GZ Interview
7/24/02

Hit the slopes with Housemarque’s Miika Tams to go behind the scenes of Transworld Snowboarding
By Michael Lafferty

Do you crave the joy of flying down a mountain on a snowboard, even in the off-season?  

If you do, or if you are merely a fan of snowboarding games, Housemarque has a title coming out for the Xbox that may just sate your desire for steep slopes, soft powder and rock-riddled nightmare courses. The game is Transworld Snowboarding and it is being released by Housemarque and Infogrames. It should be on store shelves in October.

Housemarque is the development company behind Boarder Zone, and not only does the company design solid games, but bring a love of the sport with them to the design table.

The game features the music of Apulanta, a popular Finnish rock group that has had tremendous success within Finland. Combining a range of rock music into a seamless, powerful driving force, the track heard should provide a terrific background for the game’s extreme action.

The program itself promises to combine daring “realism with vividly entertaining stunts and stunning visual effects. The game covers all aspects of snowboarding from fast-paced boarder-cross races to skateboarding-style jibbing in more than 20 worldwide locations with ten real life pro riders, accurately 3D modeled down to their clothing and equipment.”

Transworld Snowboarding will offer simultaneous play for up to four players.

Miika Tams, the lead designer for the game, talked with GameZone about this title.

Question: Explain a little bit about the concept behind Transworld Snowboarding.

Miika: “The main idea was to make a fast-paced snowboarding game which covers all the aspects of snowboarding from racing to freestyle with huge, interactive environments.”

Q: What do you consider to be the major drawing points or features of this game?

Miika: “The biggest difference to all the other similar titles is the fact that all the possible ways of snowboarding are represented in the game. Also the size of the levels and the amount of freedom offered to the player is something never before seen in a snowboarding game. As well the graphics are boosted into a level that will hopefully set a standard for the future extreme sports games.

“For the controls we have been able to provide a realistic yet arcade feeling for the player with the combos, rails and flip/spins.”

Q: Can you give us some background into the development of Transworld Snowboarding?

Miika: “The idea of developing snowboarding games is quite old for the team, almost the same team created also the Supreme Snowboarding (a.k.a. Boarder Zone) for PC. There was a huge amount of different kind of features that we were not able to do for the PC game, and we were very interested about the fact that we could be able to develop a snowboarding game for such a high-end platform as Xbox.

“The fact the game is using the well-known snowboarding magazine as a brand gave us the possibility also to provide snowboarding in the way that it can be seen in real life nowadays, as well as being influenced by the hardcore snowboarders of the team.

“The games that have inspired the team are, just to name few, are the Tony Hawk series and the 1080 snowboarding for N64.”

Q: What do you think are the most unique features of this program?

Miika: “The most unique features are, for example, the backcountry mode where the player is able to use the whole level terrain as a snowboarding playground providing up big mountains to explore. Also the possibility of combining tricks is unique for a snowboarding game, when the player has learned all the tricks and combos then one combo can last for minutes.”

Q: How did you model the boarders and create the animation?

Miika: “We used a technique called photo-based modeling, which basically means that all the athletes were photographed in a high-end studio providing exact reference for the modeling and most importantly, very high resolution textures for the characters.

“Some of the riders’ animation, basically all the others except in-game snowboarding animations, were motion captured. All the in-game animations were created by animators with real-life snowboarding experiences.

“All the characters will have in-game facial expressions; the characters will smile when a good trick is landed and grin of pain after bailing.”

Q: Demographically, who will this game appeal to?

Miika: “This game will appeal to quite a wide audience, covering players from young teenagers to adults. The game offers game play for the casual players as well as for the hardcore players, and I can promise that all the snowboarders will find the game attractive.

Q: Judging from the screenshots, this game is visually very impressive. Does this game explore any new areas, either technologically or within the genre?

Miika: “Technologically we have done a lot of inventions to be able to use the whole power of Xbox. For example we have created our own level editor tool which basically has single-handedly provided the level designers the possibility to create such levels that we have in the game. Without the editor it would have been impossible.

“Within the genre, as I have already said, we have been able to combine all the aspects of snowboarding in a game in a way that the hardcore snowboarders and the players as well will found it attractive.”

Q: What has proven the toughest part of this game to design, to date? What did developing this game for the Xbox allow you to do that you might not have been able to do on other platforms?

Miika: “Technologically the best platform for the game is the Xbox because of the fact that with the Xbox we are able to use for example a huge amount of objects and very detailed landscapes. We are using all the features of the Xbox, such as surface normal mapping ( dot3 ), environmental reflection and the radiosity lightning.”

Q: What aspect of the game do you enjoy the most?

Miika: “I enjoy the most the level of realism that we have for the snowboarding in the game, the fact that after a while you are just playing to watch the replay making your own realistic-looking snowboarder doing tricks that are out of this world but yet look and feel real. Also the game flow is really good.”

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