This week I began work on the track section of my top down flash game, it has the most scenary and the simplest track type, while the physics is the easiest to work with as the figures provided in the tutorial are almost perfect.
I began by smoothing the edges of the track as much as possible, having looked at racing courses they usually have very flowing tracks so that the cars can maintain good speed and can focus instead on gaining the best racing line and looking for points to overtake at.
Once the track was well constructed and the collision path had been built I begin to draw and design the track itself using the flash drawing tools. I began by choosing an appropriate texture for the road track and add the red and white kurbing on each corner. I also constructed a starting grid, complete with a cheering crowd and a banked corner to be taken at high speeds.
This shows the stands I built, which are animated to include camera flashes.
This shows the red and white kerbing that makes the track more accesible at high speeds.
And finally the banked corner to be taken at high speed. While none of these images are perfect and as they will look in the final result, they give a reasonable representation of what the player should expect to see.
This week I did several sketches of existing cars as practice for designing my own concept artwork, I began to realise how cars are an extremely complex shape. While my sketches looked proportional and accurate, when I tried to transfer the same idea's to a concept sketch, the result was less than pleasing to the eye.
Realising that drawing a car of my own was going to be a significant challenege, which furthermore would be shadowed by the much larger challenge of subsequently modeling said design in 3D. I decided to spend some time completing 3DS Max tutorials and reading "3DS Max 2009" by Kelly Murdock.
While doing this I moved the flash game up in the schedule to begin work on, it occured to me that modeling the basic map in flash prior to attempting the unreal map gives me a much better idea of what I'm trying to achieve in Unreal.
I followed a racing game tutorial which gave clear instructions on the process of constructing a flash racing game to get the general system working. However because of the nature of my game I had to make several significant changes, the first being that the car itself remains stationary on the screen with the race course moving in the opposite direction you would have expected the car to go.
This means that the racecourse can be an almost indefinate size, this was important for me because to include the differant racing areas I would need a large stage to work with. The original tutorial showed how to make a stationary racecourse and a mobile vehicle.
A further alteration was to change alot of elements of the control of the car to be adjustable via a set of easy to understand variables, this is crucial for the physics of the vehical to significantly change when the transformations occur.
This week I had to consider that I actually planned to do, since making a game this advanced would be impossible for me to do alone in the time frame.
While making a game of this complexity to the standard it would require making it playable is outside of my ability given the time frame for the project. I intend to produce a simple flash top down racer bringing in some of the ideas and themes that would make this game unique. The images and graphics used in this will not be an accurate representation of the graphics that should be expected from the actual game. They will be simplified and contain much less animation in the transformation sequences. The purpose of the top down flash game is to give an appropriate visual representation of what the game would look like and how the altering terrain would affect the race and the requirements of the player. While I considered trying to make a visual representation of the race itself using the unreal engine this was quickly dismissed due to the fact that it would take significantly more time to produce without the end result being any closer to my intended final product. Working with the unreal engine would require modelling the vehicles, and their transformations, in 3D and producing the race course in unreal also. Creating the course in 3D wouldn’t be too difficult and producing a fly-thru matinee would be a good way to demonstrate the kind of environments I hope to include in the game. However, adding my created vehicles to the map and adding new script to trigger the transformations at the right time would not only be very time consuming, but wouldn’t demonstrate the design of the game in a more appropriate manner than flash would. The flash demo will be top down and the racing will be controlled using W, A, S & D to accelerate, brake or reverse and to turn both left and right. The transformation will happen at predefined locations when the environment changes, however there will not be a cinematic transformation as this would be both difficult to animate and would be poorly represented in flash. As mentioned previously, creating a course using the unreal engine would not be too difficult, so using UnrealEd 3 I will produce a basic course which will take into account the road terrain, a waterborne section, an airborne section and possibly either an off-road or mountainous section. While building this I hope to incorporate a number of static meshes and 3D models, created by myself for this project, to better demonstrate the design for the environments. Creating a course which incorporates all of the terrain necessary for the race, but still looks natural and not manufactured may be quite difficult. I feel good use of the terrain tools in unreal as well as creative positioning of some natural static meshes, such as trees, grass and ferns; will help produce the desired effect. In conjunction with this I plan to produce a series of 3D models using 3D Studio Max, this will for me be the hardest element of my intended content as I have the least experience with this software. I plan to produce a 3D model of a starting car and an endgame car, as well as an airborne version and a waterborne version. These will serve to be the most accurate representation of the intended graphic quality of the vehicles in the game; they will be accompanied by a series of sketches and detailed drawings.
This week I did some market research and explored the game market at the moment, with consideration for a new racing genre game.
In 2008 the following games were the top 10 in sales figures. “BEST-SELLING GAMES ALL FORMATS 2008: 1. FIFA 08 (Electronic Arts) (Sport) 2. Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training (Nintendo) (Casual) 3. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Activision) (FPS) 4. Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (Konami) (Sport) 5. More Brain Traning (Nintendo) (Casual) 6. Halo 3 (Microsoft) (FPS) 7. The Simpsons Game (Electronic Arts) (RPG) 8. Wii Play (Nintendo) (Casual) 9. Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft) (RPG) 10. WWE Smackdown Vs Raw 2008 (THQ) (Fighting)”
There isn’t a single racing game in the top 10 sales for last year, however the sales from previous racing titles, such as Gran Turismo and Need for Speed, proves that there is a market for racing games. Considering this information it becomes apparent that there is not only a market out there for a well made racing game, but it is currently a market that is being neglected.
This week I worked on a competitive analysis, comparing my idea to games that are already on the market.
There are a large number of racing games available on the market, several with a series of sequels. One of the more successful racing simulators is Gran Turismo.
Described as “the real driving simulator”, it focuses on creating an extremely realistic racing experience. The game has licenses to use real car manufacture brands and models and allows for massive modifications to the smallest details of the car. Each car has options for tyres, exhausts, engine upgrades and other familiar racing modifications. Gear ratio can be fine tuned, suspension raised and lowered and braking balance adjusted to meet the demands of the player. The physics engine is designed to produce realistic racing conditions even taking road condition into account.
However Gran Turismo has never expanded beyond vehicles of the 4 wheel variety. While introducing a Rally mode in some of its later games it has never made space for waterborne or airborne vehicles. There is also very little visual or external customisation, with the exception of adding new tyre trims and a spoiler, only the colour of cars can be altered.
Another successful racing series is “Need for Speed” which has more recently focused less on track racing and much more on street racing. While the graphics are still working on becoming increasingly realistic, much the same as Gran Turismo, the racing itself is significantly less realistic and more simple. The cars do not handle like they would in reality and are much more forgiving of minor errors by the player.
While playing Gran Turismo, which claims to be a racing simulator, you must slow for each corner and can only safely make it through a corner if you are going below a certain speed. However on Need for Speed the accuracy needed for this has been significantly reduced so that most corners can be taken at almost full speed. This makes game play much faster paced and less intensive.
Players can instead focus on the numerous other challenges that come with street racing, as opposed to track racing, such as pedestrian vehicles and in some versions, the police. In the more recent Need for Speed games the new Japanese trend for drifting has become a prominent factor in the racing styles. Need for Speed: Carbon is based almost entirely on the Japanese downhill drift-race style.
Again however there has been no attempt by the Need for Speed series to diversify into either the airborne or waterborne areas of racing. However the player is able to make huge cosmetic changes to the exterior of the vehicle adding many decals and custom kits to personalise their ride. The more recent games also move away from the limited race courses with single option routes to free roaming races with only a predefined start and finish, so the player can select his own route which seems the fastest. While this is an ideal concept, in a race which allows the use of airborne vehicles it is too likely to be abused to complete races easier.
This week I worked on defining the project and deciding on many of the details.
For my final major project I intend to produce a proposal document defining my goals, outlining the user experience, project content, project structure, visual designs including sketches, screen mock-ups and a prototype.
The game I intend to design is of the racing genre with one of the key elements being an alternating vehicle structure based on the current geography and environmental influences of the race course.
To elaborate, the race course will not be comprised of only road circuits but will also include much more unusual terrain such as rugged mountainous areas, lakes, canyons and similar. The vehicle would be able to switch automatically or manually to a more suitable form upon reaching each of these unusual terrains.
All vehicle forms will be available to be upgraded and upon reaching certain levels a visual upgrade will also take place changing the appearance of that individual form. Upgrading one form of a vehicle does not improve the other forms so it is important to balance your vehicle.
An example of how a race could happen, the player may be driving a car along a road, but as the road terminates and meets a vast expanse of water it will transform into a boat during a cinematic scene. Once the transformation is complete the race continues with all the participants now in the form of various watercrafts.
During this phase the physics of the vehicle will be significantly changed as obviously a boat on water is not subject to the same laws of friction, air resistance and acceleration as a car on the road.
Upon reaching the edge of the lake and coming to a waterfall the waterborne vehicles will race straight over the edge and undertake another cinematic transformation as they become airborne.
Once the transformation is complete the race continues with all the participants now flying aircraft. Again a massive change in the physics will be needed at this point as the fundamental requirements of flight make it significantly different to either of the previous forms.
During the flying stage there will be a new dimension added to the race as players are now able to accelerate and decelerate as before, and turn to the right and left, however they are now also able to fly higher or lower, meaning that consideration must be given to how we can prevent players from cutting huge corners at these points.
The logical conclusion to this is the inclusion checkpoints, requiring the player to pass through a significant enough number of checkpoints to ensure that the full course is completed.
As the aircraft follow the river flowing from the waterfall they are forced to remain within the walls of the canyon that the river inhabits. As the river flows underground and the canyon comes to a swift end the aircraft are forced to undertake yet another transformation before they reach the end.
Instead of explosions and devastation a series of off-road vehicles land smoothly on the gravel at the base of the canyon and begin the rough ascent to the top. Once the top has been reached the vehicles return to their original form to complete the race.
This is only a very basic example of how a race may unfold; there are many more scenarios and other forms to be included. Additional forms will only be available in later races.
This week I pitched my idea and have begun to consider in-depth how the game would work.
The game I intend to design is of the racing genre with one of the key elements being an alternating vehicle structure based on the current geography and environmental influences of the race course.
To elaborate, the race course will not be comprised of only road circuits but will also include much more unusual terrain such as rugged mountainous areas, lakes, canyons and similar. The vehicle would be able to switch automatically or manually to a more suitable form.
In august I came up with 1 additional idea to pitch, the player takes the role of a survivor of an aeroplane crash who must escape from a mountain side using only the equipment available from the wreckage and the environment. There would be a number of obstacles each with several ways of overcoming them using the tools available.
However sometimes the equipment used cannot be reclaimed once you have passed the obstacle, so you must be careful what you use and what you save.
During the month of July I came up with several more rough idea's for my final major project.
One consists of the user constructing a farm with various attractions, similar to theme-park world, but based around a rural setting.
The next is similar to my first side scrolling adventure idea, except it would be a first person shooter running on preset course, similar to the arcade time-crisis games. The user would explore real life settings and explore the globe on a mission to find the villain.
Throughout the month of June I spent time drafting rough ideas for my final major project.
So far I have had several idea's, one being a side scrolling adventure game that involves visiting real locations (in the game) and eventually circum-navigating the earth through the levels.
