Ultimate Rivals was a series of games which expanded on arcade sport games of previous generations.
I started just as we were beginning work on a major patch for the already released tile Ultimate Rivals: The Rink. This was a hockey game that established a lot of the hallmarks of the series. About 100 athletes from many different sports, extreme action, super abilities, a neon futuristic cartoon style.
I got up to speed with the project while working on this huge patch which basically rewrote the game. However what I remember most from my time on this series was Ultimate Rivals: The Court. I played a huge role in the development of that title, since I was there from early development all the way to release.
I learned a lot from working on it. We were a small team and everyone wore a lot of hats. I worked on everything from AI to VFX, from Animations to UI.
I must say I was exceptionally proud of the AI system I developed for The Court. It was advanced to the point where the system would run pre-set basketball plays, but also adapt on the fly to make the optimal use of the specific characters’ strength and weaknesses, and simultaneously adapt to the moment to moment action of their opponent’s team. Steph Curry would try to get open around the 3pt line, Shaq would try stay around the rim looking for a rebound or dunk opportunity. Other athletes would find an open lane and weave between defenders if their movement was good enough. It was a shockingly diverse system that highlighted each athletes unique characteristics (which I managed and represented with about 100 different stats per athlete, all fed into the game through easily adjustable backend data streams that did not require a patch to update)
I also implemented a massive amount of the core gameplay features and UI. All abilities and status effects were implemented using Unreal Gameplay Ability System, which also determined a lot of our network Replication setup. We created our own homebrew UI infrastructure which was capable of impressive 3D menus, with which we did some pretty impressive and original UI work.
I would spend every day working closely with designers creating new game modes, creating entirely new HUD to fit the new game modes, modifying abilities so that they feel better and better, implementing new animations and VFX for every moment of gameplay, making sure it all worked well online.
We were a very small team of developers and we each took on a lot of responsibility. We worked a lot of late nights and really worked hard on making this game as great as it could be.
Ultimate Rivals was a series of games which expanded on arcade sport games of previous generations.
I started just as we were beginning work on a major patch for the already released tile Ultimate Rivals: The Rink. This was a hockey game that established a lot of the hallmarks of the series. About 100 athletes from many different sports, extreme action, super abilities, a neon futuristic cartoon style.
I got up to speed with the project while working on this huge patch which basically rewrote the game. However what I remember most from my time on this series was Ultimate Rivals: The Court. I played a huge role in the development of that title, since I was there from early development all the way to release.
I learned a lot from working on it. We were a small team and everyone wore a lot of hats. I worked on everything from AI to VFX, from Animations to UI.
I must say I was exceptionally proud of the AI system I developed for The Court. It was advanced to the point where the system would run pre-set basketball plays, but also adapt on the fly to make the optimal use of the specific characters’ strength and weaknesses, and simultaneously adapt to the moment to moment action of their opponent’s team. Steph Curry would try to get open around the 3pt line, Shaq would try stay around the rim looking for a rebound or dunk opportunity. Other athletes would find an open lane and weave between defenders if their movement was good enough. It was a shockingly diverse system that highlighted each athletes unique characteristics (which I managed and represented with about 100 different stats per athlete, all fed into the game through easily adjustable backend data streams that did not require a patch to update)
I also implemented a massive amount of the core gameplay features and UI. All abilities and status effects were implemented using Unreal Gameplay Ability System, which also determined a lot of our network Replication setup. We created our own homebrew UI infrastructure which was capable of impressive 3D menus, with which we did some pretty impressive and original UI work.
I would spend every day working closely with designers creating new game modes, creating entirely new HUD to fit the new game modes, modifying abilities so that they feel better and better, implementing new animations and VFX for every moment of gameplay, making sure it all worked well online.
We were a very small team of developers and we each took on a lot of responsibility. We worked a lot of late nights and really worked hard on making this game as great as it could be.
Unfortunately I do not believe Ultimate Rivals games are currently available. An exclusivity deal with Apple Arcade saw them removed at some point and I had moved on to other projects.
However there is still some evidence of the team’s hard work out there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-jbUXsS350
Projects Of Matthew Di Mare Miller 