jhitman
After watchin Murdoc's Evo feed, the bike handling after landing was one of my biggest concern, as well as spring and switch jumps remaining intact.
sipe
It's problematic to let people play early version of the game, especially physics sensitive games like Trials. People will ragequit before release if it doesn't feel perfect.
Still we decided to do so even though we knew that physics and lots of other stuff needs to be improved before release.
We are in good shape, trust me
ChicagoAJ
Game already looks like kinda messed up. Bikes come to a complete stop half the time they hit the ground.
sebbbi
You should have seen Trials HD bike physics a month before the release... The bike felt like it was taken from the flintstones, the suspension was basically nonexistent. The current Trials Evolution bike physics are so much better in every way than the physics in the 6 month old version of the game that was shown to public. The 6 months old version also had completely unpolished tracks (basically no background decorations and no dynamic physics interaction). Graphics in general has received a massive face lift and the frame rate is now solid 60 fps all the way (old version had many hiccups).
Everyone in the Trials team agrees with you that the 6 month old bike physics was total crap. But assuming that we couldn't fix it during the 6 months shows pretty little respect towards the team (fixing it actually took just a week or two).
ChicagoAJ
Do the gray cars shown in the water level still look like boxes with windows?
sebbbi
The final cars look very good. Our graphics artist Pekka has also made graphics for FlatOut racing games, so he is pretty good in car modeling
ChicagoAJ
And if the bike physics were such a minor, easily resolved issue, why weren't they one of the things polished up and fixed before the public showing? That's probably the biggest part of the game, even if you left out all background, textures and graphics I'm 100% sure people would still buy it. I don't understand the reasoning behind that.
sebbbi
Textures and graphics weren't 100% polished... not anywhere near. And we did left out most of our backgrounds. We did show it when we felt it looked acceptable (not great by any means). Bike physics was also good enough for most people, the early version wasn't intended for hardcore fans. Normal players didn't notice that the physics wasn't final. Trials HD was also shown to press before we had final physics. Physics finetuning is one of the things we do at the end of our projects, because you pretty much cannot tune the physics to perfection without final levels and technology capable of smooth 60 fps game play. Physics tuning needs a lot of players playing the game competetively, and at the end of our projects we tend to play a lot (and finetune the issues we found while playing the game). No game can be perfect without the team playing it a lot during the development.
ShiftySamurai
Hey sebbbi, can you give an estimate for how many polys are in the bike/rider models?
sipe
Character without cloths: Between ~7k highest and ~4k lowest lod. (1 part)
Avarage character with cloths: ~10k highest and ~6k lowest lod. (1 + 8 parts)
Average bike: Between 18-20k highest and 9-10k lowest lod. (19 parts)
Dynamically switchable items tend to cause some extra tris.
MegaTrain
So it always bothered me that in Trials HD, flowing water couldn't extinguish a flaming rider and bike (there weren't any built-in tracks that allowed this to occur, so it only was relevant in a custom track).
I was going to try and build an "In flames" skill game that allows you to reach an "intermission" where your flames are extinguished by a waterfall. Or perhaps an "In Flames" track where only a skilled rider can reach a hidden water obstacle and put out the fire. But when tested, water didn't seem to help at all
Any idea whether this will be different in Evolution?
sebbbi
The answer is yes.
MegaTrain
So will any built-in tracks use this feature?
Can your rider drown in deep water if he stays under too long?
sebbbi
Yes and yes.
LEGEND
Sebbi (programmer)
Vesa (animator)
Ville (artist)
Sipe (programmer)
Antti (designer)
Jorma (programmer/product manager)
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