National Egyptian Slave Racing League (NESRL) was made by myself and two friends in 72 hours for the 36th Ludum Dare game jam in August 2016. It was a good time, and thankfully I didn’t get sick during it like the previous game jam I participated in. The theme of the jam was “Ancient Technology”. My immediate thought was to put a giant video screen up in ancient Egypt, and that led to us wanting to make a NASCAR-style racing game, but using chariots and slaves to drive them! I did all of the unity work and animation, while my two friends took care of the 3D asset creation and sound effects. One of the things I’m most proud of on this project was my “action cam” system, similar to the cinematic camera found in GTA and some racing games. The camera follows the player’s chariot from various angles around the track, switching between views that change over time and depending where the player is along the track.
Things learned from NESRL:
I had never worked on a racing game before, and it was a nice challenge to develop a checkpoint system that actually kept track of what place the player is in at any given time. The solution I ended up using was hardly perfect, and I’ve got some ideas as to how I would change it if I made another one in the future.
There was a lot of audio work done by the sound guy that didn’t end up getting put into the game, as I just had too much to do towards the end of the time limit. In the future it would be nice to think of games that have a bit of a smaller scope, so I actually have time to add those kinds of features before time runs out.
It’s difficult to focus on programming when you’re having so much fun making silly animations for the characters!
Alexi Bay 