J. Portnow's Game Design Challenge: Mini Racing Games

jillduffy · 04-23-2008, 02:01 AM

Discuss your questions and responses here to James Portnow's Game Design Challenge: Mini Games for a Racing Game.

Updated May 6, 2008: The winning responses to this challenge will be posted on Thursday, May 8, 2008. GameCareerGuide.com apologizes for the delay.

Haiddasalami · 04-23-2008, 04:09 AM

Missed the last challenge due to school. Not this time...

EnSanity · 04-23-2008, 04:34 AM

What does the "neat system for road surface traction" imply? Does it mean we could have areas with less traction, like ice?

Sadr · 04-23-2008, 08:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EnSanity

What does the "neat system for road surface traction" imply? Does it mean we could have areas with less traction, like ice?

Good question, would like to have that elaborated too.

I was also curious to find out what "he cc'ed" means (English is not my native tongue), but after a quick google for "cc'ed" I figured it out...

TG1 · 04-23-2008, 08:51 AM

Same question different phrasing - Can I Change the material from which the tires are made of? (this will mainly affect the traction system and might require a different color or animation to the tires)

another question - are these mini games for single player or multi player? if for single player - what is the AI Level of the NPCs (Non Player Cars

)?

james.portnow · 04-23-2008, 04:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EnSanity

What does the "neat system for road surface traction" imply? Does it mean we could have areas with less traction, like ice?

Elaboration time!

Yes, you can absolutely have ice. In fact you can have 0 traction greased glass or 100% traction zones that bring a car to a complete stop. Your texture team can whip up some quick textures for these if you want to distinguish them.

james.portnow · 04-23-2008, 04:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TG1

Same question different phrasing - Can I Change the material from which the tires are made of? (this will mainly affect the traction system and might require a different color or animation to the tires)

another question - are these mini games for single player or multi player? if for single player - what is the AI Level of the NPCs (Non Player Cars

)?

Try to change the road surface instead of the tires themselves. You can probably do whatever you want that way without having to spend any engineering or art time.

The mini-games can be either single player or multiplayer. The less AI that the single player minigames have to use the better. I.E. single player minigames which are fun and only require the player driving are best.
(Though things which involve very basic/qusi-random AI [car pac-man perhaps] are also achievable by the team.)

Hope that actually clarified thing...

EvilLlama · 04-23-2008, 05:35 PM

Are we allowed to have the cars change direction (ie drive backwards) or have the lighting change (ie at random intervals, the track/world goes completely dark so players can't tell where they're going)?

Mr. Mr. · 04-23-2008, 06:20 PM

Does the game have a soundtrack yet, by chance? Additionally, how grounded in reality is the game? It sounds like the designs for the tracks and the cars are sticking pretty close to Turismo realism.

dreamshade · 04-23-2008, 06:33 PM

Wow, this challenge feels really limiting. I'm going to think about this for a bit.

What mini-games have other racing titles done before?