Week 2

I had another meeting with Cristi this weekend to check the progress and we clarified some things that have to go in Gameplay; we got together into the lower layers of this topic and we also updated a little bit the plan and the tasks.

Today I managed to gather enough information to finish the "Characters" topic. I searched over the internet and managed to find the real authentic mechanic manuals for all the cars, with nice details that will help us design a better gameplay, details like maximum speed, acceleration, horse power, fuel consumption (this will have a tiny impact on the weight of the car as the fuel gets burned, little impact, but we consider it), ride height, car size, the contact surface with the ground in square centimetres, which will help us with the adherence which will further affect the handling and drag force, breaking distance and deceleration, etc. A lot of table values and graphs to help us design car models with real physical properties, properties unique for each car.
Here`s a sample of the graphs I made based on the values, and a little preview of the car`s properties:

Of course these values will be available only in simulation, cause in arcade mode, we have to make the game more fun, so we will somehow put a tolerance coefficient that will ease the control of the car. 

Having finished another chapter in our design document, my next objective is to do research on tracks, maps, times, average speeds, maximum speeds, etc. to reflect all these as much as possible closer to reality. Next I will create an animation of a map, highlighting the track from start to finish from satellite view. 

Many of these materials and resources will be used to create the presentation for the pitch, which also has to be something special.

Here is the plan for week 2:

Basically we need to make sure that Gameplay will be finished by the end of the week, and we proceed with research on Levels (me) and Controls (Cristi).
Also, I am very happy that we managed to push the deadline at the end of week 10!

Week 1 report

So we got the wheels spinning now and everything looks perfect.
We managed to go ahead of the plan and there will be a new picture of the updated plan which describes better the situation.
After a meeting where we agreed on the Game modes topic, I had the task to put down all the ideas we discussed about, and Cristi went on with the Gameplay topic.
At the moment it is Saturday to Sunday, I can say we are very well organised and matching the same goals in the team makes us very organised and we manage to collaborate and synchronise perfectly.
While Cristi is working on Gameplay topic, I went ahead of the plan and prepared some nice animations of the cars that will be used in game. Here they are:

 Dacia R12 1300                                   Dacia Sport 1310

 Dacia Lastun 500                                   Dacia Lastun 500 Rally

 Dacia Solenza                                   Dacia Super Nova

Oltcit Club

Dacia Logan                                   Dacia Logan Police Car

Dacia Sandero                                    Dacia Logan MCV Concept Steppe

Dacia Duster                                    Dacia Duster Rally

Click on the pictures for a "closer" view.

So these are only 13 of the cars that will be available to the users to play with. Of course other cars will be available but this is just to have a starting point to make yourself an idea about the graphics.

Feel free to search for these on Google Images and you will see how close these little models are to reality. It took 5 and a half hours to create this cute animations, and now this project has become personal as I put a lot of soul into this.
Now we know what "toys" we will use in the game, the next thing we need to do is to gather up as much information as possible about these models, to implement their real horse power, weight, size, and other parameters in our physics engine to make it as real as possible.
This task will be assigned to Cristi while I will move further to research the "playground" seeing the fact that we got the toys.

Here is how the plan looks after one week:

We managed to finish earlier than planned the topic regarding Game modes, Characters and Gameplay are in progress but started sooner than expected, so we really hope to push the deadline closer to present and have more time for final touches and for polishing the Design Document.

Next post will include the updated plan for week 2.

Week 1 plan

This is the plan for the next weeks we really hope to beat the deadline by 7-10 days.

Week 1

So here is where it all starts, week number 1, the capital letter from the sentence, the starting point, the origin.

FRAS is a project that CT Games agreed to start considering today, the 24th of September 2013. This project has its main objective to get the full mark at University West of Scotland, but we consider this to be the actual first step in developing the game.

CT Games is born today together with this project. It is a collaboration between Constantin Toader`s NT Games and Cristian Szabo`s Videolab Games. We really hope to achieve great things from this union.

So what is FRAS? It stands for Federatia Romana de Automobilism Sportiv (Romanian Federation of Motor Sports). It is intended to be a racing game with Romanian Vehicles and with tracks that are located in Romania.

The main goal of this game is to lower the piracy in Romania and deliver a great quality game for a very low price, and to improve how Romania is seen from outside by delivering real places of a unique beauty from Romania in our racing tracks which will coincide with the real tracks used in Romanian Rally Championship, and lastly but not least to try and put the Romanian Rally under the spotlight and promote their events.

Today we have set the foundation, we have a start, we have a game type, a good title, an idea, a concept. We talked today some abstract features of the game, like gameplay (we agreed that we want to deliver a game that is both arcade and simulation), characters (which in our case will be the cars), the levels (the tracks) the menu, the platform that will be developed for, controls to be used, and other features that we will go deeply later as the project will take contour.

We established that the first and the last post will be the same on both blogs even though the blogging activity should be an individual task.
After today`s discussions we agreed what means of communication we will use, and dispatched a few goals for next week: establish communication with the real FRAS and come up with a development plan for the following weeks.

We really believe this is going to be a successful start, because the team is very compatible on all aspects.

Updates will be available individually next week.

First week`s report ends here.