Posted September 16, 2021 by Ben Smith
Hello! My name is Ben Smith and I have the privilege of being the lead game designer for The Adonai Invitational, a competitive arcade racing game themed around Greek mythology and the ancient sport of chariot racing. This is my first go as a lead designer and lead a team of 9 other talented students in the Computer Animation and Game Development (CAGD) at CSU Chico. Our goal is to complete the project in a semester and create an engaging and novel take on arcade racing.
The game takes the player into the world of Grigora, the illegitimate child of the forge god Hephestaus. The gods have grown tired of the dozens of wars fought in the fractious ancient Greek world and have devised a new way to entertain themselves and elevate their various children to the ranks of demigod, a race. The gods have been generous enough to donate a series of chariots to be raced with and teams of the strongest horses known to man, with both at their disposal there will be nothing holding back the racers from achieving daringly fast speeds. Each track is themed around the god that hosts the event and provides unique power ups based on the powers and motifs of the god. Players use their Focus to provide bursts of speeds when they need it most.
After our first sprint we have done some incredible work to set us up for a great release at the end of the semester.
It’s simple: earn the praise of the gods, enhance your chariot, master the tracks, and become the greatest racer in Greek history.
Pen to Paper:
Our first task was to take my ideas from the game design document (GDD) and translate that into work for the team. We have to start with the simple building blocks of the project. Our tracks will essentially make or break our game as it is the main way the players will engage with the world and the game. Before we could get to the fantastical mythological tracks we needed a baseline for testing our game. So like any good F1 racing team we set out to create our own test track. We tasked our level designers on taking the basic map outlines in the GDD, giving them a polish and room for critique, and creating our new annotated maps.
The top image shows the annotated map for our first level, Coast of Poseidon.
Below it is the map for our internal test track.
On the test track we wanted to have as many of our ideas to test as possible, with iteration in mind as we add power ups, refine our movement mechanics, and tune the Focus system which allows our players to gain a speed boost at the cost of focus.
Building out the Project:
As the backbone of our project we needed our programmers to be clear on the scope and vision for the game. As lead I encountered our first major hurdle. Our primary mechanic for giving players control over their movement besides speed did not work as intended when we got it running, in fact there was not much running at all and we had to go back to the drawing board. While we maintained the idea conceptually the mechanic was reworked to be more accessible, less complicated under the hood, and provide more player agency. The result of this was Focus, a resource used throughout the race to provide boosts of speed to the player and can be enhanced by different chariots and power-ups on the track.
We had early work that established our camera controls and control inputs to start feeling out the perspective and movement of the game. Additionally, we needed to teach our AI how to drive and see how they will react on the tracks we will create since it will not only need to know how to drive on a track but also prioritize power ups and travel through alternate paths that open up on the track as the laps progress.
A look inside our AI training course
Horses for the People:
Our talented 2D artist and animator were given the charge of conceptualizing our horses with different color schemes and patterns and getting something resembling a horse rigged up. We want to have some good variety for our horses and give the option for some fun colors and patterns that do not clash too much with the overall aesthetic. Our animator created their own primitive hose model to practice rigging and animated our first running cycle! It was a new experience for them and pretty much everyone on the team and we knew we needed to get this right from the start to set us up for the high speed action we want to see and feel later down the line. Both Tamil, our 2D artist, and Daniel, our animator, showed early enthusiasm for getting the world famous quadruped looking and running smoothly.
Our first horse concepts!
Primitive horse model rigged
Modeling Mythology:
Our 3D artists had the task of researching and formulating the various structures and flora that will populate our first level. And on top of that needed to get our horse models looking fun but also strong and domineering, they were reared on Mt. Olympus after all. We were initially concerned with the challenge of modeling something as difficult and distinct as a horse as it is something all audiences are very well aware of, especially how it will look and gallop. However, one of our fantastic modelers Erika was thrilled and eager to model a horse, an animal she adores as well as providing a new challenge for her modeling skills. She also created our first chariot that will serve as our test rig before getting the more mythological inspired ideas ready. Getting back to our level structures and flora, our second modeler, Tristin, was given direction and ideas for populating our first level, the Coast of Poesidon. This would include not only the typical Greek temples most of us are familiar with but also residential buildings, fountains, spectator stands, and flora to make the track come to life as the racers barrel past.
Our horse and chariot models
Temple, fountain, and pillars for our first track
Thank you very much for reading our first development blog and seeing the first steps towards making something fantastic for everyone to play. We'll see you at the end of the next sprint!
-Adonai Dev Team