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Need for Speed: Underground - Extensive Look Preview
Derek dela Fuente
06/11/2003
We chat exclusively to the Assistant Producer to get the lowdown on this hot racer...
EA in the mindset of many gamers is the number one games publisher. Not only is it the subject matter that EA select that appeals to the insatiable audience but the style and execution. The Need for Speed series is one of EAâs best but you need new ideas and innovations to ensure a franchise never tires or becomes stale. Many are saying this is the best Need for Speed to date. We spoke to Scott Nielsen, Assistant Producer, who gave a full insight to the team's direction and focus.
Need for Speed: Underground allows the player to enter the world of urban street racing and high performance cars. Take on today's most popular âtunerâ cars from Mitsubishi Motors, Subaru, Toyota and many more, building the ultimate street machine by earning cash to pay for custom body kits and a host of licensed car performance mods. Just creating a custom street racing machine will not get you to the top; it takes a certain amount of attitude and razor sharp driving skills to compete in the tough world of urban racing.
EA has not become blasé with this franchise and some radical changes have been made. Scott explained how this latest presentation has evolved. "The previous game, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, was a fantastic game that was very well received by the media and gamers alike. When design work began on the next NFS title that was to follow Hot Pursuit 2, we sat down and took a really hard look at what we should be building next. Making a sequel to Hot Pursuit 2 immediately didn't feel like the right thing to do as we wanted to spend more time to really polish the concept and move the next Hot Pursuit into new game play territory."
"When we took a look at what was popular on the car scene, it was obvious that the direction we needed to go was âtunerâ cars. Even though many people aspire to own a high-end luxury sports car, the reality is most people's economic situation will simply not allow that to happen. What kids can afford to do - and are doing - is building their own âurban exoticâ. Take a relatively inexpensive car, modify the $#@! out of it, and eventually you've created a highly tuned, high performance sports car."
"That's the essence of NFS Underground. Everyone will have the ability to build and race the fastest urban exotic car. In addition to racing, the second major foundation of the game is car customisation - both visual and performance. The similarities to the Need for Speed line are all there. The difference is instead of state-of-the-art highly tuned exotic European cars, NFS Underground is all about highly tuned, highly modified âurban exotics.â
Driving and racing at night is one of the focal features, as was explained.
"We felt that night driving was something that previous driving games have not put a lot of thought and effort into. The nighttime lighting and environment always felt like an afterthought to me. A lot of effort was put into the research (DVD's, internet videos, home made videos, movies, still images, photography, etc., etc.) and we actually came up with many different techniques that could be used in parallel with each other to deliver a visually stunning world at night. Combine the visuals (things like wet roads, reflections, light flares, etc.) with camera work and audio and all of a sudden we had this amazing sense of speed not seen in any previous driving titles."
A number of diverse events set in gritty, nighttime environments make up the heart of street competition. Players become complete street racers by perfecting skills in each event by nailing the perfect shift in drag racing and by putting their street cred on the line, racing through the city streets at all hours of the night.
The team has tried to mix things around to offer diversity and interest. The storyline in single player mode is there to help provide context and motivation for the player as they aspire to become the #1 racer in the city. The game actually features a very cool storyline, however, it isn't the main force driving the user through the game. It should be viewed as a secondary feature to the actual racing experience, which is first and foremost the main focus of Need for Speed: Underground.
Getting the right car response, ensuring the driving experience is both intuitive as well as challenging whilst also working on new ideas could ensure this is seen as the finest NFS title to date. Research, testing and data collection are just a few of the procedures that have been undertaken. No area seems to have been overlooked but this you would expect. You need to understand cars and have some street cred to be on top of it all and the team, having their own set of 'grease monkeys', ensures this.
"Ironically, we started with our own development team - some of whom are heavily into the import tuner scene. Through a ton of internal research and many meetings with experts in the field we came up with the remarkable car list. We really made a concerted effort to be true to the tuner culture and I think this really manifests itself when looking at the cars in the game. The amazing car list was a by-product of many things - a ton of internal research, many discussions/meetings with experts in the field (i.e. guys like Craig Lieberman) and talking to guys on the Dev Team who are heavily into the sport import/tuner car scene."
"We began tuning the Need for Speed: Underground cars by gathering data from each of the manufacturers. Data included such things as vehicle dimensions, weight, wheelbase, gear ratios, torque curve, drivetrain and suspension characteristics. Entering this data into our physics engine gave us a good starting point from which to tune the car. We worked with Marc DeVellis, a professional race car driver, to perfect each car. Marc would drive the car in the game and adjust tyre friction, brakes, aerodynamics and suspension settings - eventually achieving a car which very much simulated its real-world counterpart."
"But the driving physics of Need for Speed: Underground are supposed to be a cross between simulation and arcade, so we still had to make a few adjustments. We had to make the car more drivable for the average player, without losing the subtleties of our great physics engine. Specifically, the Need for Speed: Underground cars needed to handle extremely well, less like traditional Need for Speed cars and more like go-karts. So we'd drive them in game situations - on tracks we'd built with traffic cars and AI racers - and tune them even further. By the end of the tuning process, we'd have cars that were very driveable, yet retained many of the original characteristics of their real-life counterparts."
Street and Drag Racing are just two of the events on offer but, disappointingly to some, we will not see the mangled remains of cars (car deformation) after a high-speed race ends in carnage.
"Many decisions have to be made when trying to design an appropriate damage model into a driving game - things like the in-game economy, technology and car manufacturer's concerns are all considerations that need to be taken into account. Let's just say that getting many of our car licensors on board with the in-game damage model that was originally designed was extremely challenging. We made a decision that a fully blown out damage model was not an integral part of the core design and sometimes you have to make a few concessions, lose a few battles (with regards to the car manufacturers) to win the war. Trust me, the game is such an addiction, you won't be disappointed.â
Car customisation is one of the major foundations of Underground. The team has spent a lot of time figuring out just what that means in the context of the game. Finding the sweet spot between what is really cool to customize (and has an impact on the overall look and feel) and what just becomes tedious for the player (i.e. swapping spark plugs). Not everyone is a 'gear head' and we needed to balance accessibility with being true to the tuner culture.
They have signed up every single after market parts company that is significant to the culture. There are over 50 after market manufacturer's in the game. Some of the companies they've signed are: AEM, Apexi, Bilstein, Brembo, DC Sports, Eibach Springs, Enkei, Greddy, HKS, Injen, Jackson Racing, Konig, Momo, Neuspeed, Nitrous Express, NOS, OZ Wheels, Skunk 2, Sparco, Stillen, Street Glow, Toyo Tires and Turbonetics - to name a few.
Each area of upgrade is divided into three levels. As the player earns more money they open up additional upgrades allowing them to further enhance the look and performance of their car. The more money you win the better your car can look and drive.
Great care has been made to sure that everything that should be customisable is. There are 15 different areas that can be visually customized; from paint and vinyls, to installing neon under the car. If you can change it on a real tuner car then you'll be able to swap it in Underground.
There are also have 9 areas of performance upgrades. These are available as 'kits' or 'packages' that the player can buy and apply to the car. They contain a collection of licensed aftermarket parts that are applied to the car simultaneously to improve the performance of the car. The performance upgrades not only change the way the car drives, but also can have an effect on how the car looks. If you swap your suspension you'll see you're car's clearance lower as the body of the car is 'slammed'. There are literally hundreds of upgrades available for each car and, all kidding aside, (someone on the Dev Team actually calculated this) over 50 billion permutations of each individual car possible in the game.
Interestingly it has been mentioned that the team had produced a new means to creating and conveying speed. Scott was eager to expand. "The partnership between Habib Zargarpour and the team has yielded some fantastic results. The development team at EA Black Box is extremely talented and intelligent and they know how to build a fantastic driving game. We wanted to bring a fresh perspective to where we thought the look of the game could go and Habib has done a fantastic job focusing the visual direction for the game. This is especially important for Underground as all of the racing takes place at night and typically night racing hasn't been done all that well before in a driving game. Early on in the project, Habib helped produce a video that set the benchmark for the visual quality we were hoping to achieve in the game. Despite scepticism from the company, the development team not only met that visual quality, they actually blew it away!"
"The team was really committed to delivering an amazing sensation of speed. Few video games have done a good job of portraying a real sensation of speed. Many techniques need to be used in concert to create a believable sense of speed. Habib really helped to focus the interaction of things like camera movement, lighting and composition of the scene, in addition to objects flying overhead to create what we believe is the most amazing sensation of speed seen in a driving game to date."
