Well, I've been tasked with writing the first "studio update" for Bizarre Creations. Chances are I'll be doing more of them in the future as well - so gather round, pull up a beanbag, and take in some good gaming news...
Considering I'm brand new here myself, I thought it would be good to give a little intro to my time here at Bizarre. As it stands, I'm the one and only BC web developer, brought in the rescue the old site, implement BizarreOnline.net, and do a few other internal things. Before this, I was a Computer Science student in Brighton, and spent most of my days sitting around playing PGR2! In fact, I was getting pretty good (or so I thought), until I came up here and was thrashed by an artist who hadn't played the game in 6 months. Doh!
After a few weeks of working here, it's become pretty obvious that the people here are special. It's not just by luck that every BC game so far has been great - these guys are really good and certainly know their stuff! You can tell everybody in the office is really enjoying working on a new platform (despite the deadlines), and really pushing themselves to levels which haven't been reached before.
Allow me to let you into a little secret: We've got a PGR3 internal diary here at Bizarre, where everybody drops examples of their week's work in every Friday. It's a great way for slackers like me to see all of the hard work that the real dev's do each week! Some of the screen grabs in there are truly fantastic; I can't believe the level of detail that goes into something as small as a track surface. In fact, take a look at this:
That's a real screenshot, taken on real 360 hardware. Obviously I've chopped it up to show you just the track surface; but no other Photoshop jiggery-pokery has taken place. I've been told that this is actually a combination of four different layers. Read that again. Four layers. Every single inch of track in PGR3 has to be drawn four times to get the required level of detail. Crazy!
We've got diffuse textures, specular maps, bump maps, and more textures (at different scaling) to ensure that you never see a repeated bit of tarmac. Every inch of every track will look unique, which is no small feat considering we're building huge areas of cities. The skid marks themselves are actually made by the game in real-time, so that when the wheels lock or experience enough friction you'll see rubber blended onto the tarmac. Even if you don't understand all of this technical stuff, seeing it all in action is really great.
Anyway, I'll stop gushing now! The good news is that we're hoping to get started on the next level of effects soon, so expect some more screenshots to come out in the next few weeks. In fact, I'm excited myself!
Check back in a week, when I'll post the next Studio Update.
:lol 
