RetroDrive 2 (Alpha)

Overview:

This is my first professional project in the games industry. This is still a work in progress, and is currently waiting for more funding before it can be continued. 

This showcases 8 months of work with all the blueprint functionality, from the car, waypoints, number plate changing to correspond with the drivers action. Was handled by myself.  As well as level structure, and game design. I also had a weekly meeting with another member to discuss game design for the project.  It took a long time to get the car to play the way it does, we would have regular playtest sessions, and the feedback on the car would be reworked and tweaked as necessary. Compared to the UE5 default car, a lot of changes were implemented to get it to play as it does in this build.

Responsibilities:

• Designed the mechanics of the car and provided balancing throughout development using Unreal Engine 5’s Chaos vehicle system.
• UI/UX implementation including the numberplate and car’s emoji. This provided player feedback based on their actions. 
• Designing level flow and missions
• Designed elements that would add to and make a diverse driving experience, such as ramps, and elevations.
• Creating and distributing builds.
• Transferring data using the game instance to allow level progression to work correctly.
• Source control
• Optimising the game, draw calls, data layers, material, lighting and VFX optimisation.
• Provided assistance to colleagues, which includes teaching them about Unreal Engine, implementing audio and dialogue.
• Meetings with colleagues which included playtesting sessions, current progress, the next week’s objectives, monthly milestones and more.
• Monthly video recorded documentation.
• Research for plugins and implementation.

Monthly Progress Video Here:

Full playthrough Here:

Build Synopsis:

In this build the player has to navigate the mountain into the main city, collecting the blue beacons/waypoints as a guide. After this a set of red beacons will appear, same principle. Once the player collects the final one, they are ambushed by the police. Once they escape they are tasked with locating the green beacon within the allotted time. If the player achieves this they will get a different line of dialogue. If not then the player will be given additional beacons to help guide them to the end of the level. This acts as a soft win, lose condition.

After this the player is then teleported to the past, here the player must complete the race doing so will cause a change in the main city of the distant future, allowing the player to proceed.  

Feedback/future implementation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18a_M6gow-ZuAFwfi1xm1eFRAo7Op68_aWFj5EN8FdRk/...

We also included a few plugins to handle the dialogue, road generation.

I learned a lot of new things:

• Unreal Engine 5's car system. 
• Data Layers & Optimisation (VFX, Materials, Draw calls).
• Implementation of plugins & how to tweak them to the games needs.
• A timer which gives two options depending on if the player beats the timer or not.
• A race with checkpoints.
• nanite mesh reduction.

The previous installment to the series can be added to the wishlist/purchased here via steam, I only had a hand in playtesting and suggestions:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2142380/Retro_Drive_Revamped/ 

Plugins used:

• Simple Dialogue system (This user is very active on discord and helped immensely, highly recommend): https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/simpledialoguesystem 
•   Snappy roads: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/snappy-roads-blueprint-to...
  

"Courtesy of Retrodrive Ltd, all content and rights are reserved"