The Net Pit

Greetings! And welcome back as we look at some ForzeBreak goodness together! This week in our weekly update we will take a look at some of the new features that the team has been working on as we set the stage for more formal playable versions. The highlights:

• Reinstallment of our arrow indicators (networking)

• Reinstallment of players individual colors (networking)

• Powerup prototypes

• New power up 3D models

• Collectibles

• New UI Elements

• More sounds

New Phone Who Dis?

With our new local split-screen mode implemented we had to do some adjustments in order to make it work. One of those adjustments was to take away temporarily a few of the things that we had previously working on our past versions of the game. In this case we had to ‘turn off’ our arrow indicators and our color assignment for each player since they would work differently on the local player mode. Another factor that contributed to that decision was that we implemented a new networking system that would allow us to have more smooth gameplay without some lag issues the game faced before. While having four of the same vehicles with the same color is still fun, having a way to identify who is who will become a big part of the game one way or another. To that end, Jason has worked on reimplementing our pointers and individual color assignation to our new and improved online mode. So no worries, players can still brag about how their red vehicle is so much cooler than the player with the blue one. Or they can talk about how awesome will it be to have silver, orange, black, maybe even pink as DLC colors.

(Arrow indicators are back for our online mode!)

Armory in the making

Now that we have started to shift towards the next phase of chore mechanics, both our programmers and artist have began to work in what I like to call our “Powerup Experimental Workshop” or PEW (because we want players go “pew pew pew” when they use them). In other words, now that we have a more stable grasp on how our main vehicle drives around, we are now focusing on creating and testing prototypes of power ups because of the major role they’ll have. Like any other game that includes abilities, powers for characters, or weapons, e.g. multiplayer games, the earlier we test these the better in order to balance them and find any critical problems that they may have. Not to mention that it is quite fun just thinking about them and all the things we can play around with.

So from the art side, Ring and our new artist Martha, have began working on the models for the power-ups themselves. Trust me when I say that you can feel the power that these will have once we implement them fully into the game just by looking at them.

(New grapple gun modeled by Ring)

(New mystery powerup!)

From the programming side, our programmers Jason and Robin have started to implement the prototypes for both missiles and our cannon power ups, both of which fit into our ‘projectile weapon’ category. I will go more in depth for what the categories mean in the next updates but for now it means that each powerup is categorized depending on the role they will play during gameplay. Based on what I said in a previous update, power ups are being designed with the intent for players to develop their own playstyle. For example, a player that wants to feel like Rambo on a car, will most likely go for the weapons powerups. Another player might prefer a style that is more close and personal especially when they ram into other people so they could choose a ‘spike ram’ for extra damage with the boost. On the meanwhile there could be one player that likes to Ride like the Wind so they would focus on collecting power ups that give them extra speed or a more efficient nitro boost that could allow them to dodge those incoming missiles from player one.

With that many possibilities and scenarios that means that it is best for us to plan ahead and try a few of these out to not only ensure that they work the way we intend to but also make sure they are fun and do not break the game.

Rev it up!

As I’ve said, we have been building on our iterations constantly to improve what we already have an optimize it. One of the major incoming implementations that I have talked about will be our beloved ‘War Buggy’ as it readies itself for its grand entrance to our game (That doesn’t mean we love our current Tank rover any less). If everything goes according to plan it will be playtested this week and it will be the starting point to further play around with more ideas for our vehicle types.

(New challenger joins the fight!)

(Missiles Power Up!)

Thanks to Robins efforts, the current plan is to eventually have different heavy weight vehicles in a match each with different attributes that could give some advantages in different aspects of the game (i.e. an armored tank could have more resistance to damage that it receives at the cost of being smaller). However since different vehicle types will not influence the game as much as power ups, they have a bit lower priority for now. Our current goal is to have a game in which everyone starts the same thus emphasizing skills play rather than depending on different vehicles one can choose from. What I mean is that while different vehicle types is something we want included, we consider powerups closer to a core feature of the game (Think of the evolution of Mario Kart. The first ones had everyone share the same kart and the fun came mainly from the powerups. It wasn’t until later games that different vehicle sizes had a more significant effect on gameplay). That being said, just like how we did with our vehicle controls, once we have a solid grasp on power ups, that will open the games to start playing around more with vehicles that play slightly different than the standard one.

The Interactive Driver’s Manual

Our vehicles are not the only thing getting some upgrades. Our UI has also some brand new additions that will hopefully make everything clearer for our players to understand their current state in the game. Continuing with real life comparisons and our game, it is important that players keep their eye on the road, or arena in this case, most of the time. But it is also important that they should be able to know the state of their vehicles and plan their next moves accordingly. My main task as the UI artist is to find the best placements for this important information as well as finding the best way to show that in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the player and is easy to understand. So while having a panel full of speedometers, statistics, and screens sounds cool, the best way for this game is something simple and to the point following the saying “less is more”. And what better way than to do that with icons that are easy to understand what they are meant for. The main things that I want to cover would be how much damage the vehicle has taken, the current power-up equipped, and the number of lives remaining. The first rough iteration is almost finished as we gather more info from our play test to see if our new additions work the way we mean to.

(Glimpse of the new rough UI elements)

(Icon designs and variations that have gone through internal testing).

Last week I mentioned that we expanded our team including our new artist Martha as well as our Sound team including Jairus, Eaygee (AG), and other collaborators. This week Robin and me implemented some new sounds for our current match menu and we will be collaborating closer with the audio team in the following weeks to update some cool ideas that we have in mind to find the music for ForzeBreak.

That is all for now folks! Tune in next week for some more ForzeBreak goodness