[nklsrh]

Recently I decided to shut down my latest mobile game, Super Cricket All Stars.

It was a tough decision as the revenue and retention numbers were just not enough to justify spending on server costs. There was an opportunity to grow the game quicker but it would have taken too much of my time (and I have a day job so that's not possible.

I built almost all of this game; the underlying cricket gameplay, the squad management systems, gacha and loot boxes, as well as the customisation pipeline and an events-system that allowed players to experience new Live Events every week.

It was a lot of work, and I learned a tremendous amount from it.

Here are some screenshots from the game.

[nklsrh]

I did a little paintover of an existing Brawl Stars character to see how they would fit as a cricket model. 3-head-high models are pretty good for reducing complexity of shape and structure, makes it easier to animate joints like knees without too much detail.

A paintover is a great way of figuring out how a style could be applied to your game. I used Photoshop CC.

[nklsrh]

More progress on the Hangar.

The aim is to make it feel like there’s a lot of work being done hastily to assemble your aircraft so it’s ready to race.

The emphasis is on the materials as Unreal Engine really is quite fun to work with when creating all kinds of interesting materials using roughness, specular, metal and emission maps.

[nklsrh]

Made sure my environment shader uses a simple linear fog (using the depth buffer) so I can make the scene have more layering and atmosphere.

[nklsrh]

Metallic Shader for Raceplanes

I wanted to have some more 'metallic' paints, so I needed to set up a scene with some basic lights and reflection probes to create a nice reflection for all objects in the scene.

I think its really coming together and creates a style that might even come close to the bigger studios!

Plus it lets me make Iron Man-style paints!

[nklsrh]

Learning how to use Substance Painter 2 so I can make some fun designs for the raceplane.

[nklsrh]

Some terrain work to make things look nice!

[nklsrh]

UI concept for Air Racing 2

As with all other projects, I’m doing the UI design for this game.

I do all my design work in Inkscape and Photoshop. I love Inkscape for its vector art workflow. Never quite got the hang of Illustrator, whereas Inkscape ran quite fast on weaker PCs and was really quick to learn.

This is the Upgrade page. As the player wins races, they will be granted Parts of 5 different kinds, each color-coded to be easy to identify.

Upgrading attributes of a plane requires specific amounts of each Part, so players must make choices regarding which attributes they want to focus on.

[nklsrh]

Progress Report on #AirRacing game.

1 - I moved most of the gameplay logic into C++ as I was finding Blueprints to be quite limiting. Often I’d have huge structures to do simple things like iterate through arrays.

2 - The core gameplay is ready!

Hitting pylons incurs a 3second penalty

AI rivals now set competitive laptimes

Races can be set up with duration, difficulty, and rival count

3 - I’m really enjoying learning many of Unreal Engine’s core systems

Cascades system which does the particle effects

Cinematics system to control intro cutscenes

Delving more into the mobile-specific render settings and quality levels

Next step is to get some Saving/Loading and a basic Career mode with leveling and XP.

[nklsrh]

More work done on the water shaders. I really wanted it to feel like you’re flying really low to the ground.

However, the reflections and specularity are only really doable on the PC (Shader Model 5.0). You can see the Mobile version comparison below:

Mobile vs. PC compilation of the same shader

[nklsrh]

1 - Air Racing gameplay prototyped in C++ and Blueprints. The core mechanics are in C++ classes and the visual flair in Blueprints (e.g. the propeller spin, yaw, and roll behaviours).

You tap left/right to turn. The more you turn, the slower you go, so judge your turns well!

2 - Started with inspiration from the Disney film Moana and other concept art to build a beautiful tropical island archipelago as the backdrop for some racing!

3 - Ocean shimmering thanks to time-based sine curve that blends between an underlying colour / wave texture, and multiplies with the distance-based colour.

4 - Started work on an island shader that uses world-position (height) to blend between grass, sand, and water

5 - Distance-based water shader that reduces the texture power as it gets closer to the camera, so we get this nice clean area behind the aircraft, but more detail further away for an illusion of waves.

[nklsrh]

My follow-up cricket game is all about polishing my skills in all facets of development and art. From animations to shaders, it’s all about crafting a unique style and adding more detail to characters, environments, and gameplay.

There’s a brand-new fielding system. I calculate the correct fielder to chase the ball, then it plays the running animation. The fielder can pick up the ball, aim, and throw it back to the keeper.

I’ve also started a lot of work on a UI system that’s event-driven, so it’s completely decoupled from the game logic. So theoretically I can swap it out with a completely different UI system if I wanted to!

I’ve also started working on rigging and animations in Blender. The character model is generic enough to be used for batters and bowlers, so it’s a single set of keyframed animations for all players.

[nklsrh]

AllStars Cricket progress GIFs.

1- General gameplay look and feel. Note the puffs of smoke as the ball lands on the ground. Also the minimal UI and overlay.

2- The ‘Sunset’ style is a core of the game. Every match will look like a painting hopefully :D

3- Dynamic player shirts and jerseys using Unity’s RenderTexture feature. This will allow a vast number of customisation options.

4- Low poly shoes I modelled in Blender. This will be my first game with cosmetic items for purchase so I want to make sure they look really pretty :)

5- Card pack designs for the collection system inside the game. Buying and collecting cards will also be a core mechanic so the cards need to look and feel shiny.

[nklsrh]

Working on a follow-up to SUPER CRICKET 2 and trying to do some wonderful things with shaders. Here’s a day/night ambience that is achieved with a custom shader that blends fog and matcap to produce an interesting look.

[nklsrh]

Air Racing 2 work-in-progress

[nklsrh]

Creating a track builder for a new mobile game. The Editor is running on a mobile device. Trackmania on mobile is the goal. The track segments are prefabs that only contain position data and no meshes. Meshes are instantiated at those positions when I click Create Track. I'm using rulesets to generate pieces and create tracks within the game itself. Each piece only has a set of empty Transforms denoting Start and Endpoints, and fills out a series of 'gates' along the way to create nice turns and patterns. The idea being the level pieces are made of 'generic' points of interest, which are then replaced by Prefabs we find interesting (e.g. each 'gate' is being replaced by a pair of pylons in the GIF above.)

[nklsrh]

Some GIFs of mobile action prototypes I worked on in the last few weeks.