But, even so, Buggy AllStars will go on!

In this post:

• Carnival (and Buggy100) has been postponed
• Buggy AllStars will continue as usual, with some slight modifications
  • Extending deadlines by 1-2 weeks
• Certain features will be impacted
  • Temporarily pivoting away from VR

As of now, I am not sure what we will have to post next week, as CMU works to get everything up and running on Zoom. At worst, there will be a check-in post much like this one. Thank you for your patience, and please stay safe!

Carnival has been postponed

As you might have noticed, the counter on this site has changed: instead of counting down until Carnival, it is now counting down to the week before the end of the semester. This reflects the changes in our development timeline due to Carnival’s postponement.

Although there is no official notice on when Carnival will be moved to, it appears that it will not be during this Spring semester — meaning that the Advanced Game Studio will no longer be developing for the original April 17th deadline.

But, even so, Buggy AllStars will continue development, and the Advanced Game Studio is still hard at work!

Of course, some things will change

In order to ensure that we can release a functioning game, we’ve had to come to terms with a few major pivots. For one, Buggy AllStars will not be a VR game at the end of this semester. Due to the shift to online-only education and nation-wide social distancing efforts, it would be very difficult to sufficiently playtest and develop a satisfying VR experience (not to mention, potentially unsanitary).

Instead, we are looking at creating an “arcade-style” release, which will use or re-purpose all of the art and mechanics created so far. In other words, Buggy AllStars will release for PC and not require a VR headset to play.

Additionally, we are looking into building the game using WebGL, a JavaScript API which would allow it to run in a browser, online and without any applications or downloads. That way, the public will still be able to play our game at the end of the semester — without having to come to CMU or Carnival to do so — and we would still be able to playtest as usual (more or less).

This arcade-style game will differ from the original VR game in the following ways:

• There is potential to have multiple camera views, ranging from first-person, to third-person, to a “cinematic view” (as in Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption 2)
• Controls will use mouse and keyboard controls, not any special hardware or periphery
• UI will likely be more traditional/non-diegetic, in terms of how it appears on the screen like a HUD
• The player may be given more freedom to drive around the track, making it into less of a ride and more of a racing game
  • To what extent this would be is yet to be determined, but it is possible that we will allow small collisions and the possibility to turn around on a track
• We would like to encourage a social media component, which would have players share their completion times on a platform of their choice to encourage competition
• There will be no physical setup, since there won’t be an event to set up at
• There will be no spectator view, although it might get re-purposed in the “cinematic” camera view

Of course, this list is not all-encompassing, and we will definitely be running into more nuanced differences in time.

With all that said, I think it’s important to restate the following:

Buggy AllStars will continue

Even though things are changing, this shift to an arcade-style game has another benefit: since first-person controls map well to VR systems, we can continue development with a smaller team next year, to create the same, virtual reality experience that we were hoping to accomplish this year.

In any event, we will be working hard to release a product that everyone on the team can be proud of at the end of the semester, and to make that happen:

We have a new work schedule

For now, it is important to focus on the constraints we are given, and complete what we can in the time allotted. Even though a lot of assets and mechanics can be re-purposed, we are working in an unprecedented time, and that requires a bit of foresight and caution going forward.

So, instead of the original deadlines, everything has been shifted 1-2 weeks out, giving the development team more time to work in the above changes, and allowing for the inevitable complications that come with remote work and global events.

Specifically, these are the new deadlines:

Looking ahead

As mentioned earlier, I’m not entirely certain what we’ll have to report next week. CMU is going through a tumultuous time right now, and the Advanced Game Studio is no different. Students across the campus are getting used to attending classes and meetings via Zoom, and some students don’t even have access to their usual computers.

Still, if at all possible, we will have a post up at the usual time explaining the design changes that we will be pursing over the coming semester, how we’re meeting the challenges imposed on us by the new situation we’ve found ourselves in, and any other progress that is made in the interim.

Until next time, stay safe out there and see you soon!

• An inside look at the MoCap sessions,
• New Branding ideas,
• A bird’s-eye view of the Carnival setup,
• And sounds are in the game!

Note: Due to this week being Spring Break, there will not be a dev blog posted next week. We apologize for the inconvenience!

Art

This week marks the start of Beta production for the Art Team — that means a focus on polish, layout, texturing, and animations. As you can see from the Gantt Chart below, that means that a lot of the team will be working in parallel to get everything done on time.

In other words, since a bulk of the modeling is planned to be completed by this time next week (around March 17th), this period marks a transition away from modeling and towards the final stretch.

Characters and Animations

This week, our art team got to set foot inside of CMU’s Motion Capture Lab to get some high-quality animations for the characters in the game. In fact, they received some hands-on experience, with art lead Eric Yu putting on a MoCap suit!

They recorded a variety of animations that would otherwise have been very difficult to create by hand; things like idle animations for drivers and pushers, or even more unique motions like “catching” the buggy at the end of a race!

It’ll be a few weeks before we actually see these animations in the game, as it will take some time for the recordings to get cleaned up to a point that they could be used.

Special thanks to Justin Macey for his help at the MoCap lab!

Buggies – Onto Texturing!

As you might have seen in the headline above, our buggies are almost done! 7 out of 10 have been fully textured, with the rest to come in the following weeks.

Aside from texturing, the next step for our buggies is (of course) to put them in the game! Fortunately, placeholder buggies already exist, so it’ll just be a matter of uploading the correct models. From there, our art team will continue to tweak the buggy models as needed, and the programming team will continue to fine-tune their behavior.

Environment Art – Propwork

Pictured: One of the many signs that dot CMU’s campus, modeled by Sydney Ayers

Design

The design team had two major tasks this week: one, to start building the branding materials that we could distribute to the public. Two, to flesh out what the physical, Disney experience would look like in terms of floor layout and line management.

Branding – Introducing “Buggy AllStars”

Pictured: Logo designs by Adela Kapuscinska

First off, let’s take a look at the efforts of the branding team! After opening a voting poll to the class, the top three choices for a game name were a) Buggy AllStars, b) Buggy100, and c) Buggy VR. Armed with that knowledge, the design team created the title fonts you see above, and the logos you see below!

Of course, these are still just sketches, but after some discussion it was decided that we would go with the name Buggy AllStars for the time being.

So, welcome to Buggy AllStars!

The Physical Experience

From the start of this project, we had been aiming to create a physical display that would help the player immerse themselves into the buggy experience. Originally, we had planned for this to happen following a design for the player buggy.

But now, weeks later, we’ve decided to follow a different approach: instead of drawing a buggy and designing the physical experience to match, it would be better (and easier!) to create a physical layout for the physical build, then draw the buggy around that — sort of an extension of the inside-out cockpit design from the last week.

To that end, one of our UI/UX designers, Jaeyon Huh, took the time to develop a few different layouts for the physical setup. Shown above are a number of his design sketches, ranging from bare-bones (with just a chair), to a chair and fan, to a full seated configuration.

Jaeyon took then took a few of the designs he had sketched out and refined them a bit further, creating two designs that could be used depending on scope and feasibility:

For both of these designs, we’ve toyed with the idea of using a desk fan in combination with an Arduino, which would change speed in tandem with the player buggy — making the player feel the wind on their face!

Next up, we have a few views of potential layouts for the physical exhibit. Pictured below is the layout we decided to run with, featuring physical dividers that partitioned the room into two sections. Players will queue up on the rightmost side of the room, where a TV will be set to display content — either the spectator view of actual gameplay, or a cycling slideshow showcasing the development of the game!

This layout was chosen for a variety of reasons, including the entrance’s proximity to the Buggy Museum (which would be set up next door), its direction facing the entryway of the building, and the ability to curate the queued players experience.

Below are two other layouts, which had interesting features but were set aside in favor of the previous design.

Oh, and speaking of the physical experience, we received something exciting in the mail this week: three USB steering wheels! These wheels are equipped with force-feedback, meaning that (in addition to allowing physical, 1:1 mapping of controls) we can add resistance to the wheel the further the player turns from the center — making the “autocorrect” feature feel even more authentic!

The programming team has been assigned the task of hooking these controllers up to Unity — more on that as it comes along!

Sound

This week was an exciting week for sound, as it marks the first time we got to hear thing in-game! Technical difficulties with FMOD were abundant, but things came together on Friday in the nick of time.

In the video below, you can see (and hear) how the speed of the buggy affects the sound: faster speeds introduce a “whoosh” and the rattling of wind, which gradually falls away as you return to normal speed.

Pretty cool, right?

Gameplay

Gameplay took a few steps forward today, with placeholder UI up and running (which shows both the mini-map and a speedometer), as well as in-world markers that show the player the “ideal path” for their race (the wide blue line on the screen below).

Meanwhile, we got a look at some UI in-game. Seen below, there are two test UI’s in place: one is fixed in the world, while the other is tied to the player’s headset. With the code in place, the design/UI team can work with the programming team to test in-game now, instead of the paper prototypes they had been working with before!

Next on the list will be to anchor the UI to the cockpits you saw last week, grounding them in the game’s world.

Looking Ahead

The coming week will be spring break (starting today, actually) so things are expected to slow while everyone is away. To counteract that, a small subset of the class met one last time before break to get some work done and set expectations.

For the coming weeks, we hope to show the following:

• NavMesh
• Hardware Support
• Buggy Designs
• More art and sound!

Lastly, before I sign off, let’s hear a round of applause for the team and all the work they’ve done in the last few months:

See you in a couple of weeks!

In this post:

• The final buggy model — done!
• Trees and (basic) textures!
• Grayboxed cockpits for the player buggy!

The Alpha

Art

Buggies

This week, we’re proud to show the final buggy in the core lineup: the 1940, Beta Theta Pi’s Beta Baby!

With this model done, we’ve reached 9 out of 9 of the target models we wanted to have ready by Alpha. From here on, the artists will shift focus to texturing and generating additional art assets to populate the world.

Time permitting, we hope to revisit the buggy roster to add a few more to the game later in development.

Characters

This week saw the creation of our final three pusher mascots: James Garrett, Farnam Jahanian, and Anne Witchner!

And up next, we have the models for the AI buggy drivers and the Scotty Mascot:

With the mascot heads and pusher bodies well underway, our character team is gearing up for the beta round of animations and texturing, which will take these characters out of the abstract and into (virtual) reality!

Environment Art – Trees!

Trees modeled by Eric Yu

Grayboxed Cockpits

While the bulk of the design team is working on either the design and layouts for the physical experience or the game’s branding, this week was a good time for the art team to start implementing some of the designs that had been iterated through for playtesting.

Interestingly, the results of playtesting were fairly inconclusive for these two designs — it will likely be necessary to revisit these tests after adding some textures to the cockpits, and a UI element or two.

Still, putting these cockpits into the game was a valuable experience for the artists and playtesters, as it gave the immediate impression that the player was in a buggy, instead of just driving a car.

Gameplay

There isn’t much new to say regarding gameplay this week, as tuning is still a work-in-progress and other features are still in the pipeline.

Spectator view, however, has been implemented — but, since it requires two machines to run it via a network, we unfortunately do not have an image to showcase it at this time. Please check back in the future for an update to this post! Update 3/18/2020: Due to closures surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, we were not able to meet in person to take said image

Looking Ahead – Leading into Beta

Bugs in Buggy

Although not technically a bug, one issue that we’re currently dealing with is that we do not have a defined end-state to the game… which means that stuff like this can still happen:

So, to get a clearer idea of what that end-state to the game would be, we had one of our artists — Angelina Shi — prepare a view of what the ending scenery should look like:

For Next Week

Next week, we’re aiming to have in everything that was mentioned last week but fell short, as well as the following:

• Art: progress on the textured buggies and MoCap
• Design updates: Branding and Physical Experience
• As a bonus, a snippet of a recording from the class for use as crowd noise!

See you then!