Volume 97 -- June 27, 2008

The Turn 10 Weekly Pitpass Report

By: Landin Williams, Turn 10 Community Lead

Hello and welcome to this 97th edition of Turn 10’s weekly article; the one and only Pitpass Report. These reports, known as the voice of the studio, are designed to give you an inside look at Turn 10, while simultaneously bringing you the latest news directly from our community. I am covering for Che on this beautiful Friday afternoon, as he gets a jump start on the weekend in celebration of his birthday--a well deserved break. Have fun Che…and make sure you don’t leave your Turn 10 beverage glass behind on your vacation.

It’s a very sunny afternoon in Redmond today, and as I type up this report I can hear some light conversations happening in our new super stylin’ team space. As most of you know already we have just recently made our big move to a much larger, dedicated studio space that will be the home of our next project. It seems everyone is pretty much settled in, so it’s back to business as usual. A bunch of new faces quickly fill up the empty offices scattered around the studio, as we ramp up for our next big thing. In case you haven't already noticed, we recently updated our hiring page, so check it out and accelerate your career with Turn 10 Studios!

The team is very excited to show off our new digs to professional ALMS racer, Gunnar Jeannette, who will be stopping by early next week to catch up with the crew. As you probably remember, Jeannette has been a long time friend of Forza who not only provides the team with critical feedback, but also loves all that is Turn 10 and Forza. He’s here to hang out, check out our new space, and of course; to get a firsthand look at our latest big project. You can expect to see some cool media surrounding his visit in the coming weeks, so stay tuned to these reports for details of his visit!

A pair of supercars by Hoccy - "Pair" Photocomp

It’s been a very big week for a very small portion of the team here at Turn 10, as our brand new racing division takes shape in preparation for our inaugural challenge against Team RGDF (Really Good Forza Drivers) that goes down tonight at 4:00PM PST. Our pride as the developers of the Forza franchise is on the line, and you better believe we are going to fight to the finish to ensure its safety! So who do you think is going to win this week’s challenge? How will the Dev’s hold up against our incredibly dedicated community? Stop by our latest blog entry here and share your thoughts.

Of course we have been preparing heavily for this first challenge, mainly because we want to come out strong…with the fury…or…the eye of the tiger...whatever you want to call it. This meant we had to filter through our studio hopefuls and figure out just how fast everyone is when the pressure is on. So for the past week we have been spending a few spare moments setting times on our internal leaderboard. To be 100% honest here, I was doubtful that anyone in the studio could run fast enough to lay down a serious time; but I have to say I was mistaken--and very pleasantly surprised.

I soon found out that some of the Dev’s here at Turn 10 are actually just as fast, if not faster than me, and if you consider how much time I put into both Forza 1 and Forza 2 (LOTS!), you can see why this would be somewhat surprising. Overall it was great to see some skilled racers among the ranks as we fought for the top spot on our custom leaderboard. When the dust settled we were all within a second on the leaderboard; not enough of a margin to determine the final roster in my eyes. So in an attempt to secure our victory, we faced off against each other on Thursday afternoon to settle things once and for all. In my eyes, racing all by your lonesome in an attempt to set your fastest possible lap time is much different than real racing conditions, and as team manager I wanted to see how our drivers performed under the stress of actual racing.

2004 Volvo S60 R by Mathew Herchek - Turn 10 Facebook Group

So just after lunch on Thursday, I rallied the top 4 drivers from our internal leaderboard and threw them into the lion’s den on Maple Valley for 3 laps. An impromptu challenge that caught everyone off guard as intended. The top 2 drivers will move on to represent Team T10 in our first challenge tonight, so the stakes were high. After a heated battle for the lead on lap 1, and a few crucial mistakes on laps 1 and 2, we had the order sorted by the final lap. Having the opportunity to watch our drivers perform in a racing environment really raised my confidence levels in the team, and I am very confident that Team T10 will prevail in tonight’s race!

Turn 10 Team Challenge - Friday June 27th - Starting Lineup

Team T10: BLKJ SIDEFX, CamelRacer T10 and BeeRLimey

VS.

Team RGFD: NMRD Paradox, x2O4Fx JCotter and and x jimnran x

Photo by: Kami Iki

We are set to face off against Team RGFD this afternoon at 4PM PST, and while we can’t guarantee it will be broadcast on Forza TV (look for a room hosted by “BLKJ SIDEFX”), I can guarantee a full race report on Wednesday. For now wish us luck in having a clean and competitive race with the members of Team RGFD! Just as a reminder there will be no team challenge next Friday or Game with Dev, as we will be out having fun in celebration of the 4th of July. Things will pick up where we left off and we will begin accepting challenges again the following week.

There are many ways that the community can get involved with the team challenge without having to race at all, and we need your help to shut down our competitors with grace and style. Here is the lowdown. We need cool looking cars every week to run our challenges, and there’s no better place to look then our very own backyard. So…every Wednesday we will be posting a blog entry detailing everything you need to know about the upcoming team challenge. Find out what car (or group of cars) is going to be used, and submit your best Turn 10 Team livery to the submission thread linked in the blog. The following Wednesday we will post the winner of the design contest, and work with the artist to get copies of the car out to the Dev’s. Now it’s worth mentioning that not every challenge will be restricted to one specific car, meaning you may need to create a design that can be applied to a wide range of cars for those weeks. Of course all this will be outlined in our blog entries, so stay up to date with those for all the info…ya heard me!

So now we got ourselves a nice new livery, but what about a killer tune to go along with it? Of course we’re not going to dive head first into battle without the proper tools and equipment, so we might need your help. Each week (depending on the race settings), we will be contacting one of the tuning garages from Forzamotorsport.net with a simple request…hook us up with the fastest possible car to give us a fighting chance. We want to be on an even playing ground with the community, so if our challengers are getting their hands on a fresh tune (highly likely), then you better believe we are going to do the same. Moral of the story…if you’re a tuner, stay on the lookout for a PM from Turn 10!

1988 Lamborghini Countach by Kysco - "Rear End" Photocomp

And if you’re a painter then you really need to check out the contest being hosted by Dent Sport Garage, an amateur racing team from Norwood, MA who have caught on to the latest trend pioneered by James Elterman and Takata Time Attack. Much like Elterman, the folks from Dent Sport are looking for a unique paintjob that will be applied to their competition ready 2004 Subaru Impreza WRX. This is the real deal--design a livery for this car in Forza 2…submit it for review…and it could be re-created on a time attack car in real life! The submission deadline for the contest has recently been extended to July 25th to allow players enough time to put together a high quality design, so check out the official submission thread here and get involved.

On a related note, I had a chance to talk with James Elterman earlier this week, and he gave me a nice update on the progress of the Takata Time Attack STi. For the sake of suspense I won’t reveal any of the details here, but early next week I will be publishing a blog article to catch up with Elterman and the progress of his ride. We are all very excited to see this car come to life, so make sure to check out the blog next week. If you are too impatient to wait then you can get a small teaser in his build thread here.

Recently we have been experimenting with a style of article dedicated to the players found within our community, and judging by the reactions to our previous articles we have decided to keep the trend alive. Over the next little while Fred will be reaching out to racers, tuners, drifters, painters etc… to feature in this special community article. We want to know about you, and your passion for Forza 2, so if you feel you have a unique story, send an e-mail to forzafb@microsoft.com with all the details!

2003 Infiniti G35 by Stickydiljoe - Top Secret Widebody G35

Hotlap Season 4: Competition Update

For all you hotlappers out there I am happy to announce the return of our official points based hotlap season, the challenge where you accumulate points as a team and/or individual that count towards your final standing after 5 weeks of competition. If you would like to know more about the series, and find out how to get yourself and/or your team involved, check out the official rules and registration thread here.

Due to some technical difficulties last weekend, we had to push the start date back, and as a result the first challenge in the season is set to end this Sunday June 29th. Next week’s challenge will be uploaded today, and will proceed on the regular schedule (Friday to Friday). Additionally the points from week 1 will be calculated early next week and published in the tournaments section of our forums. With so many fast drivers and teams it will be very interesting to see how things play out this season. The challenge for next week has already been posted, and will run until next Friday, so get together with some friends, figure out a set-up, and run your best laps!

2002 Nissan Skyline GT-R by megawind - #50 5ZIGEN Falken

And quickly before I head off to practice a few laps on Maple Valley, I wanted to mention a new strategy for Unicorn auctions. Fred and I have decided to stagger to upload times for Unicorns in order to make it easier for folks who live in drastically different time zones. From now on Unicorns will be uploaded at either 10:30 in the morning or 4:30 in the afternoon (PST of course), and they will end at the exact same time 24 hours later. This should make them more accessible for some of our fans across the pond, so have fun trying to get your hands on one of these unicorns. And finally I want to mention that we are still working on our sponsored competition list, however if you have yet to send us an e-mail (forzafb@microsoft.com) about a sponsorship please do so immediately, so that we can get you set up with prizing.

With all that said the time has finally come to prepare for our inaugural Team race against the Really Good Forza Drivers. All the details from the race will be posted next Wednesday, so stay tuned to see what happens when the Dev’s face off against the community! Have a great weekend, and thanks for reading.

Peace

Landin