(Update No.1 - 16/10/20)

Hi everyone,

My team and I are doing Game Design in TUD (Technological University Dublin) and are in our final year of the course. Our main assignment is to make a game over the academic year (from September to May) and a part of this assignment is our Devlog. We will be posting here on a weekly basis, with the first few entries coming in over the next few days. We hope you enjoy what we have to offer and in May, you check out our game 'Chaos Riders', an Online Competitive/Co-operative Racing Shooter inspired by the likes of Mad Max, Death Race and GTA Online.

This is the title slide from our presentation on the game. (The concept art used is only for demonstrative purposes only)

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/thread-of-high-resolution-gaming-wallpapers.10979... - reference to the concept image

(Update No.2 - 17/10/20)

Hey everyone,

Now that I figured out how the Devlog system works in the Community section, I will update you here with regards to our game and not on the Chaos Riders project page (unless our Lecturer specifies otherwise lol). Apologies for the confusion thus far with these entries, but you may be glad to know that I now (mostly) understand how things work here on Itch.io. 

(Update No.3 - 19/10/20)

Moving swiftly onwards from our devlog issues however, I thought my team and I would share a little bit about ourselves, so you can get an idea of who we are.

As you can probably guess with my username, my name is William, and I am the project manager and game designer of Chaos Riders. I enjoy project management and game design, but my main interests are narrative design and world building. Once I finish this course and work for a few more years in the games industry, I would like to open my own studio and work on my own game concepts and ideas. 

Hello guys

My name is Mayowa. I am  the art lead on this project. I consider myself to be a jack of all trades, I am interested in all aspects of game design. So while I be making assets, I may also be doing some code if the assets would need it . Currently I am working on the art direction  of the project, Once decided I will swiftly move on to make version 1 of the car model.

-Mayowa

Hi Guys

My name is Conor. I am the second programmer working on this project. I love challenging myself to try new things on each project I work on. This time I am going to challenge myself to incorporate online multiplayer. The first thing I will be focusing on will me making a private server to host the game from. 

-Conor

(Update No.4 - 20/10/20)

Now that you know a little about us, I thought I would take you through our pre-production story, so you can understand how we got to where we are currently. 

21^st of September – At the beginning of our academic year, our team discussed the ideas we had shared with one another back in May, when we first came together as a team. Deciding that the ideas we had were either unfeasible or simply uninteresting to all parties, we each decided to come up with our own ideas and discuss them at a later date.

(Update No.5 - 21/10/20)

25^th of September - Sending in our ideas to our Discord channel over the following days, we discussed them at length, analysing their strengths and weaknesses. From what we had, the concept we all enjoyed the most was an online PVP game. It focused on vegetable and candy inspired characters duking it out against one another. Bestowing them with ‘hero powers’ based on their food type (I.e. onions could explode into a blinding spray), the idea was to make something visually interesting and appealing to all ages. Still somewhat unconvinced by the idea however, one of our teammates suggested that we should each come up with three more ideas for the following week, which we all believed was a good idea.

Below are some concept ideas I made for the Food Fight characters.  (the images used are for demonstrative purposes only)

https://www.freepik.com/premium-vector/carrot-characters-design_1806466.htm - reference to Carrocher art

https://objectshowfanonpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Candy_Cane_(Challenge_to_Win) - reference to Candy Cainer art

(Update No.6 - 22/10/20)

2^nd of October – After we came up with three ideas, we threw them into our Discord channel and went through them one by one. Analysing each of them, we picked our favourites, which left us with a tactical top-down shooter, a Mad Max inspired racing game, a tower defence/siege game, a platformer and a strategic survivor vs horde game. Having our favourites from the proposed games, we decided to show them to our supervisor, to see if he had any suggestions and/or ideas for them.

Examples of the ideas we had but more fleshed out.

(Update No.7 - 23/10/20)

7^th of October - Meeting up with our supervisor, we all went through our concepts and listened to his verdict on each one. Providing a realistic appraisal of each, he advised us to look at them in terms of how achievable they were and what issues they might cause if we took them on. Given a new outlook on our concepts, we reassessed what we had and narrowed our selection down to three. Believing we were close to selecting a concept now, we agreed to meet up again the following day and decide on which would be our final game. 

(Update No.8 - 24/10/20)

8^th of October – Meeting up again, we each rated the concepts from our most favourite to our least favourite. Using a point system, where our most favourite would get three points and our least favourite one point, we shared our lists and crunched the numbers. Tallying the final scores, the Mad Max racing game won with 10 points, followed by the survivor vs horde game with 8 points and lastly, the Vegetable vs Candy game with 6 points. As we all agreed to work on the Mad Max racing game as our final year project, we made a document that highlighted what we wanted and what needed to put into the game.

The necessities and potential features we would like to have in our game.

(Update No.9 - 26/10/20)

12^th of October – We made a presentation on our concept and presented it to the class. With no objections and only a few suggestions, our concept seemed to be fairing well, or at least did not garner any negative attention.

Following the presentation, we discussed out concept in further detail and ironed out most of the major design decisions.

Happy with the progress we made thus far, we decided to speak with our supervisor before we began production on the game, in case he had any final issues to raise before we began. 

(Update No.10 - 27/10/20)

14^th of October – Speaking to our supervisor, he was happy to hear that we had come to a decision on our game. To give us some inspiration, he advised us to watch several films together like Death Race and Mad Max: Fury Road. Shortly after, he highlighted that we needed to primarily focus on our car controls, as this would be what would make or break our game. Agreeing with his assessment, we thanked him for his time.

Over the next few days, we carried on with our final stages of pre-production, as come Monday, we would have to begin production on our game. During this time, we made a scene in Unity, played around with some car controls we downloaded and set up the Github and Branches for our game. 

Our first scene in the project with a map made by Conor for testing purposes

(Update No.11 - 29/10/20)

With our pre-development story now told, we can share with you our production story thus far.  These will come out either daily or every second day like our pre-development story did. These devlogs will also feature more images and videos of our work, as well as more posts from other guys, so stay tuned!

19^th of October – Today, we began our first day of Production for Chaos Riders. This was marked by the beginning of our first Sprint and the creation of our Trello (a program for creating tasks). Here, we gave ourselves tasks that needed to be completed within the week. I had to finish the pre-development story for our game, begin the GDD (Game Development Document), upload the devlogs to Itch and create the starting content for our social medias. Conor and Oisin had to look into the online aspects and car programming respectively, while Mayowa had to create his concept art for the car. Once our tasks were completed, we would review them on the following Friday. 

An image of our Trello board for our first sprint

(Update No.12 - 30/10/20)

20^th of October – As an opportunity presented itself to us on Tuesday night, we got together and watched Death Race. Although the quality for us bar the person sharing their screen was for the most part horrendous, we enjoyed the film and took some inspiration from it. The most inspiring parts were the Dreadnought (a giant killing truck essentially) and the defensive features the contestants had on their cars. We liked these ideas as a giant enemy being introduced randomly and the cars having features like napalm spray, seemed like perfect fits for our game.

After the film, Oisin showed us his work on the car, as he wanted to demonstrate how the skidding might work in the game. Seeing his work, we were all quite impressed.

(Update No.13 - 2/11/20)

21^st of October - The following day, we met up with our supervisor to share our progress. Reporting that we were on track with our game, he requested that we make him a White Box (a version of the game that just shows off the mechanics and main features), as he wanted to see our progress the following week. After he highlighted some things we should focus on like the power ups and shooting mechanics, we thanked him for his time and made plans for the delivery of the White Box.

(Update No.14 - 3/11/20)

23^rd of October – Come the Friday meeting, we showed off our work to one another. Conor began by showing us his work on the networking and demonstrated it by having one of us play online with him. After, I showed the Pre and current devlogs I had been working on, as well as the narrative work I had begun. Mayowa then showed off his work on the concept art for the car, and lastly Oisin updated us on the driving and skid mark mechanics he had been working on. Happy with each other’s work, we ended the meeting, and I made a new Trello board for the next week.

Example of Concept Art

Example of Character Design 

(Update No.15 - 4/11/20)

28^th of October – During our second week of Sprint 1, we sent the White Box demonstration to our supervisor and he was pleased with the progress we made. Shortly after, we had a quick meeting ourselves to ensure we were doing alright with our tasks. With no difficulties, Conor brought up the subject of what to work on next, between the AI development and online functionality. Discussing the issue, we felt it was best to continue work on both, with a greater emphasis on the AI development. We prioritised the AI development as this would make playtesting easier.

(Update No.16 - 5/11/20)

30^th of October – As it was Friday, we got together and shared what we each did over the week. I started the GDD, finished the character biographies and made a page for our game on Game Jolt. Conor made Car Prefabs, Power Ups and added a custom matchmaking room, while Oisin made the basic controls for the shooting. Oisin had some difficulties incorporating the controls with the online aspects however, so he needed to investigate the issue further. Lastly, Mayowa made elements of the base 3D model for the car. 

(Image of the prototype minigun on our playtesting car)

(Biography of Cecelia)

(Biography of B.A.D)

(Update No.17 - 6/11/20)

2^nd of November – After our meeting, we looked again at our design/ideation document, to throw some new ideas around and ensure we still understood the direction of the game. As we needed to give our Shooter characters more individuality in terms of mechanics, I suggested that a perk system for them, similar to that of DBD (Dead by Daylight), would be cool. Although there were concerns about whether it was achievable, everyone believed it was a good idea in the end. After discussing the Shooter perks, we made a list for our vertical slice, which prioritised what we needed to do for it, as our vertical slice was due on the 14^th of December.

Concept art for the Shooter and Driver character sheets, that would have perks/abilities on the right, the character and/or car model on the left and their biographies on the bottom.

(Concept Art reference - https://www.reddit.com/r/deadbydaylight/comments/goc8le/my_dbd_survivor_oc_i_lov...)

(Update No.18 - 9/11/20)

4^th and 6^th of November – Meeting again with our supervisor, there was little to report on, as we were having few difficulties.

Come Friday, we got together and showed off our work. I continued with the GDD, finished the dialogue for our characters and made a plan for the social medias with Conor. Conor implemented the AI for testing and fixed the issues with the online connectivity. Lastly, Oisin and Mayowa continued with the Driver and Shooter issues, as well as the car model respectively. 

An example of the dialogue between our three character Dreagan Max, Cecelia Lock and B.A.D

The AI track for the AI

The list of regions the player can connect to

(Funny story with the regions: Initially, when we first started testing the online, I couldn't connect with my teammates for some reason.  Thinking of a solution, Conor made it so  the player could select their region. The thinking behind this was that it would first check where someone like myself was being connected to automatically, and it would allow players to better find a games wherever their friends were. Testing it again with the region select on, it turns out I wasn't connecting to my team because I was being connected to a Russian server, despite Russia being pretty much on the opposite side of the planet to Ireland.)

(Update No.19 - 13/11/20)

9^th of November – Today, we got together over Discord and discussed what we would do for the week. I would continue with the GDD, Social media stuff and Publishing Plan, while Mayowa would add the finishing touches to the car model and texture it. As we needed to make a playable prototype for the following Monday, we discussed with Conor and Oisin what we wanted to have for the prototype.

All agreeing that we needed a workable power up, an input for reversing, some racing mechanics, bullet collision, a respawn system and some other features, we divided up the tasks amongst our two programmers.

After the meeting, we play tested the game altogether for the first time. Rife with bugs, however, we made a bug list and tried to identify what some of them were.

This was the biggest bug we found, where the 4th player joining (me in this instance) was left in the sky being shown the map over and over again.

(Update No.20 - 14/11/20)

11^th and 13^th of November – Come Wednesday, we met up with our supervisor again. We asked him a few questions on the GDD to ensure that we were on track with it, but other than that, there was little more to say.

On Friday then, we got together and showed off our work. I finished off the Introduction, Narrative Overview and Design chapters of the GDD, while also doing a bit of work on the Devlogs, Social Medias and Meetings. Conor implemented some of the racing mechanics, and Oisin implemented the health for the cars, the ability to shoot for the Shooters and a visual representation of death for the cars, in the form of catching fire. Mayowa then added some finishing touches to the car model.

Car explosion upon death.

Health bar on the AI car.

Checkpoints and starting line that the player needs to pass through in order to win the race.

Mayowa's improved car model in game. 

(Update No.21 - 15/11/20)

Hey Everyone,

With our entry on the 14th of November 2020, we have caught up to our current stage of development. As a result, I wanted to explain a few things to you:

• Although we are now past the 'Just Started' phase (we’re probably somewhere between 10 – 15% through the development of our game), I can’t seem to change our status here on Itch. If any of you know a solution to this, other than starting a new topic, I would greatly appreciate it if you shared it below.
• As we are now caught up with our development story, we believe it would be best if we share our continued progress in the form of imagery and video.
• We’ve also set up a few social media pages for Chaos Riders. A link to them can be found below:

https://twitter.com/RidersChaos

https://gamejolt.com/games/ChaosRiders/549580

https://www.facebook.com/Chaos-Riders-101592815066450

https://www.instagram.com/chaosriders2021/

Lastly, we wanted to thank you for checking out our development story thus far. Over 300 of you have done so, and this means a lot to us, so thank you all again.