Schlagwort: Ivanovich Games

  • How Arcade Racer Touring Karts Plays Best on PS4 and PS VR

    How Arcade Racer Touring Karts Plays Best on PS4 and PS VR

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    I’ve always been a huge fan of the racing genre, be it hardcore sims, arcade entries or anything between. That love helped fuel our own debut into the genre, mobile title Mini Drivers, back in 2016.

    When we considered bringing the game to PS4, we knew a simple port wouldn’t suffice. Instead, we took the original concept and reimagined it for console, taking inspiration from a diverse range of genre heavyweights such as Crash Team Racing and Codemasters’ Formula 1 (a personal favorite).

    This ensured that our title would be packed with the features players have come to expect: cross-platform multiplayer, crazy yet customizable power-ups, and plenty of accessibility options. A great physics engine. Stunning visuals. And lots of courses, all with dynamic race-disrupting dangers to make every lap different from the last. And so was born Touring Karts.

    1. Keeping the multiplayer lobby thriving

    Making sure there are enough online players to keep multiplayer healthy is always a challenge. Cross-play, coupled with no segregation of VR and non-VR players, proved to be a simple solution… on paper. Of course, the reality is somewhat more complex, and involves building server infrastructure, testing all combinations of platforms and control methods, and so on. Ensuring that all players — regardless of where and how they’re playing — have the same experience was difficult, but ultimately worthwhile.

    2. Power-up precision for everyone

    It was a real challenge to create power-ups that were attractive to use in VR and also engaging and easy to use on any other platform. The hammer, for example, can be moved in any direction in VR, the same when using the touchscreen on a mobile device, or by following the position of your finger or direction on the D-pad of a DualShock 4.

    The implementation of the bazooka was another challenge, as we decided to use a hybrid approach mixing auto-aim and manual aiming. That way, you could easily regulate the precision for each shot both in VR and outside of VR.

    3. Funny how?

    Battling for pole position can be a serious business. We wanted to alleviate that tension (or ramp it up, if you’re on the receiving end of an attack) with our multiplayer power-ups, which highlight our interest towards the wackier end of multiplayer racing. Sure, hammers and grenade launchers are unorthodox items for the racetrack, but they’re not unfamiliar to gamers in other online arenas. But how about a giant, irate chicken, or a troop of miniature monkeys trained to briefly hypnotize your race rivals?

    The circuits deserve a special mention, as they have been enriched with tons of dynamic gameplay-disruptive elements (random slopes, new curves with superelevations and final jumps, optional side ramps, etc) many of those fit the culture and location of each place (a big slice of pizza that throws olives in Italy, giant Frankfurt sausage that hits the ground with beer jugs in Germany, etc).

    And as previously mentioned, you can fuse power-ups. Combine that angry avian with a bazooka and watch it stampede ahead of you, sporting a military cap and laying explosives onto the heads of those unfortunate to be in its path. Switch a bazooka for an ice cube and you’ll replace grenades for ice cubes, a military cap for an eskimo hat.

    4. Comfort settings

    Touring Karts offers multiple camera modes. Arcade Cabinet recreates the oversized sit-down machines that once frequented arcades, and can help players who suffer from motion sickness. You “sit” in the cabinet, with the game screen built-in in front of you. Power-ups still appear in your hands, and are “thrown” into the cabinet screen, ensuring you still enjoy the immersive physicality of a race.

    Practice makes perfect

    Touring Karts had a few practice runs before it roared onto PS4, with tests conducted and bugs ironed out as the game took its first Early Access laps last September on PC. Changes weren’t just behind the scenes: we continued to refine tracks, in both gameplay and aesthetics, adding dynamic elevation to further emphasize the ever-changing courses. All in answer to player feedback. As a result, the PS4 release offers the best version of our arcade racer!

    Website: LINK

  • Blasting back to old-school arcades, with Operation Warcade

    Blasting back to old-school arcades, with Operation Warcade

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    For a period in the 1980s mounted guns on arcade cabinets were hugely popular, with the feel of those guns and the rapid-fire feedback giving players a real sense of immersion through the machine’s CRT monitor. Today, Ivanovich Games is bringing back the arcade experience inside your HTC Vive – literally. We spoke with Ivan Cascales, CEO of Ivanovich Games, on the creation of Operation Warcade. 

    Can you tell us what Operation Warcade was mainly inspired by?

    Taito's Operation Wolf arcade cabinet

    Taito’s Operation Wolf arcade cabinet

    In Operation Warcade we wanted to pay tribute to the golden era of arcades that I was lucky enough to experience in the 80s and 90s. (I’m now 41 years old.) If I must choose a single game, it would certainly be Taito’s Operation Wolf as the title that most marked the inspiration.

    What made you decide to create a virtual arcade inside the game, so that you stand in front of an arcade cabinet as you would have ‘back in the day’? Most developers would probably have put players ‘in the action’ immediately.

    I was convinced I didn’t want to do “another wave shooter.” I also wanted to get away from the classic use of teleport and unfortunately free movement tends to make many people dizzy.

    In Operation Warcade we tried to mix up a lot of gameplay mechanics that don’t get people dizzy, and that all of them can be played sitting as well as in room scale.

    The best way we found to offer this repertoire of different mechanics materialized in an abbreviated time was to emulate the arcade from outside with the so called “immersion points”.

    As well as that way of playing it, you can also go ‘inside the machine’ in Operation Warcade. What’s different between the two modes?

    Operation Warcade offers 2 totally different game modes:

    1. CLASSIC MODE: For those particularly nostalgic. We try to recreate the original gaming experience of the classic arcade machines: You play on a flat screen, with limited lives and limited ammunition and 6 screens to overcome. Of course, there are no coins.
    2. IMMERSIVE EDITION: It’s hard to explain, the screen is not flat here. It’s huge and in real 3D. The feeling is totally different. Here you have endless ammunition and infinite lives, but you cannot relax because you must overcome a total of 108 missions divided into 36 levels that also allow you to improve your arsenal.

    The original arcade games often limited you to one gun, but within VR you’re not so limited, obviously. So what will you be using in Operation Warcade?

    The aim of Operation Warcade is to surprise the player with different game mechanics in very short periods of time. To do this we make many changes of contexts and take advantage of most of them to make changes in weapons that bring freshness to the game.

    We have many weapons: the usual ones: shotguns, missile launchers, snipers, explosive arrows like Rambo, etc. But we also have very funny experimental weapons like the antigravity grenades or grenades that cause tornadoes of fire.

    One of the unique weapons in Operation Warcade is the gravity gun… tell us what kind of crazy stuff you can pull off with that!

    Yes! The gravity gun is a piece of work! It is clearly inspired by one of my favorite games: Half Life and allows you to attract anything from the stage and throw it freely. The feeling of freedom and madness it offers was fun and surprising.

    Tell us about your physics. A soldier gets crushed by flying debris in your trailer! What have you implemented here?

    Operation Warcade offer a strange mix between seemingly realistic graphics and absurdly exaggerated physics with the aim that everything is very spectacular and fun. The result is that when you play, fun things like the one you mention happen.

    You’ve also got vehicles which is a big change from the arcades… what can you pilot?

    Yes! The game not only offers several types of “immersion points”. Some are static, others travel inside a vehicle by sea, air or land that you don’t drive. But you’re also driving in many immersion points.

    You can drive several military land vehicles with one hand while shooting with the other.

    You can also fly both airplanes and helicopters and do it by taking the controls with your hands. The helicopter flying spots are my favorite. You can fire missiles and take advantage of the height. It’s cool : -)

    What’s next for Operation Warcade?

    The most immediate future is to release the PSVR version and a very special surprise: The augmented reality version of the game using ARKit for iPhone. It’s a blast!

    In the medium term we plan to launch something that many people are asking us to do: Cooperative multiplayer!

    Thanks for talking to us, Ivan!

    Operation Warcade is available on Viveport.

    Website: LINK