Unannounced Project (Deadlift Studios)
Summary: A Currently unannounced Racing Game Project by Deadlift Studios, I worked as their first intern and made several prototype levels and their documentation.
Role: Level Designer Intern
Project: Internship
Development time: May 2024-September 2024
Made Using: Unreal Engine
Download Documentation Here!
Lesson Learned:
Racetrack Design: Creating a good racetrack is about 3 things! Challenge, Aesthetic and Replayability! Or C.A.R for short! Figuring out each of these aspects is crucial to creating a quality racetrack for a video game!
Unreal Tools: I learned a wider variety of Unreal tools! Including spline and terrain features!
Documentation: Knowing how to document your process is crucial for a team to understand your work! As such, writing down your process, your discoveries and other notes of worth is invaluable for a team! Especially if they hire someone new who can read these to learn faster!
Sketching out concepts:
This is the 2nd of several concepts I designed when working on the second level I would make for a prototype. I will use these sketches to explain my paper prototyping process
The Yellow strips represent Grind Rails, the orange pips represent Items and the Green blocks with arrows represent Boost Pads. The arrow that is pointing from the checkered block is where the track starts.
When beginning sketching, I will usually try to envision the track would look or feel like in my mind first. This would help me come up with a strong challenge or visual theme I could work with to begin sketching.
This was the 3rd concept I designed for the second track; this one was meant to invoke a European drive across the mountainsides. The rails are meant to go in between mountains as well as historic town alleyways
After envisioning the concept, I begin to sketch out a general layout, I often try to work within the space my canvas allows me as it helps me keep track of scale. When designing tracks, I try including a wide variety of curves depending on what challenge I want to give the player. This creates track to not feeling tedious and keeping players on their toes.
This is the 4th concept I designed for the second track. I designed this one to be a tutorialization of what was the games current mechanics, taking inspiration from opening tracks in F-Zero and MarioKart.
When sketching I will sketch the main track first and then include shortcuts after. Ive found this allows shortcuts to feel much more secret and rewarding for players as well as allowing me to see potential flaws in my track.
This is the 5th concept I created for the second track, a personal favorite of mine, the idea was this track would be set across 4 different skyscrapers connected by the track. The challenge I had in mind for this track was handling dips and holding curves.
I don’t do these sketches in one go! I often do two different sketeches on pencil before settling on a particular curve or section of track. Sometimes it takes me at least 3-4 tries to even get just 1 section just right!
Is the 6th concept I drew for the section track. The idea came from a rollercoaster I saw when I was a child that had 2 tracks that would run simultaneously.
Usually, the final thing I add to my sketches is the interactable such as boost pads and items. I do this to make sure the track is fun by itself and doesn’t rely on items or boost pads to be fun! This also helps denote what sections of the track I want to be more combative and which ones more technical.
This is the 7th concept I sketched for the second track. I wanted this track to be rail centric as to show that mechanic, so I had the idea of setting it in a train station and making whole sections of the track rail grinding.
This concept is an example of a track where I had a clear idea of what mechanic or challenge, I wanted to do and the proceeding to base the aesthetic around said idea. This thought process is invaluable when coming up with tracks that stand out!
Creating the first level
When I was brought into the studio they already had a simple track done for demo purposes.
Here is where I was first taught about what tools in Unreal they were using worked. This picture here shows a photo of nodes, a feature that is used by the spline tool in unreal
The System does have a few extra tools such as rectifying and being able to manipulate the rotation of a node.
This was the first completed version of the track
The idea behind this track was to make two different paths, each path having different challenges and turns to showcase to full prowess of our game to investors.
Originally wanted the track’s turns to be way more angled as to create a sense of dynamism in the track, however after playtesting, I found out that the with the current physics engine main of these turns would prove impossible.
I would rectify this with the second version of the track
This is the completed version of the track. Now with added Grind rails! (the white nodes)
track felt much better to run through without the heavily angled turns, I was still able to keep the dynamism by including lots of elevation in the track.
However, the major issue with this version Is that one of the two paths proved to be significantly slower than the other as well as the other path feeling rather dead in terms of rail grinding action. All of this would be rectified by future versions of the track
This is the third version of the track that’s been heavily modified from the second version
I included more grind rails, 1 per every major section of the track, each of the grind rails were designed to showcase different rail grinding situations
I also increased the size and changed the angles of the turns in one of the paths, to make sure it was on part with the other path in length and somewhat similar in challenge
This is the track now with whiteboxing.
I wanted to create a strong structure to the track and began to develop my white boxing philosophy for the game, incorporating the grind rails and shortcuts into the buildings and geography of the game itself to create a more in-depth world and engaging set pieces.
However, later, I was informed that I had gone overboard with my whiteboxing. As I gave it too much detail, I tried my best to tone it down in the next track I designed
This is the opening strip of the track where the players would begin the track
I’ve learned from playing a wide variety of racing games that you should always start with a straightway as a way for your players to understand their position as well as letting them view the map and other necessary information.
However, the reason why this isn’t as straight as I wanted to is simply due to inexperience with the tools, in the next track I designed I was able to make a better straightway
These grind rails were put here as a way for me to access each area of the track.
During the time I was developing this track, we had yet to create a track splitter piece for the spline.
Later on during my whitebocing period of the track, after doing some game research, me and the game team discovered that no tracks had a split quite like ours. As such this track was scrapped and another was created.
This track still had value though as I taught me how to use all the tools needed to create more tracks
This curve is meant to challenge players on holding a turn.
When confronted with a large spiral curve it is important for the player to maintain focus on keeping up with the ever changing inside of the curve to shorten their time on the curve. Which creates tension and excitement
This challenge is extended to the grind rail shortcut, where players had to lean into the curve of the rail in order to gain the most points.
This segment was created with the idea of challenging players on sharp turning and finding the apex of a turn.
These curves are designed so as to have pints in time where both of their inside turns end and begin at similar positions, allowing a smart player to make small adjustments to their positioning to allow them to pass through both turns without needing to turn sharp
In retrospect the angling should have been inverted as to better telegraph the turns
This segment serves as an expansion on the sharp turning challenge from the previous segment, now focusing on how well a player can take the inside
As seen before this section used to be much more curved. Giving it a box-like shape gave this segment more identity.
The rail in this segment also challenges the player the same way, challenging them to lean on the turn at the right moment to get the maximum points.
This final turn is meant to be the final curve before the homestretch. As such I wanted to give it a slight angle which helps with the feeling of speed in the game
I also made a rail that is intended to review the challenges to the previous two sections as one last challenge before finishing the lap
This segment was designed with the challenge of how to capitalize on speed after a turn
The three lights in the second turn of this segment are items the player can pick up and fight each other with. The idea is to challenge players with how and what to do against these items and their positioning against other players.
The rail in this segment is an additional option I’ve given players which is to get a sizable shortcut at the cost of not getting any items making for an interesting trade-off.
This segment is somewhat like the segment in the other path; however, this challenge is meant to be how players handle going fast on a curve
Right before this segment there Is a large amount of boost pads that can allow the player to pick up a sizable amount of speed
The rail here serves the function of being a comeback factor for players who struggle or were hit by items right before this.
This particular turn final turn isn’t noteworthy in itself but instead the rail is
This rail has a rather confusing shape because it is one of the rails that exemplifies the philosophy change we had with rails
This rail isn’t necessarily faster than the base path but instead generates a lot of points if the player is able to grind it effectively, making for an engaging trade off.
This sketch was a proposed remake of this track with the new technology we had at our disposal which was being able to have individual segments of track.
This remake sets out to fix some of the more problematic areas of the track while also incorporating the new technology.
The incorporation of track segments would’ve allowed this track to have better flow and pacing. However, another track was selected and this one was scrapped.
Creating The Second Level:
This is the original Sketch for Chaos Highway. I wanted to take advantage of the new technology we had, the ability to make separatable track.
This new feature made me think of jumping from track to track. So, I decided to base the track around the idea of hoping from highway to highway, in a cluster of highways!
This is the track without any whiteboxing and without rails
Adapting the track was simultaneously simple and complicated. The simple part was simply adapting the track from paper. Because of it, it is simple line-based layout.
However, the complicated part was finding the timing of each line, seeing how much overlap was needed for each turn and each new line in order for the track to properly flow
This is the beginning of the track. Learning from my mistakes with the last track, I ensured the starting line is a true straight line.
I also made the straightway longer than before since the games new systems allowed you to pick up speed much faster than before
This first turn is meant to be a simple showcase of the main gimmick of this level, hopping from track to track.
I intentionally made this curve short and easy to read to ease players in to this idea. So long as they do the turn they will land on the next track.
I even made it so the player can take the turn from a wide angle in case they wanted to avoid items or attacks from other players.
This is the next major curve, meant to test the player again on the levels gimmick.
Particularly crafty players will also notice the secret skill of this track which is knowing what angles may reveal secrets. They are rewarded for using this skill with a grind rail.
I wanted to make this grind rail particularly cinematic by having it go through some of the structural beams of the building above.
This is one of the more advanced segments that appears later in the track. The idea is that the player jumps from one track, which was leading away from the race, to another which continues the race.
To pull this section off I made user that the player could see the track ending and the other track beginning a few seconds before having to switch
I added in a rail here however not as a secret but as an alternate path, the theory being that players who may find trying to do the jump to risky given what their opponents have could take a safer route.
This ramp took quite a bit of testing to get just right
·Originally the gap was much to big for our games current speed, so I shortened it.
Then I noticed the receiving angle was too sharp for the player to access so I then began to test several angles to see which felt the best, resulting in this semi slope seen now
It allows players who boost through to still see the other end of the ramp while still getting some serious airtime!
This is meant to be the tracks signature section, a massive 4 lane highway that the players could hop between using a to be developed mechanic.
The idea is that this would be a hectic battle zone that rewards the player for good timing and spatial awareness.
This section would’ve really shined with those mechanics, but my internship ended before the mechanic was implemented.
This is the final section of the track and its meant to be a final challenge to the player on the gimmick fo the track
Thematically this section is meant to be a “under construction” portion of the highway cluster, resulting in multiple short track pieces the player needs to hop to and from
There are several rails in this section that all follow the same logic of taking a different angle for secrets, the reason Included so many is to ensure players had chances and to include various modes of travel so players can avoid hazards if needed.
Here is the full whiteboxing of the level. I wanted this track to feel like it was in a dense city and as such I included a variety of blocks that the track would go between and even under
I also made sure to turn down the details of my whiteboxing, keeping structures simple as to allow a future artist to then work with me in creating the full vision!
The big checkmark section was inspired by the concrete park in the Seattle Convention Center, where a huge park goes right above a large highway!
Writing Documentation:
In this section I talked about my defining philosophy when designing tracks. I dubbed it C.A.R (Challenge, Aesthetic, Replayability)
I gained this philosophy from playing racing games all my life and happened to find that the best tracks often have a distinct feature that fits into these 3 categories
In the document I gave a slowly building example of a track that then ended in a visual example of what the results should look like.
In this next segment I discussed another philosophy that guided me when making tracks. It is a theory I began to develop when analyzing tracks for this very project. Ive dubbed it Segment Theory
The theory goes that most tracks in successful racing game franchises can be divided into clear segments, on average about 3-4.
These segments function much like how level segments in a platformer would function, introducing new elements to the player in one section, then expanding or evolving them in the next sections.
This segment is a more technical section, where I talk about how the tools as of my time working there functioned
I thoroughly went through how to set up the conditions to begin production, as well as what each tool does and how to use them
The Player’s Starting position is within a small little hidden section of the level seen at the center of the photo. When the player leaves they are meant to feel awe struck at the sheer size and scope of the level since they can see the roof of the cave by this point and then later how deep it goes.
After that emotion they’ll then be guided by the stalagmites onto the next section of the level which takes them away from the sights.
However the player knows they will get back to it since they see various chests that don’t seem to be accessible via normal means! The first secret of the level is also hidden at the start where if the player goes the opposite direction of the intended path, they are rewarded with a chest!