Traceur - Development Blog

Traceur - Fruit of Hard Work and Experience

My proudest working experience and project so far

Traceur is my last group based long term project before I head into my final year project hence I've put in more efforts to make sure it work out. I've been given freedom to assemble my team for this project and rather satisfied with the team members that I gathered. The team - Team Oatopus consist of 2 artist, 1 designer and 8 programmer and we are supposed to finish a 3D mobile game within 14 weeks.

The first draft of the game idea was a first person view exploration parkour game with a core emotion mechanic, and the original pitch was selected out of few other choices by our lecturer. Player will be throw into a city filled with skyscrapers, navigate around the building's roof to deliver illegal packages and they can uncover their backstory by exploring the city and interacting with objects found. For the first two weeks, we spent quite some times focusing on developing a suitable movement scheme that only uses 1 virtual joystick for our game because I want to leave the other side of the screen open for other actions buttons. I eventually settle with the tank control scheme as it allow players to have control over the movement and camera view with one singular joystick.

The control scheme serve the purpose of allowing 1 joystick control but I overlook the awkward camera work that it brings which doesn't suit our character and fluency of parkour. The decision received several criticism and reminds me of my lack of understanding on parkour which partially lead me to this problem. I then decided to do more research on parkour, looking at parkour videos from expert, games that involved heavy parkour element such as mirror's edge and project parkour and the infamous first person view film - Hardcore Henry to understand more about the concept, philosophy and spirit of parkour.

After digging deeper into parkour, I come out with 2 different approach for the game as I believe both have very different perception on the idea of parkour. The first approach is to create a realistic free run parkour game that award player for their ability to observe, move quickly and come out with creative solution. Player will be given an objective within a obstacle course level and they are free to come out with their way to complete the objective as fast as possible before the time run out.

The second way is to have an adrenaline pumping non-stop high speed runner experience which required player to react based on their purest instinct. Player will be running around a wide city area trying to get to their objective point while avoiding fatal traps and outrunning deadly enemies that are chasing them. Since I am content and confident to develop any of the ideas, I let the team to choose the approach that they are more inclined to.

The team like the high speed runner idea more and we will spend the rest of the 12 weeks to work on the game based on the two design pillar that I established for the game which is non stop and consequences. We decide to go for the very vibrant and fun 80's futuristic cyberpunk for the art direction and overall vibe for the game. The decision to set these anchor points so early in the development cycle proof to be extremely helpful as it provides me with a guidance whenever I am trying to make a decision. We choose the name Traceur because it means parkour in french which indirectly honor the original of the game idea.

I know the importance of having a spot on music choices for our game that focus heavily on the overall feeling hence I build a music library where I ask my friends around to suggest music tracks and I would at least listen to 10 sample per day to look for the suitable music for the game. The genres that I pin point are Synthwave, Cyberpunk, Futurefunk and Vaporwave, spending time listening to the music not only provide me with valuable music choices, it also helps me come out with visual guides for UIs and transitions.

I wasn't satisfied with my first design layout for the tutorial although all the key point that I am trying to convey to the player are in but it's all randomly placed. I want the level to be fun as well as good enough to teach the basics to the player hence I consulted my lecturer and we come to a conclusion that utilizing the music might be a good choice. I listen to the music multiple time, make a indirect cut and breakdown the beats and notes, this allow me to build the level and obstacle based on them and player are able to feel the continuous note sync if they time all their action right. In order to not overcrowd the game with different audios and at the same time help player play and enjoy the game, I decide to assign 1 programmer to work with me on FIE sounds system where we break down all the audio into different category and amplified it based on different situation.

Since there's only one character that player will be interact with, I want to make it unique yet real in order to bring player closer to the world. The character is the operator, a secret voice that is commanding the player throughout the game. I am lucky enough to have a very talented voice actress - Amanda to help out with the voice act, the final result was exactly what I have in mind although I never actually have any sort of conversation with her. The result was praised and rated highly considering I have only communicate with her through documents and reference materials that I have provide for her. In order to create the intended personality for the voices, I spend weeks studying targeted characters and their script to figure out key points.

Those will be some of the experience that I gathered and like to highlight their importance, it's proven that accurate research is the key to separate good from okay. I would like to thanks my team mates and lecturer that help me out during the development, here's the link to the Game Design Document and link to download the game's apk. Apologies as I am not able to share all the document here by please do drop me a message if you are interested to know more about it.