Shaolin

This game came out last Friday, and ive heard that its pretty good.
Have any of you got it????
If so, what do you think??

Cheers.

Shaolin

Well.............hurry up peeps.
Come tell me.

Richard Curtis

Its the dogs dangly bits!!!

Graphics - awesome (especially the rain & motion blur at speed)
Handling - I Dont ride a bike but looks & feels realistic to me.
Controls - very straightforward but also gives a lot of flexibility (you can do endos, burnouts, donuts, wheelies etc.)

A training mode similar to Gran Turisimo licenses earning stat points e.g. cornering, braking.
Arcade mode thats fun.
Career mode etc.

Loads of cool unlockables. e.g. just won Japanese GP and unlocked video highlights of 2001 Jap GP - excellent.
Toon mode is very cool.

To sum it up I've played some great racing games - GT1, GT2, F355, Colin Mc etc. and this is easily by far the best and an essential purchase on the X-box.

If you think rallisport was good this will blow your socks off - 10/10.

Rich

Shaolin

Nice, will have to have a look then.

Thanks.

Pete_UK99

Glad you liked it

Iain Young

Well worth a look. I was playing it all weekend. I reckon it's the best racer on the xbox yet

Iain

PiNkEyE69

Got it for my birthday from my brother on Monday.
To be honest I'm not really into bike games, not since the Spectrum era, but this is really good and changed my mind about motorbike games (Still suffering from Ducati Racing on the DC).

I spent last night just trying to get a gold medal on all the training tracks (managed to get gold for all 4 stats on the first 2 levels, and partial gold/silver for the next 2). It's like Amped in the way that you start off with low stats and contanstantly try to complete tasks to up your stats.

The graphics are fantastic and the rain effect is the best I've seen in any game. The detail is very, very good (I only noticed last noght that your initials are imprinted on your bikers jacket, how cool is that!)

I was initially skeptical of it's multiplayer capabilities as the back cover says 1 player only, but yet it supports 4 player on 1 xbox and 16 players over a lan - misprint city. THQ might want to correct that was anyone who hasn't read a review might be concerned with the "1 player" logo (in this day and age of multiplayer gaming)

The sound is very good and very accurate, a little dissapointed that you can only select one user-ripped cd to play from the xbox's hard drive unlike Amped and PGR which allow you to play multiple ripped cd's, but apart from that the sound effects, especially in replays when you've got a crowd of bikes, is as real as it's probably is going to get.

I like the way the guy moves on the bike and whole physics of the game, especaiily the 'blurry' vision you get at high speeds Is ther any way to change your bike or leathers after creating a racer? You unlock new bikes and leathers but it seems you can only allocate these to a new biker, which will mean going through all the training stuff again

A true racing game that's going to probably be hogging my time at the moment (now that I've completed PGR & Halo, and Crammond's GP4 is some weeks off yet)

Kudos to THQ.

[Edited by PiNkEyE69 - 5/29/2002 12:06:17 PM]

Shaolin

PINKEYE....
To change leathers etc...
when you first select season mode & rider, press Y to change team, and there you can change both bike and leathers.

I got that from another site.....so i dont know if its what you want.

PiNkEyE69

Does that work for a custom rider you create?
If so that's exactly what I'm looking for.
Some of the leathers you unlock look pretty sweet and I realised I wanted my biker to have one of them but find a way (I've only had the game 48 hours!)
Cheers.

Pete_UK99

Pinkeye69 that will work if you try that.

Pete_UK99

Yeah we're not happy about that, the front cover was bad enough but when I saw they'd got the amount of players wrong as well it just p*ssed me off. A lot of people will buy a racing game only if it allows more then one player so for someone that hasn't read the reviews they'll probaly leave it on the shelf.

PiNkEyE69

I'm having a blast on it a the mo, just going through a GP series. (as I said, I got Monday and unfortunatly I Work 8 - 6:15)
I've just enjoyed the awe that was the 'training' session. I like the difficulty level, really pushes you. If you get stuck completing one thing (usually on the gold level) then I had a crack at some of the others to build up those skils, found it helped out completing the test I got stuck on.

Racing with 'The Matrix' soundtrack going in the ingame music
Good job Pete_UK99 (and rest of the team!)

About the leathers/bike etc, isn't the 'Y' at this point delete the rider? or are we on about the screen with all the real drivers with your custom driver on the far left?

Cheers guys.

[Edited by PiNkEyE69 - 5/29/2002 11:18:23 PM]

Shaolin

Right, i just played the demo last night that comes with the official xbox magazine.
And i am sorry to say that i am not impressed, the graphics are ok at best, like rallisport, its all nice and clear up untill a certain distance, and then it just blurs, which is better than just using fogging like the ps2, but i expect alot more from xbox.
And before you say anything, im not on about when you go really fast and it sort of goes into blur mode for that extra speed sensation.
I did like the handling though, the way you can lean him forward etc, and do some nice wheelies.
One thing that was complete pants..........was the sound, they sound like 50cc hair dryers, and not like five hundreds, very poor, i think they used the same sound on hang-on in the eighties.
Now i am hoping that some of these things ive mentioned, are like this because its the demo, so i will check out the proper game.
Im hoping it will be better.

I was looking forward to this.

Pete_UK99

Pinkeye you can change on the GP status screen. Thanks for the praise by the way, I'm really enjoying reading what people think.

Shaolin the demo on the mag is unfortunatly very old. Because of the deadlines on mags they needed the demo back in January so the game was still in development. The sound was temporary at that moment in time and I have to agree very bad indeed. The finished version I think is very accurate to the real thing gear changes happen instantly. Draw distance is huge in the game, check out Donington. The Xbox has it's own antialiasing which is the best on any system but will cause things to blur the further off in the distance they are. The only way to solve this is to turn it off which would mean everything becomes very jagged and in my opinion a hell of a lot worse. Also another thing to note is the frame rate, in the demo it does drop a bit but again in the final game it's a smooth 60. Really we should have put a disclaimer on the demo to say it was still some way off from finished. If you're still not sure give it a rent first.
Cheers for the comments.


Peter

[Edited by Pete_UK99 - 5/30/2002 10:25:09 AM]

Shaolin

Pete......i will try the finished game then, thanks.
By the way, i have spoken to you on here before, what do you do?, did you help make this game then????

If so,,,,,,,,gizza job.

Pete_UK99

Yeah I'm an artist so I had to make all the bikes plus I also made Jerez, Donington and the training track. Infact if you do buy the game check out the building on the training track because it's our office. Also theres a secret hidden there but you have to play the game lots to find out
As for jobs we've got a lot going, the studio is expanding so we're looking for artists, programmers and Designers, check out our web site www.climax.co.uk. Not sure what qualifications you'll need to be a programmer or designer but if you're thinking of becoming an artist then a good knowledge of a 3d package i.e. Lightwave, Max, Maya. And if you got any good fine artwork then it would really help you out. Look foward to hearing from you.


Peter

Iain Young

Pete, as I've just recently bought myself a copy of Lightwave to play around with I'd be really interested to know how you created the bike models. Did you use a 3d scanner and import the data from a model, or did you model the entire thing inside the computer (spline patching / nurbs?).

Cheers,
Iain

Pete_UK99

We used our own in house modeling package to create everything, although Lightwave is my favourite package for doing high renders. The way we created the bikes was actually more basic then what most people think. We had to go to all the tracks and take pictures of the bikes. Some pics we could scan in and work with them in the background but because we could'nt get exact side on views for most bikes(the pitlanes are pretty busy places), it meant having to just create the bikes by eye . The best way to work though is to have a front, sides, back and top view. If you want to create a car or something the best place to start is buy a kit from a model shop and scan the views that you get in the instructions that way you know they're bang on.
We used patches to create the bikes, nurbs are apparently really complex for the game engine to support and polys were just not suitable for creating those lovely curves you get on a bike. How long have you had Lightwave for?

ptholt

pete, next time you need somone to go to a gp to take photos give me a shout

I ordered the game last night after reading several reviews and downloading about 200mb worth of movies lol.

The only things that have disapointde me a little so far (just watching from the above, tho they could have been dev versions still) was that the bike could go steaming into a gravel trip at any angle and ride straight through the other side back to the track (in real life you HAVE to keep it upright and even then its touch and go as to whether you'll make it out) and also at some stage when cornering (in one movie i saw) the rider put his leg out speedway style, i coudlnt quite figure this out at all.....

still with give it a blast when it arrives



[Edited by ptholt - 5/30/2002 2:42:27 PM]

Iain Young

Cheers Pete, looks like it's off to the model shop for me then. Do you just use a standard flatbed scanner to scan the pieces?

I've had Lightwave about 3 months now. Not had much time to play yet though (work keeps getting in the way), but I am working on a few little animations (mainly involving teddy bears and roller coasters) My main problem at the moment is that I've been using sasquatch light (the one that comes with lightwave) to add fur to a construction worker bear, but the fur pokes out through his clothes and hard-hat. Looks like I might have to upgrade to the full thing at some point

Cheers,
Iain

Pete_UK99

Ptholt cheers for the comments. Most of the movies going round the net at the mo are really old and alot of animations were a bit dodgy, infact I know the one you're talking about. The rider would put their foot down at 100mph, so that was sorted out. When you go into the gravel you can still keep control of the bike. The reason why we done this was because generally people who aren't to hot at games would keep flying off everytime they hit the gravel and would become frustrated so we felt it distracted from the gamplay to much. if you play on championship or legend you'll find the bike will fall a lot easier when hitting the gravel or another rider.

Pete_UK99

Iain, I just use a normal flat bed to scan the pics in and then look at the model kit to get a better idea on the models curves because side views are great for gettting the general look but sometimes you just cant tell what somethings doing just from those views.
I haven't been using Lightwave for a while, well actually I just had to use it tonight but I've really missed out on a lot of the new features like Sasquatch. I really want to make a furry animal or something, infact I've still got a face I made that needs hair. Tell me what the full versions like if you get it.

ptholt

Thats ok pete, i can feel another chat coming on about gaming and my own test consultancy company, if you ever make it to a sx meet or similar having done work for EA and sega in the past

Iain Young

Will do Pete.

Flippin excellent game by the way

Cheers,
Iain

Pete_UK99

Cheers guys. Iain I'd love to see some of the work you've done, email me some renders if you want.

Iain Young

Ok Pete. I'm off on holiday in a little while, but I'll sort something out when I get back next week. I'll be in touch.....



Iain