Source: @osamadorias

Parallels is an event put on by the Freeplay Independent Games Festival each year - it’s an evening during which up to a dozen unique and interesting games and works are shown by their creators, who are encouraged to give a short talk about their project in a personal, heartfelt way. It has consistently been one of our favourite game events - it’s engaging, inspiring, and important, particularly in its focus on games as art and expression.

In October we presented Need 4e+9 Speed at Parallels 2019, alongside a bunch of other amazing creators and their projects. We speak about the genesis of the project, and some of the key moments during its creation, as well as exploring why it’s important to us. We also talk a little bit about creating the glitchy aesthetics - how we push the game engine, embracing floating point errors.

It was a wonderful night, and we really feel like our talk and how it came together tells the story of Need 4e+9 Speed in a beautiful way. 

We highly recommend watching the whole thing to hear from all of the thoughtful creators and to see their exciting projects, but you can also click below to go straight to our presentation.

Transcript:

Kalonica:  Around this time last year, I was one of the creators commissioned to make a game for an event called the Arty After Party.
Jason had previously suggested that we collaborate on something sometime, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity!

Kalonica:  I remember a conversation I had last year, at Robert Yang's Bar SK exhibition, where a mate was looking at the games and saying that they wanted to make more things that were meaningful - that they wanted to make games about love! and identity! and life! .. and I was like ‘nahh I just wanna make car game.. I just wanna, you know, drive around.. Maybe toot a horn..’. I think I was tired of what felt like this constant pressure to make something big and deep and important- I just wanted to make something that simply felt good.

Kalonica: So when Jason and I were discussing what to make, we had a big chat about our favourite driving experiences both in the real world and in games. 

Kalonica: I thought a lot  about the old white-spray-painted-purple 1987 Nissan Urvan I had as a kid growing up in rural Victoria. I would drive around the paddocks near my house and I would take it for laps just for fun (and maybe get some air- but don’t tell my parents)- but there was never any reason for driving outside of it feeling good. 

Kalonica: We realised that neither of us engage much with driving that is aggressive, competitive, punishing or about an objective. What we like is the sensation, the speed, the freedom, and the tension between being in control but never feeling entirely in control.
We also considered that the game would be shown at a party - how could multiplayer work? What would a cooperative driving game look like? How good is Thomas Bowker's Draw?

Kalonica: So we started up the Unity game engine and were like 'hmm let's give this project a temporary name so we're forced to change it later' and we called it 'Need For Speed'. 
And then later, we added those weird numbers and letters in reference to the numbers we use in our cool game.

Jason: The strange glitchy stuff that happens in the game is a side effect of how game engines work. 3D game engines are optimised to work really well in a relatively small area, close to what's called the "origin point". 

Jason: The position of everything in the game is calculated relative to this point, using floating point values. This works fine for objects that are a metre away from the origin, or even a few kilometres away, when you’re at like, four billion metres away, the engine has a bit of a tough time - is this object at 4 billion metres, or 4 billion and 7 metres? And, then... this is what happens.

Source: Floating Point Grid, DM Gregory

Jason: I had always been curious about this quirk of game engines - so on the first day that we got together, we took a 3D model, and moved it out into that space. Unity complained at us - it knows it's going to have a bit of trouble dealing with objects 4 billion metres away from the origin - but we could rotate this model around, and see it morph wonderfully in each axis, contorting to fit this low-fidelity environment.

Jason: So getting back to driving - we loaded up the Unity car demo, and tried linking the entire world’s displacement to the car’s speed. Which means that, as the car speeds up, the entire world moves further and further out into the glitchspace.

Jason: This was really interesting, and fit into exactly what we wanted to explore around driving and hovering on the edge of control, but at this point we were still trying to turn it into an “intentional game idea”. So we had lunch and talked for a couple of hours about a driving, gardening game, where you turn the soil and create grooves, then plant seeds along those grooves, then water the seeds, and then maybe as you drive around and glitch out that helps the seeds… grow?

Jason: As soon as we got back, we added a quick, debuggy way to spawn a ‘groove’ beneath the car, to do the soil thing. But when we tested it, we realised that, as we were driving, rather than digging down, the grooves would slowly lift the car into the air... and also turning the car would somehow bent the grooves, forming this beautiful track through the sky. It just felt… exhilarating.

Kalonica: So we played the game a bunch after that. There were a few times I felt very guilty that Jason was sitting there working away and I was just playing!

Kalonica: I think one of the most important lessons Need 4e+9 Speed has taught me is how valuable it can be to work out what a game is through the act of making it.
All the personal games I have made or intended to make I absolutely think about the whole. entire. thing first: exploring every possible way it could be in my mind, imagining the process of making it, the iterations it would go through, what the player might think about - to the point of exhaustion. To the point that it no longer feels interesting or rewarding to actually sit down and make the game. It’s often at this point that I’ll just discard the entire thing.

Kalonica: But it’s tricky to think that way with Need 4e+9 Speed! This game is more about creating a space, an opportunity for players to make their own fun. It didn’t need to be complex to be good. So it makes sense that this game’s design is driven by our own experience of playing and enjoying it.

Jason: From this point on, the making process felt very organic - we were responding to how we were playing it, feeling out adding things or making changes, keeping what was interesting or enjoyable, and then allowing further accidental developments to become a piece of the whole.

Jason: There were a few technical or design problems we wanted to solve, but the solutions often tended to be interesting or to have interesting side effects. 

Jason: For instance, if you’re stuck like that blue car is in the corner, you can press ‘Y’ and what that does is it just moves- like when players are stuck- it just moves the entire world like way way waaay further out into the unknown. And then it comes back and by the time it comes back the car is in a totally different position and spinning wildly through the air. And that’s how we added a reset button. 

Jason: Throughout this whole process, we were also playing it a lot - continuously enjoying the thing we had made in the first few hours of working together, and discussing it, and tinkering with it - trying to only change what was necessary. 

Kalonica: I felt very intimidated to make the car model, knowing that it would greatly affect the tone of the game. We replaced Unity’s default futuristic space car that looks like an electric razor, with an ordinary 1988 Nissan Micra. Suddenly flying around isn't a special ability of the car- it's the space that's special. And there is no driver, you are the car. It’s a car heaven - with no competition, no danger, no rules: it’s freedom, and expression.
The driving is an act of creation but in this glitchy world you're never quite in control enough to feel as if you own it. There’s no feeling of loss if you make a mistake or it glitches out, it’s more about creating an impression of your experience.
… Also the cars have little horns that go beep-beep.

Kalonica: Need 4e+9 Speed is not like anything else I’ve made before. I feel like so much of what I create needs to justify itself by meaningfully answer the question “why?”. “Because it feels good”. There were many times making this game that we actively said ‘let’s just do the easiest, least-stressful, most-fun thing’. It made me realise how I often I think something needs to be stressful and difficult and overwhelming in order for it to feel worth doing. I love our cool game!

Jason: I love Need 4e+9 Speed, the experience of playing it and the game itself, but maybe the most important thing to me is how we made it. We were kind to each other, and respectful of each other’s time and energy, and we didn’t work ourselves silly over it, and we had so much fun with it… it was just really nice to create this weird, wonderful thing together.

Source: @huedavies

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