start a game from Rally Racing

In the Flockbay app, press New from template on Home, pick Rally Racing and press Create. On a first run, answer 3D and then Template, and Continue makes the game. Flockbay downloads the template into a new game folder and opens it in the Godot editor as an ordinary Godot 4 project you own. Tell Flockbay what to change first: it writes a short brief from the template, asks before it builds, and plays each change before you do.

What people usually ask for first: a night stage with headlights; a third car that handles differently; a rain mode with less grip.

## The Arcade Racing template in Flockbay

Arcade racing with drift, gears and AI rivals on a wet coastal mountain track, from boot screen to results. It is a 3D Godot 4 project in GDScript, open source under the MIT licence, and free like the rest of Flockbay.

A coastal mountain route with wet-road lighting and a second track set up as a locked example for progression.

A 3D garage to pick a car and a paint, and Easy, Medium and Hard rivals.

Drift, automatic or manual gears, a countdown, an in-race menu and a results screen.

A track toolkit where a route is data: road points, width, banking, elevation, zones, the start grid and generated props.

## Start a game from Arcade Racing

In the Flockbay app, press New from template on Home, pick Arcade Racing and press Create. On a first run, answer 3D and then Template, and Continue makes the game. Flockbay downloads the template into a new game folder and opens it in the Godot editor as an ordinary Godot 4 project you own. Tell Flockbay what to change first: it writes a short brief from the template, asks before it builds, and plays each change before you do.

What people usually ask for first: unlock the second track after a win; a nitro boost that fills while drifting; a time trial with a ghost car.

## The two projects people actually find

Kenney Starter Kit Racing is the first. It is 3D, viewed from behind the vehicle, released under MIT and CC0, and it is built as a foundation rather than a showcase. Its own description covers an arcade vehicle controller, track pieces you can lay out, a follow camera, smoke, and skid and engine sounds. There is a motorcycle variant alongside the car.

The second is Truck Town, one of the demo projects the Godot project maintains itself. Also 3D and MIT licensed, it exists to demonstrate the engine's built-in vehicle physics: selectable trucks including trailer and tow variants, driving built on Godot's VehicleBody3D, several cameras to switch between, a speedometer, and a town to drive around with its own lighting moods.

The intents are different and that matters more than the feature lists. A starter kit is written to be extended. An engine demo is written to show you that something works. Both are honest about themselves; neither is pretending to be a game.

## Arcade feel against simulated wheels

This is the fork. An arcade controller does not simulate a car. It moves a body around according to rules chosen because they feel good, and grip is a number somebody picked. Kenney's kit sits at that end. Godot's VehicleBody3D sits at the other: actual wheels, actual suspension, engine force applied through them, and handling that emerges from physics values rather than being stated directly. Truck Town is the demonstration of that path.

Neither is the correct answer. They fail in opposite directions. Arcade handling struggles the moment you want weight to matter, a trailer to swing, or a heavy vehicle to behave differently from a light one. Simulated handling struggles when you want [the car to simply feel snappy and responsive](/ai-racing-game-maker/), because you cannot type that in. You approach it through spring rates and friction until it arrives.

The reason to decide early is that the choice is not a setting. Everything you tune, every piece of feedback you build, and much of what your track has to be, is shaped by which model you are on. Swapping late means throwing away the tuning, which is where most of the work went.

## What no racing starter contains

A track. Both projects contain something to drive on, and that is not the same thing. A track is a sequence of corners with a rhythm, sightlines that let a driver commit, a straight long enough to matter, and at least one place where overtaking is possible but not free. Laying that out is the design job of the genre, and it takes driving your own track badly a great many times.

Opponents. [AI drivers that are enjoyable to race against](/blog/what-makes-good-ai/) are their own discipline: a racing line, a sense of when to yield, mistakes that look like mistakes rather than malfunctions, and some quiet correction so the pack stays near you without it being obvious. None of the starters solve this, and it is the difference between a driving toy and a race.

The race itself. Laps, checkpoints, a timer, position, restart, a results screen, penalties for cutting the corner you will absolutely cut. And the sensation of speed, which is largely [a lie told by camera and sound](/blog/the-challenge-of-cameras/): field of view widening, the camera lagging under acceleration, engine pitch, tyre noise, wind. None of that comes out of the physics. It is all built on top, and it is half of what players mean when they say a car feels fast.

## Tuning is a reading job as well as a driving job

Handling is tuned by changing values in the vehicle script and driving again. That loop is the work in a racing game, and there is no way around doing it many dozens of times. What is worth knowing in advance is that the values mean completely different things on either side of the fork. Grip in an arcade controller is a dial the author invented. Grip in a wheel simulation is an outcome of four or five interacting settings, and moving one moves the others.

So adopting a racing starter is adopting somebody's vocabulary as well as their code. Before you can change the feel you have to work out which value in their script corresponds to the thing you disliked while driving. That translation is the real cost, and it is paid in reading rather than in typing.

If you read GDScript this is a fair price for skipping the whole build-a-car stage. If you do not, you have a car you can drive and cannot adjust, in a genre where [adjusting the car](/racing-game-maker/) is the game.

## The other route

Flockbay goes at it from the other end. It is a desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux with Godot bundled inside. You describe the race, and Flockbay asks questions one round at a time, each with a recommendation, starting with the fork above: arcade feel or simulated wheels. It writes a brief, and once you approve it, it builds the track as sculpted and painted terrain with props along it, writes the driving, the lap logic and the opponents as GDScript in your project, and drives its own build first, sending input events and capturing the viewport. The handling model is chosen for the game you are making rather than inherited from a demo, and when you dislike how the car turns in you say so and drive it again.

A corner's exact shape is taste, so the same world tools are buttons around Godot's own 3D view: Sculpt and Paint let you tighten that hairpin yourself, and Godot's undo takes it back. Flockbay also ships two racing templates of its own, Rally Racing and Arcade Racing, at the top of this page under New from template on Home; a Godot project you have downloaded opens in it with Open Godot project, and the two community projects above are public ones you clone yourself. These are two separate ways to end up with a racing game, not two menu items.

[Building needs an internet connection](/answers/does-flockbay-work-offline/), since the chat and asset generation come over the network. Driving what you built does not; it runs locally on your own machine at your machine's framerate, which for a racing game is not a small detail. Flockbay is free, AI included: free hosted AI every day, or your Claude or ChatGPT plan, your own agent, or an API key.

## Questions

### Which Godot racing template should I start from?

Decide the handling model first. If you want arcade feel and track pieces to arrange, Kenney Starter Kit Racing is built for that. If you want vehicles with real wheels and suspension, Godot's own Truck Town demo shows the engine's VehicleBody3D approach. The choice is expensive to reverse later.

### Does Godot have an official racing template?

Not a template as such. Truck Town is an official demo project and it is genuinely useful, but it was written to demonstrate vehicle physics rather than to be the foundation of your game. Kenney Starter Kit Racing is a community starter kit and is framed as something to build on.

### Do these come with tracks?

They come with somewhere to drive. Designing a track with a rhythm to it, and the lap, checkpoint and results systems around it, is left to you. So are AI opponents, which are their own substantial piece of work.

### Why does my car feel wrong even though the physics work?

Because the sensation of speed is mostly camera and sound rather than physics. Field of view, camera lag, engine pitch, tyre noise and screen shake do more for feel than the tuning underneath them, and they are built separately.

### Can I load one of these into Flockbay?

Not from New from template. Flockbay does not ship those two; it ships its own Rally Racing and Arcade Racing templates under New from template. The community projects are open-source Godot projects you download yourself, and a downloaded Godot project opens in Flockbay with Open Godot project. Flockbay's own way round is a brief first: it builds the track and writes the code for the car and the race, and you tune it by driving.

Download Flockbay free: Flockbay is a free download for Windows, macOS and Linux. Approve a brief, let Flockbay build the track and write the driving code, and tune it by driving. https://flockbay.com/

Related: [Godot 3D game templates](/templates/godot-3d-game-template/), [Godot tower defense templates](/templates/godot-tower-defense-template/), [Godot platformer templates](/templates/godot-platformer-template/), [Godot FPS templates](/templates/godot-fps-template/)