There are a lot of design decisions to make as to how it should work. Different modes, options, buddy lists and so on. I'd like to share the prototyped game modes we are testing: Chase, Race and Trick as well as a tip that have kept my head straight and focused over the last couple of years as a developer.

Before that I'd like to thank Bloody Bill and Joel (who still struggles with "Sinks") - the  last couple of days of harassment related to Bloody Bill's amazing race and Joel's big mouth has fueled the current dev phase. We're closing in, well on our way and maintaining great speed. Bloody Bill - keep practicing, you'll need it - Joel, shut up!

The three modes as follows:

Chase

Both players see the same view, as if playing on the same computer. This means that when one player gets a significant lead the other player will be left behind and even out of the view of the "camera". When that player's bike is not visible anymore, because it left the screen, it explodes and the leading player earns a point.

Then both bikes are reset at the same place and the chase starts again. Get a certain number of points to win.

Oh, and several tracks are chained together into one big track.

Race

Just a regular ol' race, first to the finish line wins. Exploding bikes might make an appearance, just for the sake of it.

Trick

Win the race by getting more stars than the opponent.

Oh yeah, the tip: Set a time for ending the day's work, at the end write down what you have done today and what you are supposed to do first thing tomorrow - doing this is the reason I am still sane. Very simple.

Take Care!

Tobias

It is weird how you sort of shut down just before it is vacation time ey? This Friday and next Monday are public holidays here in Sweden, so we all begun a four day weekend yesterday.

I need your help coming up with a great idea!  All I could focus on yesterday was snowy picnics and drinking games involving Worms 3D. I love my job, but yesterday my office head was filled with jello and my irresponsible play head was filled with guarana - all n' all weird n' wonderful.

Anyways I need your help:

What kind of game would you pitch with the following constraints:

It has to involve a shipbroker, a psychologist and a company distributing plastic cards such as the credit card you used to pay for Mad Skills. The game is NOT supposed to involve pitching the companies and you should play for about an hour. It does not have to be playable in a browser.

Great ideas will be rewarded! Email me at joel@turborilla.com

Happy Holidays!

Joel

However, if you're a games programmer you might find this interesting. I've wanted to write that article for quite some time and now I finally got around to do it. It's been bugging me that no other article on timestepping talks enough about vertical synchronization.

Read our Timestepping Article

In shot it says that you should use a fixed time step and strive to enable vsync. Then it explains what you should think about when making your timestepping algorithm based on that goal. It covers the problem when vsync rate is different from the targeted framerate and the likely superflousness, lag and unevenness (frame time variation) of interpolated draws.

Don't worry if you didn't understand the paragraph above. The non-programmer version goes like this: It makes your game run smoother.

Particle Systems

Particle systems are often used for special effects. They consist of particles that are emitted from something, and these particles have velocity, size, color and many other variables that can be varied over time. The particles often have an image attached to them, and when lots of particles are used you can not tell them apart. They kind of melt together and it can look like fire, smoke, explosions, exhaust gases, blood splatter and much more.

Nearly every graphics engine has particle systems built into them, and some even come with an editor where you can set all parameters and directly see what the result would be. The graphics engine I use, jMonkeyEngine, has a particle system and an editor but I found it a bit limited in functionality so I started looking elsewhere. Requirements:

• Java based
• Open source
• Easy to integrate with jMonkeyEngine
• Lots of features

And I found Java Open Particle System (JOPS) which really fulfills the above requirements. Unfortunately, there were no ready-made code for displaying the particle systems made with JOPS in jME, but that was easy to make with a little help from the author of JOPS, Guilherme Gomes. The integration code will be released publicly as open-source when it has been cleaned up a bit.

In this video you can see some nice particle systems made with JOPS:

{youtube}mlTKOsBOVMw{/youtube}

Now that the jME integration is done, I can use any of those systems or make my own with the editor and insert them into Mad Skills Motocross with just a couple of lines of code. I suggest you download JOPS and play around with the editor, because it is quite a lot of fun to make particle systems, and easy too. Feel free to mail me if you make something nice, I want to see it.

Start sequence

I have been revamping the start sequence, which was much needed. In earlier versions it looked like a big wooden wall that fell down when the countdown was over. That sucked, according to the testers.

Watch this video to see the current start sequence in action, the graphics need improvement but you get the general idea:

{flv}countdown{/flv}

If you pass the start line too early the red light will go off and there will be a restart. At the end of the race you get statistics on when you passed the start line and at what speed, to give you the proper tools to improve your start skills.

Meta-game structure

In games there are many different ways that the player can progress, and this I like to call the meta-game structure. Think of a football (soccer) tournament: the game is football and it is being played by a number of players on a football-field. This is the gameplay. The meta-game is the tournament, player replacements, sponsorship deals, and anything else that affects the team's progress and quality. If the team wins, it moves on to the next level of the tournament. If they lose, it's game over. That is the meta-game structure of a football tournament.

There are various manager games that focus on the meta-game aspect of football, and in that case what we call the meta-game of football is the actual gameplay.

In Mad Skills Motocross, the game is to ride a bike and win the race. But what about the meta-game? How does winning affect your progress? What about losing? There are so many possibilities:

• Tournament. You lose a race, you're out.
• Series. You race the whole season, and the top riders move on to the next division.
• Incremental. If you win a race, you go to the next race. If you lose you get to retry until successful.
• Anything you can think of...

I chose a mixture of Series and Incremental (a name I made up just now). There are five divisions 1,2,3,4 and Turbocharged Division. Even though they are called divisions, you must win a race to go to the next race. When you have successfully won all the races in a division (different tracks every time), you move up to the next one. If you lose a race, you may simply retry until you win.

That's the basic meta-game structure of Mad Skills Motocross, but there is still room for some variations. Maybe there are always three unlocked races so that if you can't get past a particular race, you can win the next one and then go back to the previous. This will be up to the testers to determine.

Modifications

The meta-game structure is defined in simple text files, to allow players who feel like it to produce their own mods for Mad Skills Motocross. A text editor like notepad and the built-in track editor is all you need to be able to make whole new career modes. Which you can share with your friends on turborilla.com.

The modifications does not stop at the divisions and tracks, however. With a text editor and a graphics program like The Gimp, creative players will be able to modify bikes, riders and backgrounds

With the JOPS editor you can modify the exhaust gases, the dirt spray and the celebratory special effects displayed when winning a race.

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Take care
// Tobias
Turborilla Games

These diary entries are here for you, the readers. So I would like to know what you think, what you would like to see in the future, and any ideas and questions you might have really.

I have created a forum topic just for this diary entry: discuss here

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Quality assurance

The time for testing Mad Skills Motocross has come. Testing is really, really important for every piece of software to ensure its correctness, completeness, efficiency, usability, portability, maintainability, capability, reliability, and compatibility. All those conditions are important when developing a software system that for example a hospital will rely on. Any business-critical system should in fact be thoroughly tested for all of the above.

All of those, with a few exceptions, can be (but should not be)  tested by the developers or their Quality Assurance department alone. Usability for example is best ensured by testing the software on the actual target group of users.

Anyhoo, I would like to state that games are a bit different in that most of them do not need to be tested for all of the above criteria. Certainly the compatibility and usability criteria are very important, but correctness and completeness aren't as vital.

In addition, games need to be tested for the fun factor. This might be the most important criteria for games, if the game is fun enough the players might put up with horrible usability for instance. I know, using the term fun factor is a bit pretentious, it could be included in either the usability or correctness criterion. I feel, however, that its importance grants it the right to stand on its own.

Note: everything I write in this diary entry is my own take on testing and should not be viewed as an instruction on testing software. I merely want to describe how the testing of Mad Skills Motocross will be conducted. I am no expert on quality assurance and I might be wrong on a lot of the things I write here. So take it with a pinch of salt.

Alpha

Testing how fun a game is should of course be done by a selection of the actual target group, the players who are likely to enjoy this kind of game. Here on Turborilla, the development department (that's me) defines an alpha as an "early version which is not feature-complete nor content-complete and mostly exists to test how fun the core mechanic of the game is, but also the compatibility with different computer setups".

What that means is in a nutshell that I don't trust myself in judging whether the core machanic is fun or not. I need actual players to tell me what is fun, what is boring and how things can be improved. At this stage of development I have most likely become blind to the flaws of my own product.

The first alpha contains a couple of playable levels and is horribly unpolished and, to be frank, not very fun at all. It is up to the testers to try to see the potential of the gameplay even though most of the basics of game design is not there yet (rewards, challenges, a sense of progress).

New features and content suggested by the testers during alpha might make it into the game. The goals of alpha-testing is to make sure the core gameplay is fun and make plans for additional features. This is very different from the goals of beta-testing.

Beta

The beta version should be feature-complete and ready to release if it weren't for all the bugs that have inevitably been introduced during the implementation of all the features. The beta-testing of Turborilla's games is all about squashing bugs.

The goal is for the game to be completely free of bugs at the end of beta. That is probably impossible, but aim high and you might just get there.

No new features will be introduced during beta, since that would also produce new bugs. Suggested features are written down and will be considered after the game is released.

Release

After release the game goes into a kind of alpha again. How do we make it even more fun? What features would be really cool?

The alpha-beta-release cycle will continue for as long as people are still buying the game.

In closing

That's all for now, please discuss and ask questions in the forums, and I will try to answer them as best I can. Also, if you have any ideas that might improve the game, don't hesitate to bring it up in the forums.

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Take care
// Tobias
Turborilla Games

These diary entries are here for you, the readers. So I would like to know what you think, what you would like to see in the future, and any ideas and questions you might have really.

I have created a forum topic just for this diary entry: discuss here

{mosloadposition contrss}

Spices

So. As you all know, since you take my word for it, the core gameplay of Mad Skills Motocross is brilliantly fun. And chicken tikka masala is brilliantly tasty, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't benefit from some more chilli. The equivalent to chilli in the world of games is periferal game mechanics. For example, how fun would Mario be without his mushroom? Still fun, but the power-ups make it even more fun.

The core mechanic of Mad Skills Motocross is skillful handling of the bike, whether it's for making the best time or the most impressive back-flip. The spices, or periferal game mechanics, should not stray too far away from the core mechanic in my humble opinion. The whole game could be ruined by forcing the player to play a game of solitaire before every race in Mad Skills Motocross. Solitaire is fun, and motocross riding is fun, but together they make a mess.

Nitro

That is why I have decided to take nitro out of the careful and fragile mix that will soon become a tasty motocross dish. Ok, enough with the food analogies. Nitro gives you a nice speed boost for a couple of seconds, and every racing game during the golden days had it. I tried it out in Mad Skills Motocross and it was quite fun, for a while. I noticed it didn't bring anything to the core mechanic, though, so it's out. No nitro.

Slow-motion

After the nitro experiment, I implemented slow-motion. You press space or whatever and the game slows down for about 5 seconds. Nitro is out, but slow-mo is most certainly in. It's great for getting past those really tricky parts in high speeds, or for making that perfect landing that will conserve your speed. This is an example of a periferal mechanic that really plays well with the core mechanic. With slow-motion you can handle the bike even more skillfully.

Now, I need more of these mechanics. Please, you readers, if you can think of some new mechanic to add let me know in the forums.

Challenges

I am also currently implementing challenges. There are a long list of challenges in the game, like 2 second wheelie, 3 second wheelie, 2 backflips in 2 seconds, frontflip, 2 second stoppie, Big Air, Double backflip... and so on. If one of these are accomplished while you race, a text will appear to indicate it, and if you crash the accomplishment fades away. If you don't crash within a fixed amount of seconds, the accomplishment is collected and you have a new medal for that challenge on your profile page. If you have done the 2 second wheelie, it will not appear again.

After a while of playing the accomplishments will be far inbetween because only the hard ones are left, like 4 backflips in 4 seconds. I think this will provide additional replay-value. Even though you have beaten the career game, you can still try to collect those really, really hard challenges.

I think challenges ties in nicely with the core mechanic, because it encourages you to improve your skills. What do you think? Unnecessary coating or good fun?

Check out this video to see how it looks right now, and for some nice maneuvers. (Note: this video was not recorded while using the slow-mo ability, I have just slowed it down so you can study everything that is going on.) Enjoy:

{flv}mad-skills-motocross-october{/flv}

The challenges are currently in the experimentation phase, and it will probably not look like that when they are finished.

Menus

I happen to think that nice menus are very important for a game. I can't stand sluggish, unclear or plain boring menus, and therefore I set out to make responsive and pleasant menus for Mad Skills Motocross. One of jMonkeyEngine's weaknesses is the lack of proper GUI (menu) support. One of jMonkeyEngine's strengths is the fact that coding new stuff is a breeze. Take a look at this video for a sneak-peek at my home-grown menu system:

{flv}gui-october{/flv}

The background will be changed of course. I was thinking that just having two AI's competing in the background could be cool. This is a mockup that my artist produced:

In closing

That's all for now, please discuss and ask questions in the forums, and I will try to answer them as best I can. Also, if you have any ideas that might improve the game, don't hesitate to bring it up in the forums.

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Take care
// Tobias
Turborilla Entertainment

These diary entries are here for you, the readers. So I would like to know what you think, what you would like to see in the future, and any ideas and questions you might have really.

I have created a forum topic just for this diary entry: discuss here

{mosloadposition contrss}