FBAUL-IST GAMING 2018
ULTRA RACER
Meet the Team
Carlos Silva
Concept Art, Game Interface Design
— I’m Carlos Silva. I’m a Master’s student at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon in Communication Design and New Media. My journey up until now consisted of lots of doodles, lines of code, games and japanese shows. Since then, I’ve become passionate about the digital world and I am pursuing in my work the exploration of the lines between arts and code to create engaging and worthwhile interactive experiences, having found a nice playground to explore that to my heart’s content in the world of computer games.
Ricardo Fonseca
3D Art, Game Design
— I’m Ricardo Fonseca, a Master's student in Computer Engineering and Computers at Instituto Superior Técnico. I’ve always loved Mathematics and Physics, but also the creative industries in the other hand. Upon discovering the Computer Graphics area I realized that I could combine both things and I decided to pursue that. Linked to this area are video games, another of my great passions, so working in this area is one of the greatest dreams that I have. It can be said that Computer Graphics and C ++ are my life…
Manuel Silva
Graphics Programming, Game Design
— I’m Manuel Silva, a student of the Master of Informatics and Computer Engineering of Instituto Superior Técnico. Video Games are a means of expression that always captivated me and I always dreamed of working in the industry. My areas of interest include Computer Graphics, C ++, C #, Unity3D and GameJams.
Bernardo Eichler
Game & Physics Programming, Game Design
— I’m Bernardo Eichler, student of Master in Informatics and Computer Engineering with specialization in the areas of Intelligent Systems and Games at IST. All my life I've been a fan of any kind of games, but what interested me the most was the way the games were developed or how they could be changed. More recently Artificial Intelligence began to have a greater impact on our lives and as such I took an interest in this area and how it could be incorporated into the area of the videogames.
The Game
Inspired by the worlds of racing in games such as Wipeout and Mad Max, our project will take form of a high-speed racing game, set in a futuristic dystopian world and featuring high-tech machines as racing vehicles.
Concepts and mechanics
The player is awarded by his skill in piloting a racing jet as fast as possible, while dodging and making swift turns along the track. Depending on how well the player races, a progress bar will fill up with energy that when at its maximum will open up a portal to different dimensions to race on and award the player with certain advantages or boosts. To experiment with the play style, at some point during the races, the vehicles would be able to engage battle at an arena-like zone for a specific amount of time while still racing at high-speed.
Concept sketches
These first sketches try to explore an industrial and futuristic artstyle for the game and its possibilities in giving a unique personality to the racing jets' design and also its driver character.
March 30th 2018
​Ultra Racer Update
The team has been working on the game and we've been making progress! There was a slight change in our team tasks, where Ricardo, Manuel and Bernardo are focusing in the different programming aspects of the game (physics, interface programming and graphics programming) while I'm taking care of the 3D graphics and animations along with the game interface.
Setup
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We're using the Unity IDE to collaborate on the project together. For now we're programming the basics of the game using placeholder assets.
The team is focusing on delivering one race track with multiple lap scenarios and one kind of racing jet.
Game Mechanics
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We fleshed out a bit more the Ultra Racer's game system. The main feature is the ability to teleport to different race tracks by filling a speed meter to its maximum, which requires the player's skill to keep the momentum of the vehicle and avoid any collisions while racing through the track. Upon teleporting, the player enters a new dimension where a minigame ensues: it involves dodging obstacles rhythmically along 3 different race lanes, like games such as Thumper, where player's reflexes are important. Completing this minigame successfully will award the player with speed boosts and other advantages upon arriving at the next lap/track of the race.
Graphics
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On my end, I'm currently building a 3D model for a racing jet along the style of our concept arts. It's coming together nicely and I'm also working on its textures and animation effects. This base model can then be further customized for other vehicle variations and colours.
On the next update we'll showcase our current racer in motion along with graphical and interface elements.
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Stay tuned.
April 15th 2018
Ultra Racer — Update
This update we're going to share how's work coming along so far in graphical and style aspects.
Game Logo
First, I've tried to come up with a positive and negative version for the game's logo. It uses a very stylized but clean geometric type with well-defined edges and slanted lines to convey the sense of speed and futuristic style we're going for.
Race Model
​We now have our very first high-speed racing machine! It was definitely a challenge to model and texture this, but the result came out pretty good. It still has some room for improvement though, and I'll try to fine-tune some of its geometry and play around with racing stickers, symbols, metal textures and other interesting design elements.
Game Interface
Moving onto the GUI, it was important to maintain a consistent design language that goes in hand with the game's title logo while not overdoing the geometric details so it would lose readability. I tried to apply the same principles as with the logo: clean lines, very low number of decorative elements and giving more attention to the typography and information given to the player so the interface still has personality while being functional.
This is the Display that will be always on-screen during the races: it tracks the player's current Speed, number of Laps and Race Time. The Speed Meter displays the current speed in a blue colour and it has a red region that marks the High-Speed numbers which the player needs to reach in order to be able to trigger a SHIFT, that teleports temporarily the player to alternate dimensions.
We're still deciding whether to use the circular version (which is usually seen in racing games) or the vertical one (which resembles more of a energy gauge) and see how they look on the game's screen and integrate with the code to actually display the values.
That's all we've got to share this time,
Stay tuned for the next update.
April 30th 2018
