Unity

To develop the game, we decided to use the game engine Unity. The reasoning behind this was that all the programmers in the team had used this engine before. The other reason was that Unity already had vehicle examples which we could use to make our driving.

The Aim and Purpose

The purpose of the project was to explore if connecting a dialogue system with racing, and affecting an AI to race differently so to create a story that is told both on and off track that is compelling to a player. To make this interesting we designed mechanics where each system affects the other to create dynamics for the player. Along with using MDA to amplify our aesthetic goal of making the player feel like a racing driver.

Design Document

As Lead Designer, my role demanded me to communicate the design of the game to the rest of the team. The easiest and most tested way of doing this is by creating a design document. The document should describe every part of a game, but it should also change during development as testing changes how the game is designed. To properly communicate the design to the team I routinely asked the other team members to read through the document as I was writing it.

Planning

After the pitch for the game was approved, a plan was required so that the ones responsible for the course could see that we were going to make the vertical slice within the time allotted for development. In the concept, we had decided what the vertical slice would consist of. The planning was a collaborative effort of the entire group, because each member has an area that they know how much time is necessary for each artifact. In the planning document, we also described how we would keep up with development. To do this we decided to use the agile development method Scrum. In a previous course, we had been taught this method and decided that it would be the safest option. Scrum consists of stand-up meetings each day and sprint planning’s and reviews at the start and end of each week. At the sprint plan meetings, each member of the team describes what they are going to work on during the sprint, these sprints in our case are one week long. During stand-up meeting, each team member informs the team what they have done up until the meeting and what they are going to do that day. On the sprint review the team members review what has been done during the week and if they are on schedule.

Concept

Before the course started the students received a chance to pitch a game idea. In these pitch sessions, the students received feedback from both members of the institution and their peers. During this stage I wrote the concept for Fast Gear and pitched it during the first one of these sessions. The pitch consisted of the core ideas of Fast Gear from the perspective of improving the racing class Formula 1. The feedback I received from Jakob Berglund Rogert consisted of that I needed to define the vertical slice, explore how difficult it is to create an AI which communicates the behaviors I described, and that the project had a clear target audience. I used this feedback to improve my presentation for the second pitch attempt. During the second pitch attempt I included a more detailed vertical slice. This description included that the vertical slice should have a short dialogue sequence with a rival racer, and a race around a track against three AI opponents. The feedback I received from Alex Untoro consisted of that I needed to find the focus for the project. Either the story or the racing. After getting this feedback I redesigned the game to make the vertical slice possible to make during the eight weeks with the members that I had in mind at that time.

 

An Introduction and the Design Document

Hello and welcome to my blog. In this blog I will describe the development process of Fast Gear. Fast gear is a story-based racing game with art and sound inspired by the 80s. In Fast Gear the player will race around circuits all over the world against AI opponents that each have personality. But the player will meet these characters off track as well. Off track the player will be able to spend time with their opponents to fom relationships with them that can help them during races. The player can also impact how other characters feel about them in press conferneses. In a press conference the player can bad mouth a rival racer and that racer will race with more ferocity against the player. But if the player talks the talk and walks the walk they will gain public opinon. Public opinion is what investors look at to decide which racer they want to sponsor. Through sponsorships the player can get abilities that they can use during races.