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Interstellar

Racing League

Trailer

Game Info

  • Four different cars, with unique stats and characters

  • Four futuristic tracks, from cities to alien frontiers 

  • Two In-Game pickups, Knock and Shield

  • 3 Game Modes: Grand Prix, Time Trial, VS-Race

  • Original Music

  • Supports 1- 4 players

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Development info

Role: Game Designer/ UI/UX Lead

Team Size: 56

Genre: Arcade Racing

Engine: Unreal Engine 4

Development Time: 3-4 months

Game summary

Interstellar Racing League (IRL) is a multiplayer racing game in which players speed through high speed, gravity defying alien tracks to compete for the title of the galaxy's best racer. Players must use power ups, boost pads, and their vehicle's distinct statistical properties to overwhelm their opponents and beat them to the finish line.

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Roles and Responsibilities

  • Acted as the principal Game Designer for all in-game menus, system options, game modes, and gameplay HUDs.

 

  • Acted as a team representative during milestone presentations, in conjunction with our Lead Producer.

 

  • Coordinated daily with Team Leads, Producers, and fellow Game Designers to design and implement product features.

 

  • Analyzed and iterated on playtest feedback, with a focus on game conveyance and usability.

 

  • Served as a team-lead for our UI/UX team, including acting as our team’s Scrum-Master.

 

  • Retained and communicated overall vision for all UI/UX decisions in the project.

 

  • Led a Conveyance Strike Team to address key issues in gameplay conveyance in our Beta Milestone.

 

  • Tested all tracks, cars, and game mode combinations to ensure usability goals were maintained.

development sTORIES

architectural design AND FORWARD PLANNING

At the start of the project, one of the main concerns of my team was the implementation and overall structure of our various menus, data structures, options, and in-game HUD. In order to resolve this issue, I first needed to fully plan the execution of our menus and interfaces, and coordinate with our architectural team to ensure we could integrate successfully with the game itself.

This proved to be well-timed, as in discussing the variety of necessary features for a racing game (modes of play, data types on screen, saving data, etc.) we discovered that we needed to make critical decisions about the architecture of the game itself, and that in our teams would need to coordinate constantly to properly integrate menu and HUD systems. This conversation was instrumental in creating the first real structure of the game that we would use moving forward, and created a link between our teams that we were able to leverage moving forward with the project.

in-game UI Design and Creation

In order to design our in-game UI, I partnered closely with my fellow Game Designers to determine exactly what sorts of things we might want the players to do, and with my car and architecture teams to determine what variables we may want to capture to display to the Player. This was a unique challenge as a Lead Designer, as it required envisioning many possibilities long before certain decisions were firm on all sides and ensure our programming teams accounted for them as they cars were first being built. By ensuring that many of these variables were accounted for and globally displayed early, I was able to ensure that my UI team had plenty of information to prototype with at a much earlier stage of development, and that a good pipeline between these two teams was established.

The process we used to arrive at the final UI design began with whiteboard sketches and simple goals, feeding into an overall product backlog and timeline for completion at differing stages. At each milestone of development, we implemented different UI elements in accordance with that milestone’s needs. I favored this approach as it helped answer design questions quickly and gave us playable feedback, starting with usability and evolving into the aesthetic. By getting our designs on screen as quickly as possible, we were able to identify what worked best and what needed improvement in an appreciable timescale, allowing us to adaptively iterate those designs.

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One good example of this iteration concerns our Player Icons. From early on in development we intended the Players and NPCs to have overhead icons that could be seen at a fixed distance. Our initial design was to have these icons act as identifiers (Player 1 as P1, NPC 1 as NPC1 etc.) serving as a sign post that a car was just ahead, and which car it was. However, in user feedback and playtesting we found that players were more concerned with what their place was overall, rather than who exactly was in front of them. This led us to change the Player Icons to reflect Player Place, a change that fueled player competitiveness and added an extra intensity to our fast paced racing experience.

IRL_OLDICONS2.jpg

Initial Player Icons                 

WEBSITEIRLUI22.jpg

Final Player Icons

For a more detailed look at our our In-Game UI evolved, click the download button below.

Menu Design and creation

In developing the menu system for Interstellar Racing League, I created and stuck with a few clear design goals:

  • There needed to be as few screens as possible to get the player quickly into the game.

  • All buttons and options needed to be primarily visual, with minimal text, and confirmations before harsh transitions (such as quit).

  • The menu needed to act as an advertisement of the game, and get the player excited to play.

  • Options needed to impact audio and video in addition to providing alternative control schemes, at least in terms of right and left handed players.

These goals served to inform my team on how exactly what we meant our menu to achieve in terms of architecture and flow, in addition to acting as a guide for what we should change when we received feedback.

By prioritizing player excitement and game advertisement, I was able to partner with the UI, Car, and Environment team artists to characterize our cars with interesting and diverse characters and thread these identities to the locales that they would be driving in. This feedback loop helped cement the overall look and feel of the game, as well as providing a cohesive vision to frame the sort of experience the player may expect.

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Though it was technically difficult, I remain proud that we were able to achieve a Right-Handed and Southpaw (Left-Handed) control scheme into our final product. Throughout development I faced resistance on the implementation of this feature due to inter-team dependencies and the high amount of tasks my team was responsible for completing. However, by taking their concerns to my production team, and discussing our overall goals with my fellow Game Designers and Stakeholders, we were able to shift resources to expand our team by four people to accomplish this and other goals.

Lessons Learned

  • Communication and coordinating vision with sizable teams is manageable with good communication pipelines, and sound leadership.

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  • Sometimes on a large project you will wear many hats, in my case as a Team-Lead, a Game Designer, and at times a Producer. Develop clear goals for these roles, and delegate responsibility where possible to avoid being overwhelmed.

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  • It is possible to be candid, without being condescending. The key is empathizing with the other party, and focusing on the problem not the person.

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  • Balancing individual responsibility with the ever-changing needs of the team requires a firm and transparent schedule.

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  • Communication can and should be tailored to the needs of the individual team-members and their discipline.

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  • By making time for my team-members, and providing an open environment for communication, I was able to better identify and assess their needs, working with production staff to get them the resources they need.

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  • In negotiating changes with other disciplines, teams, and stakeholders, always be clear about your needs, and willing to accept a better alternative.

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  • Keeping a cohesive vision across the length of a project requires clear goals, firm pillars, and constant communication.

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