Synopsis
From the vibrant streets of Tokyo to high-stakes professional competitions backed by global brands, Torque Drift 2 invokes all aspects of drift and street culture to offer an experience as diverse and dynamic as the motorsport itself.
Engine
Unreal Engine 5.4
Studio
Grease Monkey Games
Platforms
Release Date
3rd October 2023 (Early Access)
Dev Timeline
Early 2021 - Current
(I Joined August 2023)
Level & Gameplay Design
A collection of all my design work in Torque Drift 2.
Level Design on Daikoku
In Daikoku, I blocked out four areas, focusing on core level design principles to ensure a fun and challenging environment. I created clear paths, placed obstacles, and balanced difficulty to keep the player engaged and following the core direction of the track.
Car Stash/old warehouse area
Designing the flow for this specific building
Hidden burnout area
Burnout area entry
Final design
Fuel Truck depot Area
Go kart track
Tutorial
After the release of our 0.11 major update we dropped a small hotfix that contained a tutorial for new players. The brief was for a compact tutorial which teaches players all of the important core mechanics and to get an overall feel for the driving physics.
I was involved in the entire tutorial from start to finish and was the lead designer throughout. I designed the entirety of the driving portion of the tutorial and worked with both Engineering and Art to reach our target end date.
Driving portion design
My approach to designing these layouts was to ensure that any one of any skill level could pick up the game and get through it. This had some challenges as racing games inherently have a very high skill requirement (especially when focussing on drifting)
In the end I found that limiting the requirements of each section allowed for much better progression.
Through testing and iteration I found that some of my designs needed to be simpler to ensure a 5 minute completion. To fix this I ended up shortening some of the paths and giving more gradual turns so that players have more room for error and didn’t miss the intended path.
The driving portion contained the following five sections
1st | General Path
To give the player a feel for the controls
2nd | Handbrakes
Learn how to initiate a drift with the handbrake
3rd | Points
Learn what a clipping point is and how to collect them
4th | Zones
Learn clipping zones and experience the track
5th | Lead Layout
A final test in a proper environment
Some layout designs for the first 2 sections
Drift Skills
Drift skills is a gamemode introduced in the 0.11 major update. This gamemode was designed to be a stepping stone for new players and introduces them to a variety of important mechanics that they will be using throughout their time in the game.
Together with another designer we designed 30 individual layouts with a gradual ramp in difficulty to reinforce the new mechanics players were learning.
Out of 10 difficulties we introduce a new mechanic every 2 difficulties with the inbetween difficulty being more of a reinforcement stage to teach the use of the newly introduced mechanic and are more on the challenging side.
2-1 A simple layout that introduces a continuous corner
2-2 Introduces multiple sharp corners with a long straight
2-3 Reinforces the last layout by providing plenty of repetition
4-1 Introducing a asymmetrical layout with more unpredictable corners, this is also the first layout with handbrakes before corners
4-2 Symmetrical layout with repetitive sharp corners reinforcing the use of handbrakes
4-3 Longer level with a mixture of straights and sharp corners
6-1 Introduction of Donuts, first layout with a more complicated path
6-2 Central larger donuts provide a clear direction to start with but leads towards a more confined straight section
6-3 Layout with multiple overlapping paths provide a clear direction but a more tight layout to follow
8-1 Layout introduces clipping points and more gradual but continuous corners
8-2 Fairly long and windy layout, having clipping points and handbrakes in a more complicated layout forces the player to drift
8-3 Symetrical layout with very little room for error, also a cool S
10-1 The first of the final difficulty which incorporates every mechanic
10-2 Build on the last layout by giving less room for error and introducing long and short corners
10-3 Final layout which is considered the most difficult, this layout incorporates all mechanics learnt but pushes the player to make less errors
Layouts
Layouts are essentially the core gameplay loop of Torque Drift 2’s singleplayer experience. I have been involved in the creation of Freestyle and Lead layouts, These layouts are composed of 2 main mechanics that attribute to the scoring system, these are; Clipping Points and Clipping Zones. Freestyle tends to be the easier gamemode where players are given a small area that they get to drift around in for a limited time collecting points. Lead Layouts are more technically designed using real world examples as a guide to ensure they had the correct flow and feel.
I was involved in the creation of all 48 Lead layouts and directly designed and implemented 30 of these.
Similarly to Lead layouts, I was involved in the creation of all 12 Freestyle layouts but directly designed and implemented 5 of these.
QA & Player Support
Player Support and QA side of my role saw me use common processes to ensure smooth gameplay and high-quality releases. In Player Support, I handled player issues, tracked recurring problems, and communicated with the development team to prioritize fixes. In QA, I conducted thorough testing of new updates, documented bugs, and worked with developers to resolve issues before release. This helped maintain a positive player experience and ensured a polished final product.
Using Linear task tracking and Plastic version control together with unreal engine 5, I was able to thoroughly test, ticket and track a wide range of bugs. Some of my QA Tasks gave me the freedom to design and persue more efficient ways of tracking more complex issues/tasks.
Example entries
Design Brief:
Create a spreadsheet that has a database of parts and cars and the ability to quickly access what cars had issues with certain parts
Community Management & Marketing
The community management and Marketing side of my role saw me through a variety of tasks from managing the long running Torque Motorsport Discord to writing up the latest announcements and patch notes.
These tasks have further enhanced my skills in writing and editing and has taught me a valuable lesson in creating and tailoring media to a particular target audience.
This role required the use of various software which I have become very familiar with, these are primarily Figma and G suite.
All 9 patch notes I created