Volume 39 -- March 23, 2007
By: Che Chou
Forza Motorsport 2 Tournaments Coming Soon...
It's Friday night and that means the Turn 10 Weekly Pitpass Report is back with a vengeance. Hello and welcome to Forzamotorsport.net -- my name is Che (that's pronounced "chay," by the way) and I'm the community manager here at Turn 10 studios, the folks who are putting the finishing touches on Forza Motorsport 2 on Xbox 360. We've been doing this Friday night tango now for almost 40 weeks, so for a full rundown of what we've already covered, I implore you to check out our Pitpass Report index. Those of you who follow my ramblings know that this would be our second update this week due to Internet complications last week when we trekked out to Sebring, Florida, for the 12 Hours of Sebring race. For full details on that and more, check it out here.
First order of business. Many on our forums have already seen Team Xbox's exclusive batch of new Forza 2 Photomode screenshots and an interview on community features with yours truly (see the link in the left sidebar). I've been commenting here and there on the forums about this, but I want to reiterate that these Photomode pictures are pulling images fairly close to the metal within the game. No doctoring or post-processing in regards to the lighting, contrast, and so on and so forth. So as you can see, track lighting and car shaders have come a long way and they'll continue to get polish as we wrap the project. A few of you guys noted there's some aliasing or artifacting in these photos. Those are the results of JPEG compression to keep photo size relatively small so we can upload lots and lots of photos to Forzamotorsport.net for everyone to sign-in and download. The PNG format would have been better (since it's lossless), but it also would have been about 10x as big in size. Anyway, the point is that you won't see the occasional minor aliasing and artifacts that you do in the uploaded Photomode pics.And yes, it's true. I can't stop playing with Photomode. It's so addictive and my photo album is getting ridiculously bloated. But then again, I love leaving my photo album on slideshow mode in the game and just running that in the background all the day long. I'll see what I can do about giving you guys a couple of Photomode pics for every Pitpass Report.
Fridays is also the day when everyone here at Turn 10 engages in a studio-wide multiplayer bug-bash. So right now, as I hammer away on my fancy new black Microsoft keyboard beefed up with functions I'll probably never use, I hear a symphony of car engines driven to its ceiling, screaming and wailing from TV to TV. The reason I bring this up just now is because my office mate Rob Fulwell just ruined his LMP car in an epic four car multiplayer pile-up worthy of a review later in replay mode. It was a true yard sale with parts, fenders, and body kits flying every which way. After the wreck, he tried to get back on the road with his Audi R8 but found that it wasn't behaving quite like it used to.
A quick glance at his damage HUD told him that the car had, among a laundry list of mangled components, a wrecked transmission that was barely working. At first, we weren't sure where that awful gut-wrenching sound was coming from... but then it dawned on us. The audio stream, which went from a mild grinding/wheezing to a full-blown metal rake on chalkboard sensation was actually the sound of Rob's failing transmission, which sounded like it was basically comitting suicide every time it tried to change gears. Since I normally don't make it a habit to thrash my car to such extremes, it was the first time I had heard the stages of our transmission damage audio -- and I was awestruck by the horror of it all.
The story behind our transmission damage sound source demonstrates the kind of dedication we have here on the team when it comes to re-creating audio reality. The problem with recording the sound of damage is that, well... you're sort of required to actually damage stuff in order to get an accurate representation. I've been on plenty of trips with the audio team, including collision sounds (yup, we crashed cars for 3 days and destroyed lots of carbon fiber), renting cars and drifted the crap out of them for tire skid audio, and visited a turbo factory to isolate the sound of boost. But after all that legwork, there was still no transmission damage audio. Not only that, but the team didn't even know what proper transmission damage noise sounded like. So they tried a few things, including mashing various metal gears together on a grinder. But as students of sound, they soon realized that, just like the other components in this game, they couldn't fake out reality.
So what to do? Our audio content coordinator Mark Price (the guy who records all of our engine sounds on the dyno) decided to wire up his car and take sound designer Mike Caviezel for a ride in his beater first-gen Acura Integra. Then while rolling through town, Mark repeatedly threw the car into third gear without disengaging the clutch. The sound they captured was so disturbing, so soul-crushingly wrong, that some on the audio team felt it was almost too unpleasant to use in a videogame. But (un)luckily for the rest of us, the transmission damage audio did make it into the game.
And it sounds absolutely great -- which is to say, it sounds absolutely awful for human eardrums. Grabbing this little slice of reality has its price, of course. Mark's trusty little-red-Integra-that-could never quite recovered from that recording session. According to him and many eye witnesses, putting his car into third gear is impossible without breaking out into sweat and profanities. As promised in the last Pitpass Report, I said we were going to talk more about the game this time around. To do so, I've cornered multiplayer lead designer Bill Giese for the lowdown on Forza Motorsport 2's new online tournament mode...
First Look at Forza Motorsport 2's Tournament Mode
Q: Alright, so when last we met, we covered Forza 2's Auction House. Today, we're gonna take our first look at the other big new feature in the game -- Tournament mode. So, from a high level design standpoint, what was the big idea behind giving tournaments their own official space in the game this time around?
Bill Giese: Well, we had always wanted an in-game tournament system since the first Forza Motorsport. After we shipped the first game and began scoping out Forza 2, tournaments was the first multiplayer system I put down on paper as the multiplayer design lead. After we saw the work that was done by Microsoft Game Studio's tools and technology group to create tournaments for Project Gotham Racing 3, we knew we could easily implement a compelling tournament structure within the game.
Q: So can you explain how these tournaments work?
BG: Each tournament will have a two-day qualifying period. In those 2 days players can go to the tournament select screen and choose a tournament to qualify for. Really, this is similar to a Time Trial and/or Free Run time attack. Players will be shown the Qualification Bar needed to make it into the tournament. This bar is set by the players themselves based on how many people are allowed in the tournament. If a tournament will only allow 128 players in, then the player with the 128th fastest time is that qualifying bar. Players can qualify as much as they want before the cut-off point.
Q: What happens after you qualify for a tournament?
BG: Once you have qualified for a tournament we will place a graphical helmet icon on that tournament in the menu list. Here, you can select this tournament to see the tournament bracket breakdown (as well who is assigned to in each room). You can also see what track is set for each round as well as who you will be playing with in the first round. Players are randomly seeded after the qualifying round into the first round. You can also choose to practice any of the rounds before the tournament by selecting the track on the bracket screen. The number of brackets depends on the amount of players we determine at Turn 10 for that tournament.
Q: How many total players can be in a tournament?
BG: The player size for each tournament breaks down as follows:
64 players = 8 Brackets – 4 rounds
128 players = 16 Brackets – 5 rounds
256 players = 32 Brackets – 6 rounds
To allow more players into a tournament we have branched out some of the tournaments after the qualifying round. This will allow a great deal more people to play and get to experience tournaments. We will take the top third from qualifying and put them into the gold tier tournament, the next 3rd of the qualifying will be put into the silver tier tournament, and the last 3rd will go to the bronze tier tournament. The track and lap assignments are the same, the payout at the end of each race will just be different. We have also incorporated our career payout system to the tournaments. So those who finish 7th or more will still be given a reward. This payout is scaled based on which tier tournament you are in, so no matter what, you are still earning money toward you career profile -- and besides the glory of winning tournaments and getting called out on Forzamotorsport.net, money is the main motivator for joining tournaments.
Q: Wow, sounds like a pretty complex system of automation. So, this is all automated, right? It's not like Turn 10 is going to sit on Xbox Live and create lobbies and rooms for people to join, right? (Please say no).
BG: Yeah, the great thing about Forza 2's tourney system is that everything is automated and we control it with an admin tool here behind-the-scenes. One nifty feature we've included for all this interaction with Tournaments and Auctions is a notification and inbox system all within the game. This notification system essentially helps you get to your tournament race on time. We track your gamertag while you play Forza Motorsport 2 and you'll receive messages in the menu system telling you that you have either 15, 10 or 5 minutes to get to you tournament race before it begins. If you open the message it will automatically take you to the tournaments screen from whichever menu you're currently sitting at. Note that this function does not work in race, only in the non-race menus of the game.
Q: What happens if you fail to show up for a tournament?
BG: Noshowkernal.exe is fired off the DVD and we wipe the players hard drive of all Forza Motorsport 2 data (just kidding -- or am I?). That and you will be given a DNF or instant loss for that race, therefore removing you from the tournament.
Q: What kind of (and how many) tournaments will we see online?
BG: When the game hits retail in May, we'll have 12 weekly tournaments active, with at least one for every car class. The non-race classes will be split into three groups so overall you will see 24 tournaments on the tournament select screen. We designed the faster classes (S, U, R1,R2,R3,R4) to start on the weekends as we felt the best racing action will come from those classes. We are also opening up the player limit to those weekend starting tournaments to allow more people.
Q: So this sort of begs the question you know the community is going to ask -- can we setup our own tournaments?
BG: One of our main goals in Forza 2, was to bridge the gap between hardcore racers and casual racers. Forza 2 is our first implementation of tournaments and we wanted to build an automated system that would allow all players to compete on common ground. We have the ability to setup, change, and tweak tournaments on-the-fly. Our tournaments are designed in-house here at Turn 10 and take all of the hassle of finding good people to play against. Similar to auction house we want people to have a safe and clear environment to trade cars with one another. In that same vein we have removed the middle man from the equation.
This is not to say that we don’t want to have player created tournaments. On the contrary, we do want players to develop their own shared experiences through Forza. One tool we've given players is a much more robust multiplayer server with all kinds of restrictions, settings, and even multi-round racing. But like I said, this is our first attempt at a complex system like tournaments and we want to make sure we do it right by not biting off more than we could chew in one go. We are barely skimming the surface of tournaments and this is an area we are very passionate about.
Q: Will we be seeing sponsored tournaments or win prizes?
BG: Yes, we will be doing some really cool things with sponsored and community driven tournaments.
Q: So we've heard a bit about Forza TV. How does that work into all this?
BG: Forza TV is completely integrated into the tournament system. If a tournament is currently running, you have the option of going into the bracket and watching the action in real-time. We have also built a specific channel off of the Forza TV list called “Featured Races”. These races are hands down the hottest races happening online. This includes sponsored tournaments as well as tournaments containing the higher ranked players. So consider it an honor as well if you find yourself being televised in our Featured Races channel.
Q: Can we record replays or take photos from tournaments?
BG: If you are playing in a tournament you can save the replay after the race, like you can in all multiplayer races. Likewise, during these replays, you can go into Photomode at any time to snap pictures.
Sweet. I can't wait to see the community get a jump on this. Thanks for your time Bill!
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