Harriers
About the game
Harriers is a racing game, in which the player competes using a futuristic wingsuit, flying through the roads of a descending metropolis. He will have to carve his way through flying cars, pedestrian bridges and floating advertisement panels.
It is mainly a multiplayer experience, but a singleplayer mode is provided for those who can't play online.
- It was commissioned by Raceward Studios.
- It was completed in five months.
- The team was of fifteen people.
What I worked on
I was a Game Designer and a Level Designer
In the early phases of the project, I worked on concept, documentation writing and benchmark making. However, my biggest responsibility was level design: I designed, prototyped, blocked out and refined both the tracks in the game, that together make up approximatively 15 kilometres. Besides, I wrote and cured the level design document throughout its whole life.
Challenges
The first great difficulty in this project was the spread of the Coronavirus, that forced us to work from home, this was the first time for the whole team, and we had to adapt the techniques we learned at the academy for this new scenario.
The main personal challenge I had to face was that I never studied racing track design, so my first objective was to find a logical and repeatable way to create a track. And to achieve my goal I tried to give the track sections included in the test track a difficulty score, based on its shape, inclination and obstacle density, then they were refined by playtesting. Assigning these values was vitally important since they are what the whole system leans on.
For the difficulty curve, I inspired myself to Formula 1 tracks, and I proceeded with the creation of the first fifth of track for the alpha.
Once the alpha was delivered we experienced some deep changes in the controls system, so I revised the methodology I used and resized the sections that were now too big, also I slightly modified the system to allow interchangeable sections between tracks. Then I started over creating the first track 2.0 with the mistakes made with the first one in mind.
The actual production kicked in at this moment, we started to implement the actual buildings, the respawn and the multiplayer part, and I completed both the first and the second track. In the end, even though various problems arose, I delivered the two tracks perfectly in time with the project manager expectations.
During the project, I also worked on the Level design document, from its birth to its refinement. I started from the design philosophy, proceeded to the progression and metrics. Then the explanation of the difficulty curves and tables, along with the theoretical and technical guidelines to design and create a track in the engine. The last part is a list of the tracks in the game and of their parameters.
Gameplay screenshot gallery