Introduction

Welcome to the first Bike Racer devlog, an offline PvP game where you duel it out versus your friends in an arena using bikes! Do you have what it takes to beat your friends and become victorious?

Bike Racer is a couch arena game, where you fight it out in Free-for-All fashion. Gather your friends and join up into the arena filled with powerups, coins and more. Bump, dodge, laugh, annoy your friends and may the best coin hoarder win!

The team behind Bike Racer consists of five passionate Game Graphics and Game Development students, each bringing our own skills and ideas into the mix! Our artists: Lobke Van Gheluwe (Characters), Anouk Donkers (Technical), Remko Luyckx (Environment) and our programmer duo: Luka Verhelle & Wouter De Moor.

Development

This first week, we've focused all our attention on figuring out which tools to use how to use them and what exactly we're aiming for.

Unity vs Unreal Engine

After testing out certain game mechanics and engine tools, we've decided to go with Unity using the Universal Render Pipeline. While Unreal Engine has better graphic fidelity out of the box and more built in systems, it also adds unnecessary complexity and makes the development process longer. 

We believe that having more control and faster iterations will help us create a more enjoyable experience in the long run, without harming the graphics much. This is where the Universal Render Pipeline comes in to play, offering a flexible and scalable system with a strong set of tools such as the Shader Graph.

Characters

Before the match starts, you'll be able to choose who you play as from our 3 available gelato-inspired characters! Each character has its own unique flavor and personality. The choice for these 3 is related to our target audience. Firstly we have the big guy- who will look incredibly funny on a tiny tricycle. Secondly, we have the twins, a young character appealing to everyone. And of course, we had to add a girl, but not just any! A fierce tall one that will slay everyone in her path. 💅 

Environment

The environment will be inspired by Cinque Terre, a group of five islands located in Italy. These five islands are well known for their houses and vehicles in vibrant colors. The arena in which the game takes place will include a lot of props, clustered houses and funny vehicles that will give the player a vacation feeling, as if the player is there in person enjoying these vibrant colors and fun environment!

Bike Controller

This will be the most important mechanic in the game, if it's not fun to drive around with the bike the game will simply not be fun. For this reason we've researched different approaches to implement a simple but fun controller. Our result is an arcade like controller, which is somewhat bouncy and offers a strong base to further improve on.

What's next?

Next week, we'll try to clear up as much rough edges as possible and give you a better understanding about the direction of the project. We'll also have more mechanics for you to test and additional info about the art direction.

We hope to hear from you! See you next week👋