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Crash 'n' Burn Q&A Feature
Derek dela Fuente
18/10/2004
Eidos look likely to shape up online racing with a little carnage and 16 players...
A great name for a racing, come carnage, experience in what is already looking like a superb title that is near to completion.
Crash ānā Burn is a hard hitting, no nonsense, arcade-styled, driving game where the aim is not just to win races, but to survive them! With a number of options and a real road rage ethos those of you that love your speed thrill laced with do or die action could well find this right up your street. With customising galore, the only real question whether it can challenge Burnout 3. Derek dela Fuente spoke with the Producer Dan Mayers on what Crash ānā Burn will offer.
TVG: Tell us a little bit about the background to the game and concept. Was the game created by Climax to a particular spec and design and taken to publishers or was it commissioned by Eidos?
Crash ānā Burn was born out of research Eidos did into racing games a while back. We recognised that while everyone was going down the route of licensed parts and cars the big limiting factor on that was that the license holders wouldnāt allow you to crash the cars. Or at least you could crash them but you werenāt allowed to do any damage. We didnāt think that was much fun, felt it made racing games a pretty serious affair and wanted to inject some fun back into the genre. Back on PSone games like Destruction Derby had been popular because, we believed, people liked smashing cars to pieces and causing big piles ups. Itās good clean simple fun. Given that the technology available today was so much better, why not try to make a game that had all the fun of smashing cars up while using state of the art tech that would allow us to show extreme damage and special effects. The design itself sprang from that little connection.
TVG: What are the USPs for Crash ānā Burn?
Destruction on a level never before seenā¦. Explosions, oil slicks, flame walls, burning cars, components littering the trackā¦. The tracks at the end of a Crash ānā Burn race resemble a complete warzone. Weāve designed the tracks to be very short and constricting which means that when you try to lever 16 cars into a small space they are forced into contact. And being in contact at 150 mph is not something you want to be doingā¦. Another hook for the games comes out of this and itās what we are calling emergent track design. Basically everything that gets ripped, shredded and dumped during the course of a race stays there. So while the tracks seem relatively simple, by the end they are pretty complicated obstacle courses in which you have to dodge walls of fire, avoid skidding in the oil and try to anticipate what hazards may be suddenly appearing from round the cornerā¦
We also have 16 players in the game which is well in advance of what the competition is doing at the moment. Having 16 players in the kind of race described above soon leads to even more chaos on track!
TVG: Climax is known for their in-house technology. Firstly, what other game do you see as the main competitor and what one technology feature would you pinpoint as being central to the essence of the game?
Other games focus tightly in on certain elements of what Crash ānā Burn is doing, so they might look at detailed customisation with licensed parts, or pure velocity and the risks involved in driving at high speeds. Our game really concentrates on the idea of extreme driving and the destruction that ensues when you have a large number of cars jostling for space in a very small area. The key tech element of that is the procedurally generated damage model which is something people havenāt seen on this scale before. Each crash is completely unique and realistic; cars deform and fall apart as they would in the real world. We do make sure youāre constantly in the thick of the action though, so when you get involved in a big pile up you retain control of the car at all times, youāre never taken out of the hot seat.
TVG: Although Crash ānā Burn can be billed as an arcade action spectacular how important is to have realism and plausibility to the gameās structure and how far do ā“ can - you stretch things? Does gameplay ALWAYS come top?
Realism is present in the game in the sense that the way the cars deform and explode is based on the way it would work in the real world. Sure, we have exaggerated it a little to make sure itās as much of a spectacle as possible, but we always ensure that the game is fun to play rather than frustrating.
TVG: The settings are diverse from street circuits of Miami, San Francisco, L.A. and New York. Are there specific location components that are more than visual references and what marks each setting in terms of driving and speed as being interesting ā“ isnāt this very predicable?
Predictable is something that canāt be levelled at the game! The exact opposite in fact... Because of the destruction model we have we are throwing down hundreds of components during the course of a race which makes each race completely unpredictable.
TVG: How far into development is the team and how many are working on the game at present?
We have a team of around 25 working hard to get the game ready to ship this Autumn. Weāre nearly there, maybe 95% complete at the moment.
TVG: How important is the car customisation aspect, and do you think that this can compete with the likes of Need for Speed: Underground 2?
The car customisation in our game is there for a very different reason than the customisation of NFSU2. NFSU2 is all about licensed parts and is very official. Our customisation serves two purposes. One, itās fun to fiddle with your cars look, collecting new parts, changing the paintwork, changing the vinyls to make the car exactly how you want it to look. The other is that all the effort you put into customising pays off when you take your car online. It basically becomes a representation of you and your personality in an online world. And because the parts arenāt licensed you get to smash them up without a licensor telling you what you can and canāt do with their partsā¦
TVG: How inventive will the team be with location deformation and what kind of vehicle deformation is on offer and will damaged cars have real effect on the controls of the vehicles?
The car damage model in the game is second to none. We use procedurally generated damage which means that each crash is unique and conforms to the type of damage you would see in the real world. But, we donāt allow the damage to affect how the car handles and thereās a good reason for this. If we allowed, say, the car to lose all its wheels and skid to a halt on the track youād feel like youād been pretty badly cheated out of winning a race.
TVG: Tell us about the online features; is this a large part of Crash ānā Burnās appeal?
The online element of Crash ānā Burn is integral to the game. Itās a great single player experience but being able to get 16 players barrelling round these circuits causing chaos as they go makes for a thrilling experience. Gets a bit heated on the voice comm thoā¦.
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