All the World's a Stage #6

Submitted by Eduardo Agostini on Wed, 2010-06-02 22:47

The countdown is on! Our launch date fast approaches and there are so many things left to do. The atmosphere around the office is a mixture of anticipation and excitement. Much like parents are anxious to meet their baby for the first time, that's how I would compare our launch day. Need for Speed World will be like a newborn baby that is full of potential and ready to grow. All we need is a community of fans to foster it and shape it into the "rockstar" that we all want it to be.

As of this posting, about 150,000 of you are giving the game a shot in our beta phase. Some are curious, some are hooked and some are skeptical. We welcome all of that. We've seen some great suggestions, ideas and observations that definitely play a role in what steps we take next.

Right now, the team is killing off some of the last major bugs for our launch build. This build will also be beta tested in the very near future. What's going to be different you ask? Lots!

For starters, the world will be expanding. The entire Camden region will be opened up and drivable. The artists have spent a lot of time getting the regions for launch as tight and polished as possible. Now that we're at "art lock" for the launch build, we're focusing again on the remainder of the world which will be opened up in the near future. We want to ensure the quality bar is high and there are plenty of new visuals that I think will be worth the wait.

Also coming in the next build will be our Day/Night Cycle v1.0. The reason it's 1.0 is because it has everything but a full on night mode. Re-lighting the entire world for night is a big job and we want to add a few other features to make the night mode satisfying. We hope to have it ready at the same time as when we open up the rest of the world. For now though, I'm sure you'll enjoy the gorgeous dawn to dusk lighting.

Here's a little taste of our brand new Rockport International Airport in Downtown Rockport! We now have additional roads that let you drive right up to Departures and Arrivals. Maybe some day you'll have to hop a plane to get to a new city. The building is gorgeous in any time of the day thanks to NFS art vet, Lily Bai.





Other tidbits:
- From the audio side, I just heard the AWESOME ambient music that was added to the free roam environment. I could just sit and chill at my favorite vista and do nothing else but listen. It's very cool.
- That pesky "shadows through the road" bug from all the AI and opponent cars is fixed! And you thought we weren't listening. Our rendering engineer simply had other features to work on before he could get to fixing that bug. Bug squashed.
- New traffic cars! I saw some new ones added to the mix. Definitely an improvement to the overall vibe.
- Bodykits anyone?
- I finished Uncharted 2 before Jude! Gorgeous game!

Yesterday I popped into World Garage and was invited into a chat with a few of their members. Always a good bunch who loves to ask questions. I usually try and be as mysterious as possible without divulging too much info. While I was there, I mentioned I was going to prep a new blog entry and asked what areas of the world they were interested in seeing new screenshots of. SO ... by popular demand ...

Camden seems to be a favorite and how appropriate that it will be the next major region to be opened up!


The price of real estate just went up. Awesome sunset view from these condos!


The road just outside the trailer park. Don't wake up the neighbors when you scream on by.

World Garage member, FrozenStar desperately wants to see Fortuna again. It's a much different look from the endless nights of Carbon!


A few upgrades here and there make this scene a lot sexier.


If you're ever visiting Fortuna, these hotels have really nice ocean views.


Up in the hills of Fortuna is one of the best schools money can buy. Don't tell those going to Rosewood State University. The rivalry is intense.

And finally, the cat's out of the bag! On the latest edition of Ask Marc, he mentioned coming to our desks to drive the canyons from Carbon. While I can confirm we have some of the canyons in a drivable state, they are VERY FAR from being ready. We're going to take creative license and change the scenery to better fit the open world. So yes, we're thinking of letting you drive a few of the canyons linked together. That's not the ONLY thing we have in the preliminary stages, but like all good things, they will take time. It's all part of our long term plan to support and expand NFS World.

Until next time!
Eduardo


wadee902

Expanding the cities would be awsome!


kevinsean

I know it would be YEARS off if it DID happen (which I am okay with), but I have to ask. Will we ever see a Mac version, or a console version? PRETTY PLEASE???? thanks


egh_m3gtr

Since Bayview has BIA (Bayview International Airport) it's highly possible they may add their Bayview, Olympic and Tri-City in World...And you could use the airport to fly away from Rockport/Palmont to go to Bayview, Olympic City or Tri-City...And I just hope the Crowds aren't just AI, they're real players...And they can follow you around while racing


CoolK_92

Rockport International Airport ? Really great Addition, now you can fly from the RIA to BIA (Bayview International Airport) :D

And also all the other Updates are awesome !


NeiroAtOpelCC

I genuinely don't understand why obivously passionate art designers keep doing the wrong thing!
Adding detailed buildings is fine. But it's not the crucial part! All trees are using the same models, they're even rotated in the same direction appearently. Why not make brances vary in placement or rotate some of them at least, or perhaps change the color cues.
Also, add better texture mapping to the roads. They still look flat with paint on textures, sort of dx8ish. And thruout the beta I saw many places where I thought lighting wasn't properly implemented. Some items would be receiving much more light than they should.
Car models could also use a serious touch. Especially AI cars that are often overly simplified. You have color editing on player cars, why not add some random color to the ai cars, so not all compacts are white low res things etc. And the actual model for the cop vette is broken too. Certain damage events cause parts of it to become transparent/missing (a bug I submitted yesterday along with a lot of others).

Overall my suggestion is to spend more time making the enviroment look real (soft shadows, the newest hdr and alphablending etc) and make proper limits to the view distance and add reasonable texture sizes. Currently a 512mb card can easily display all textures, which means they're in general too low res, or just too few), yet even 2400 radeon 4870 shaders isn't enough to properly handle view distance when on high ground. I'm blindly guessing it's rendering stuff that is actually obstructed from view, or rendering serveral objects that are only 1-2 pixels big and far away. Those are engine fixes, but I think people who work with art would be interested in them solved. Otherwise you're facing the choices between fewer objects and textures or lower quality of both (polygon count and resolution).

Just my two cents.


freetheAngels

some issues :-s

- i was starting a singleplayer race : i was @ the countdown 3 ,2 , 1 , and the race ended not started , the end race screen appeared , gave me the money for 8th place (about 300 bucks) , it even made me choose a card :D
- i jumped to a race, i hit for Multiplayer , got asked to Join after found opponents , i hit JOIN then the loading screen with the Gallardo and the flashing lights appeared and stayed there , i tryed pushing Acceleration , left right and i could hear the engine roar and hitting things even a cop . after a few seconds the world appeared and i was a few hundred yards from the Race Icon. This happened several times, Connection problem maybe ?
- i entered a multiplayer race with a few guys , there was a guy with a Nissan 350z that stormed off the line with 200 MPH and kept going like he was strapped to a rocket :O he blew of the map :| is it possible that he was on cheats or something?

if i encounter something else i'll let you guys know . Thank you !


freetheAngels

Hello everyone :">
Finally i decided to give you guys some feedback after playing tha geme for a few days. It is great !!! and i'm psyched for what is to come from what i have read (look at me i'm shivering with anxiesty :| ).
the wold looks fantastic , good to see the world from M.W. (the best world for me from all the NFS games).I was raceing through the top left side of the map and i have come to that mountain that like rises out of that lake an simply stopped my car in the middle of the race and just staired at the view... fantastic!!!
Exited for the day/night circle as well,but as a Architecture student myself i know how tough and time consuming it is to construct a building from scratch starting from an simple ideea so what i am trying to say is that as you guys said ... better take some time to make them better and as perfect as possible before releasing the new worlds ,maybe you coud have some sort of contest where people can submit sketches or renderings of houses(maybe the Mayor of Rockort's hause in the hills... i would like to wake him up late at night :X) or other building of some sort (i wish :X) so congrats to Lily Bai i understand completly what she goes through to make them and the satisfaction of getting things done and how great they look.
Multiplayer for me starts in 1-2 minutes an average , no problems there ... even when i'm using my allocated bandwith.Car handelings as ever ... fantastic !

Overall only great things to say ... except 1 :">

her's the scenario :i'm driveing amt 230 km/h folowed by police , i have seen a spikestrip roadblock aproaching ... and before i can make a decizion on where to go through it or avoid it ... the in persuit writing "Tagged 45 cop cars" or whatever come up right in the middle of the screen blocking my field of vision for a bit ... but eneogh to hit the spike strip or worse hit a standing cop car head on and getting me busted . if you guys could maybe make it apear at 1/3 the the screen down , or move it 2 inches up that would be great cause it's annoying sometimes maybe you could just make it appear only in the right side of the screen as is .

Thank you a lot for keeping the NFS Franchise alive! i have bought mayself a new Graphic card especially for you guys ,for the game i mean.to play it at it's full potential and i have to say i played the first hour with a big smile on my face :D that my cheeks started hurting without realizeing .

Looking forward to the new posts ! You can only go up from my perspective !


Axelia

WORLD is Awesome !!! Can't Wait to get A taste Of That ,, WoW , i'm that kind of guy that lovees competition ,, I know I am getting plenty of that here,, great idea about this game congrats.. Hope i get Picked from 500,000 HAHa ,And a great PLace would be a Dessert with plenty of hills , thats going to be hard for the Art But with what you guys have done nothing is impossible, well "see ya on the road" ..


Alphaomega

Wait... Rockport has an airport?


C-Webb

The ideea of expanding the cities (implementing Olympic City, Bayview City, and the city from Undercover) is really awesome ... i really trashed my mouth with this ideea the last months here on the forum, its definetly something that must be done 100% Olympic City is definetly the best City from all NFS games, altough we did not have the possibility to Free-Roam but its definetly the best ...... that must be implemented!
The thing with the CAR NEONS .... its something that would be awesome again
Our OWN MUSIC IMPORTER .... again is something that must be implemented in the game (i want to hear my own music tunes from the PC, if it happens not to like the Original Soundtrack of The Game)
Original TUNING PARTS (REAL AFTERMARKET PARTS) ..... real bodykits, real bumpers & skirts, real spoilers, from different Aftermarket companies like C-WEST, VEILSIDE, EXTREME DIMMENSION, etc ....
And the Most Important for me!!!
Give us the possibility to have CROWDS again in the game
Crowds of people at the start of the line, at the finish line (It would be AWESOME to see the actual CROWDS waiting for you at the finish line once you cross it in a race, this would be AMAZING!!!) and actual cutscenes of crowds around your car congratulating you for winning the race!!!