Something very common among many game developers today is DLC’s and title updates for their games. The idea is to add content to an already existing game to make the lifetime longer and/or improve the game. We’re no different than other game developers in that sense, and want to expand Reckless Racing 2 with new content based on what our fans want to see. For Reckless Racing 2 we have been working on a new race mode that really feels like a perfect match; Drift. But adding something new like this is rarely as easy as it seems!
Once we had decided that a drift mode was going to happen, we did a list of everything we needed. In short, this included a point based score system, unique drift cups with our favorite drift tracks, and naturally some new drift cars. Not very much, now is it?
The score system took way more time than we anticipated to figure out. The coders had to have a solid, stable set of rules in order to calculate the scores. It must be impossible to abuse or cheat, it must reward skillful driving, and it must “feel” just right. The way we did it was to calculate the speed, angle and a secret ingredient into a drift value that determines how fast the drift score adds up during a drift. So the faster you go, the more aggressive angle you have, and the longer you sustain your drift; the higher score you’ll get. Going slow and careful will earn you some points, but it’s when you really go all out and pulls it off without crashing that earns you the massive scores! A few weeks of intense office drift competitions later, and we had all the values tweaked into what we think is “just right”.
Another problem was to make the game accessible for casual players, while still providing a challenge for our more hard core racers. In the first versions, the player only received the drift points for a safe exit; if you crashed, smashed or left the road after you had built up a massive drift you got no points at all for it. Challenging for sure, but it might also scare new players who would constantly see all of their points wash away as quickly as they were earned. So we decided to let the player keep any drift points gathered, no matter what. But, if you end the drift successfully (i.e. not crashing), you get a double score bonus. In effect, this should let the casual players ease into the drift mode while still earning some scores, and the hard core player with more skills and dedication are rewarded as well.
On top of this, we also tuned the physics and controls of the drift cars to add even more depth to the drifting. It’s now possible to adjust the drift with the throttle, not just the steering wheel.
UPDATE: It’s available now! Trailer below.
/The Pixelbite team
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