Project Gotham Racing 3 Q&A Feature

As one of the most eagerly awaited launch games on the XBOX 360 this could well turn out to be the finest racing game around, certainly the best in the series. With over 80 cars and a real sense of scale when it comes to the cities, folks who have already seen demos of the game have marvelled at its sheer beauty! With a plethora of game modes, and unlimited custom game options, Project Gotham Racing 3 can already be described as awesome. Totalvideogames found out more when we spoke to Bizarre Creations.

Following the success of Project Gotham Racing and its sequel, this next instalment must be a daunting task; could you outline the main enhancements and the core values that keep the series an Xbox brand defining series?

We were extremely pleased about the reaction to PGR2, as we feel it really kicked off the whole Live phenomenon and was great single player experience too. When we were asked to do a launch title for the Xbox 360, is was great as it meant we could include so much stuff that we wanted to do for PGR2 but just didnâ??t have the power to achieve.

After much design deliberation, these are the core values we wanted for PGR3:

Gotham Racing â?“ A real sport with real champions

The level of realism has been massively increased visually and through our new audio system. But thatâ??s not all itâ??s about. Weâ??ve added a whole new online career where you race with real players, a new world ranking system and an in-game TV channel that broadcasts races of the best players. Itâ??s these sorts of features that make the game a real sport, where players can become heroes in the Gotham community.

Earn Kudos and respect

Kudos is still a massive part of the game and weâ??ve added a whole new set of Kudos game modes, along with a new system that accurately rates your driving, such as evaluating your slides based on entry angle, entry position and speed. Thereâ??s a new ranking system online that weâ??re really pleased with, and a whole new set of achievements based around doing particular stylish moves on track!

Play How You Want

We really wanted more freedom for the player in PGR3. Weâ??ve added a whole set of features that allow players to use the content we make in fun ways â?“ the Playtime mode is there to let you play exactly how you want. We have a route creator, so you can build custom routes and play them solo, split screen or on Xbox live, and a photo mode that gives you complete control of where you place the camera. Players can create their own races and add their choice AI opponents. Thereâ??s a tonne of new online game modes and thereâ??s much more choice in the career mode about what cars and championships you play.

"Our goals for the crowds in PGR3 were very ambitious for a racing game. Itâ??s why we didnâ??t put crowds in PGR2, and so we knew all along that realising them would be difficult!"

The Kudos system has subtlety evolved throughout the various incarnations of Project Gotham Racing (and MSR before it); what can we expect from PGR3 and perhaps you could give a brief outline of the varying modes presented to the player (will cone challenge still feature)?

Yes cone challenge will be in the game - but weâ??ve also added a few other kudos based game modes to test you. One example is the Drift Challenge, where the player has to earn a certain amount of Kudos round a particularly â??Kudos-worthyâ?? section of track. Another is â??Time Vs Kudosâ??, a timed event where the player gets a small amount of time to complete a lap, but can stop his clock by earning Kudos. Theyâ??re both good fun, and add a lot of variety to the career mode.

One of the most startling introductions seen so far is the animated 3D crowds; how difficult has this been to achieve and what does it bring to the overall experience?

Our goals for the crowds in PGR3 were very ambitious for a racing game. Itâ??s why we didnâ??t put crowds in PGR2, and so we knew all along that realising them would be difficult! Right from the start we wanted the spectators to look and move as realistically as possible and be present in their thousands.

We avoided repetition in appearance by mixing and matching head models, body models and textures to give around 4000 uniquely different people. Reference photos of people of many different ethnic origins were used during the modelling and texturing process so that it would be possible to adapt the crowds to individual cities: for example, the crowds in Tokyo needed to have many more Japanese people than in London. Over 100 motion captured animations were created for the crowd reactions such as clapping, cheering, talking and pointing.

"PGR3 hardly ran on Alpha kits, even when we tried to simply view the city geometry alone, but runs just fine on the final hardware with everything switched on!"

The main technical challenges were to compress all this data down to make it fit within the memory that had been allocated for the crowds and to develop a system that could manage the simulation and rendering of crowds of tens of thousands of people alongside everything else that the game had to do. Not an easy task, but we were able to exploit some of the new features of the Xbox 360 to make it possible.

We feel that the crowds really add to the ambience of the game: they make the cities feel more alive and increase the sensation that you are taking part in a real racing event. The way the crowd reacts to your driving makes them more than just a simple background effect. As you pull off an impressive slide around a corner itâ??s very satisfying to hear an encouraging cheer from the people watching nearby. Itâ??s also fun to watch the crowds scatter as you plough into a barrier â?“ it takes some of the pain away from the fact that youâ??ve just lost valuable seconds off your lap time! :)

PGR2 was and to this day an Xbox Live defining experience; what have you in store for PGR3, what does Xbox 360 Live bring to the experience (marketplace, etc...) and could you elaborate on GothamTV for us?

Xbox 360 Live has a lot of features we were asking for in Xbox Live for Xbox! The TrueSkill system for accurately matching players is a big step forwards. In competitive events we can now automatically and accurately match you with players of a similar ability, and for once and for all, know who is the worlds best player.

This ties into Gotham TV, which broadcasts races involving the worldâ??s best players, creating heroes in the worldwide community. We also have a news ticker that keeps you up to date with all the happenings in the PGR3 universe, from your friends winning a race, right up to being alerted when a new tournament is about to start. The whole system is much more integrated, so you can find out what your friends are up to, how far they are through the game and how good they are compared to you!

"Most developers will immediately start to use the multi-threaded processors (which the Alpha kits didnâ??t have) and all the shaders, meaning that in all areas of the game, better results can be achieved."

Perhaps you could give us a brief description of what the Xbox 360 power allows you to create as developers; how difficult and demanding the HD era is and whether or not gamers can expect more than the alpha dev-kit titles demonstrated at E3?

The Xbox 360 allows us to create highly detailed, immersive environments of a much higher quality that we could with previous hardware. Consoles have always been limited to relatively low resolution graphics running on standard televisions, but with the introduction of HD and the immense power of the 360 we can realise these environments at a much higher resolution, meaning much crisper, anti-aliased graphics. Part of the difficulty comes in balancing HD, which is still a minority in many locales, against current generation displays. Many people donâ??t have access to HD, so you donâ??t want to put too much emphasis solely on making your game look great on HDTVs, when the majority wonâ??t get much benefit from it. So we have made sure that even on a standard definition TV PGR3 still looks light years better than anything before it.

As the Alpha kits were a small fraction of what the full machine is capable of, then of course thereâ??s a big leap in what can be achieved on the final hardware. Most developers will immediately start to use the multi-threaded processors (which the Alpha kits didnâ??t have) and all the shaders, meaning that in all areas of the game, better results can be achieved. PGR3 hardly ran on Alpha kits, even when we tried to simply view the city geometry alone, but runs just fine on the final hardware with everything switched on! And because thereâ??s a lot to learn, thereâ??s plenty of power left for the games to get better and better over the generations, as the developers get to grips with the machine!

Previous comments have hinted at â??a whole new way to play racing gamesâ?, can you divulge a little further on what is meant by this, can we expect Forza styled Drivatars or is there more to this?

No we arenâ??t doing Drivatars â?“ and in any case, that wouldnâ??t be a whole new way, as Forza already does it! ;-) I donâ??t think MS want us to give all our secrets away â?“ but people will just have to try the game and see for themselves how theyâ??ll play it in a whole new wayâ?¦

A lot has been made of the intricate details such as the visible heat-haze emitted from an exhaust pipe; can you elaborate on the visual and sonic enhancements that the Xbox 360 and HD bring?

The power of the Xbox 360 allows us to render models at a far higher detail level than was possible on previous hardware thanks to a much higher triangles-per-second throughput. Coupled with the 360â??s model 3.0 shaders this allows us to create very detailed and immersive environments, where shading and lighting equations are carried out at a per-pixel (and even sub-pixel) level. With such graphical power available to us we can really concentrate on the little details (like the heat haze), utilising volumetric textures, hi-res normal maps, animated noise maps and a whole bunch of other stuff to add that extra dimension to our effects. One of the most exciting avenues that the 360 opens up for us is in the post-processing department â?“ we can now implement effects such as full screen motion blur, higher-dynamic range lighting with adaptive exposure control, tone-mapping, depth-of-field â?“ all running together in real-time!

There are also very big differences between way Xbox and Xbox 360 handle the audio, the biggest being that the Xbox had audio hardware, whilst the Xbox360 does everything in software. This may initially seem like a problem, but it has allowed us far more flexibility as we can now decide what the processing is used on. For example, we can now choose to use fewer sound channels and more DSP effects rather than the fixed limitations of audio hardware. It has allowed us to build a new audio engine for the game with more flexibility to create the sounds than has been possible on any previous console.

We have also learned a great deal over the course of the three games about what it is that makes a car sound the way it does, and how that sound changes with different inputs, allowing us to use new techniques to record and implement the sounds. Add to this a whole new slew of audio options allowing you to customise the overall mix to your listening environment and you own personal tastes and you should easily be able to hear quite a big improvement over the previous consoles and games.

Previous comments have suggested an all-together more accessible experience for gamers, with the structure of the game and progress through it changed significantly; could you elaborate on this for us?

We really wanted to give the player much more freedom when comes to the career mode. For example, we found that the majority of people in PGR2 didnâ??t particularly enjoy ploughing their way through masses of lesser cars in order to get to the fast ones. And some people didnâ??t want to have to race every type of event. So in PGR3, we donâ??t force you to race cars or events you don't want to race.

For example, if you want to drive the Enzo â?“ itâ??s available from the start of the game, so as soon as youâ??ve earned enough cash by completing races, you can buy that car. Then you can use the Enzo for the rest of the game if you want â?“ the event targets will change based on the car class of your chosen car. Or if you want to try them all, you can use a different car for each event and build up a massive collection of super cars, all stored in stunning 3D garages that you can walk around in-game. Itâ??s really all about enhancing the feeling of ownership.

And the Playtime mode is an additional bonus to the accessibility â?“ if you simply want a blast without affecting your career (or even without actually having a career), to experience the cities by making your own routes to take online, or to play with some friends when you get in from the pub, then you can chose whatever you want, and have a blast!

Kudos ranks were different between online and offline play in PGR2; can we expect a further synergy between the two in PGR3 and what are your visions for the future of the series?

We wanted to keep the ranking system online and offline separate for PGR3. Playing through the career mode earning Kudos and playing real people online require very different skills, and some might want to do either or both. For this reason we have a ranking system related to earning Kudos in the career mode, and a TrueSkill system based on wins and losses for online career.

So players can progress their ranking online or offline or both, without compromising their game or rankings in either. And they can also use these two ranks to see what sort of driver another player is, and how theyâ??ll match up online. This TrueSkill system is something we really wanted for PGR3, so as Live on Xbox 360 develops, weâ??ll be using this system to create competitive leagues and tournaments.

What were the teamâ??s opinions of Forza: Motorsport and perhaps you could share something about PGR3 that will have everybody gasping for more?

Forza is a great game â?“ and we know a lot of the guys from the team, so weâ??re pleased with the reception the game got. We also feel that itâ??s aimed at a different sort of player, as itâ??s much more of simulator than the Gotham series, whereas weâ??re more a mix of sim and arcade. How the cars handle is what really defines a racing game, and we feel weâ??ve made something distinctly different than anything out there. We really think weâ??ve taken big strides forward from PGR2 with the physics and handling of the cars, and itâ??s something that weâ??re really proud of. And at the end of the day. Itâ??s the driving that is what racing games are all about!

TVG would like to thank Bizarre Creations and Microsoft Game Studios for providing this fascinating insight into Project Gotham Racing 3 (good things truly do come to those who wait); weâ??ll have further coverage of the hugely anticipated racerâ??s return soon...