On April 18, the 2022 N.GAME NetEase Game Developer Summit (hereinafter referred to as the Summit) was held online.
At the creative trend sharing meeting on the first day, Jiang Yuyuan, producer of NetEase's "Ace Racing", shared in depth and comprehensively on the entire process of this domestic racing mobile game, from product establishment, to production and innovation, to post-operation.
The following is the full text of the research and development sharing of the mobile game, in order to improve the reading experience, the content has been deleted.
Hello everyone, my name is Jiang Yuyuan, and I am the producer of Ace Racing. The content I share today is mainly based on the development process of the game, from project establishment to core experience to product innovation and content expansion.
Starting a racing game from scratch is like starting an engine from scratch, putting on a gear and stepping on the gas, and driving on the road. So I will use "driving" as a metaphor for the development phase of the project later in this article.
01
Ignition: The beginning of Ace Racing
About starting from scratch, I would like to talk about my own story first.
When I was an undergraduate, I studied mathematics, a standard science man, but when I was in graduate school, I chose economics, and for me, it was the first time I started from scratch.
After graduating with a PhD in 2015, the right place for me to work may be a university, a research institute, a financial institution, etc. However, at that time, I especially liked to play games, so I came to NetEase to do game planning as a new recruit. For me, the change of career was the second time I started from scratch.
After entering NetEase, the first project I first came into contact with was MMO, and three years later, in 2018, I began to set up a project to do "Ace Racing". From the traditional MMO category to the racing category that the company has never done before, this is the third time I have started from scratch.
We found that when interviewing students, one of the questions we are often asked is that some students feel that they have not studied game design before and have no foundation in this regard. Although I also like the game, I am a little worried about whether I am suitable for this position in the future.
I think my experience is the best answer to this question. As long as you like it enough, you will always have the courage to try from scratch.
In fact, whether or not to start from scratch does not make much sense. Because from the perspective of the results-oriented market, more often, doing this thing from scratch means that the starting point and progress are lagging behind. Even though I was told at the time that I would make a racing game in the future and share my research and development experience with everyone, I still thought it was unrealistic.
But in NetEase's open and free R&D environment, we can more easily explore new projects. I remember in 2018, I went to ask the leader if he could do a racing game. On the one hand, there are no market opportunities for racing games like this realistic picture, multiplayer racing as the gameplay; on the other hand, the team is also willing to invest. The leader's reply was: "You can try it, and it is best to try it seriously", so we had the first demo team.
02
Getting started: Careful polishing is important
Everything is difficult at the beginning, and it is naturally challenging to get involved in a new category that has not been developed at all, not to mention the racing category with a relatively high entry threshold.
First, we need to do a series of art and technical pre-studies. Includes some algorithmic pre-research for vehicle materials, physical systems, and lighting such as PBR.
Then, we also need to get to know and get close to the user as much as possible. NetEase's research team has organized dozens of user surveys and street visits with products to help us understand users, narrow user distances, tap demands, and test our DEMO or products.
Finally, on how to dive into and analyze the underlying experience, I think it can be divided into three steps:
First, to play the game from the player's point of view, to have an in-depth experience of racing and racing games;
Second, we must disassemble and sort out our experience from the perspective of planning;
Third, from the perspective of users, to discover the needs of players;
03
Gears: Use drift as an example to gain insight into and analyze the basic racing experience
We need to combine a lot of games with frame-by-frame viewing of real-world videos, and we need thousands of game experiences to understand this fast movement process. Of course, the best thing to do was to try it myself, so I went for a drift driver's license.
Since the establishment of the project, our team building has selected automotive-related projects. For example, go to the karting stadium to race, go to the real car experience hall to test drive or watch the car show and so on. I see these as valuable opportunities to develop a team interest as well as a familiar experience.
After full experience and understanding, we found that the essence of drift is actually the movement of the front of the car and the direction of the speed of the car are not consistent. The core variable is the angle between the front direction and the speed direction, which we call "drift angle". The front direction represents the driver's steering intent, while the direction and magnitude of the speed represent the hysteresis feedback of the physical system.
As you can see from this figure, the first is the drifting stage. In the starting stage, the front direction of the car is rapidly rotated, and the direction of the speed changes little or no change at all, the speed will be rapidly reduced, and the drift angle will expand at a relatively fast speed.
The second is the stable fixed circle stage. In this stage, the front and speed of the car are basically in the same direction, while the drift angle remains basically unchanged, and the speed is attenuated at a relatively low rate.
Finally, there is the rewinding stage of the front of the car, the reduction of the drift angle, and the increase of the speed. So for the drift process, we divide it into three stages: drift, fixed circle and retreat drift.
What's the use of disassembling to that level? The effect is that we can better identify the scenarios where the player needs drift skills.
For example, in some gentle bends with wider roads, players may need faster speed and smaller drift angles to cross the bends. This is reflected in the variables previously disassembled, i.e. the drift angle is stabilized at a smaller angle during the fixed-circle phase, allowing the drift to be faster.
Based on this appeal, we designed techniques such as inertial drift. From the video, you can see that during the entire cornering process, the drift attitude of the vehicle is relatively small, and the speed is relatively fast.
For example, in some narrow corners of the road, the player needs to quickly turn the front of the car and complete the corner by rapidly decelerating to avoid collisions, that is, in the drifting stage, the drift angle expands faster than the normal drift, and the speed decays faster.
This brings us to the in-game brake drift trick. As you can see from the video, when entering a corner quickly, such a movement can be achieved by braking drift.
For example, sometimes the player will find that the drift is early, or drifting halfway and finding an obstacle or other vehicle in front of them, at this time, it is necessary to adjust the drift route to avoid it urgently.
We can temporarily stop the rotation of the front and speed of the car during the fixed circle stage of the drift, which is the technique of straight line drift in the game. The video shows that during the drift, the use of pedaling on the brakes can avoid the collision of the inner bend.
With an in-depth experience coupled with meticulous disassembly, we can observe more of the player's needs. Then, through the multi-link and multi-level skill design, it gives players a better feel and basic experience framework.
Of course, the whole process is not easy, in order to meet the design expectations, we iterated a total of 4 versions of the racing physics before and after. From the most common commercial physics engine, to the increasing involvement of scripts, to the complete rewriting of entire physical environments.
04
Acceleration: Overtaking in curves through innovation
1. Introduce multiplayer cooperative confrontation experience
We have observed that with the networking of games, mainstream game categories have found multiplayer cooperative confrontation gameplay that is strongly integrated with networking mechanisms. For example, shooters have found a tactical competitive mode, and action games have found a MOBA mode.
These modes are characterized by both confrontation and cooperation between players. However, the multiplayer experience of racing games is basically only on the confrontational side, and there is a lack of cooperation. Players don't need each other, and when we play racing, we will feel that what runs faster than me is open and hangs, and what runs slower than me is too good.
Based on this pain point, we have done some thinking and found that in the real racing competition, because the drivers and cars of each team will be different, there will actually be a division of labor in the team. For example, some drivers protect our teammates through the wake, or hinder each other's overtaking routes through card slots.
In addition, in games such as MMOs, it is often through the method of class design to establish mutual needs between players. Tanks, DPS, and healing, for example, are mutually in demand.
So in Ace Racing we also tried to design the vehicle positioning. There are race positions suitable for rushing first place, interference positions that can hinder opponent vehicles, and auxiliary positions that provide buffs for the entire team of vehicles.
So what is the effect of the introduction of this vehicle positioning? The retention of the entire test is about 10% higher, which is not a relative value but an absolute value. In the player's vehicle selection, there is basically a three-point trend, namely racing, interference and assist, and their number of players is roughly equal.
This changes the traditional experience of racing only competition without cooperation, and from the feedback of players, it can also be seen that the introduction of more vehicle positioning has increased the possibilities of this game.
2. Added a counterpoint win-loss system
After all, mobile games are a way of entertainment that lowers the threshold, and it is the pursuit of more people to feel the fun of the game. However, in racing games, because everyone is staring at the finish line, they will be abandoned if they don't run to the end. So we often use "one person is happy, five people are frustrated" to describe the experience of this kind of racing game.
Our thoughts on this are that the frustration of not running to the finish line is too strong, can we give the player an easier goal to achieve? So I thought of the story of the Tianji horse race. Tian Ji and Qi Wang did not put all their horses in one race to run, but divided into three catches and fights.
Inspired by this story, we designed a counterpoint-win system. In a 3V3 duel, we will compare our first with the other side, our second with the other side, and our third with the other side. It doesn't look at the absolute ranking, nor does it look at whether he finishes the game.
Why does matching win or loss lower the threshold for getting started? Because in such a format, even if I am the slowest in the team, as long as I can beat the slowest on the other side, I can provide a very full contribution to the team.
Obviously, this format provides a more attainable goal for players of different levels, and also allows players with certain levels to play together, so that team racing is more encouraged.
Still from the data point of view, when the test did not introduce the match, the proportion of team matches was about 32%; the first introduction, the proportion immediately increased to 60%; with the launch of the game, after players further understand the rules of the event, this proportion increased to 86%.
3. Dig deep into the depth of gameplay and add "big moves" to the racing car
We can see that racing games are a category where speed is paramount, and its pursuit is relatively single, only fast.
However, on the one hand, the faster the speed, the easier it is to collide, and the blind pursuit of speed will eventually bring about such a bad experience as bumper cars; on the other hand, when players only want to play the fastest car, it will lead to the homogenization of the vehicles in the game is more serious, and many vehicles will become useless waste cars.
Our thinking about this is that in the earliest combat games, there was actually only one dimension of attack power. It is only later through the expansion of countless works, the introduction of settings such as moves, martial arts, magic, etc., the depth of battle is excavated little by little.
So can we improve the racing game in a similar way, such as adding skills to the vehicle? Can you find some reference support in real life, in fact, there are. For example, the drainage ditch bend in "Head Text D", the whirlwind storm tornado in "Four Wheel Drive Brothers", the hook claw weapon and rocket car in "Fast and Furious", and so on.
On the one hand, these things break through the imagination of the audience and make the game more ornamental, on the other hand, they make the game itself more suspenseful. With a design basis and realistic endorsement, we boldly designed a big move for every car. At present, the number of vehicle moves in our game has exceeded 50.
The introduction of racing moves, on the one hand, can achieve the progression of the threshold for getting started. Some vehicles that can avoid collisions will be easier to get started, like the car in the video, which can turn the negative feedback caused by the collision into positive feedback when zooming in, that is, when the vehicle collides, it will briefly jump forward.
This allows players to run with great confidence when facing unfamiliar maps. Other big moves, such as the one that changes the turn radius of the vehicle in the video, put forward higher operational requirements for the player's control of the track line.
On the other hand, the introduction of big moves has revitalized the player's need for multiple vehicles. Some big moves are suitable for some specific tracks, some big moves have a restrained relationship, and some big moves are very challenging to the player's release timing, which makes more vehicles in the game can come in handy.
So in terms of effect, the introduction of vehicle moves is fresh and intuitive, strengthening playability and depth of the game. Through the video below, you can intuitively feel the "racing car with big moves". The vehicles in our Ace Race are more similar to a hero or a character, they have their own stunts, and can be freely combined with different lineups to get a rich gaming experience.
05
Long-distance travel: "Ace Racing" long-term operation, steady and far-reaching
1. Design original vehicles
At the beginning of the project, we mainly worked on foreign licensed cars, but if the game is full of licensed vehicles, then the player remembers the car itself, not the game.
More importantly, we found that there are many players who like the style and design of the vehicle very much, fail to find the license in the game, or they are not real vehicles at all, such as some sci-fi, concept, retro and so on.
So we started trying to design our own original vehicles, and in the game, we called these real-life vehicles "fantasy camp vehicles". So how are these vehicles designed?
Some of the students in charge of vehicle design are graduate students from well-known automotive design colleges at home and abroad, and some are big guys who have done the actual design of real vehicles in the depot, and they will use the design language and tools of the automotive industry to do our fantasy vehicles.
Fantasy vehicles account for a considerable proportion of the total number of vehicles, probably and real vehicles are five or five cars, the coexistence of real vehicles and fantasy vehicles allows us to meet the preferences of more players.
2. Try to tell our own story
"Ace Racing" is NetEase's first self-developed racing game, and it is also one of the few self-developed racing games in China. We want to tell our own stories more than foreign racing works.
The mainland has ushered in the era of vigorous development of the automobile industry and overtaking in curves, domestic vehicles are rising, and new energy vehicles are leading the world. Therefore, we also want to record this historic moment through games.
"Ace Racing" has been cooperating with many domestic automakers, including Wuling, BYD, Lynk & Co, Xiaopeng and so on. We can not only experience more domestic vehicles in the game, but also experience "Ace Racing" through the steering wheel and foot pedals in the intelligent central control platform of some new energy vehicles.
That's true of racing, and it's the same with the track. In recent years, the state has made very brilliant achievements in road and bridge infrastructure. For example, the world's tallest bridge - Guizhou Beipanjiang Bridge, the tianmen mountain 99 bends known as the most dangerous winding mountain highway, the historically significant Xinjiang Duku Highway, the 318 Sichuan-Tibet line known as the most American road, and the beautiful Alishan in Taiwan Province.
These are all reflected in the scene of "Ace Racing", and you can feel the game's display of the famous mountains and rivers and cities in the game through the following video.
Finally, since the launch of the project for more than half a year, our number of players has exceeded 30 million, this number is still growing, and we sincerely thank every player for their support. Of the 30 million riders, 80% are first-time contact with NetEase Games, so it can also be said that "Ace Racing" has brought an incremental market to the company.
In 2022, we will not only work hard to introduce better content and gameplay to players, but also expand overseas. We are confident of achieving better results on this track. Apparently, this race journey from scratch is not over, in fact it has just begun.
Okay, that's all I've shared, thank you.