In this sprint we’ve been working on a myriad of different things to help improve First Time User Experience (FTUE), revisiting the structure and design of some of our existing maps, and developing our AI further so they feel more like other players and less like epic-driver-bots-of-doom.
Our biggest set of priorities in the run-up to Christmas is general stabilization, bug fixing, and getting the game back into the hands of the community to see what you all think of the changes. You’ll be seeing this pop-up a lot in future blog posts as it's super important to us to get you all back into the world of Stuntfest Worldtour ASAP. The same is also said for our server stabilization progress making sure your competitors are where they’re supposed to be … behind you!
Our first-time user experience has gone through a number of significant iterations since the project began, starting as a general game intro in which, you saw yourself approaching the stadium and were tasked with overcoming a number of obstacles to quickly learn the controls and mechanics integral to the Stuntfest gameplay. A lot of the feedback we received about this was that, while fitting, it really didn’t give the user opportunity to really get to grips with skills/gadgets/etc, they'd be using on a regular basis during their playtime, so we’ve made some pretty big changes.
First of all, we’ve made the tutorial into an instanced-based event in which you, accompanied by bots, really get a feel for everything you’ll need to use to get the most out of each Stuntshow. We added a splash of slowmo here and there to really give it that epic feeling and made sure the instructions are truly crystal clear for everyone to be able to understand.
Our programmers have also been hard at work adding some more believability to our bots and increasing the number of different ways they play. In general, our bots tend to follow “splines” we feed them which look a little like this;
Now, for those of you thinking “What the Heck?!”, let me explain. Recording the data from our developers and such we build a library of these splines based on how they played, the colours represent different states for the AI such as red meaning use nitro, blue meaning use Jetwing, and black meaning drive. The AI turns this information into in-game actions and you see the end result of an AI racing against you.
It gets way more complicated when you start adding event-to-event variables such as what happens if you slam into them or their car gets wrecked. This is where our programmers are hard at work, adding more splines, allowing the AI to understand the variation better and really expanding what they do on a moment-to-moment basis.
The more recordings we create, the more varied the bots will get and the better we actually play in those recordings, the better the bots will get as well.
If you’ve had a chance to get your mitts on Stuntfest at any point you’ll remember our tracks tend to mesh natural formations and man-made tracks together to create our events and, while this has worked for the most part, we wanted to revisit these structures to see if we could give our maps more of a natural feel while adding an influence of humans, rather than turning it into a construction site full of metal and such.
The goal of those changes is to make the tracks more readable and also to give us the opportunity to add more gameplay-impacting obstacles without making the maps look too chaotic.
This is happening for a number of maps such as Distance Dam and we’re looking into how we can add certain elements to each map to bring more of a theme to each one, making them instantly recognisable from each other stylistically. Additionally, we’ve begun work on the final knockout map and its first blockout.
We want to make the final race about proving you really are the best this stuntshow has to offer, so you’ll need to combine all the skills and gadgets you’ve employed to get this far to make it past the finish line first and secure the victory. We’ll have more to show coming soon!
