Hello! This is once again Ben Smith, game designer for The Adonai Invitational. Me and the team were hard at work to bring the prototype of our first level out to playtesters and we were able to get some great results, but more on that later. We really pushed to get a vision and show the direction of the game for this playtest and were able to get our track laid out with some of the key environmental elements we wanted to show off. Chariot movement and 'feel' is still a number one priority for us and we will be tweaking it throughout development. But getting this first track out was a big moment for all of us.

It’s simple: earn the praise of the gods, enhance your chariot, master the tracks, and become the greatest racer in Greek history.

Playtestin’

We were able to get 51 playtesters for our first level and it was fantastic to see the level not only be played, and in many cases recorded, but also received well! Players were able to get a good idea of where the level was headed and the overall Greek/mythological  theme. We had a few persistent bugs but overall testers were positive on the speed of the chariot as well as the track layout. Turning was still not tight or ‘sensitive’ enough and many playtesters wanted more to do on the tracks, which we were extremely pleased to hear about. Within the group of 51 we had a pretty diverse audience and got to do some valuable in person playtesting. Most of the testers described themselves as non gamers or people who do not usually play games. Which was perfect for us as developers because this made it easier to test how intuitive the controls were and how the assets in the levels felt. They responded well to the game, and it was extremely valuable to see how they reacted to the track, AI racers, and control window. 

So, some key points that we were able to gather. Overall, the controls were not clear enough and braking was not impactful enough to make a difference on the track. In fact, many racers let off the accelerator rather than brake, which sort of works, but we made notes that braking needs to be more impactful overall.  As mentioned before the turning was a bit stiff. But the impression the level and concept left on the testers was overall very positive which was a huge relief to our level designer Hudson who had worked very hard on getting the level ready. In fact, we had discussed a complete overhaul of the track if the feedback was too negative, fortunately that is not the case so we can get to iterating instead. Seeing the level start to come together and having playtesters try it out for the first time was very special especially when they said they were eager to see what was next. 

Banners and Horses!

Over on the art and animation wing of Adonai Racing our artist Tamil had an especially productive sprint and was busy finalizing a concept for our Poseidon chariot as well as our game executable icon! He also completed the sky box for our Coast of Poseidon level as well as the splash art for our itch page. Everything turned out really crisp and on theme and Tamil has been very consistent in producing high quality work for us that matches with the vision I have for the game and since I am myself a pretty poor 2D artist it has been a pleasure to see my ideas brought to life under the pen of Tamil. 

Below is the finalized chariot concept that incorporates a variety of nautical and sea god themed ideas, and it just looks fantastic there's no other way around it. The skybox looks great as well and has some lush and cotton candy feeling clouds that remind one of the Hercules movie.

Here is the icon, skybox, and splash art! They basically speak for themselves.

For this sprint our animator Daniel was chipping away at creating the animation controller and skin weights for our horse rig and was able to complete it for this sprint, which sets us up nicely to have our first animation inside the next build! Finally having the horse model start to come to life and ready for the track is a great feeling and talking to Daniel he has enjoyed working on something that is not just a bipedal human. 

Ready for the Race

Moving onto our wonderful 3D artists, Erika and Tristin, they similarly had a productive sprint with Erika modeling and texturing our Hephaestus and Poseidon chariots bringing my vision and Tamils concepts to life! The chariots speak for themselves and look fantastic, unique, and will pair up nicely with the different horse colors we have as well. Erika has produced high quality work throughout the semester and this sprint was no different, I loved the way the chariots turned out and they are very unique from one another. Meanwhile, Tristin was busy finalizing our flora for the first track as well as creating our starting archway and racing banners that we can use to palace around the track, really making it feel like we have a full race set up on the entire track. The archway is a triumphal arch often associated with Rome but influenced from their Greek predecessors. It will serve as the starting point for the race as well as a visual indicator that can be seen from across the track. I want to give a special little ‘fist bump’ to Tristin here because he did a lot of work getting more modeling assets ready for the level but went the extra mile to set things up for our level designers to make it as easy as possible to start working away on our track. It was extremely helpful and his assets are really starting to populate our level and it feel unique and lived in.

Track Testing 

Speaking of our level Hudson and William were busy this sprint doing some internal work as well as getting the first level ready for our build. Hudson was busy fleshing out our level further and adding a very nice water and ocean animation to the level that can be seen from different viewpoints as well as near the beach on the level. It was immediately noticed by playtesters and overall Hudson’s work on the level was of a high quality that was fun for the players to drive around on, in fact the only complaint was that there was not enough more stuff on the level. We have a lot more planned to add in the upcoming weeks, so it was great to see Hudson’s work validated by the playtesters and give us more energy and direction for what the players want in the next level. William meanwhile was doing internal testing on our test track as well as setting up a google form for said internal testing that we could do as a team. We are nearing the stages of starting our work for level 2 so William will be transitioning to getting to work on his own level that is drastically different from the coastal theme for level one. 

Refinements and Improvements

Our programmers, Justin and Adam, were plenty busy this sprint setting up our main menu with a smooth little animation as well as adding a minimap, plugging up our chariots to the player controller, and integrating Unity’s new input system. Justin, our AI programmer, set up a check point system that is used to guide the AI throughout the track and can be altered and modified easily depending on design decisions or even if a new area needs to open up on the track. The minimap itself is also modifiable to show the different locations of the AI and player as well as give a birds eye view of the track, a staple of any racing game. It is not completely polished yet but is fully functional. Justin meanwhile set up the new control scheme and a key part of our racing project, focus. Focus is a resource used to gain a speed boost when the player uses their primary ability, hit the reins. There are sections of the track where the player will gain increased focus which usually will be on the ‘in line’ of a turn. However, the way Justin has it set up is very simple and can be used in a variety of ways that can give the player the most opportunities to gain more speed. We are making really steady progress towards an engaging and unique first level and all of the work Justin and Adam having been doing is greatly contributing to it.

Thank you very much for sticking with us through this crazy thing called video game development. And an extra thank you to those who took the time to playtest our game!

We’ll see you on the track.

-Adonai Racing Team