Interstellar Racing League
“Interstellar Racing League” is a high-speed, 4 player racing experience. Players race along gravity-defying tracks on planets to compete for the title of the Galaxy’s Best Racer.
Quick Summary
Design Goals
Create a unique atmosphere and lighting for Downtown, Open Desert, and Oasis
Maintain a consistent performance of 60fps
Increase development speed for blocking out environment
Environment asset placement for Slums and Open Desert
Development Facts
Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Responsibilities: Design, blockout, tool design, material design, documentation, lighting for 3 tracks, and asset placement for 2 tracks
Development Time: ~4 months
Game Mode: Racing
Screenshots
Systems Design: City Generation Tool
Implementation
+Systems Design: City Generation Tool - Click to Expand+
The track spline without the tool engaged
The track spline with the tool engaged
- As an environment systems designer, I was tasked to work alongside the environmental artists to come up with a solution for quickly implementing a way to block off the sightlines around the track, aid in realizing the aesthetic vision, and test the feel of the track.
- The track spline at this stage in development was changing rapidly due to playtesting and the balancing of the cars. Therefore, the system needed to be modular in that it could adhere to any type of track design.
- The system was designed so that it calculated the midpoints between spline points and, based on a specified distance and range of building dimensions, auto-generated static mesh cubes around the track.
- This tool proved that sightlines, coupled with the large size of the tracks, were the main reasons for performance issues coming from the environment team and spearheaded optimiation solutions early on that saved time later in development.
- From there, this information was relayed to the art team, specfically for the Downtown Level, that buildings would need to surround the track. This tool also proved that the distance of the buildings from the track could alter how fast a player could feel.
+Performance Optimization: Mesh Instancing - Click to Expand+
- Each of the buildings for the Slums track were hierarchal mesh instanced. Part of my job was to reduce performance and work with my Lead Level Designer and the performance team to reduce draw calls on the Slums track.
- Through mesh instancing, the draw calls were reduced to 1 total instead of each asset being an individual call. This was accomplished through having each static mesh be apart of an array.
+Lighting - Click to Expand+
Note: same lighting procedure was taken on Downtown and Oasis Tracks
- Working with concept artists and the color pallette that was decided upon, both environment and assets, I was able to come up with lighting references and scenarios that focused on emphasizing the track, as well as provide contrast to the assets and track.
- The left image represents an early lighting pass/The right image representes the final level
- Because the focus was to be on the track, the sky atmospheric fog density and color choice was made to complement the environment terrain colors.
- The purpose of this was to alleviate any distractions from the environment during the race as possible.
- As shown above, the only things that are of high contrast to the environment colors and lighting are the bones hero piece and the track.