Project Info:

An Open World Driving Game that I worked on during my 3rd University Year

Project Details:

• Team Size:15 Developers
• Development Time:10 Months
• Time Frame:Sept 2020 - July 2021
• Responsibilities:Research, Vehicle Balance, Content Design, Technical Design
• URL: Steam Page

I started with research during the concepting phase. My core focus was finding out how a real life snowmobile works, what parts it contains and how it feels to drive one in different environments. I also looked into what different purposes does a snowmobile serve and why people like to drive one. All this research gave me a good idea of what vehicle I need to make.

After that I researched and played multiple popular snowmobile games to see how other devs have portrayed the Snowmobile in their games. Reading the feedback on those games gave me a good idea on what the community likes and dislikes when it comes to controlling a snowmobile in a video game. I also took a note of the controls these games used and the camera behavior.

Acceleration Curve:

The acceleration speed of a snowmobile is one of its most important features. I took that into account first as it was very much tied to the max torque of the vehicle.

Steering:

I spent the most time on the steering as it required me to balance out all 4 wheels which had a huge impact on the vehicle feel. Since a normal Snowmobile only has steering on the front (the 2 ski) I disabled the steering on the back wheels and made it so you can only steer with the front ones.

Camera:

Camera turned out to be a huge part of a vehicle development. The lack of a good camera can downgrade a driving experience in a game quite a bit. Since our game is an open world one, I decided that a camera that allows the player to look around them in all directions would fit best.

Physics Body:

The physics body was something I learned about during this phase and got to work on it for quite some time. Setting mass for each component and reducing their size changed the vehicle feel drastically.

The Core body:

The core body changes also had a huge impact on the vehicle movement as I changed the wheels position and size. Thanks to these changes the snowmobile was able to go over bigger bumps and drive smoothly on the snow terrain.

Drifting:

Drifting was originally implemented as a leaning mechanic where the player can shift the center of mass of the vehicle in each direction by pressing on its respective arrow key. This meant the player had to have both of their hands on the keyboard. My goal when working on this feature was to come up with convenient controls and smooth behavior. That's why I decided to set the drifting to 1 single key which will shift the mass of the vehicle forward and once the player applies a turning direction (left or right) the vehicle will shift its mass to that direction, resulting in a drift.

Air Control:

I implemented the first iteration of the Air Control by giving the player an option to turn the vehicle in pitch and yaw when they are not colliding with a terrain. Air Control was essential for our vehicle as its something often used in real life when performing stunts. It also gave the player more movement options.

Mission Design:

I designed all 9 Objective Missions and 6 Time Trials. To manage that amount of content I setup a Mission Design Document and Pipeline for the team to track the Mission development and assist when needed.

Mission Implementation:

To implement the missions , I worked closely with the gameplay programmer, who set up all events and data tables that I needed in order to implement a variety of missions. During this process I iterated on the missions, shaping them after every playtest and making sure that every mission had purpose and place in the game.

During the polish phase, I added a cinematic sequence to every mission intro and to some checkpoints. My goals with the cinematic sequences were to explain the goal to the player and hint them to their next objective.

Exploration Encouragement

Another task of mine during the development of Til Nord was to encourage player exploration. Players were not exploring the world, missing out on interesting POI’s and creative environments.

To fix that I took upon the task to better distribute the already existing snowmen collectable ( a snow man that gets destroyed once you drive over him) and designed a ramp collectable ( a passive mission that required the player to jump from 20 ramps). I also designed the mission paths to lead to one another, essentially creating a linear game feel, that made sure the players go over each mission without having to constantly look for them.

Working on Oboarding:

I also worked on improving the first 10 minutes of the game. This mean I helped design a Onboarding section with an exciting activity at the end, to build hype into our players and make sure they stick around longer. To do so I designed a big ramp jump that led to the mission end, with a big overview sequence that shows the whole map. The goal was to show the player how much they got to explore and reward them with a big jump afterwards.