WHAT THE CAR
Gameplay Designer / Systems & Gameplay Programmer
Released May 4th 2023 for Apple Arcade, Sept 9th 2024 for Steam
Release date : May 4th 2023
Platforms : Apple Arcade, Steam
Role : Gameplay Designer / Systems & Gameplay Programmer
PHYSICS-BASED CONTROL
The universal language between two objects in a Triband game is physics. But once you’ve gone down a physics-based path, it can be hard to fully retain control over how things feel and interact.
I often found it was best to start with the simplest physics-based core for the broad-strokes, then layer it up.
If something needed to be “physics-ish”, but not actually physics-based, I’d look for alternative ways to approach it to protect the core behaviour and keep it intuitive to work with (as well as easier to debug).
The jumpy-lamp above left is only built with a single spring and two rigidbodies. The articulation of its arm and all of the other secondary motion is driven by that baseline to give the lamp the appearance of being more complex than it actually is, while still being responsive and consistent for the player.
SLAPSTICK PROJECTILES
Once objects start moving fast enough in a game, they often start to cause problems. Some of the gameplay ingredients in WHAT THE CAR started to hit this threshold, becoming unreadable, or causing physics issues (or both).
To address this I created a lightweight projectile class, which also added some squash-stretch animation principles in a flexible & designer-tweakable way.
The soccerball above & to the right begins its journey as a non-physical projectile, where its arc and impacts are handled “by hand”. Once it collides with the world, it graduates to a proper rigidbody, while its visuals are gradually blended out from one state to the other with some numeric springing.
It can still handle subsequent impacts in a way that maintains this springy soft-body feeling, even though from the original point of impact onward, its collision is always a simple sphere.
ROBUST CHAOS
Triband puts ideas in-game faster than anywhere I’ve worked before, and WHAT THE CAR shipping with a level editor meant that our systems needed to have a huge array of gameplay ingredients perform well in countless different setups. We strove to “say yes” to the player as often as possible.
The unfortunate bears above were my streamlined adaptation of a more computational expensive plugin we’d first used in pre-production.
In addition to tuning their behaviour & animations, I rebuilt them to use a flexible “hitbox” system I’d written for all of our other props to ensure that all the different ingredients in the game were always talking to eachother.
(can a couch be boosted by speedpad…? yes.)
(can a wooden crate rustle a bush and shake loose some leaves…? yes.)
(can a bear sprint to avoid a flying icecream truck, only to slip in a puddle of oil…? yes.)
(of course.)
SANDSTORM
Gameplay Designer / Systems & Gameplay Programmer
Released May 25th on Apple Arcade
FURY ROAD x TEMPLE RUN
After WHAT THE CAR shipped, pitches were solicited from the team for new episodes to expand the game post-launch.
My pitch: take one part infinite-runner, one part Mad Max: Fury Road, and combine them into a new mode to redefine how the base game played, and hopefully set a new bar for what players could expect from our updates moving forward.
I was responsible for the core concept & design, building out our new features and visual effects, supporting our level designers, and working with our other programmers to keep performance in check on device.
EVERYTHING IS A VEHICLE
In Sandstorm, everything is physics-enabled, everything is a vehicle, and everything is constantly on the run from a devastating storm that relentlessly chases you through the wasteland.
Among several new systems I created was one which allowed the team to tack wheels onto any new (or existing) prop, however mundane, and immediately turn it into a driveable part of the larger "convoy", racing to escape the storm.
Houses, trees, rocks, garbage cans… everything must escape.
One advantage this approach provided was that, with a little bit of setup, nearly all of our existing assets could be reframed to instantly add to the new world we were building without a significant production overhead.
CONVOY PHYSICS
Everything being a vehicle meant that everything around the player could become a moving-part in a larger setup.
A “level” was now a “convoy”, and could be built with much more dynamic and exciting moments than were previously possible in the base game.
It could also be completely destroyed by a curious sandworm.
AI OPPONENTS
Previous attempts to add AI opponents into WHAT THE CAR had proven difficult; it was hard to keep them on-screen and relevant throughout a level. Eventually it was decided to leave them out out of the base game, but Sandstorm’s design allowed us a new opportunity to re-integrate them.
Several key factors contributed to this. One was a simplified environment to navigate; no more deadly falls, and driving forward always means making progress.
Another was that even though they could vary widely in size, shape, mass, etc., all of the vehicles shared a purely physics-based driving model. They all angled their tires to apply friction to steer, and increased or decreased their torque to slow down or speed up, meaning their driving behaviours could easily be shared.
Much more important though was that we had introduced an endlessly renewable stream of potential new opponents, in the form of the convoy itself.
Because other “vehicles” (which again could mean houses, trees, couches, etc.) were less individually precious, they were now free enter & exit the stage however chance would have it, and to drive as irresponsibly & spectacularly as they liked. So long as they made a splash, they’d done their job, and could be replaced by the next vehicle to come along in the convoy.