October 3, 2008

All Revved Up with Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars’ Director of Development
By Louis Bedigian

“The car itself is the weapon. I would say it is like demolition derby meets FIFA.”

Prior to the creation of Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, a new game that's being referred to as "demolition derby meets FIFA," Psyonix Studios hadn't made any full games of its own. Instead, the studio worked on specific portions of other games – such as the Burnt Rubber level in Gears of War – while dreaming up its own original creation.

"It actually started when we added vehicles to Unreal Tournament 2003 as a mod," said Dave Hagewood, Director of Development at Psyonix Studios. "Epic Games took notice and hired us to implement the game as 'Onslaught' for Unreal Tournament 2004. We worked directly with them on the project and became experts in Unreal Engine technology. After that we were ideally suited to help Epic and other licensee developers with their own games. It is an interesting strategy because it allowed us to develop our own game in between licensee projects without deadline restrictions."

How does game development differ when you're working on one chunk of a game as opposed to the entire thing?

Dave Hagewood: Every project is different. We like to work on parts of the game that can be done as independently as possible. Examples would be new levels, game modes, or ports. Often we're able to put a lot of focus on a particular section of the game that would normally get less attention or be cut from the game entirely.

What are the time constraints on these kinds of projects? Is development trickier because there are zero delays? Obviously some other developer is calling the shots. (As opposed to your own project, which you could feasibly delay if you wanted to.)

DH: Yes, it can be a challenge. Unexpected delays are normal during game development but they are much harder to explain if they happen off-site by a remote studio. We have to be very careful to provide accurate time estimates.

In addition to working on specific portions of various games, Psyonix is also credited with porting Monster Madness to PS3. So how have you been promoting yourselves as a developer – as the all-purpose software team?

DH: We do a lot of work on Unreal Engine based titles. As a result we have become very good at it. Developers and publishers are often surprised how fast we are at getting a game going. The engine also makes it much easier to port between platforms.

But now things are changing. Instead of working on someone else's game, you're finally doing your own. What made now the right time to take this step?

DH: It has been a long time coming. Developing our own games has been a goal of the company since we started. However, we wanted to do it on our own terms. Bootstrapping development between contract work was a key part of our plan. We developed Battle-Cars to be fun without any pressure from publishers or deadlines to meet. As a result, every aspect of the game is there because we not only approve of it, we love it. It wasn’t part of a design document at some point. We just kept iterating game ideas, adding features here and tweaking gameplay there, until the game was so much fun we became obsessed with playing it all the time.

Is SARPBC an idea born from one of Psyonix's developers, or did an outsider contribute to the concept?

DH: We have a democratic design process. Everyone contributes ideas. The soccer idea actually came from a special game mode one of our level designers came up with when we were planning the game as more of a combat game. We already had the crazy rocket-powered flying cars but adding the sports element made it something entirely different.

We know the cars are supersonic, rocket-powered, and able to battle each other. How does this all fit into one gameplay experience – is it something along the lines of Twisted Metal meets FIFA?

DH: There are no weapons in SARPBC, so that is one big deviation from most battle games. We didn’t want a health system or weapon aiming while driving, so the car “itself” is the weapon. If you hit a car while driving at a Supersonic speed it will explode. I would say it is like demolition derby meets FIFA.

Break down the elements (supersonic, rocket-powered, battle, and any others…) and tell us about each of them.

DH: Supersonic: When you exceed a certain speed you go supersonic. At this speed you will demolish any players in your path.

Acrobatic: Your car can jump, flip, spin, and roll in-air. You can also do dodge moves in four directions, powerslides, and double-jump.

Rocket-Powered: You collect “boost” around the arena which powers your rocket. You can even temporarily fly with a rocket boost.

Battle-Cars: Ramming, slamming, and utterly destroying your opponent is a big part of the game.

What can we expect from the vehicle lineup?

DH: Players will start off with two cars made available to them, and five additional cars can be unlocked through the game’s single player mode. So there are seven car styles to choose from, each with multiple skins. Each one has slightly different handling but we don’t vary up the speed or acceleration. We felt this was important to keep the game balanced and sport-like.

How about the arenas…anything interesting there?

DH: Each arena is based on a theme (city pavement, desert wasteland, greek paradise) and also changes up the layout a bit. One of the arenas is actually round as if you bent a standard field into a circle so the back of the two goals meet together. We will also be releasing new arenas as DLC as often as possible.

If I'm not mistaken, SARPBC's focus will be multiplayer competition. Will there be any single-player battles as well?

DH: We have excellent AI opponents which you can play any way you like. There is an AI tournament and we also have, as I briefly mentioned, a single-player mini-game system which changes up the gameplay in a lot of interesting ways. In one such game you act as goalie while a group of cannons fire balls at the goal. In another you play a standard match with a wooden crate instead of a ball. In my favorite game you play a match in a windstorm that is constantly blowing the ball back toward your goal.

When battling online for the first time, what will players have access to? Modes, number of players, etc.?

DH: We wanted to support every multiplayer feature we could think of. You can have up to eight players online and four players splitscreen. You can even play splitscreen vs online in any combination. We also support forming a team with your buddies and registering it online. Anytime you play as that team it will be ranked in the leaderboards against other teams.

How will the YouTube feature work?

DH: We kept having these amazing moments in the game where someone would pull off the most incredible goal or save and we wanted to capture that. We have actually integrated a fully featured editing system into the game that allows you to pause the gameplay and go anywhere in time or space within it. It supports timeline scrubbing, slow motion, fast motion, keypoints, zoom, and basing the camera or its focus on any game object. Then you can record what you want to a file on the hard drive or upload it directly to YouTube. We really want to see what people do with this. We’ve actually done all the shots in our video trailers using the in-game system.

The announcing press release brags about Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars being one of the longest named games ever made. Is this something you're really proud of?

DH: We like the name because it fits the game, not just in description but in style. It is crazy, unrestrained and over the top.

PlayStation Network is your service of choice for SARPBC. Any particular reason? And have you thought about taking the game to WiiWare or Xbox Live Arcade?

DH: PSN made it easy for us. They were thrilled to have us aboard and also to self-publish the game. They were also open to accepting the game we wanted to make. I’m proud to give them exclusivity for the launch. There probably won’t be a WiiWare version as the Unreal Engine doesn’t support it but I can’t rule out an XBLA version one day.

Thank you for your time.

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