Creating a hovercar racing game with Unreal Engine

Abstract

The reason for choosing the game as the subject of my thesis was the fact I was already working on it during my studies. This meant it was a convenient way of combining work and school into one project. I also see this thesis as a way of promoting the game during further development.

The game itself was born out of love for Nintendo’s F-Zero game series and the desire to see a sequel. The last mainline entry in the series, F-Zero GX was at the time of writing this thesis over 20-years old. The goal of this game is to carry on the spirit of F-Zero, while creating a product that’s appealing to both F-Zero fans and people unfamiliar with it.

Before starting work on the thesis, I already had some amount of experience with Unreal Engine and Blender through independent studies. I also had game development experience through smaller demo projects and one actual mobile release, on which I worked mainly as a programmer.

The goal of this thesis is to document the steps taken during the prototypes development and at the end of the thesis the reader should have a good understanding of the development process of this kind of game.

By the end of this thesis, besides the systems being developed, the content of the prototype will consist of 1 test track, made with a 3D modeling software, that the player can race around alone.