Team: 5 members

Duration: 3 weeks

Role: Mechanic Designer/Programmer

Time: November 2019

A Simple Introduce to ‘Hacker Racer’…

Hacker Racer is a game my group and I developed based on an AI school project.

The game is set in a Sci-fi Cyberpunck style city that is currently holding a “Racing Competition”. Of course, now all the vehicles are all driverless and controlled by computer.
The player is going to hack into other cars on the road, take control over them, and keep racing to win this competition.

Car Racing

With player’s default car or hacked car, player controls the car and race to win.

Hacking

Hack into cars on the road and switch the control onto that car.

Design Challenge

How to create diversified experiences in single player racer game?

In our early prototype playtest, the feedback from the playtest shows a large drop of motivation after testers playing for a while.

After analyzing player behaviors during the test and the qualitative feedback that we collect after playtest, we realized that the lack of diverse and challenge is the main causation of player motivation’s drop.

In order to solve the problem, we tried to make improvements on three direction, level design, mechanics design, and AI design.

• AI Personalities

During the development of ‘AI Cars’, we noticed that, while the AI Cars constantly following the waypoints and completing the laps, there is a lack of interactions between the player and AI. Thus, we decided to create ‘personalities’ for AI Cars.

Based on ‘Drive Style (Speed/Skill)’ and ‘Player Interaction (Competitiveness)’, we designed four AI Cars and each have different personality.

Speed shows how fast does the vehicle moves over the whole competition.

Skill means how accurate the AI would predict and manipulate the movement of vehicle.

Competitive shows how likely would the AI car interrupt with the player and hinder the player from winning.

In order to achieve Competitiveness for AI Cars, we made a player car detection function.

When the player is close to and behind the AI Car, AI Car will move to the front and get in the way of player car. If player is close to and in front of the AI Car, AI Car will target player and try knock the player car out of the track.

How Does It Improves Player Experience？

Diverse Play Experience

Since Hacker Racer is a single player racer game, player’s experience is largely depended on the AI Car which competes with player.

By having AI cars each have different abilities and driving styles, player could enjoy different styles of combat, confronting challenges on multiple racer skills.

Player would feel more immersed and intriguing when interacting with AI cars.

Smooth Learning Curve

When designing of the personalities of AI Cars, we also considered to create a smooth learning curve for players who just get into the game.

Avigonon is easy, good for players who wants to familiarize themselves with the game. Lyon is a little harder, with a high speed. Caen is good at driving skills also kind of aggressive. Vannes is perfect at any aspects which is going to be a great challenge.

From easy to hard difficulty level, players constantly practice their skills and confront higher challenges, so that follow Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow and stay in the flow state.

• Level Design & Mechanics

“Car Switching” (hacking) as one of the core mechanics, could create a competing environment in a multiplayer racer game. However, in a single player racer game which players compete with AI Cars, how could "Car Switching” brings a challenging game experience and be applied skillfully?

We started from level design.

During our design period and playtest, we came up and found out three typical situations when player use “Car Switching”. First is when player trying to avoid obstacles, and when player want to quickly switch to a side road, and last is to block the AI Car.
Based on these basic movements, we designed our map with careful placement of obstacles and “switchable car” position.

Final Level