How To Make Good Independent Racing Games???

And a good October 31st to you.  Here's a programmer's joke:  Why do programmers always get Christmas and Halloween mixed up?  Because Dec 25 = Oct 31.  Haha, go eat your bag of Tootsie Rolls and candy corn.

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So I want to say that it's good that fans are talking about Daytona USA again.  And Scud Race.  And Daytona USA 2.  And other Sega games.  We're getting emulators, fan projects (like Daytona Universe), strategy guides, loads of new media, this is very good.  Keep working at it, people.

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But here's what I was really going to say.  Here at FIEA, the second and third semesters are devoted entirely to working on large capstone games.  Each game will have about 12-15 people working on it, maybe more as the semester moves on.  So which games do we work on?  The ideas are funneled through an American Idol-style voting system to find out the Top 3 games to make.

The first step is to deliver a 5-minute pitch/presentation to the class.  All producers (about 22) must present an idea to the class.  Then any programmers/artists who have a good idea may present their ideas too.  This means there will be, give or take, 30 ideas out there to choose from.  Students and instructors vote for their Top 5 games.  Games get narrowed down to Top Ten: five chosen by students, five by instructors.  Oh yeah, these pitches are scheduled for a week from now (Monday/Wednesday) so better get ready soon!

And that's just the first round.  The second round is where you pull all the stops.  You must give a 20+ minute presentation (Good Lord, everyone will fall asleep) devoted to the game.  Then the Instructors poll the audience again and they meet in their top secret lair to determine the Top 5 games and who works on what team.  This is at the end of the semester in December.

If your idea has made it that far then good job.  You actually get to start "working" on the game.  Well, for a little while that is.  You get up to around April/May EDIT: end of February (my birthday!!!) then you go through the "vertical slice."  The instructors bring a bunch of professional game designers from EA, Bioware, whatever (it's stupid) and then they determine the final cut.  Two games are cut so only three games actually get finished.  Everyone on a losing project must assimilate into another team and ride out the rest of the semester that way.

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I want to pitch a racing game.  Oh Lord Jesus please have mercy on me.  I'm not surprised that the marketplace is hostile to racing games in general.  But the whole idea behind this presentation is to get the students to "feel it."  To want to make this game with me.  Cause they trust me or that nonsense.

Here's my idea.  It's really easy to say, "Make a Daytona USA clone" but that won't fly.  The idea is to come up with something new.  So the first thing I did was ask a crowd of producers what they would like to see in a racing game.  They actually came up with some good ideas.  This was some of them that I recall:

* Didn't like Gran Turismo or boring sim racers.  Stick with games like Ridge Racer (hell yes).
* Make games with wacky environments.  They need to look varied and pleasing to the eye.  I wholeheartedly agree with this.
* Needs strong competitive multiplayer.  Something like Mario Kart.  Or anything you can have fun with.
* Needs non-traditional powerups/items.  When this person was asked to come up with an example, he couldn't think of one.  This one is dicey for me.
* When making a racing game, try to come up with a more complicated system than just "go from start to finish."  Some producers want to produce more convoluted ideas and be challenged that way.  A traditional racing game would be too linear for his taste.
* Lastly from somebody who doesn't "like" racing games.  He pointed out some non-traditional racing games he liked such as Jet Moto and Wave Race.  Main reason he loved Wave Race was because of the way the jet ski bobbed in the water.  That's very interesting to point out--the way the vehicle "moves."

Well, I learned some interesting things.  But here's my idea and part of the things I want to include in the presentation:

* Racing games ARE a reasonable genre these days.  Mario Kart Wii sold over 20 million copies.  Forza 3 and 4 are critically acclaimed games.  There are also many other relevant racers such as Need for Speed, Burnout, Split-Second (I'm going to bite my tongue on that one).

* The problem with racing games is that no one really knows how to make them perfectly.  There's two categories of racers--simulation and arcade.  Here's some typical problems with each:

Simulation: too boring, too difficult, too reliant on intellectual properties, constrained to real life physics/visuals.
Arcade: too easy, too slow, too gimmicky/obnoxious, too many crashes.

But we can take the best of both worlds (swap parts) and make a superior racing game done RIGHT!

* I was thinking of a Stunt Race FX/Micro Machines-style game.  It would borrow many aspects from Daytona USA, OutRun, and maybe Mario Kart.  Hey, read my superb article on why Sega racers are so good.  Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V everything from that list.  Make use of drifting and manual transmission to win!  Drive your car faster than you ever have in Mario Kart/Sega All-Stars Racing!  Watch the way the car rocks back and forth on the suspension!  The way it trembles at top speed!  The way it turns on every bend!  You don't get this kind of adrenaline rush from sim racers when the car just turns left and right like a brick, demonstrating no emotion whatsoever.

Put all good racing games in the blender!

* Environments NEED to be colorful!  It's an uplifting, almost therapeutic game.  It should retain a cartoony atmosphere while throwing elbows here and there (should be some demerit for losing).  I think that track selection should go for the more absurd.  For instance, remember California Speed?  You drive through malls, roller coasters, super-computers, UFOs, volcanoes, golf courses, and so forth?  This is great stuff and would allow artists & level designers to flex their creative muscles.  While the courses are a bit crazy, they need to stick to some coherent theme--that is, they must be rational in whatever universe we're in.  Blue skies forever, baby!

* How about music and sound?  Most games go for the cheap dubstep music & tinny engine effects which don't do justice.  Let's get some intense rock & roll and deep sound effects in here and add icing to the cake! Any good sound producers here?

* I was thinking about some car customization options (with performance upgrades) in order to give the user an sense of ownership over the car.  Make it deep--give him things to score points and achieve.  Add various multiplayer modes with awards and whatnot.  This is where I begin to draw a blank so it's best if I talk it over with a few people and see what I can do here.

If I go in there, polish my presentation, and actually have the guts to present this, I may sway a few people.  If I have the only racing game in the room (and I most likely will), some people will get behind this because they want to work on something nice and clean without some overbearing plot/gimmick.

Well, there's two problems with this contest.  First, assuming I do manage to get past the first round into the Top 10, then that means I have to put a lot more work into this game concept.  I need to come up with a lengthy presentation and discuss this with other producers.  That's going to take more time away from other assignments that I may have due.  And should I somehow get to the Top 5, then I can't be the Lead Producer on the project.  Someone else will.  While I can talk with this person, there's no guarantee he'll keep in touch with me.  He may take this in the completely wrong direction so who knows.  Plus I'll have to work my ass off (even during the Christmas break) trying to avoided the dreaded "vertical slice" so my game makes it to the Top 3.

And the second problem is that I'm probably not going to win.  I mean, I got into this GameFAQs "Win a Private Message Board" contest about a year ago and I was all stoked cause I had a good video but was let down when I didn't even crack the Top 3 entries.  So let's not pretend that I have a good shot at this one either.

But if I have that attitude going into this project, then why bother in the first place?  Even if I only make it one or two stages, at least I'll have tried.  I'd much rather work on a racing game for a few months and have it canned than never to work on one at all.  If I have to see another Tolkien/sci-fi adventure story of epic proportions for the 1,672,278th time (or even work on one), I'm going to kick a puppy through the uprights.  Maybe my fallback project will be decent, I sure hope so...

Also, I read somewhere that the best time to embark on grandiose projects is while you're in college.  You have the time and resources on your hands (you're at college, duh).  You don't have to disrupt the norm of your average career to work on petty side projects.  So if I'm going to make a racing game, now's my best chance.  I hope I catch lightning in a bottle.  That is all.  Let you know if I get any ideas as they happen.  Wish me luck that I give my Winston Churchill speech next Monday, haha.

"Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." - Winston Churchill, 1940.

Rock Band 3 Keyboards! Part 2: Welcome To Hell

Ok, now the Christmas fallout is over.  I got a digital camera, a new desktop computer (one that can hopefully run HL Source games), a bunch of polo t-shirts, and a set of 1996 Indianapolis 500 Micro Machines.  I might add I love Micro Machines and any small toy cars (Hot Wheels can bite me), but I'll get to that someday.

But most of all, I picked up the Rock Band 3 Clavier Keyboard with stand...alright, I'm super pumped!  So that's the first present I opened up.

Now I've already talked about RB3 Keyboards before.  My initial reactions were slightly off (ex. you can't play Guitar and Keys in the same song) but regardless, you have the option to play Pro Keys.  That spans the entire length of 25 keys.  On the contrary, normal Keys is just 5 notes--C, D, E, F, G.  You have the option of holding the keyboard like a guitar (sling it over your shoulder), but I'd rather do like everyone else and lay the thing down on a surface.

But I said that everyone thought that Pro Keys on Hard/Expert was really hard and I thought I could take it, but no, it's THAT HARD.  And this is coming from someone with over five years of piano lessons.  There's four reasons why:

1. You usually have no idea where your hands are.  So you'll see a note and go for it and you completely whiff it.  Yes, you may say "I'll keep my hands here and remember from now on," but then you have to jump around, especially with the black keys which throw you off.  The game tries to make it easy by color-coding the lanes, but it only helps a little.

2. You get hit in the face with a chord and no matter how slow it comes, your brain misfires and you miss it.

3. Fat fingers--you go for a note but accidentally hit another one too.  Bam, miss the note.  Even if you know which notes to hit, it can be hard to keep a combo going at first.

4. I wouldn't say this is a difficulty concern, but on some songs, you spend a lot of time idle waiting for notes to pop up.  I just finished playing Radar Love and you have to sit there for a minute, play some hard chords, wait, play hard chords, repeat.  Makes going for high scores more aggravating.

NOTE: One egregious offender is Rock Lobster.  Once the guy goes "It's a giant clam!  Down, down..." after those two-note repeated chords, just get up and walk away.  Or party on the beach.  Or beat your head against the keyboard.  No more notes for the rest of the song.  Hey, at least it was an easy FC for me!

And about the "whammy bar" touch pad and the Overdrive button--that's on the left side of the keyboard.  So in theory, you're supposed to play the entire chart one-handed, but that doesn't stop people from using both.  Like this:



Hardest Pro Keys song in the game.  Now this guy deploys a good strategy--place the keyboard near the screen so you can see both at a time.  I haven't tried it, but you can better see where your hands are.

Now unlike regular Guitar/Bass/Drums/Keys, you need to practice beforehand.  Unless you're some sort of prodigy like Mozart, Liszt, or Danny (AKA GHPhenom), then you probably can't do it.  Like throw up any moderate song--I'm not like the lady at church who plays any hymn on the piano or organ like that--no, not at all.  Yes, you can turn No Fail on and still submit scores to the Leaderboards, but unless you feel like flailing around, then practice or play on Easy/Medium difficulty.  The game does try to make it easy by offering you some training lessons for each song--specifically practice the hard bits over and over again until you get it.  Unfortunately, these segments don't cover every hard part of the song which kind of sucks.

I just finished 5-starring all the Warmup Pro-Keys songs on Expert and even though it's not much, it still feels good.  Just being able to get a combo going on something easy is tedious.  Crap like Oh My God and Radar Love seem easy, but it's a few big chords and you can't afford to break your combo or miss that many Overdrive segments to have a chance.  The only reasons these songs are labeled as easy is because with so few notes, it's hard to fail.

You have to fight your battles one at a time.  If you don't know how to do something, start on easy then move up as you go along.  Like a tube of toothpaste--roll it up from the back to front.  I don't know how long I'll take this Pro Keys stuff seriously since it's so damn tedious.  I'll probably go back to Guitar soon which I'm much better at.

So anyway, that's enough of the rant.  If you like pianos, give it a shot.  You've got to put practice into it though.  UPDATE: I've gotten a lot better at Pro Keys (it's May 2011 and I've already 5-starred many Tier 5 thru 7 songs), I'll get back to you later about that.