“Go Go-Karts”
(Developed Early 2019)
Role: Kart Balance Lead
Team Size: 46
Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Development Time: 200 hours
Trailer for Go Go-Karts
Go Go-Karts is a 3D arcade multiplayer couch racer that is set in the fantastic Fable World, a magical theme park where legends and myths are real. Adventure awaits, and legends will be built in the wonderful land of Fable World!
Light, Medium, and Heavy karts all passing each other
As the Kart Balance Lead, I worked closely with the physics team and Systems Design to create and access certain kart statistics for gameplay balance. In addition to balancing the karts against each other it was also my job to make the game fun to play both by yourself against the AI, and also against other players in local co-op.
Following the GDD:
Light karts are fast with less control (i.e. fast but “floaty”)
Medium karts have average speed and average control
Heavy karts are slow with responsive control
Drifting stats for each kart in Unreal
click to expand
My work fell under the main categories of responsiveness, speed, control/steering, and additional mechanics like drifting and anti-gravity. Additionally, I worked with the Game Designer to ensure the GDD was followed and understood in terms of kart mechanics and kart differences. All of my design work was done in Unreal through iteration, where I worked in two data tables: drifting and non-drifting. Each table contained the statistics of the Light, Medium, and Heavy karts in their normal and drifting states, as well as stats used for experimental testing.
Non-drifting stats for each kart in Unreal
click to expand
I iteratively tested each kart on every track with different styles of gameplay as the physics systems, tracks, and AI changed and adjusted, working to find the fun and balanced game it eventually became. At the end of development, the QA team was formed and I was placed on it as the lead for the Kart Feel section, a sub-team dedicated to making sure all of the karts felt fun and “right”. As the lead, it was my job to both test for bugs relating to kart gameplay, as well as convey to the rest of the testers exactly what we were striving for. I ensured the karts felt as they were described in the GDD, and worked with the Game Designer and the Lead Level Designer on polish for release.
What Went Well
Players consistently enjoyed drifting around the tracks.
Players reported the final karts felt different from each other without any of them feeling like a bad choice.
What Went Wrong
Acceleration used Unreal’s default forces systems rather than custom hard-coded movement, so I didn’t have precise control over things like turning radius. This made it harder to differentiate between karts while also balancing them.
While the Heavy kart reached the desired balance of being slower with more player control, the sacrifice in speed didn’t matter as much given the winding tracks. Heavy karts easily made tighter turns, making them “faster” than expected in practice even while being slower on paper.
What I Learned (Improvements)
Creating a custom movement system would allow for precise control that developers need.
More time should have been spent testing a system wherein drifting brings all karts closer to an average performance (i.e. Light karts can make turns easier and Heavy karts lose a bit of control while building their Drift Boost). This would’ve helped discourage drifting through entire tracks.