Gamespot.com interviewed the developers of ModNation Racers portable. In the video embedded below, they cover where the game engine come from, details of the game compared to the PS3 version, and what was the main focus of development of the game.
Were you ever curious about the Gamestop listing of a psp version of ModNation Racers? Well, Jeff Rubenstein (SCEA Social Media Manager) paid a visit to San Diego Studio to officially announce the development of the PSP title. The SDS team demoed the title showing Mod creation, Kart customization, full track creation, single and online-multiplayer modes. Basically everything you can expect in the PS3 version jam packed into a portable version. This portable version will be release on the same day as it's PS3 counterpart. Stay tuned to the PlayStation Blog, as they will reveal more about the portable title next week. Meanwhile, check out the trailer embedded below.
Liam, European Community Manager, has recently posted an update at EU PlayStation Blog with the announcement of the official beta feedback forum. Since the beta release, there has been 100,000 races entered and on average 5,500 creations uploaded every day. Make sure you check out the full article, since most of the pictures on there are creations from our community members.
Ramone Russell, SCE San Diego Studio Community Manager, has posted a recap of the NA Beta at the PlayStaion Blog. Make sure you take a look at the original post and leave a comment to show support for the amazing job SCEA, San Diego Studios, and United Front Games have done with this project.
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Ramone Russell here, back again with a complete recap on the ModNation Racers beta. Well, the beta is over and we wanted to give everyone an update on how things went. First and foremost, we are absolutely astounded by the sheer amount and variety of user generated content that was created during the online beta. Thousands upon thousands of karts, mods, and tracks were created, remixed, shared and uploaded. On the racing side of things, there were over 95,000 total races played during the beta.
Playing, creating, and sharing (while awesome), is just one piece of the beta puzzle. We were also able to gather pages upon pages of feedback on all areas of the game. The information gathered is a vital part of the beta process as we make the final changes and tweaks to ModNation Racers before it ships later this year.
All of us at UFG and SCEA would like to thank everyone who participated in the beta for your help giving the game a thorough vetting.
If you have seen interviews or previews with William Ho, Dan Sochan, or anyone else from the UFG team, you know we are super excited about the possibilities of user-generated content for ModNation Racers. With this in mind, we wanted to show everyone a small fraction of that content created during the beta. Also keep in mind that the beta build of the game had more than 90% of the parts (shirts, pants, terrain brushes, etc.) locked out. Every one of these creations was made using a very small portion of the parts found in the final version of the game. Below are just a few images, but you can click through to our Flickr page to access the whole set.
Were you a little down this holiday season from missing out on ModNation Racers beta? Well, lift your chin up, there is some good news! Liam Quigley, European Product Manager, has recently made a post on the EU PlayStation Blog about the EU beta starting on January 22nd.
This beta will include four tracks with two of them being exclusive to this version of the beta to race on. In order to participate in this Beta; you will need an EU PlayStation Network account and be one of the first 100,000 people to download from the EU PSN Store on January 21st. This beta will end on February 14th.
Rob Oliveira, Robo, gives us a tour of the United Front Games studio in the above video. Mean while, Lead Producer Julian Beak, talks about the studio in a post at the PlayStation Blog. Have a look at the birthplace of ModNation Racers, where there is meeting rooms named after Mexican Wrestlers and no offices, even for the President.
Game Designer from United Front Games, Matt Thomas covers the details of the racing physics and mechanics of ModNation Racers at the Playstation Blog. In the video, which is embedded above, he covers on how to boost at the start, side swipe, drift, drafting, and weapon usage. He gives us the background of how the racing controls, drift, and A.I. developed over the course of it's design in the blog entry. Below is some of the highlights of his post, which you can read the full article by heading over to the PlayStation Blog.
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Originally Posted by Matt Thomas
When we started working on ModNation Racers we knew we couldn’t simply create a basic physics system to deliver our core race experience. We were also weary of the fact that unlike many racers, the player in ModNation Racers will also be focused on weapon play. Very early on in development we experimented with extremely tight handling (akin to driving on rails) and a much more physical race experience. What we soon realized is that when the handling model is tight, there is not much fun in the race experience, it was essentially too easy and likewise when the user is spending a lot of time concentrating on just keeping the vehicle on the track with a more complex handling model then this doesn’t leave any mental power to experiment and use weapons. So as you may expect we ended up with something in the middle which offered us the physicality and emergent feel that for us makes this feel like a true next generation karting title. What we found is that this made the handling very much pick up and play, and easy to understand but at the same time offering depth you’d expect in other racers.
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We decided very early on in development that in order to make sure the race experience is fun at all times, the player should have a lot of different abilities even when they were unarmed. All of these abilities are then tied back into our boost system – we encourage the user to earn boost by doing a variety of abilities. These include drafting, spinning, hopping, hitting enemies and of course drifting. The better the player is at this then the more boost they will accumulate. This accumulated boost can be spent in several ways: the player can obviously boost, but also the player can use their shield to defend against weapons, or spend boost on delivering a tough ramming attack on a nearby opponent in the form of a sideswipe. The result is that even without weapons the player can combine all these skills to have a great race experience.
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In terms of weapons, no kart racing game can go without them! Again, we set out early to try and add depth to the weapons system. You can play ModNation Racers by collecting weapons and firing them but the key is what we have called the ladder system. In a nutshell, the more item pods you collect the better the weapon you will get. In all, we have four classes of weapons with three levels to each. Also you can convert all weapons to secondary weapons that can be dropped behind the player. The depth this adds is great; it gives the player the option to either save up weapons to get to the more devastating weapons or simply fire as you please. Saving up can be risky however, as the player will lose item pods if hit by other racers. This really helps build up different strategies, and we have found playing the game here at UFG that people approach the weapons in very different ways. Personally, I am big fan of constantly firing so I don’t tend to upgrade all the time but then again, I don’t win all the time!
This week Mark Riddell, Modnation Track Designer at United Front Games, brings us a tutorial video of track creation on the Playstation Blog. In this video, which is embedded above, Mark starts off by showing us some neat jumps and objects that can be used to create your track with. Than he moves into much deeper detail of what can be done using the advance editor for creating a track. Here are some of the highlights in his post.
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Originally Posted by Mark Riddell
With Advanced Edit, I can directly manipulate all the points that make up the path of the track, allowing for very fine control of position, elevation and slope. Even better, I can edit any of the four points across the section of track that defines the width of the road, fence and runoff on either side. While still intuitive to use, this allows me to get precise banks, fun drops and cool technical sections that you can’t get just by driving out a track. Another great trick is with one or more points selected holding the square button will smooth the selection, which has proven immensely handy!
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Originally Posted by Mark Riddell
Breadcrumbs also are really useful here. Breadcrumbs came about as a way to make shortcuts across the terrain, while allowing for the game logic for racing, weapons and A.I. to keep working. Starting from the main road, create a trail of breadcrumbs leading off the track and then back, and now that becomes a race-able part of the circuit. It’s awesome for making shortcuts or alternate paths across terrain — just remember to get rid of the roadside fences to allow the players off and back on the main road.
Last week Rob "Robo" Oliveira began a series of videos about character creation in ModNation Racers, which has been going up on the Playstation Blog. In his first video he showed us how to build a Mod Racer from the ground up. This week, he goes deeper by showing us how the decal layering system works. With the help of said system, Robo only uses one sticker with different scales and colors to show us how to make a gigantic eyeball. The decal layering system allows you to move, scale, skew, rotate, flip, group, and change the order and transparency of all the stickers. Just imagine all the possibilities of what you can do with hundreds of stickers in many many and more layers! Wait, you don't have to imagine - the ModNation Racers Beta begins December 18th and runs until January 10th, so be sure to read our beta access round-up to discover how you can secure a beta code before then!
Are you one of the many people excited to get into the ModNation Racers Beta? Well, we've got two separate ways you can get in on it (other than purchasing a copy of LittleBigPlanet: GOTY Edition), one of which are completely free! Read on, Racers:
If you want guaranteed access, you can sign up for an annual Qore subscription before December 15th. Qore is a digital magazine exclusively on the Playstation Network. They offer videos, interviews, and behind the scenes footage of your favorite games. You will also get exclusive access to demos and betas. An annual subscription will give you 13 episodes for $24.99 a year. Qore is currently only available in North America.
If you don't mind taking a chance, you can sign up for the ModNation Racers newsletter at the official website by December 17th. Registrants will be randomly selected to participate in the beta. Signing up for the newsletter will also keep you updated on other ModNation Racers information, including release date info, exclusive offers, and more content related to the game. Those that registered before December 13th will receive an exclusive ModNation Racers PS3 theme as well.
*The ModNation Racers Beta is currently only available to North American PSN accounts*
