Volume 41 -- April 6, 2007
By: Che Chou
The Unique Whips of Forza Motorsport 2...
So here we are, deep one Friday evening, about to delve into console gaming's best racing simulator -- so as such, I'd like to welcome you back to this week's edition of the Turn 10 Pitpass Report. If you're just joining us for the first time, I'm obligated to let you know that I've penned 40 other Forza Motorsport 2 development rants in our WPR archive section. Go check 'em out on a rainy day. But enough with long introductions. We've got a WPR jam packed with words and screenshots this week so I'll get right to the point.
Forza Motorsport 2 is coming down to the production wire. Internally, our clocks tell us we've got just a couple weeks left before we hand the game off to Xbox 360 certification folks who then hammer on it something fierce. After that, of course, the game gets packed into plastic cases, boxes, and into your sweaty little palms. There's been a lot of confusion over release dates out there in forum land, and all I can say officially is that Turn 10 does not set retail dates. That's what our marketing folks get paid to do. That said, the dev team is on schedule to hit our commitment to ship the game. How that plays out in the retail channel is out of our hands, but we certainly hope you guys get the game sooner rather than later.
So -- Forza Motorsport 2 is still set to release in May 2007 -- sorry I couldn't be more specific than that. The good news is that we should have some 720p gameplay videos out there next week so you'll be able to see the game running in 60fps glory. Yay!
We've got a lot to cover in this WPR. Turn 10's senior game designer Bill "Guitar Hero" Giese joins us to give a detailed tour of how Forza 2's livery (that's just a fancy word for paint job) editor works in the sequel. The whole system has been much improved -- so much so that even a pathetic painter like myself can come up with instantly nifty designs. You could say that the entire goal of our livery editor team was to give the player tools that are both powerful and easy to use. In Forza 2, they've gone above and beyond that call. One final note: I was going to try to get to some of the questions you guys have submitted in the stickied thread, but won't have time to get to them today.
Forza Motorsport 2 Career Progress
But before we get to looking at the livery editor, first a brief note about single-player. Last time, I talked at length about kicking off my single-player Career game in Forza 2 and promised to give Career updates in each week's WPR. Well, truth be told, I didn't make as much linear progress as I would have liked in Career mode this week. Although I could blame it on the fact that it's been crunch-hell around the office as of late, or the fact that I recently moved into a new home, or the fact that the cops recovered my stolen Acura Integra -- I know these aren't the reasons why my Career character is still only Level 8 (out of 50), with only 4,600 credits in the bank. The real reason Career progress has stalled momentarily is because I got (like you would in any sandbox gaming environment) totally sidetracked.
In one of the early Career race series, I was rewarded a 1985 Toyota Sprinter Trueno GT Apex. Folks in the U.S. know the humble little hatchback as an innocuous Toyota Corolla. JDM-freaks and Initial D fanboys know the car as the AE86 Hachi Roku drift monster. Like anyone else with a slight appreciation for Japanese manga (comics) and anime, I did my stint with Initial D and stopped reading it when the story started repeating itself (c'mon, admit it, it was more fun in the beginning when Takumi was drifting genius who didn't know jack about cars or racing). And being keenly aware that Forza Motorsport has a huge community of dedicated and talented drifters, I decided to put a little work into my own Trueno. That would be the beginning of a three-day long Career mode derailment where all I did was empty out my bank account on upgrades and take my AE86 out to the track for tweaking, tuning, and lots of drifting. Well, lots of crashing into walls and destroying my car was more like it. Pulling off a perfect apex drift is a finesse sport and one I'm beginning to doubt I can truly master. But I certainly can't wait to see all the replays, videos, and photos of drift groups out there (I'm looking at you, Blackjack).
As for my Trueno, I took it from a Class D Sunday driver up to an S Class competitor. I'll spare you the stat recitals since you can see for yourself in the above screenshot, but this carved out, naturally aspirated, single-seater hot hatch ain't nothing to scoff at. I purposefully left the paint job a manufacturer chrome (one of the options in the paint menu is to choose from only manufacturer colors -- nice for those who want to stay authentic), but slapped some racing slicks around 225 Momo rims and added a kit to the rear bumper. Subtlely sporty, I suppose, nothing too furious. As for logos, I also kept it on the DL. I wanted to keep this thing stealthy. Of course, with its power-to-weight ratio, this car is a handful to manage if you're habitually going flat out coming out of turns. Out on the track, I can easily dust my #1 A.I. rival Mr. M. Rossi on the straights, but keeping this altered beast under check on the corners often costs me my position.
Since last week, I've also added a bunch of cars to my collection -- the favorite ones being a 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS and a 1997 E36 BMW M3. Both of these cars hurt the pocketbook so I'm fresh out of funds to do any upgrades on them just yet. But they sure look sweet in Photo Mode. Speaking of Photo Mode, I've become quite the ridiculous shutterbug in Forza Motorsport 2, compulsively pausing the game during practically every race and snapping and uploading photos to the server. Although I'm a fairly straight shooter with this virtual camera, I've also been exploring some of the settings, including a trippy fisheyed lens effect. I dunno, it kind of gives your car an instant SpoCom magazine subject matter feel. I also dig how cars get more and more dirty the longer you run them on the track. Anyhow, check out the Trueno here captured with the fisheye lens. (And by the way, before anybody freaks out about flat-looking blurred rims, just know that rims are still being worked on.)
I'm not sure how long I'm going to stay on this drift tangent. My office mate Rob Fulwell set the second to the fastest time (8:57.03) on the Nurburgring today with a C Class Camaro so I spent half the day trying to take him down with my beloved Porsche 914/6. I came close (9:03.11) but no cigar. But what I realized was that I absolutely adore the 914. It is so supremely balanced and fun to drive, I may have to shift my focus once again and return to my first and only love.
A Tour of Forza Motorsport 2's Livery Editor
By: Bill Giese (aka Pasqually)
For the last year of development on Forza 2, we've been making strides at building a more powerful and accessible paint shop. We have encapsulated all of the color cosmetic changes of the car into one area. Here you can paint the car, apply decals or vinyl shapes, tint your windows, manage your designs, or take a picture of your car (and upload it to Forzamotorsport.net). Our goal was to allow players with only a few button presses create a unique car that stands out from the rest of the pack.
Painting your car has been expanded and tweaked. The paint car area allows the user to paint the different parts of the car, such as hoods, brake calipers, sideview mirrors, wings, rims, and of course the body panels.
As you can see we have also blown out the amount of colors you can choose from. Forza 2 features hundreds of different colors including metallic, opaque and two tone colors. We also have the full manufacturer’s colors for each car. And if you can't remember which color you picked last, we have a color history list so you can easily be sure all of your subtle shades of purple match with each other.
As you can see, I've chosen a metallic green and painted my “trim” yellow. Let get down to the meat of the paint shop, custom designs. Before I continue, let's brush up on the layer system, and how they work in Forza 2. Each car is broken into five to six sides. Each side represents a part of the car, these include: front bumper, left side, hood/top/trunk, right side, rear bumper, and wing. When creating a design you are applying it to one side at a time. Think of these as separate entities. Each side can have a unique design. And each side consists of a specific amount of layers to make a design.
Each side of the car is broken out into individual layers. These layers can contain a single decal or vinyl shape. If you fill up all of the layers on one side of a car, you will need to delete or move some layers to make room. Each side has the following layer limitation:
- Front Bumper -500 layers
- Left Side – 1000 layers
- Hood/Top/Trunk – 1000 layers
- Right Side – 1000 layers
- Rear Bumper – 500 layers
- Wing – 100 layers
...For a grand total of 4100 layers on every car. Layers are stacked on one another in the list. The first layer will always appear below the 2nd layer and so on. If you follow this principle, it's actually pretty easy to create very complex designs and illustrations. I have faith there will be some true virtuosos out there in the Forza community.
When you select a layer you can also choose to either place a vinyl shape or a manufacturer decal. The vinyl shapes can be colored and stretched and skewed to whatever you wish. The decals can only be scaled and are more representative of race stickers.
We have included 19 pages of vinyl shapes. Each page is a different theme. These are:
- Primitive shapes
- Gradient Shapes
- Stripes
- Tears
- Racing Icons
- Flames
- Paint Splats
- Tribal Shapes
- Nature Shapes
- Creatures
- And various fonts of upper and lower case.
Total number of vinyl’s come to 760 different shapes. After you’ve chosen a shape and its color you can then place it on the car. You can move, size, spin, skew or apply a transparency to the shape.
In my example above, I have applied a square shape toward the front of the car. Then I put a gradient box over that to hide the hard edge. Then I select a flame vinyl and make it transparent. As you can see below, it's incredibly easy to create gradient and multi-colored cars without the hassle of manually mixing a bunch of shapes and colors.
Let me now show you the “stamp” function. When positioning a layer you can press the Y button to stamp it onto the car. This will also create another copy of that exact same shape. You can now move that wherever you like on the car. This is a perfect feature for giving depth to a shape.
My first shape is on the left, it has a very high transparency so it is easy to see through. I press the Y button and create a copy (middle picture) I change the transparency some more to make it more solid. Press Y again and I have a third shape. Each time I am moving it just a little and applying less transparency. As you can see we have the layered effect. Now is where vinyl groups come into play. One of the biggest new features to Forza 2's livery editor is the addition of vinyl groups. On the layer select screen, hold down the left thumbstick (button click) and you will see the help bar change.
Now when you press the A button on a layer you will “link it” -- this changes the layer box to orange. You can link as many layers as you want on one side, forming a group that you can move and manipulate all at once.
All of the linked layers will now act like an individual layer. You can position them at once, change their color or even save those linked layers out as a group. This group can then be loaded at any time with any car. This is a great way to create designs and share them across all your cars.
Using the vinyl groups I simply stamp and move my 3 flames over and over. This is an incredibly fast way to create a design. And voila! With the addition of some decals this car is ready to race. The last thing I want to mention here is your livery design catalog.
When you are done painting and taking your car’s picture you can choose how to save it. You can save it straight to the car or you can save it to your design catalog. Think of the design catalog as your car’s wardrobe. Bring in any car of the same make and model and apply any of the countless designs you have saved. This is an especially powerful tool when paired with Forza 2's online Auction House as the hottest design will surely go for top in-game credits.
I want to close by saying that we have spent a lot of time trying to create a tool that will let you guys excel. This design literally took me five minutes to make. I seriously look forward to seeing what the community can do with this and, of course, I look forward to seeing your photos and bidding on your auctions.
Before I head out, I gifted this Xbox 360-flavored Fairlady Z we painted for this demonstration to Che, who promptly took it out onto Maple Valley for a photo shoot. Here's what he came up with... hope you guys enjoy the game.
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