Q&A with Steve Anthony Part II

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Bojan
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Q&A with Steve Anthony Part II

Post by Bojan »

The second part of the Q&A session with Steve Anthony has been posted on the official Need for Speed Carbon website.
Community Team: In the demo, the frame rate felt slow and the game lacked a sense of speed. Will this change when the game is released?

Steve Anthony: The drifting physics and handling have been totally revamped for Carbon. Our number one goal throughout development was to focus on the speed of drift. In the past, drifting in racing games has felt quite sluggish and didn't capture the insane speeds which you see in some of the pro drift competitions. We've focused on speed so much that we've tied point scoring to it. Keeping up a consistently high speed is the key to getting huge drift scores.

In addition to the regular drift tracks which take place on closed circuits, players will also have a chance to try their skill at the challenging Canyon Drifts. These drifts take place on narrow mountain roads and have the added risk of being able to break through the barriers and fall off the track. The handling on these roads is pretty similar to regular drifts but you'll have to really learn how to control your car to avoid hitting the walls or going off the road. These are by far my favorite drifts in the game. It's a very satisfying feeling when you can make it to the bottom of the track without having touched a single wall.

The framerate issues that some users have commented on have been addressed for the final product. Typically our optimization only takes place once all the content is in place and locked. At that point we target both the code and the environments for optimizations. The tricky part about demos is that we are usually about half way through the optimizations by the time we release them. Early reports from all the review code that has gone out to the press is that there are no framerate concerns to report.

Certainly for sense of speed the same holds true. We tuned the visuals right up until the final moment we could before we stopped.

CT: Autosculpt is cool, but feels slow and unresponsive. Will this be improved upon in the full version of the game?

SA: Again the optimizations that were done to both the autosculpt system and the vector vinyl system didn't take place until after the demo had shipped. We felt that it was more important to get the feature into the hands of the fans so that they could experience the power of autosculpt, than to hold it back by several weeks until the optimizations had taken place.

CT: Why can't we race in the day, or better yet, both day and night?

SA: We made the choice early on based on the premise of the game that a night environment better suited what we were going after. Certainly daytime racing between crews does take place but the majority of it happens after the city goes to sleep. And with Canyon racing there is nothing more dangerous than tearing down these winding mountain roads when you can only see 10 feet in front of the car.

CT: Will Carbon have content available after the game is released?

SA: Need for Speed Carbon will have a selection of premium unlockable and exclusively unlockable content available at launch and more content will be made available in the weeks and months following launch.
The original article is available here and on tuesday part III should be available.
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Post by peterfaj »

Nice, we'll have better performance for less money, more frames per second for worse graphic card. I hope the later stuff will be free. And I thought speed based drift scoring was before too.
___________
yay, first post
Last edited by peterfaj on 31 Oct 2006, 10:23, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Aurel 2008 »

" We've focused on speed so much that we've tied point scoring to it. Keeping up a consistently high speed is the key to getting huge drift scores. "
Yep ! :D I`ve noticed that ! :D I think this is a very good thing, in the underground series this is what was mising to the drift part to maked realy good.
But this could also be a bad thing, coz when u get a very big score on you`r drift because of the speed, that speed could also sent u into a wall ! :lol: You`l have to be realy good at this thing ! :D
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Post by BluePhirePB »

I like the new drift physics. Much easier to hold a nice drift and not as sluggish.
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Post by Skyline_man »

Typically our optimization only takes place once all the content is in place and locked. At that point we target both the code and the environments for optimizations. The tricky part about demos is that we are usually about half way through the optimizations by the time we release them. Early reports from all the review code that has gone out to the press is that there are no framerate concerns to report.

Certainly for sense of speed the same holds true. We tuned the visuals right up until the final moment we could before we stopped.
Absolutely happy now. :)
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Post by Abrams »

I _certainly_ hope that new content wont be costing anything.

btw, what is that premium\exclusive stuff? is that the thing that you need to race online to get or something you need to buy collectors edition...imo if they make collectors version with more features thats rather dumb. specially tuned cars and races are ok, but if there will be different content itself like completly new cars then thats bull...
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Post by spectre01 »

shoud that count down timer in the front page be re-work? cuz i saw on futureshop's web site, they said it will be released on Oct 31...
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Post by 93360 »

BluePhirePB wrote:I like the new drift physics. Much easier to hold a nice drift and not as sluggish.
its easier cos it does all the counter-steering for you =/ no sense of skill involved imho
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Post by Abrams »

Oct 31 is US and Nov 1 is EU if im not mistaken. But usually games actually hit shelves only day after wich means youll be able to buy it Nov 1 in US and Nov 2-3 in EU.
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Post by peterfaj »

They said Tuesday - part III, right?
Last edited by peterfaj on 31 Oct 2006, 19:59, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by BrontoX »

Yes i know where is part III?
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Post by peterfaj »

BrontoX wrote:Yes i know where is part III?
You know where is part III? What? You mean you don't know?
Last edited by peterfaj on 31 Oct 2006, 19:58, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by BrontoX »

No i don't know where part III is
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Post by Surfi »

15 minutes remains!! :P
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