Curious questions for the devs re: classic courses and characters

[Will T.TVR]

Got some purely curious questions regarding the classis courses and characters for this game (no whining about why wasn't X included, I promise :P).

1.) I notice that Sunshine Tour and Shibuya Downtown both use music tracks that were available as alternate pieces in the original S&SASR rather than their default themes from that game. (Egg Hangar could be the same way, but since it was never on PC and I only have the PC version of S&SASR I have no idea.) Was this just a licensing thing I guess? I really liked Samba de Janeiro for the Samba courses in the original game and experienced a slight sadface when it didn't return.

2.) Why did the mylar balloons on Sunshine Tour vanish? And the transparency on the roads during the trippy rooms with the giant heads? Or the springs in Roulette Road? Was it just simple engine changes/incompatibilities? I thought those little things made those courses a lot more interesting and was kinda disappointed that they didn't make it into this game. Totally understand if they were cut due to being wonky with this game's engine though.

3.) We all know that Football Manager and Shogun seem like slightly out-of-the-blue choices for a kart racer. Personally I enjoy them both, especially Shogun's constant orders to "RETREAT, RETREAT!!" :P What exactly was the driving force behind using these two in particular? Just a cross-promotion ordered by the suits at SEGA, I'm guessing? Again, purely curious, you'll see no hate on them from me. ;)

That's all for now!

[Zork Nemesis]

Messaggio originale di Will T.TVR:

3.) We all know that Football Manager and Shogun seem like slightly out-of-the-blue choices for a kart racer. Personally I enjoy them both, especially Shogun's constant orders to "RETREAT, RETREAT!!" :P What exactly was the driving force behind using these two in particular? Just a cross-promotion ordered by the suits at SEGA, I'm guessing? Again, purely curious, you'll see no hate on them from me. ;)

I'm not a developer, but I have a feeling that Total War and Football Manager were chosen for this due to the fact that those two frannchises are easily the most popular of Sega's PC exclusives; in fact Football Manager rivals games like Counter-Strike in popularity if you look at Steam's stats page. If you were to put FM or Shogun on WiiU or Xbox, people may not recognize them as easily as they do here (and even then it's still odd since FM and Total War are a lot more serious and realistic than most Sega franchises). It's possible they were looking for a couple of venues to help PC gamers relate or recognize characters, and since these two are Sega it was probably a lot easier to secure the rights. If you look at the PS3 version, from what I heard Sumo tried to include Sackboy as one of the racers (from LittleBig Planet) however Sony said no. If Sega had the rights to LittleBig Planet or at least a connection (publisher license perhaps) that probably would have been a reality.

While true, the inclusion of Team Fortress 2 also helps PC players relate, TF2 is likely included more or less out of courtesy; through Sega and some fans, both Football Manager and Total War have cross-promotional merchandice through Valve and TF2.

[Ganba the Nesoberi]

Messaggio originale di Will T.TVR:

1.) I notice that Sunshine Tour and Shibuya Downtown both use music tracks that were available as alternate pieces in the original S&SASR rather than their default themes from that game. (Egg Hangar could be the same way, but since it was never on PC and I only have the PC version of S&SASR I have no idea.) Was this just a licensing thing I guess? I really liked Samba de Janeiro for the Samba courses in the original game and experienced a slight sadface when it didn't return.

The main track for Shibuya Downtown, "The Concept of Love", had a certain three-letter word that begins with an "A" uncensored (which this very forum censors), most likely as an oversight. I figured Sumo weren't going to risk that again.

[S0L]

It was simpler than even that. We just fancied a change of music! Bear in mind we hear the default music tracks thousands of times during development - and we'd already been through one game with that music :P

On the removal of the balloons and bumpers, we did these as in cases you could hit them unfairly, plus we wanted to streamline the tracks. You'll notice in general most of the hazards in Transformed tend to be static, easy to see, and so you have plenty of chance to avoid. In the bumpers case, as the new physics lets you around Roulette Road so easily, they didn't really serve a gameplay purpose. The transparancy we pulled back as it just makes the road clearer.

You've also got to bear in mind the tracks also needed lots of tweaks and tucks to work with the new physics - plus it's a completely new engine with a totally different architecture, each one of the classic tracks took two artists close to two months to bring over. It wasn't a simple copy and paste!

The additional PC characters were picked as... No surprise... they're all well known PC franchises. They were originally requested by SEGA, but we knew we'd be able to make fun playable characters out of them.

Making the Manager Man was the hardest one, we had to make sure you couldn't see his face (as you never do) and also make sure he was cool even under pressure. Small fact, Miles Jacobson is the voice of Manager Man in the game :P

Total War is a great series so that made sense, plus we got to do some really over the top oriental war machines. The speech just made us laugh when we got assets from Creative Assembly, so in it went.

Team Fortress of course is due to the games Steam exclusivity. Plus, we love Team Fortress. Valve gave us great support (in fact they're still doing it now!) - a super talented friendly bunch of guys. Lots of time for them.

Cue complaints about other characters not getting picked in 3, 2, 1....

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S0L
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[mandobardanjusik]

Eh, I am not going to complain, the characterset is solid enough, even with one or two sad missing characters, however some of those should be remedied with DLC, now cant wait till you can leak the news on that! now the question is where and when you will.... wish you could give us a hint, or even tell us if more have been confirmed since then. Well have to wait and see

[Zork Nemesis]

Messaggio originale di S0L:

Cue complaints about other characters not getting picked in 3, 2, 1....

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S0L
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Vectorman!
Toejam & Earl!
Aika!

...nah, I kid, I know not all of my favorites are up there, but considering PC gets 3 exclusives over the 1 that Xbox/WiiU have (or 0 that PS3 gets), I'm not going to complain.

[mandobardanjusik]

Messaggio originale di <eVa>Zork Nemesis:

Messaggio originale di S0L:

Cue complaints about other characters not getting picked in 3, 2, 1....

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S0L
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Vectorman!
Toejam & Earl!
Aika!

...nah, I kid, I know not all of my favorites are up there, but considering PC gets 3 exclusives over the 1 that Xbox/WiiU have (or 0 that PS3 gets), I'm not going to complain.

Its kinda funny, there is a chance we may see 2 of those as DLC

[NBlast]

Messaggio originale di S0L:

Valve gave us great support (in fact they're still doing it now!)
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TF2 HATS PLOX!oneone

;)

[Zork Nemesis]

Messaggio originale di mandobardanjusik:

Its kinda funny, there is a chance we may see 2 of those as DLC

If I read my sources, Aika was on the original shortlist and was cut for some reaosn.

[Village]

I would prefer getting more than one song for a place.

[【ネップ】— Excal —]

Messaggio originale di Village:

I would prefer getting more than one song for a place.

We actually already are. The ingame music is basically two halves of different songs. For example in Sanctuary Falls, you hear a remix of "Sky Sanctuary" on the first two laps. As soon as you enter the third lap and take off in plane mode, the music transitions to a remix of "Back In Time". ;)

Or in Dream Valley, where you'll hear a remix of "Paternal Horn" throughout the track, but after you enter the 'dream realm' (going through the portal), you'll immediately hear a remix of "NiGHTS & Reala", and it switches back once you come out of that section of the track. ;)

[A Fat, Angry Serval]

I admit I would rather have Samba de Janero (Radio Edit) on Sunshine Tour, but other than that I have no complaints.

Why isn't Jackle in this game?

Messaggio originale di 2007excalibur2007 {MOBILE}:

after you enter the 'dream realm' (going through the portal)

That's actually the Nightmare Realm. The dream realm is the main part of the track.

[【ネップ】— Excal —]

Messaggio originale di =\RLT/= Akuma:

That's actually the Nightmare Realm. The dream realm is the main part of the track.

Ah yes of course, my bad. :u

[Village]

Messaggio originale di 2007excalibur2007 {MOBILE}:

Messaggio originale di Village:

I would prefer getting more than one song for a place.

We actually already are. The ingame music is basically two halves of different songs. For example in Sanctuary Falls, you hear a remix of "Sky Sanctuary" on the first two laps. As soon as you enter the third lap and take off in plane mode, the music transitions to a remix of "Back In Time". ;)

Or in Dream Valley, where you'll hear a remix of "Paternal Horn" throughout the track, but after you enter the 'dream realm' (going through the portal), you'll immediately hear a remix of "NiGHTS & Reala", and it switches back once you come out of that section of the track. ;)

Eh, i would prefer being able to choose a song for a place. Sumo Chose all the bad JSR songs, I don't trust them with the Ipod anymore.

[Zork Nemesis]

Messaggio originale di Village:

Eh, i would prefer being able to choose a song for a place. Sumo Chose all the bad JSR songs, I don't trust them with the Ipod anymore.

They didn't necessarily choose the bad songs, I think Sega had to jump through hoops to relicense the JSR themes anyway when it came to rereleasing it; possible they didn't have them all by the time Sumo started work. Also a fair amount of JSR's music had explicit lyrics; although Sumo likely would have mixed them, using such a track could potentially push the ESRB/Pegi/whatever rating higher than it needs to be.

Besides, as cool a song as it is, Dragula doesn't exactly fit the JSR theme...

[Will T.TVR]

Messaggio originale di S0L:

-snip-

That all makes sense. I certainly understand the desire to not get stuck hearing the same music - I'm currently attending DigiPen and have done sound for several projects over the past couple years; there was one project last spring where I was responsible both for the soundtrack and the actual sound-playback infrastructure ... it wasn't until a couple months ago that I was finally able to listen to the music from that again without my ears bleeding. :P It certainly didn't help that there was an issue we had up until right at the end of development which made it so that the music didn't stop when you quit the game, so you had to hear it over ... and over ... and over ... and over ... and over ... and over ... until you killed the process. Thankfully that wasn't an issue in the final product, but you can imagine...

I didn't realize this engine was 100% new. That would certainly be a reason to drop old features! The balloons slipping in and out of view was a bit annoying now that I think about it. So many times accidentally hitting one as it dropped onto my head... I hadn't noticed just how static most of Transformed's hazards really were either (although the Eggrobos on Sanctuary Falls and steamrollers/helicopters on Graffiti City come to mind as exceptions).