Ask the Developer: Black Rock Studio (PURE)

Ian Hudson (forum name PURE_DEV) is a member of the Black Rock studio development team (Environment Designer) and is willing to answer any questions you have about Pure, Black Rock Studio or game development in general.

http://www.dcemu.dreamhosters.com/pi.../pure-logo.jpg

Ian started out in the games industry in 1996 working as level designer for Acclaim Studios London. He moved on to Climax Racing (the former name of Black Rock studio) in 2000 shortly before Acclaim went under and is currently working for Black Rock studio since the Disney acquisition in 2006. For 12 years he has been designing game worlds and racing tracks for various platforms from the N64 through to the 360. Games that he has worked on include Forsaken, The Italian Job, ATV Offroad Fury 3, ATV Offroad Fury PSP and PURE.

If you have a question you would like to ask, post it here (via comments) and "PURE_DEV" will answer.

There will be a launch event of PURE on Leicester Square, London, on Wednesday the 24th of September. This event is open for everyone, and you will be able to try out the game and get the best PURE experience throughout the day. The event will run from 8am until 4pm.

Pure will be available for the PC, PS3 and X360 this Autumn/Fall

Q1. What did you find during the prototyping stages that worked and what didn't?

Hi, my name is Eddie. PSN DA_SHREDDER, from the US. Im glad that I found this article on n4g.com. Ive been wanting to contact BlackRock by phone, but I dont know how to call out the states. Wow, am I relieved.

Question 1. Are you guys gonna implement custom soundtrack in the ps3 version? Dude, you dont know how much it would mean to us if you guys did that. Screw the trophies,, we want in game music.

Q2. Is there gonna be DLC in the future? New tracks and tricks, maybe even customizable tricks?

Q3. Please tell me your working on Pure 2 soon. Are you?

I have many more questions, but I think I've wasted enough of your time. Please fill me in, im really enjoying your game btw. Its the best offroad racer since ATV on the ps2. I even wrote a review of the ps3 version yesterday at gamefly.com. It was my first review,, you should check it out and tell me what ya think. 10/10. Thank you, god bless and have a nice day. Email is [email protected]

Hi there yaustar, good question.
We spent a lot of time R&D’ing different ways of to create the worlds in PURE. We looked at using polygons, heightfield and patches. It all came down to what would give us the most flexibility. We new that we’d want to be able to tweak the tracks through focus testing so the way we went was to use hightfield. We tried a method of authoring the worlds using heightfield and then exporting this out to polygons so that the art team could build in to it and texture the worlds, but this proved far too inflexible for us. It was all too one way. We needed a pipeline that would allow us to go back and forth from art and design.
We had some really good heightfield tools written by our code team from our PS2 days of working on ATV Fury so we revamped these to cope with next-gen visual requirements. This worked out much better for us. I think the old tools have seen their last game now though!

Thanks for the great review DA_SHREDDER! I’m glad you picked up on not get punished too much. This was one of the design briefs for the track designers and the physics guys. We wanted to keep you going forward as fast as we could as much as we could. Possibly ATV riders may think this is ‘fake’ but its integral to the experience of PURE.

Now, about your questions..
Q1 and Q2 – we’re looking at the possibility of DLC of some kind for PURE at the moment but I can’t comment either way right now. Sorry for the copout.

Q3 – Currently we are looking at ideas for what we’d want to see if we did a squeal. We’re looking at new game modes, new environments and loads of new tech so we can really ramp up on the visuals. If you speak to the art team about this, they’ll tell you there is seriously unfinished business with the environment art.

Thanks for replying. Some more questions if I can:

How long was the development cycle and how manageable was crunch? If there was no crunch, what steps did you take as a team to prevent this?

Did any of the ideas from the mini game week make it into PURE?

@ Pure Dev.

Okay thanx for the info. I really amazed that you guys actually feel that you could have done more to the graphics in the game. If you read my review, you will see that I think your game is spectacular when it comes to visual effects. I cant think of that many games that has the detail and polish that you guys gave to this game. I can tell that your very dedicated, and I more than appreciate you love for making games. Alot of Devs out there always worry about the technical issues instead of fun factor in games, but you guys define what a true Game Developer is. Thank you so much for this wonderful game. I hope,, no , I pray to God you guys make a sequel,, or at least another game because you guys are seriously one of the most talented Dev team's on this planet. And no Im not just saying that. Ive been getting really mad at how many bad games there are to good ones. Its at least a 100:1 ratio. No pun intended.

Also,, I'll make this short. I probably should have just gotten the 360 version, but I played the demos to both games, and the ps3 version just looked more polished. Im not a fanboy whatsoever. Its just my opinion, but now me and several others are stuck with the fact that Microsoft put a patent on freakin in game music in consoles, and now I cant listen to freaking Pantera, or Slayer while im doing back flips and break dancing on my atv. It sucks beyond comprehension. You guys should really think about adding that in the game. You would not just be doing us a favor, but it would look good on your guys' part and actually showing people your dedication before they actually played the game. I can seriously think of 20 or more people that didn't get the game because Mx. vs. Atv pissed them off with no voice chat , and lack of in game music. Im just saying that you should really consider it. You would get alot of media attention as well,, that means nothing but good things to say about you guys.

Thank you for your time, and sorry for making this so long. I love what you guys do. Also, if you guys need a tester or something, let me know. Will work for video games! Ha haha . Rock on boys..

P.S. Put some heavy metal in the game like you guys did for the ATV series on the ps2 version. Alice and Chains Bones was pretty sic. Peace!

I originally decided to get this game as a stop-gap between MotorStorms, but the game was so impressive that it will be played alongside Pacific Rift.
Now onto the questioning!

How much of an influence was the look and feel of MotorStorm in making PURE?

How big of a team did it take to create PURE?

Are there any game devs/directors that you would cite as an influence on your development style?

Is there anyone who you look up to in the gaming world?

What games (aside from your own) do you enjoy playing?

There are so many games now that ignore local play and focus on online multiplayer (which is great in pure, 16 players online), why did you decide against split screen play for pure and will pure 2 get a split screen mode?

Qa. What did you implement in PURE to take it out of the shadow of games like Excite Truck, Motorstorm, Burnout et al?