Volume 40 -- March 30, 2007
By: Che Chou
Kickstart Your Career in Forza Motorsport 2...
You've worked hard all week, so now it's time to kick back with a cold one and read all about the progress of Forza Motorsport 2, Xbox 360's complete racing simulator. Welcome to the latest edition of the Turn 10 Pitpass Report, where, each week, we give you a glimpse of life behind-the-scenes of life here at a game development studio. If you feel so inclined, we encourage you to get caught up on our previous weekly updates for some context into how stuff works (or breaks down) 'round these parts. Those of you who have been following the WPR (whoa, does that sound official or what) for a while will notice that we've now arrived at our 40th update since we announced Forza 2 at E3 2006 with a sweet CG teaser trailer. What that means, of course, is that development on Forza Motorsport 2 is in its final stretch and the team are flatout on the throttle now, working insane hours to fix those last bugs and polishing up gameplay to the design team's high bar.
And with the game nearing completion, we here at Turn 10 are also starting to enjoy in abundance the fruits of our labor. "It's funny because people think all you do when you're a game developer is to play games all day and that's not true at all," Dan Greenawalt told me earlier this week. "Most of the time, you're heads down in the trenches coding systems and staring at spreadsheets. Then at some point everything comes together and it's really magical to watch folks on the dev team actually 'play' the game for the first time."
Meet Bob Crocco, Forza Motorsport 2 Addict
Case in point, now that the single-player Career mode is more or less finished in terms of tuning (although Dan and his crew will probably be tweaking this and that right up to the hand-off to the rigorous Xbox 360 certification process) I've embarked on a new career in Forza 2 with a brand new profile. No cheating debug menus and unlimited amounts of credits and cars in your garage -- this is likely the career profile I'll chip away at until we get retail discs and may be forced to start anew on retail 360 kits.
I'm not the only one who has started new careers in Forza 2 with noticeable conviction either. All over the team, folks are playing Forza 2 and discovering cool little touches they may not have known about, being so focused on their own subsystem of the game and all. Take for instance, Bob Crocco, one of Turn 10's systems developers (he's a big part of the reason why Photo Mode rocks in Forza 2, by the way); Bob has been absolutely addicted to single-player, enjoying and getting deep into the open-ended career path in a way only Bob could have devised. That is to say, none of us did what Bob obsessed over for the past week, but after we heard his story and saw his crazy little car, we all wanted to try something equally as decadent.
Like me, Bob started his Forza 2 career in Europe. With his beginning stipend, he bought an unassuming and mostly harmless (at least in stock form) 2004 Peugeot 206 RC hatchback. At first, he felt no real attachment to his starter car -- afterall, aren't these the dispensible stepladders to much sexier and powerful cars? But the more time Bob spent with his trusty little 206, the more races he won with the car, the more upgrades he endowed on his ride, the more he began to be fond of his little hatch that could. At some point, Bob asked himself: "What would happen if I just took this car all the way to the top?" So began an obsessed journey to jack his 206 into the Car Class/Performance Index stratosphere.
Like all upgrade games, it started under the hood, and soon ballooned to ridiculous horsepower multiplying improvements like powertrain swaps (which essentially changes all of your engine upgrade options as well). By the time the haze cleared, Bob's Peugeot 206 RC was no longer the 180 hp, 2,425 lbs FWD hatchback -- what emerged was a stealthy AWD beast that clocked in at 690 hp with 443 lb-ft torque, and sporting a slender weight-reduced chassis of 1,941 lbs. The in-game dyno benchmarked the car's 0-60 mph time to be 2.263 seconds (0-100 mph in 4.463 seconds), with a top speed of 213.9 mph. In other words, Bob's Peugeot was completely ridiculous, but utterly cool at the same time. And it was a blast to drive -- in a straight line, that is.
My Forza Motorsport 2 Career - Week 1
Bob's story illustrates precisely why Forza 2's Career mode is so compelling as the game holds very little back from you once it kicks off in earnest. Like Bob, I began a fresh career this week in Europe (although you have the option later on to relocate your base of operations -- for a price). But instead of investing huge amounts of money into my starter car (an '02 Saab 9-3 Aero, respectable but boring), I sold it off the first chance I got when I was rewarded a vintage 1970 Porsche 914/6 after finishing first in one of the first sets of races in the "Proving Grounds" sector that eases you into the flow of Career.
To be honest, I had never really taken much notice of Porsche's six-cylinder, mid-engine roadster. Sure, I had seen 914's on the road before in real life, and like any vintage car, I always had to temper its sexiness with all the headaches of having to maintain such a fickle (and potentially expensive) mistress. When I crossed paths with the 914/6 in Forza 2 this week, something clicked with me. I began to appreciate its unique, flat, wide-body design, and its sleek sloping lines. I don't know, maybe it's because the car was staring me in the face in my garage and on the UI, but I felt myself drawn to the Porsche 914/6.
With the credits from the sale of the Saab burning a proverbial hole in my Forza 2 bank account, I began upgrading my new baby. Rather than take the path of Bob, I wanted to elevate the 914 in a manner befitting of the car's characteristics -- that is, really take advantage of its flyweight persona and mid-engine RWD virtues. A big part of that upgrade philosophy was realizing that a car like this could probably excel in one of the lower car classes, as long as it was chillin' at the very top of that category. So my goal was to get my 914 to the pinnacle of C Class, focusing more on performance and weight reduction than pure gas guzzling muscle.
Those of you spent time in the original Forza Motorsport's single-player career know the balancing act here of trying to get your car optimized for a class, particularly one that's lower on the rung. With a car like the 914, it's easy to go overboard with no-brainer purchases like top of the line K&N intake systems or race spec AWE Tuning exhausts. Or if money wasn't a consideration, I could have gone straight for the 911/83 Porsche engine or the slightly excessive M64/60R powertrain.
Nope. Moderation was the key. I picked up sport intake and exhaust, gave the engine block a sport upgrade (balanced the crank, rods, and pistons), dropped in Porsche Motorsport sport cams and valves, a Motec race fuel system, some new tires, and I quickly found myself sitting pretty in the middle of Class B. To bring me back down to earth, I began adding penalties such as 115 lbs of downforce, reverting back to stock intake and exhaust, scaling back on my brakes and driveline, and finally, giving myself silly 195 rims all around (this made the tires look super-low profiled).That seemed to do the trick. I was just under the Class B threshold with a performance index of C496. Sure, comparatively, the car wasn't packing that much power, but 179 naturally-aspirated horses with 175 lb-ft torque pushing a curb weight of 1,876 lbs isn't anything to scoff at either. The dyno clocked my 0-to-60 mph time to 5.511 seconds with a top speed of 143 mph. Most importantly, the car felt awesome on the pavement. Armed with this Porsche 914/6, I set out to win races.
I tend to do things in linear fashion, so naturally, I wanted to finish all the events in the "Proving Grounds" area before moving on. The important thing to note here is that you really don't have to be such a completist in that regard. After a few races in the beginner arena, you're free to wander and complete the game's huge matrix of events in any order you like. So it was on one of the test track events where I was first introduced to the concept of Career AI racers.
In Forza 2's single-player mode, you go through career events competing against a decent group of international racers, each with a unique name, driving style, favorite color, and career record. So as you advance through the ranks, chalk up wins (or losses), so do the AI racers. So in effect, you end up going wheel-to-wheel with these guys over many many hard-fought battles.
Soon enough, I found my nemesis and his name was M. Rossi from Italy. Rossi was good, and even while I could often dust the rest of the pack in my nimble 914, I would often find Rossi right on my six after a bad corner, even going as far sometimes to overtake me on the outside. I should also mention that Rossi likes to drive red cars. In the photo above (taken during a replay viewing), you can see how close some of our races have been.
What's even more interesting is the fact that you can also hire drivers (whose cumulative stats also change as they win or lose races) to hit the road for you if you feel like sitting out and watching from the sidelines. The better the driver, the more they'll take from your winnings. A good strategy I've discovered is to basically give your mediocre driver an overpowered car to ensure that you'll get some money if he wins. Of course, it isn't a guarantee, and I've seen the AI do some pretty dastardly things to me and each other.
We're all going to keep playing single-player here at Turn 10. As for me, I'll be giving updates on my career in Forza 2 each week, highlighting some of the advances and stories as I experience them.
In the meantime, may you all dream of the Forza Motorsport 2 demo on Xbox Live Marketplace. See you next week.
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