Researching for a Racing Level Pitch

Here at Ringling, we're getting prepared to pitch our ideas for our racing level that we'll be working on for the majority of this semester. Over the past few days, I've thought about what I wanted to do quite a bit.

I've decided that the setting for my racing level will be Titan, the largest natural satellite of Saturn. I reached this decision as the creative liberties offered by Titan as well as the opportunities for hazards and interesting environment elements are many!

Being that Titan is covered with a thick atmosphere which is rich in methane, giving off a brilliant blue hue when viewed from certain angles. In addition to this, the ground is a deep, rusted orange, which pairs nicely with the blue light emitted from methane. It was here when I first settled on a few options for my color scheme.

As you can see, the warmer tones will cover the many ranges of colors found on the surface and in different parts of the atmosphere of titan, and the cool blue tones will cover the methane lakes and reflected light from the atmosphere.

I initially had some trouble with determining how I wanted to represent the surface of Titan, being that it shares a lot of similarities with Earth. I decided to use a little bit of artistic freedom and drew up some rocks that looked a little alien at first glance.

The locale for the racing level on Titan will be an old, dilapidated space station that has been repurposed and revived by scavengers, gamblers, crime lords, and other shady folk. Over time, the place has become quite the popular destination, and is especially known for its specialty of hosting matches for the "Interplanetary Space Racers", a league with questionable legalities.

To make this place look awesome, I looked at a number of artists work and photos from around the globe and beyond. One of my go-tos is the work of the late Ralph McQuarrie, the original concept artist for Star Wars.

I've always been a big fan of the architecture from the Mos Eisley Spaceport, and I thought that something in that vein would be quite fitting for the buildings in my level. If i were to go with a more contemporary science fiction style, I'd probably go with something like the following.

As for the location of the buildings themselves, I thought that having them located on the side of a cliff like the monastery seen below would be pretty interesting.

So, without further ado, here's a very work in progress top down view of what I currently have planned for my track!

And a landmark to boot!

Here's a little bit more on how the stunt above will work exactly!

As you can see in the diagram, there are different tiles on the old satellite which will fall when driven on. This means that the next time the player comes around for their second lap the path will be changed, forcing the player to take an alternate route when traveling along the satellite. Additionally, there will be boosts on the satellite to not only guide the player, but to give them enough velocity to launch the full distance of the jump.

I have just about every beat of the map marked down in the following thumbnails. I had fun with these!

Anyways, I'm really excited to see how this all turns out soon! Thanks for reading :)