Hey folks! we’re back for the next ForzeBreak weekly update. As it is the case with many games during development, balancing and tuning mechanics is extremely important to ensure steady progress towards the future. As such with the list of new implementations from last week we used this one to tune them up and adjust them as needed:
Vehicle controls tune up
Flipping mechanic adjustments
Individual Colors for each players and corresponding color indicators
New playtest arena
Collision adjustments
Flipping not Flying
Starting with our new cool vehicle flipping mechanic, Robin made adjustments so that players wouldn’t be able to fly off just by spamming the flip button. As fun as flying is (and believe me, it is truly fun), unfortunately it is one of those unexpected fun features that has big potential to break our game. After all the goal is to push other players so they fall, and them being able to fly makes it impossible to do that. Not to mention they could go to infinity and beyond instead of standing their ground on the field. Fret not however as the flipping mechanic is still within the game and it's still really fun to use for crazy jumps and evasive maneuvers during the match. It is one of the most loved features, from both our playtesters and developers so far.
Continuing with tune ups of our core mechanics we have also made some adjustments to our vehicle controls as we get more feedback from our playtesters experiences. In our game, driving a vehicle involves so much more than just accelerating and going forward. As we take into account how other mechanics might affect a vehicle's momentum: Flipping and landing suddenly when going at top speed, making a boost jump, colliding with other players, etc.; controls are going to be a feature that will constantly be tested to ensure they work and for players to be in control at all times.
Knowing your Enemy
One important aspect of our game right from the start has always being able to identify where the other opponent players are, as in the case with most multiplayer versus games. Last week Jason implemented arrow indicators that pointed towards the other opponents in real time. To further improve on that, now each player has their own individual color and each arrow is now colored to correspond with the player it is aiming at. Nice! Am I right? Now you’re able to focus and get back to that player that has always been at your tail, form temporary truces with other players, and brag about how cool is your color compared to the others.
(Rough UI on the top bottom right that indicates your boost and speed)
Feel the Forze!
Vehicle collisions have also been improved as our team continues to test out all the possible scenarios that could happen within a match. For example how would ground collisions would be different from cars clashing on the ground vs clashing in mid air? How will they differ between two cars boosting and hitting each other vs only one boosting? All of these are important things that have to be kept in mind to lay our basic mechanics and even more so once powerups are implemented. To that end Jason in collaboration with Robin have been hard at work to make sure that once a player boosts into another player not only does it work properly in terms of physics but also that it leaves that satisfaction of “I sent that player flying!”.
Creative Equilibrium
Switching to the creative and the art side of things for this week, Ring and I have been working on further designs as we address some of the common problems we’ve noticed during our playtests. So far one of the recurring problems that we’ve have seen is that players haven’t been able to push other players off the arena yet the way we intend them to do. In other words while players are able to find and have some basic interactions with one another as they crash, it doesn’t quite work like sumo yet. So as a way to experiment with what we could do to make our playtesting matches more interesting and continue to design new play areas for players to use their toys, we created a new arena design.
This new design, which I like to call “The wheelie” (pun totally intended), serves many purposes as we test out different surfaces (how rough or smooth can a terrain be), different levels and elevations (could a vehicle go up stairs or just ramps?), some flip jumps, some advanced trick skills like boosting to make some jumps across and are, and new inner gaps in the arena so that players don’t always have to push others to the edge to get them down. We colored each are differently both to give players a clearer sense of where they were and where they were going. That and also the different colors would make it easier for us developers to see which areas worked (which were the most fun, which weren’t), what scale we could do when designing future arenas, and most important of all can players push other players off just like robot sumo.
(“The Wheelie”. The perfect place to try out crazy ideas! Colors help with dividing this new stage into sub areas and help us gauge where players spend the most time).
All of this information has been recorded through our survey questionnaires as we analyze valuable feedback to have a better sense for the next weeks to come.
The team has also been hard at work to come up with some amazing ideas for future implementations including some cool concepts for upcoming power ups that will have intriguing and exciting reaction during matches. Don’t want to spoil the goods just yet but for now I can say that these new toys are being planned with the intent of players developing their own style on the battlefield: those who love speed, those who love firepower, and those who love skills.
We draw a close for today for now but see you next time!