Game Design Project 2: Check the game balance

Summary: you will do the handshake-style analysis of a street racing game

Due:Either in the Final or by Dec 18th in hard copy in my mailbox or under my door(this will overlap the last programming project) which ever you prefer.

This is an individual project, Do not work with classmates on this project.

Project:

Consider a racing game where the vehicles have the following attributes: (We'll only do four to give you a fairly simple game to spec out - and give you an appreciation of the work that needs to go into designing games like this.

Top Speed: in meters/second

Acceleration in Meters/second²

Breaking in Meter/second²

Max Turning Speed in meters/second

two of your cars are

The SUV with stats {Top Speed: 50, Acceleration 4, Breaking 3, Max Turning 16}
The Sedan with stats {Top Speed: 45, Acceleration 5, Breaking 4, Max Turning 13}

The third Vehicle will be the

Student Car with stats {Top Speed: [# of letters in your last name*5], Acceleration: [ Your year, seniors are 4, juniors are 3, Grads are 5 and Sophomores are 2], Breaking: [the last digit of your bannerID], Max Turning: [The number of letters in your first name]

So my student car would be{Top Speed: 35, Acceleration: 5, Breaking: 6, Max Turning: 4}

Define your own 4th and 5th vehicles. Make one motor cycle and one a different kind of vehicle. Be sure to note their attributes in your paper.

Next consider those vehicles on several tracks.

Track one is a straight track that is 200 meters long.
Track two is a straight track 300 meters long, but with a brick wall 50 meters past the finish line.
Track three is a rectangular track 100 meters in one direction and 300 meters in the other direction with four corners, assume you can only be going your Max Turning speed right at the corners
Track four is a square track 200 meters long on all straightaways with 3 square corners.
You design track 5.

Consider the 5 tracks and the 5 vehicles, which order would each of the 5 vehicles finish each of the 5 tracks while not letter them crash (you can't crash into the wall in track two, nor go over your max turning speed at the corners). Show your work.

Assume all vehicles begin the race stopped (speed of zero)

I found the acceleration calculator at

https://toolstud.io/calculate/acceleration.php?compare=physics&acceleration=1&acceleration_unit=m%2Fsec%C2%B2&time=1&time_unit=sec

to be useful when trying this out. You might find your own calculators useful. Feel free to use tools like this, but reference them in your paper.

The writeup:

After you do the exercise, write a paper (the usual rules apply: proper grammar, spelling etc Remember, your goal is Business English, if you struggle, have it proofread). (MAKE it double spaced so I can comment between lines) The paper must include:

An introduction, telling future game students and designers what you are doing

The five vehicles and their attributes
The five tracks and a description sufficient for a reader to understand.
Analyze your vehicles balance, report the results and show enough of the work for readers to understand how you got there. (put the work above into a written form in the report)
Draw conclusions and Report on the balance results, do different vehicles win on different tracks? Are there any vehicles that seem over powered? any under powered that come in last all too often?
Grads only: Consider the tracks, are can you design a track that makes some of the under performing vehicles do better? show me

The paper should be about 2-3 pages of analysis and writing (up to 4-5 for grads)

Print the paper and bring it to class on the due date. (or put it under my door)