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Thursday, September 07, 2006 |
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Nail The Trick
Scott Pease
Studio Development Director
I’m Scott Pease - I led the development of the first five Tony Hawk games and now oversee multiple teams at Neversoft. But the most rewarding part of my job is still when I get hands-on with the design of a new Hawk game feature.
So I’m here to give you a preview of a killer new mechanic that just might change the face of the franchise, like the manual and revert before it. We call it “Nail the Trick.”
Since Pro Skater 1 we’ve been trying to capture the essence of skateboarding in the core gameplay – the freedom to skate what you want, the creativity to try tricks anywhere, the means to push yourself towards bigger and bigger goals (i.e. combos).
But something was still missing - something tactile; some element that captured what it feels like to flick your foot at just the right moment and angle and execute a perfect kickflip...
Enter “Nail the Trick.”
It started with a simple question: can we make the dual analog sticks on the controller act like the skater’s feet and precisely control the flipping of the skateboard?
I could explain how it works it in detail, but I think pro skater Rodney Mullen does a damn good job in our new video: (click image to play)
When you enter Nail the Trick mode – and you can do this at any time by clicking both analog sticks - we slow down time, to focus in on your board, and bring the camera in from the side so that the sticks on the controller match your feet as if you were standing on the skateboard.
What’s hard to show in the video is that you directly control your feet with the sticks. Push the left stick down or up and your front foot flicks– under analog control - in a kickflip or heelflip-like motion. Push the right stick (back foot) down or up and you’ve got a backside or frontside shove-it. You get front or back foot “impossibles” for left and right flicks. For the non-skaters out there, that means with both sticks you can flip the board around all three axes of rotation, and in any combination you can dream up.
It’s all mapped to the analog sticks to give some subtle motions. Flick the left stick precisely straight up and the board spins faster, in a perfectly clean flip. Push it sort sloppy, off angle, and you get a slow rotating “mob” flip.
As in real life, you have to hold your feet out of the way as the board spins – so you’ve got to release the sticks at just the right moment to “catch” the board and land it. It feels good this way; a little closer to skating.
Then there’s the combo. Instead of putting your foot back on the board, you can try a new flip when the board is straight up (late flips) or perfectly upside down (a nod to underflips).
Nail the Trick Sequence: A big ollie to front foot impossible, to a late kickflip on the bottom side of the board...
... two rotations later, Bob catches the board with both feet, lands, and rolls away.
(Click on these pictures to get the bigger, bad ass exclusive blog versions)
We push the realism a little bit so that you can create dynamic combinations of different board flips. Some that haven’t been done yet, but you can imagine they just might work, if someone (ok, Rodney Mullen) could pull it off. It’s a blast to invent new tricks on the fly.
Like any good mechanic, there’s depth you eventually learn. You get bonuses for creativity and variety, the board spins faster the more accurate you are with your feet, and for a total mind trip you can spin your body frontside or backside which causes the camera and the world to rotate around you.
The result is a new mechanic that makes the simple act of a clean varial kickflip or a heelflip to boardslide feel fresh and cool again... Yet has the depth to make you try it over and over as you think up new combinations and new ways to score. At the office we’ve been having a blast one-upping each other on the Nail the Trick leaderboards, trying to outdo each other’s board flipping kung fu.
In the end, what we have with Nail The Trick is the result of many ideas contributed by a great many people on the team. It’s brand new, and yet feels like we always should have had it... I think the best mechanics are like that.
I could go on with more details, but Nail the Trick is just one small part of the total Project 8 package. You’ll be able to try it out when Project 8 releases in the Fall. Thanks for checking in... Now get off you’re a$$ and go skate!
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Thursday, August 31, 2006 |
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Kicking things off – Blog #1
Hey there, let me introduce myself. My name is Brian Bright and I am the Project Director for Tony Hawk’s Project 8 (PS3 and Xbox 360) at Neversoft. I began working at Activision in 1996 as an audio designer and have spent the past 10 years working on over 35 different titles. Each of them has presented their fair share of challenges, but nothing is as intense and exciting as developing a game created specifically for this new generation of consoles.
The move to PS3 is a much larger leap than from PS1-PS2. Processing asynchronously across multiple cores opens many more options for design and art, but poses huge hurdles for programmers.
We are taking 8 years of code and throwing it out the window, rewriting the majority of our game systems from scratch for the next generation. Some of the new features for Project 8 include:
A brand spankin’ new graphics engine written specifically for the PS3 and 360.
A mo-cap driven, layered animation system that provides animations that dynamically react to the physics of the skater.
New ‘momentum’ driven skater physics where carving bowls and bombing hills are vital for success.
3D scanned pro skaters, with incredible detail.
A huge streaming world with skate lines flowing in all directions.The most challenging Tony Hawk game ever with AM, PRO, and SICK levels of difficulty on almost every goal.
Controllable Rag Doll Bails with their own series of goals.
Online Leaderboards for many goals in the game.
Walls - A new online game type.
Nail the Trick – A revolutionary new mechanic that kicks serious a$$.
Over the next few weeks you’ll get to meet the various leads on the team, the guys responsible for making this the best Hawk game to date. They will discuss the challenges and pitfalls we have experienced in creating Project 8.
Stay Tuned!
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