Studio Update 27

The road to E3...

As any game fan knows, the time around E3 is a super stressful one for us developer types. Even though the event has been scaled back this year, that doesn't make it any less important to make a huge splash with your games. In fact, this year it's probably even more important, given that the whole thing has become more focused. We can be sure that when we give interviews we're talking to people that matter, rather than some guy who works at a store.

And what makes it even tougher is that we're not just showing one game. We've got about a squillion projects all coming together at the moment, not just PGR4 and The Club. Here's the rundown:

BizarreCreations.com

As you've hopefully noticed, we've updated the website! This new design has been put together over a couple of months, and lots of people have had a hand in it (unlike the old site, which was knocked up by me in a couple of weeks!). The area we've really tried to push ahead with is details on the games. There's a truck load of information on here now about all of our titles (both new and old), and this will be constantly updated over time.

A few things that are new to the site include dev diaries for MSR and Fur Fighters, and a video development diary for Treasure Planet. There's a cute page on Boom Boom which tells you which firework types you can unlock per level, as well as the number of beats per minute on each. Oh and have a look at the Jobs page, which gives LOTS of advice and information for breaking into the games industry.

Oh and of course there's info on our new titles... but you can expect these sections to grow once we've made a few announcements at E3!

Anyway you get the idea. Have a look around, and drop me a message on the forums if you think we've missed anything!

The Club

Work on our 3rd person shooter, The Club, has really kicked into overdrive recently. If you don't know what the game's all about, have a look at this page: What is The Club?

The 360 and PS3 platforms have both passed Beta, which means that the game is virtually content complete and it's just a case of polishing and balancing now. Of course, the final 10% of the work takes 90% of the effort so the entire team is pulling together to get it sorted now.

That doesn't mean it's not a blast to play now though. Here's what the game is looking like right now on Xbox 360:

Of course most of the graphical jiggery pokery is being adjusted and the frame rate is getting solidified, but I hope you'll agree that it's turning into a really good looking game. Of course, The Club isn't about looks... it's about gameplay and that's still as fast and fun as it's ever been. We've got two pods set up in the Bizarre kitchen area at the moment; one is running The Club demo constantly, whilst the other gets a cycle of games. At the moment it's got DOA4 running on it, although it's a tough call between that and the Last Bronx cabinet when you fancy a bit of beat 'em up action!

Anyway, we're currently putting together a build of the game which we're hoping will be well met by journos in the future. Certainly we've had a positive reaction from most people so far, but you never can tell until they get it in their hands and have a run through. To be honest though, actually playing the damn thing is where The Club's strength lies... fingers crossed!

On the Characters page you can have a sneak peek at all the guys you'll be able to play as in The Club. Only Dragov and Renwick's bios are unlocked at the moment, but we'll be adding to this as we release more information about the other six.

The same goes for the Locations page. Each location has multiple routes through, and as you go through the main games Tournament mode you'll hop around the world visiting each of these locales. The Steel Mill and Prison Cells are unlocked right now, but the rest will be available soon!

You should also have a quick look at the Tournament Mode and Multiplayer pages, specifically to look at the game modes. This is really where The Club sets itself apart from every other shooter; pure arcade blasting for points against the clock. Some of the game modes we're not talking about yet though! You know what they say... patience is a virtue!

Boom Boom Rocket

Downloadable Content? Yes, it's coming. The first song pack will include five new tracks, with a musical style that's a little different from the game shipped with. As to what that musical style is... my lips are sealed!

The audio is written, recorded, and in the game, and right now the team are working on camera positioning and firework layout. It's actually a really in-depth job making the firework patterns all match up and play well, and we have a dedicated person at Bizarre doing exactly that right now.

We have learnt a few things from the first batch of songs in BBR. This new pack is HARD (well, when you play on the Hard difficulty anyway). Personally I've completed all of the originals on Hard, but have yet to finish a single one of the new tracks. Given a bit of practice I'm sure I'll be able to nail them, but they do seem to be a level above and beyond what we're all used to. That can only be a good thing for all the hardcore, blindfolded, multi-fingered BBR experts out there!

There's more info on BBR on the game page. Have a goose.

Geometry Wars: Galaxies

Our man at Sierra, Roger Carpenter, has been out in the wild with copies of GWG on both the Wii and DS. He's been showing off not only co-op play, but also a couple of the new game modes and enemy types. I think you're much better off watching the 1Up Preview video though, as they talk about it much better than I could ever scribble down here...

I'm so super excited about GWG right now it's not even funny. I'm hoping Cakey doesn't get himself a Wii though... he beat my high score in GW:RE again today. I've been playing so many different variants of Geometry Wars recently that I'm totally out of practice on Retro Evolved, so I think it's time to put some serious time in.

PGR4

And to finish up, we have Gotham 4. All deadlines have been hit so far, and the development status of the game is pretty good. You will see more of the game within the next few weeks, along with an announcement we hope you won't be expecting (yeah right!).

The PGR4 game team have been paying attention to the little things which make a game enjoyable. Of course we've got our share of big sweeping changes (the dramatic weather for example), but we're aware of the fact that it's often the small things which make or break a game.

Some of these small things are being handled by our "racification" team. These are the guys who are in charge of adding race furniture to all the cities, i.e. turn markers, crowd stands, race teams and vehicles, ambient traffic, animated billboards, etc. Now when you race you'll see crowd members waving your flag, and trackside signs calling out how many Kudos you've earnt. It's all pretty cool stuff, and adds to that automotive festival atmosphere we're trying to build.

Check out the screenshot below. This is an environment shot from one of our unannounced cities. See the yellow and black Armco barrier? Well in PGR3 this would have been grey and, well, dull. In PGR4 the barriers are different colours based on the city, they have logos and slogans painted on them, and you'll even trade paint with the barriers if you scrape up against them. Of course this paint trading stays for the duration of the race, so by the end of three laps you should see some pretty colourful barriers!

All of this should help remove that "racing through a tunnel" feeling that sometimes occurred in PGR3. As you know, all of the PGR3 locations are making a comeback in PGR4 so our guys have gone back and "racified" these old cities as well. Now they too benefit from this new found awesomeness.

So that's pretty much what's going on at Bizarre right now. Busy times for all for us, but it's also one of the most exciting times in the companies history. I hope you guys will look out for our titles at E3 next week, and please do come and chat with us in the forums about them.

Let the chaos begin!