Riders Republic

Join a massive multiplayer community and participate in an avalanche of diverse activities as you shred the snow, mud and dirt in real time with others! Squad up with your friends and take on downhill races, dominate maps in team vs team competitions, or challenge yourself in PvP modes and Events. If you're up for some insane action, throw yourself into mass races and be the first to cross the finish line. Brace yourself for some sick action!

I worked on Riders Republic during my end of studies internship. I was working in the 3C / core gameplay team, in Ubisoft Annecy. Riders Republic was in its first year of live. Development involved a few other Ubisoft studios : Belgrade, Pune, Kiyv, Berlin, Odesa and Montpellier.

Contents

For confidentiality reasons, I can't show important parts of my work at Ubisoft Annecy.

3C gears

In Riders Republic, Gears are equippable items like bikes, skis, snowboards, wingsuits, etc. Each gear has visible stats affecting its gameplay, and some of them also have special properties or interactions as stated in their description. I designed many gears while working on Riders.

BMX DLC gear progression

The BMX DLC adds BMX as a new sport. This expansion features a lot of new bikes. I was in charge of defining the overall progression of these bikes : their statistics, the thresholds of rarity, etc.

As Riders Republic already featured multiple bike careers (Road bike race, Downhill bike race, Freeride bike tricks, Slopestyle bike tricks), it was a challenge to make BMX feel unique with its own stats repartition across all rarities. I adressed it by understanding the key dynamics in existing career progressions, finding blank spots of stats combinations other careers don't use, and following closely the BMX fantasy : little bikes made for agile tricks in open environments.

Career gears

In Riders Republic, a career is both a category of gears and events (races, tricks) in which these gear can be used. Each career has its own gear and events progression. New career gears are added each season, and can be obtained through challenges, career levelling or battle pass progression.

I designed seasonal career gears of 4 title updates (from season 2 update 2 to season 4 update 1).

This means 3C design, fitting the gear in its career progression, in-engine implementation and tweaking, and making sure with other specialists the item meets its target experience and quality.

Funkies

Funkies are gears that don't fit in a career progression. They don't follow a sport fantasy, rather other real or surreal ideas. (Examples : a cargo bike, old wooden skis, paper plane wingsuit).

Designing funkies uses the same pipeline as designing career gears, with added time dedicated on building a specific identity. Most of the time, this identity is a completely unusual 3C tweaking. It can also involve original behaviors, special audio, etc. which are decided in creative meetings with the different specialists involved.

Gameplay prototypes

In Ubisoft Annecys process, prototyping is very often used. Most of the time I was doing it alone using engine tools, but sometimes with a GPP colleague. I made prototypes for multiple purposes.

Overall I made them for:

• Trying out gameplay concepts
• Iterating on a feature design before it goes in production
• Evaluating analysis points
• Bugs finding and fixing

For confidentiality reasons, I can't show anything of these prototypes.

Documentation

I took a special role in the design documentation of Riders Republic.

I overhauled a core design documentation
I created dynamic shortcuts, dynamic charts and data visualization tools in Excel.

I created and updated important documentation
With a GPP colleague, we investigated the code and wrote doc for some features.

I wrote development documentation
Pipeline reference, presentations, pitches, feature, mockups...

For confidentiality reasons, I can't share this documentation.

Unannounced features

The most important part of my work on Riders Republic hasnt been released yet.