REFLECTION | 2302862

Since March 2021, I've been teamed up with a friend called James Falconer. We have been working on our project "Rampage Racing". The idea for this game originated from our inspiration Hutch and their game called "Rebel Racing". Around the time we started this product Hutch had recently visited our college to talk about the game industry. While doing this they also talked us through some demonstrations in programming and 3D while also showing off some of their games behind the scenes.

Concepts:

The concept for our game was for it to be a destruction based racing game. The player would be able to change their car and its colours in a garage system. There would also be multiple modes such as a campaign and a time trial - where players could compete to become first on the leaderboard.

Before starting the development process me and my partner jumped in a call to plan out our game. This was a really fun experience because it was the start of my first collaborative project. We bounced multiple ideas off of each other until we came up with a plan we were happy with. We knew we wanted to keep the game low poly with bright colours and destruction so a lot of our plan was based on this idea. As well as the plan, we created a Trello board which I think helped to keep our plan more organised and easier to follow.

Expectations of Genre:

As my product was expected to be a racing game primarily focused on destruction, we made sure to include lots of ways we could include this into our game throughout our planning. We also decided to include lots of research on racing games such as the styles and which racing products already exists. The racing genre often includes single-player, time trials, and car customization so we wanted to include these into our product.

As this project is focused on racing, we knew we needed to create a way to make players keep coming back to play more. This is because racing with no real objectives can become quite boring. To stop this from happening we knew we needed to add many elements of destruction. This is why we decided to make almost everything in our environments destructible. We also knew we needed to create a way for players to compete such as time trials.

Expectations of Audience:

We decided to document a lot of our game creation via Twitter and Discord. We also decided to create a QA form for people to play and test our game before release. From our discord and QA form, we received a lot of helpful information and constructive criticism.

"I find that the vehicles are a little hard to control and they drift off the track too easily."
"I enjoyed the fact that there are different maps to choose from and that there is more coming soon. I also enjoy how the devs have implemented sound effects and music in the game."
"Multiplayer is something I enjoy in any video game, but it was not in the car game which I tested."
"I believe that except for multiplayer, I would add a time trial mode such as the mode shown in Mario Kart games."
"It's a nice little simple arcade-style game where you race AI drivers. It has several different vehicles, modes and maps to choose from."
"Forza Motorsport"

From all of this feedback, I've found it is very positive overall.

My Expectations:

I believe the product we have managed to create in such a short amount of time goes above and beyond my expectations. I am very proud of what we have managed to create and would love to keep working on this project even after the deadline.

Issues Faced:

We faced many issues throughout the development of this project. The main issue I faced during the development process was creating working car physics that fit the style we were aiming for. This was very difficult because many variables can be altered. I managed to overcome these problems by reading the unity documentation, watching youtube videos on the subject and also taking breaks so I could come back with a fresh mind. I also ran into a couple of issues with the player respawn system, saving system and also leaderboard system but I managed to figure all of these issues out via trial and error.

Organisation:

To keep organised throughout the creation of this project we decided to use a website called Trello.

Working with Others:

I enjoyed being able to work within a team. The reasoning for this is because it removed a lot of stress from us. This is because we only had to focus on our strengths rather than everything. Being able to work only on my strengths was very fun. I think our teamwork skills were very good as we always bounced ideas off of each other and would help each other out in areas we struggled with. Working with James has been an amazing experience and I believe from this project out friendship has grown stronger.

Strengths of Final Product:

We have many strengths in our final product such as AI, car physics and also our leaderboard system. These systems made the game what it is now.

Improvements I would make:

If I had more time to work on this product I would love to get more destruction implemented. Although we already have a lot of destruction in our game. A new mode with random events causing destruction would add more fun to our product.