Game Map

Here is my game map for the racing game. I got lots of valuable feedback from my dear dear dear classmates during the critique. I am not proud of the map very much, but I am definitely going to make an awesome racing game in UDK, I am not very good at Adobe Illustrator, but everything is in my mind, I am excited about making the grey-box. YES, I CAN DO THIS! Trust me, my visitor, trust me as usual, I need your support! Alright, that's all!

Vehicle Modeling

I almost finish modeling my Lamborghini.I wanted to use NURBS at the beginning, but due to the fact that we only have one week to finish modeling, so my professor suggests me using polygons. Well, I still outlined the contour of the car. I used lots of techniques that I have learned from a tutorial, which the instructor used CV curves and Create Polygon tool. Right now, the major issue is that I have to keep its poly-counts under 5,000 faces, and the same time keep as many details as I can. I eliminated lots of its faces now,but the surface of the car is not as smooth, so I guess I have to use the high-poly version and bake its normals on the low-poly version. Here are some screenshots of my car:

 

Rouph Concept Sketches and Map Design

Here are 20 rough thumbnails that I drew to explore the concept of my game map as well as exploring how the cars overcome all the obstacles:

 The 1st pass game map design:

I also made 3 rough light study for my final concept drawing (two cars are racing on the Great Wall.), the first study is currently my favorite:

Lights come from left

Lights come from right

Lights come from front

Theme and Concept of My Level

The racing is going to be taken place in the outskirts of a city, there are highways and bridges lead to mountains. Concept statement: "Nothing ventured, nothing gained!"
More views of one of my stunts:

The 1st pass of my map:

The Checkpoint: The way I guide the players staying on the right track is to used checkpoint, a giant label floating in the air tells players where to go, once a player goes to the wrong direction, they will be warned on their screen: "Wrong Direction"!
  
Here are some images and photos that shows my concept:

The time of the day is going to be afternoon, 5:00pm to 6:00pm. At the beginning of the map is the outskirts of a city, then soon players drive into a tunnel, then they will encounter a bridge across a valley and lead to mountains. I am considering using two sets of color schemes:

1. The city area (Old Chinese industrial area):

2. The Mountains (Tropical bamboo forrest):

Story of my level: Year 2020,  south part of China. In the old abandoned city district of Shenzhen, a gang of young idel people gather there and hold car races every day. Soon, they start working hands in gloves with many foreign drug rings by helping them transporting drugs near the boarder. Those young racers drive some of the fastest car in the world, they always overwhelm the police border controls and transport drugs to Vietnam and Thailand. The local police can't catch them because of their excellent racing skills. Many of the racers do that just for excitement and humiliating the police. Until one day, A SWAT team that is equipped super sports cars is found. They are the best police soldiers and have been trained to be the best racers. This is the last day of the crimes of drug dealing! Catch them! Bring them to justice!

My Hero Preproduction!

I have a big project that requires us to model a realistic human and a car. Both of them are going to be included in the racing game project. Lots of ideas come across my mind, but at last I chose a pretty challenging concept: A Chinese SWAT woman! She is a person who is in charge of chasing and arresting those racers on the road. If it is necessary, she is able to fire her M4 assault rifle! The car that goes with her is a "Lamborghini Murcialago"! The challenging part of this character is her outfits, she has plenty pockets, belts and other little details on her uniform. Here is the character sheet: "Amanda Wang"

She is a woman that believes and protects justice. She has a bit of short temper, but in front of the citizens, she is a kind, helpful and spiritual person. She won't mind if you just go and ask her the way of going to a airport. In her 3/4 pose, she warns the suspects that she has an eye on them, and her hand is reaching her pistol!

I drew this on top of a UDK skeleton that our teacher give us because at the end, we need to rig our characters according to it:

Weapons:

The figure turnaround:

Some reference photos:

Her Lamborghini:

My Stunts, Obstacles and Aids Concepts

Before I start elaborating my stunt ideas, I want to make players to change their track whenever they want. Changing tracks could bring their opponents disasters: the road suddenly collapsed or some shortcuts are opened. But these abilities cost their turbo powers. Turbo powers could be acquired by collecting oil tanks on the road, they are indicated as circles on my sketches. So players could choose to either use turbo or trigger traps.  


 Stunt1:

This is my first stunt idea. After a long driving in a dark tunnel, players would have a sudden open sight, very strong sunshine. There is a long bridge in front of them. They could trigger the bridge to start closing. Once the bridge is closed, other players will fall off the bridge.

Stunt2:

  While players pass this part, they really need to drive very fast to prevent them falling down, they will be driving upside-down. At the end of the track, they need to control their speed as there is a big turn in front of them. As I said those circles are oil tanks, players can find many of them in some dangerous areas.

Stunt3:

In this area, Players better not stay too close with the cars in the front. The cars in the front could press one side of the "seesaw" to make the other side up, so when other cars try to cross, they will fall off the cliff! I am going to figure out a way to incorporate this in my level, it is hilarious!

Stunt4:

This is the suspension bridge part. The player who drives in the front would make the bridge shift left and right. This could significantly slow down the rest. Someone can also trigger the trap that was placed here, make the bridge break, other players will fall into swamp, which slows them down even further,the good thing is: there is a tunnel in front, that is the exit!

Stunt5:

Those are two routes to the same direction, this is a big slop area. Players choose the broken path can fetch many oil tanks, and they can make them a bit ahead by jumping over.

Stunt6:

This is a tunnel on a mountain, at the same time, it is a very big turn. Players must drift through this tunnel, meanwhile they must be careful of not drifting out of the tunnel and fall off the cliff.


Aids: The aids I can have in mind now are:

Road Signs: They tell players what kind of areas or road conditions in front of them.

Oil Tanks: Oil tanks are used to trigger traps or use thrust.

Speed Camera: Speed cameras tell players their current speed.

Checkpoints: Checkpoints make sure players drive towards the right direction and if a player crashes a car, he or she can start from last checkpoint.


Obstacles:

Street Lamps: They can reduce the players' speed if players hit street lamps.
Swamps: Slow you down significantly.
Water paddles: When you drift on water paddles, you could lose control of your car.
Wall: You hit walls, you crash your car.
Nails: The effects is like suddenly using handbrake,you can lose control of your car.
Other cars: Other cars can make you crash.

Researching Stunts!

Some Great real-life stunts:
The first task that we need to do for the pre-production project is to research car stunts. The very first thing that we do is researching real-life stunts, below are those videos that inspires me! Please click those blue titles to watch videos.

1. A Taiwanese Guy's "Seesaw" Trick

At the 2:00 of the video, the driver drove on a flexible track, which it works just like a seesaw. He drove back and forth, so his car went up and down, that is really scary. This video inspires me a lot.

2. A Russian Guy Drives On A Suspension Bridge

Although that bridge did not break, but this is definitely you don't want to attempt to do. He drove through the river really slowly, so we don't feel the bridge shift left and right. But in my racing game, all players would drive under a very high speed, their cars could go left and right, so the player who drives in the front would make the bridge shift, I think that is a very good idea! Here is a link of another video about this idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce-PQqkIXe0

3. Robbie Maddison Backflips the Tower Bridge in London

This Australian guy Robbie Maddison rode a motorbike to jump over the Tower Bridge in London. I am thinking of having a long bridge in my level, which it can be opened in the middle. While players drive towards the bridge, it is opening up, Players have to speed up their cars and fly over the bridge. I will use this design in one of the shortcuts. Players don't have to go through this part. I am thinking that before encountering this part, players race in a tunnel, like this:

One of the paths lead to the bridge, there is going to be a sign and an alarm on the wall that warns players that the bridge is closing now. There is going to be roadblocks, but players can break the roadblocks and choose to jump the bridge.


Game Mechanics of Some Great Racing Games:

Below is some research on the game mechanics of famous racing games that could change the tracks or hinder or help the players. I might try to incorporate lots of them into the game level I am making.

1. "Split Second" (Crazy amounts of obstacles and it requires strategies! )

"Split Second" enables players to use strategies to destroy their opponents during a race, and changing the track whenever they desire. A player could destroy buildings along the track by triggering bombs , by doing that, a player can destroy their opponents during the race. Players could even call in a Boeing-747 to let it crash on your opponents. A player could also open up a new route during a race, and then blocking it in order to preventing his or her opponents passing through. I definitely should also make my game very strategic, for example vehicles should be able to throw some spikes or nails on the road.


2. The "Need For Speed" Series

Weather Changing: There are many good game mechanics in this game that constantly affect players gaming experience. For example, the change of weather, sometimes it starts raining while you are driving, after a while the road could become very slippery, which becomes harder for players to drift.

Road Condition: Almost every part of the map has many different road conditions,which players must try their best to stay on the road instead of off-road, off-road could slow them down.I should definitely think about the variety of road conditions: large scales of water paddles, sand, grassland etc. So players need to think of shifting their route sometimes

Speed Camera: Another great design is the "speed cameras". You can find them on the side of the road, every time a player passes a speed camera, you can get your current speed and the highest speed that camera has recorded, which allows players to track their performance constantly.

The Signs: The signs on the side of the road are also very helpful. They tell you where the road leads.There is also a mini map on the screen, you could set direction of a certain place, then a green line will be drawn on the mini map, by which it tells you how to go there, it works like the GPS.

  
There are tons of big turns in this game, but most of the time there are some signs which tell players where the turn is, a player could tell the radius of the turn from the signs. Sometimes you could find checkpoints on the road, by following the checkpoints, you can drive towards the right direction during a race. After Crashing: Another great design is that when you crash your car, you won't be kicked out of the race, you will be delayed a bit, but you will be placed back on the last checkpoint you passed.

Racing Game Research!

We have started a very challenging project recently, well at least for me it is pretty challenging and I am sure I would benefit a lot from it. We are making a racing game! We must model a character and a vehicle that match the style of the character. This time is making something REALISTIC, it might not photo-realistic, but we are allowed to make models that have high polycounts, which is great! Well, first foremost, we need to analyze a existing racing game, which has to be awesome and famous.I chose to analyze: "Need for Speed 17: Most Wanted"!

I am actually not a fan of racing games, because previously I don't see to the reason why people like driving fast. After I played this newest version of the legendary "Need for Speed" series,I have to say that, I love it! I love racing game right now! I started to like to listen the sounds of engine and start to love cars, the design of cars is actually an special art form, driving them is another type of art. (You definitely need lots of skills and techniques to win a street racing!) Here are some screenshots I took while I was playing the game!