Hi guys,
As part of my uni degree, some friends and I are planning to create an arcade racing mod on the UT2004 engine. We're already pretty far into it with the low level stuff, but as we get inexorably further into the real meat of the game we'd like some feedback from players on what they enjoy about racing games so that we can make this the most enjoyable game that we can, for the widest range of players.
So, what are some of your faviourite racers, and why? What do you like about them, what do you think could have been improved upon?
cheers!
If you are making an Arcade racer, the action has to be fast and easy. Weapons are a great way to make it fun, but I guess that depends on if you want just a dedicated racer or not.
Fun physics are great, all the "fullysikadorifto" kids love sliding their cars around corners. Keep the tracks fast, that'll keep the intensity up. Check out Burnout 3 on Xbox, that has some really crazy action. It's pretty much a matter of just holding the throttle flat and steering. In one of its battle modes, each player has to try and knock the other off the road and cause them to crash.
One of the ways Burnout keeps the action consistent is by using a rubber band effect. A driver that is further behind manages faster speeds until they catch up to the leader. If you are going to be having a lot of instances where the players kill each other with weapons etc, this can be a good idea, it'll keep the action constant. If its just a racer with no weapons etc... steer clear of this.
Stuff like booster pads can be a good idea, rewarding a driver who has a more control over their car. Jumps are also a blast but they need to be in the right spots.
Personally I enjoy realistic racers, I love hammering around a track just trying to push myself for consistent times and the best lines. However I am a big fan of motorsport, and I love attending the odd track day with my Celica and try to do some karting when I get the chance, so sims are in my field of interest.
You aren't at QUT by any chance are you?
I say go hard on the environments in respect to interactivity and collision, I dont know what you lads are like with physics but if you can pull off a lot of loose geometry about which can potentially get in the way then awesome, even if it doesnt affect the car's performance directly, you need visual noise, its exciting to have stuff flying everywhere, the smaller and more "bitty" the better.
Take a hit on poly counts and really spike up your particles, even just sparks and tire smoke, flung up dirt, anything you can think of, you need noise. This being said however you need to know when to hit the Player with that noise, do not hit them with everything immedietly and all the time or it'll become boring very quickly, when they're driving fast and smooth you actually want more silence, not too much happening, hopefully it would even bring them into a comfort zone, but if something goes wrong you want them to know about it, one car spins out and hits a wall and in a fraction of a second shit just goes flying everywhere, shocking the Player out of it and making them go "....... holly crap!"
Dynamic levels, really think about the level design and how you can really throw a spanner in the works, script a building to fall down somehow mid race and force all the Players to suddenly change course and take a detour, suddenly everyone's back to square one and having to find their way again.
Emphasise the environments over the vehicles themselves, yes make the vehicles look as good as you can, animate little characters on them or whatever, but they are not the gameplay. Once moving the player is for the most part watching the track ahead so thats what will be the most drawing aspect. I'd rather take a whitebox model through a slalom of loose geometry spitting up and smashing you all over the road than a fully detailed and textured rx7 around a figure 8, as much as I love rotaries, that just aint fun.
Modding!! as a bit of a car fan myself you cannot have a racing game and skip past being able to customise a car (mariokart excluded) you dont have to be realistic, you dont have to know the output of a 20B with a Garret To4, with a comical game you can do this. At one stage I was thinking of a Pirate racer where you have sail karts which you mod up with different sails or crews or weapons, you can do anything. I'm actually not a racing fan, but I remember playing SEGA GT on the Dreamcast and spending hours on the drag tracks alone, running down the qtr again and again, then taking it back into the shop to tweak this or that and get another fraction of a second off, Player's love to have things all of their own.
Do not ignore sound! DO NOT IGNORE SOUND! especially in a racing game! There's nothing like the "katshhhhh" of a blowoff valve, or the chunk of a Viper or Austin Martin's transmission change, and you gotta think, for the most part the Player's car will not be showing much activity, even flaming exhausts and wheelspins only go so far, the action and the dynamics and the 'animation' comes from the sound. Too often sound is put off to the last minute and its a waste because people just dont realise how much of a difference it actually makes. If you're doing a futuristic game then even better! make your own engine sounds up, take the sound of a tie fighter and hit a reverb on it when they change gears, it would sound kick ass.
Sound can really land the Player inside the scene, even when nothing is happening on screen, take these examples of the following scene:
"The car rounds a bend and enters into a straight to build up speed"
1) Without sound.
i)The car rounds corner
ii)Begins drift: Smoke effect off wheels.
iii) Straightens out, increases speed.
iv) 1st gear change: car jolts.
v) 2nd gear change: car jolts.
vi) 3rd gear change: car jolts.
v) Car hits final powerband, blur effect on camera, camera pans back to put distance between audience.
2) Now again, with sound.
i)The car rounds corner
sfx: powerband winding down, cuts with gear shift down, powerband winds down again.
ii)Begins drift: Smoke effect off wheels.
sfx: Engine reemerges, loose sliding sound overlayed perhaps becoming full screech depending on surface type.
iii) Straightens out, increases speed.
sfx: Powerband kicks in on gradual rise, turbo spins up overlayed on top
iv) 1st gear change: car jolts.
sfx: Chunky transmission sound and turbo blowoff, Powerband kicks in on gradual rise, turbo spins up overlayed on top.
v) 2nd gear change: car jolts.
sfx: Chunky transmission sound and turbo blowoff, Powerband kicks in on gradual rise, turbo spins up overlayed on top.
vi) 3rd gear change: car jolts.
sfx: Chunky transmission sound and turbo blowoff, Powerband kicks in on gradual rise, turbo spins up overlayed on top though is lower in pitch.
v) Car hits final powerband, blur effect on camera, camera pans back to put distance between audience.
sfx: Powerband hits peak, turbo becomes more of a jet engine whistle overlayed on top, then all sound volume drained out and hollow wind tunnel humm overlayed to depict silence of extreme speed.
...... BIIIIIG diference.
And finally, with the music, make it repetitive, singular purposeful beats, they depict purpose and drive and help the player maintain focus, also (I'd like to get feedback from some of the audio guys here) but I'd imagine it would pay to avoid music that has long string like sounds because the engines would occupy that. The music should match the engine sounds and compliment them, think about it, an engine for the most part makes a long steady hum, it's a consistant sound within the Player's ear so therefore it should be treated as part of the music to some extent, you gotta break that sound up and maintain activity.
I know you're just starting out, but if you can get some of that stuff happening then it'll make a difference for sure.
Wow, thanks for all the suggestions there!
All of what you've said are things that we've touched on during our time so far, so that's encouraging. Sound may be an effort for us as our sound guy is kind of external, but I definitely hear what you're saying about it so we'll endeavour to get some good noise in there. Particles, explosions and physics are all a definite must for us, trying to make it as noisy as possible when things go wrong.
The only thing we wouldn't go with are car customisations. Well to an extent- we're allowing people to change skins but that's about it. We're hoping for a very simple race dynamic a-la Midtown Madness or something, so we're feeling at the moment like if we allow people to mod their engines and things it's going to throw us towards a more realistic game which isnt what we're planning at the moment. We want people to be able to very quickly jump in a car and drive it around into other cars :D
Thanks for the help so far, definitely given us some new things to consider so please keep the suggestions flowing if you have more to say!
PS yes, I'm from QUT. Why do you ask?
quick idea for the harvesting:
- both player cars, and quite a few non player cars on a track
- if a player crashes, there's the physics, explosions, whole lot...
- instead of the whole respawn from stopped position, the player is transferred into the nearest non-player car behind, instantly getting them back in the race without them stopping and trying to make up their speed again which isn't fun and interrupts the fast pace, but still having a time detriment.
definitely the latter - kind of cyclic though so it's still spread out evenly enough that it wouldn't wildly vary from amount of time to respawn behind the crash.
I think it'd work quite well in a destructible environment -- cars as volatile as leaky nitro glycerin, yet still a very fast pace gameplay at a constant peak instead sharp drop offs at each crash.
yeah there was not too much more annoying than dropping off the BLLLOODY EDGE of the haunted mansion track in mariokart... man that ticked me off. Or even worse the SNES mariokart, probably the single most frustrating game EVER!! You would absolutely blitz that italian bastard, wipe him out with a shell, he'd get flattened by some stampy thing, float down into the lava, you'd get to within a PIXEL!!! of the finish line, then "DADADA DADADEDADA" BAM!! Mario creams you from behind with his invincibilty you get knocked off the track, Peach and Bowser cross the finish line 2nd and 3rd, "GOTTA GET 4th GOTTA GET 4th!!! GOTTA..." BAM!! Donkey hammers ya, takes 4th, and you smash the controller on the floor.... now THATS gameplay
I'm an arcade racer fan from way back. From Pole Position to Outrun, I loved them all. Anyway, I'd probably fall into that category of folks like JI Styles where we feel a bit alienated by the surging popularity of racing simulator games. I mean, I understand that you shouldn't really compare arcade racers and racing simulators because they're two totally different genres really, but damnit, I just can't really get into or enjoy racing simulators that much.
Anyway, my favourite racer is Outrun. It's got all the hallmarks of a great arcade racer. It's fast, and you felt like you were going places. There's a whole variety of wonderful levels/locations and getting to the next stage was seamless. I think Outrun is well known for it's stage selection where you can choose your route at the end of the level. It's a pretty good idea which helps with replayability. You also don't need to brake much at all, rarely do you have to slow down to a crawl to prepare for sharp turns, and you weren't doing laps [;)]. A great soundtrack, and an exotic car tops it all off.
I'm not sure how I would improve on Outrun. Outrun 2 added only a few new things, like powersliding around corners, and some new modes like time attack. I think the changes I'd suggest would change the much loved old Outrun formula into something else entirely. It's probably the same reason that Counterstrike is still the same game that it was in 99 or whenever it came about.
If I could change it, then I definately think it should go in the way of Burnout Revenge and Need for Speed: Most Wanted, both of which are excellant games and arcade racers at heart. I'm sure you can come up with a fair few ideas from those games.
well, I'm not a racer fan at all, but I do enjoy an odd lap around in a game every once in a while - so why listen to my comments at all? simple fact that I can supply you with the common reasons why people can't get into the genre.
first up, realism isn't fun. you're calling this an arcade racer, that's great, so tackle the frustrations from that point of view. If you crash into one wall head on (say a square pylon) which is perpindicular to you, sure you would be stopped in all logical conclusions (well... really you'd be wrapped around it and metal and organic beings would cease to exist seperately, but that's not the point). That's not fun. Hitting one thing and stopping for a 5 second crash, and then taking a further 10 seconds to pull yourself back up to the speed you where going at isn't a fun way to go from 1st to 8th and lose the entire race from one mishap. Another frustration is learning curve. Although the whole easy to pick up and play, hard to master rule sounds all good in theory, it's very rarely pulled off, with huge skill gaps between hardcore racing fans and casual gamers preventing it from being fun for either of these audiences to mix. Mario kart is a prime example of how to even that up... although a player that's just picked it up isn't going to be completely on par with someone who's been playing a month solid, they can still compete with the way the pickups are balanced - basically, the person most behind gets the best pickups to affect the person most in front, and that rule meets at the middle.
It's a hard formula to break, but simply make it fun by discarding anything frustrating and introducing only elements that enhance the entire audiences experiance. Oh, and don't reward people that are doing the best and are the most in front by making them more in front, and likewise, don't penalise people not doing well and are liable to be most behind by making them more behind. How to do that? Be inventive [:)] quick example, in f-zero on the n64 if you blew up you where out of the race (harsh penalty, not fun), but they had a slot machine you could play which affected the people in various ways that where still in the race (alleviated the frustration, made it fun, and kept you "in-the-race").
good luck [;)]