A couple of days ago we picked up some news over the tin cans that Bizarre Creations (the studio behind
Project Gotham Racing 4) had some issues fitting what they wanted to include in their game on Microsoft's chosen game storage format for the Xbox 360, DVD9. Now that that news has washed over the gaming blogosphere, Bizarre Creations has posted some
clarifications on their web page. Now they say that:
"DVD size is absolutely not a factor that we consider when designing our games... and PGR4 is no exception. DVD9 gives us more than we need to create a fabulous experience for you guys."
To 'shed some light' on what's going here, please take a look at what Alan M, another Bizarre staff member posted earlier:
"In the past we've always had day and night and to do this we've had to create a duplicate set of textures for most of the buildings, obviously there is the space on the disc and the time it will take make all those night time textures. For some cities night time is important, as good as Vegas looks in the day everyone really wants to see it at night, so in PGR4 only night will be available, and if you thought Vegas and Tokyo looked good at night wait until you see what Shanghai looks like!"
So, it seems like Bizarre Creations' response is to say that their dynamic weather system could create more gameplay situations than the previous day and night option, letting them change the environments of one texture set in many ways. That definitely makes sense, but it does not change the fact that there can only be a set amount of texture sets because of the limited storage space. They said it themselves:
"You won't see different times of day per city because this involves recreating all the textures again (one for day and one for night). Whilst this wasn't a problem for our dev team, it was a problem fitting all this data onto a single DVD."
While there may be more variety with the lighting/weather effects versus simply having a day and night version of each locale, wouldn't it be better to have more texture sets
and the lighting effects? In other words, while a night time Tokyo may look great, will their lighting system be enough to make those night time Tokyo textures look like day time ones? That would be kind of hard to imagine. It's kind of a bummer because a Tokyo sunrise can look great, too.
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
9:31 AM on 08.02.2007
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In other words, XBOX360 DVD limitations ruins another potential grand scale game.
In other words: we said too much in our forums and now we have to cover our ass/
All that being said, I'm not working on the game so I can't know exactly whats going on but I find it hard to believe it was a size issue.
Either way, I appreciate the honesty of the original post where they admit the systems shortcomings. Every system has weaknesses. It sucks that developers can't be honest without getting a scolding from the hardware maker. Or at least that the case with MS developers.
For the Wii it is! Haha, I love the Wii, don't kill me guys.
And BTW, you got linked on Penny Arcade =O
Metropolis Street Racer:
The day/night time spectrum during gameplay is realistic, in that the game uses the internal clock of the Dreamcast to calculate the present time in each city. Play at 8AM in England, for example, and the San Francisco races will all be at night.