Akeldama
10-28-2005, 02:51 AM
Today sees the UK release on PS2 of WRC: Rally Evolved, the latest in the racing series from Evo Studios. Unlike rival rally games, WRC has the official license which means that players get stages in every single one of the world championship locations. And while the stages aren't as long as the real life ones, they certainly look the part. WRC Lead Designer Simon Barlow explains how:
We build all our stages from landscape DEM (Digital Elevation Model) data taken from satellite images of the region. This gives us a very rich and natural looking landscape that we can “carve” into to create the tracks. We build up road networks, areas of vegetation, try to match the surfaces to the real-world locations. I mean, we take so many reference photos and videos, we really go all out to make these rallies look and feel exactly like the WRC series. There are concessions we have to make for a game, sure, but if you follow the real WRC there’ll be bits you’ll recognise throughout.
In layman’s terms, our stages are built by designers and artists working together in real time, rather than artists having to work in isolation with reference material and a boring document.
You can read the whole interview with Simon Barlow about the latest World Rally Championship, the car physics, the gameplay modes, and the new features right here at Boomtown (http://ps2.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=9650).
We build all our stages from landscape DEM (Digital Elevation Model) data taken from satellite images of the region. This gives us a very rich and natural looking landscape that we can “carve” into to create the tracks. We build up road networks, areas of vegetation, try to match the surfaces to the real-world locations. I mean, we take so many reference photos and videos, we really go all out to make these rallies look and feel exactly like the WRC series. There are concessions we have to make for a game, sure, but if you follow the real WRC there’ll be bits you’ll recognise throughout.
In layman’s terms, our stages are built by designers and artists working together in real time, rather than artists having to work in isolation with reference material and a boring document.
You can read the whole interview with Simon Barlow about the latest World Rally Championship, the car physics, the gameplay modes, and the new features right here at Boomtown (http://ps2.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=9650).