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Wed Jun 08, 2011 10:59 pm

(I'm dusting off this old forum account. Hi.)

So I was at E3 today, and it took me an hour and half of waiting in line, but I got to play SSX! :woot Plus I didn't have to sign any non-disclosure agreement or anything, so as far as I know what I learned is fair-game to discuss. Figured I'd pop in and tell you all about it. Edit: aaaaall about it. This is a long post!



They had the game behind closed doors and they gave 30 minute previews. In the first 15 minutes one of the devs talked about the design of the game (Race it, trick it, survive it, etc) and played the game in front of us. The menu is the google-earth inspired interface they talked about it, and it's really slick. Select a mountain range, it zooms into a perspective view on it and you're looking at a couple mountains to select from. They zoomed in on the Himalayas, Africa, and Alaska. Each one had 2-3 mountains. Needless to say, the game looks pretty damn big.

The dude played the 3 tracks you've all seen in the videos, and it was nice to see a different play-through of each of them. The race and trick run were neat, but I gleaned the most insight from him playing the deadly-descent. In that run the camera smoothly transitioned from regular view to the backward-facing camera once he glided off the ridge with the squirrel-suit (still not totally sold on the angle, but hey at least it was smooth). The very next thing that was apparent from him playing was that it's hard. The guy had a tough time getting down it, and apparently in all his demos to people that day he hadn't been able to survive (he died at about 670 meters for us). It also didn't look like he was faking it, so I think it's very interesting that the difficulty is legitimately high.

More importantly, he also stressed the fact that these descents are meant to be stand-alone set-piece moments in the game. He likened them to when you get chopper-gunner segments in Call of Duty. He said they're there to act as a foil to the rest of the game and change the pace. The point being, things like the rear-facing camera aren't really part of the core experience - that fact that it's so different from what we're used to is the point. Based on what he said, I was actually pretty sold on the concept of the deadly-descents.




After that they ushered us into another room with a bunch of TVs to play the Himalayas trick level for a good 10-15 minutes. I happened to be at a station next to another one of the devs (who I unfortunately forget the name of, but he said he was a gamemode/online play designer), and I was half playing the game, half talking to him. This was good and bad. I gleaned more info, but I didn't get as much of a chance to analyze the game first-hand. But here's what I thought of it:

It's an early-build
The first thing I noticed is that they actually aren't lying when they say "pre-alpha." Plenty of games at E3 are called "pre-alpha," but are really more of a beta build. The SSX I was playing was missing lots of features, and hadn't been polished yet (and that's not a bad thing - I actually think it's very cool they let us play it this early in development). I wouldn't be surprised if the 3 levels they showed look completely different in the final game (especially since they appeared to be sharing lots of textures). Also, going into it I was concerned about whether the characters were going to be talking and yelling at each other, and have that great personality from Tricky and 3. But the game really isn't in the state where they would be concentrating on that stuff yet. So perhaps some of you can rest more at-ease about that. :)

The general feel
Nevertheless, I was having fun. The game feels like SSX but... more weighty I guess? It felt like the characters preserved their momentum, so if I screwed up my aim on one jump, correcting myself upon landing to hit the next one perfectly was tricky. And I mean that in a good way. Other than that, it's hard to talk more about the feel of the game, because again it was unfinished and will probably change a fair amount come-release. But I will say I've played the fuck out of SSX3, and I could kind of pick up this game, but I was making pretty bad runs. So at the very least we should all have the experience of re-learning how to master an SSX game. ;)

The controls

The devs have been hesitant to talk about the controls, and the guy I was talking to told me they're not finished (especially with the tricks). I was playing on PS3, and the D-pad was all-but not used. The L stick was used for both turning and winding-up spins/flips. It's not clear whether that's how the final game will be, but I told the guy I missed having them separated. Although, it wasn't bad like Shaun White or Amped where in order to do backflips you have to slow down :lol . It was like the turning controls disappeared when you held down jump, and were replaced with the winding controls.

That brings me to the jumping. There are two ways to jump. #1 is hold down X like usual. #2 is R stick held down, then flipped up like in Skate. I switched between the two and couldn't decide which one I liked better (really). Both methods were very function and felt just fine. Don't worry, there's no need to get all worried about "oh god they're turning into Skate," because they're totally not.

The in-air trick controls were the part I didn't really get. I was telling the guy that I was an SSX3 player and asking "how do I do this, do that, can I tweak, how do I do an uber", and he didn't want to give me solid answers because the trick-system is still being worked on. However, the way it played was the R stick up/down/left/right corresponded to grabbing the top/bottom/left/right of the board. The odd thing is the face buttons did the same thing. There was no "hold triangle to do an indie" - the buttons still corresponded to different sides of the board. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to try every button combo to see what would happen (obviously, you can hold 4 buttons at once but only 1 direction on a stick), but they really seemed to function the same as the stick. I then asked "oh so is it like Skate where I can diagonally move the stick and stuff and I do different grabs?" He said it would be but they're still making it ;). He very-much made it sound like the trick system is in flux right now. I was sort of doing ubers out of nowhere without knowing what I was doing, and I wasn't sure how do to different grabs and tweaks, but it was whatever. I'm not sweating it, because the guy was right there saying it wasn't finished, and I believed him, so no harm no foul. I'm sure when they do nail-down the trick system it'll feel 10x better than what I played. And I was playing something that was about as fun as Shawn White's trick stick, so take that for what it's worth.

The Track

One thing I've been curious about is whether the mountains are open world, or series of enclosed tracks. So naturally I restarted, turned right, and boarded off the track. I went about 30 yards over what was obviously not supposed to be seen, then reached where the geometry ended and only skybox remained. So that answers that question I guess! The guy then told me that, indeed, it was not an open world game. Their eventual aim, he said, is to make natural barriers that look legit, and that players wouldn't really want to go over anyways. So it seems they're using the topography data as a foundation for all their levels, but that they are that: levels. Earlier on in the presentation the person talking noted that "raw topography data makes awful levels", which makes sense. Personally, I'm really glad they're going in this direction. Plus, both the trick and race tracks definitely had paths continuing on below, making it seem that you can probably board from peak to base seamlessly on these mountains. And who knows if each mountain will have multiple tracks that take you to the bottom (a la On Tour)? I can't say, but I wouldn't rule it out.

Other than that, the Himalayas track was pretty cool. It was very wide with lots of paths and ways to trick off things. It was a fun little showoff stage.

Loadouts? (Question Mark?)
I tried quitting out of the event to start it from the menu (ha-HAH, I am sneaky) to get a closer look at the character-select screen that they briefly showed in the first part of the presentation, but didn't want to talk about. You select a character, board, and 2 (or was it 3?) other options. The guy told me I wasn't supposed to see it, so I only got the slightest of peeks, but it's pretty interesting stuff. It appears things like the squirrel-suit are 1 of many tools to choose from. I also noticed that "boost" was something selected in another slot. Perhaps the boost button can be set up to do other functions? I don't know, maybe. Plus, at the very bottom is a dialogue that says "chance of success: ___". This makes me think that you can loadout your character however the hell you want, regardless of the event. That wing-suit jump at the start of the deadly-descent? Maybe you don't have to do it if you don't want! Who knows! Speculation!

The Uber-trick shockwave thing
Yeah, it's sort of weird, but not as bad as it looked in the videos. Interesting to note: they are not exclusive to the trick mode. The guy I was talking to said that they will also factor into races, perhaps letting tricking give you the ability to knock riders away from you upon landing. He was sort of hand-wavy about it, because apparently it's another feature they're still playing around with.

However, I got one chance at this thing to give him a little bit of feedback, and I spent it on this feature. I told him that whatever they have this shockwave do, I don't think it should slow your character down. I likened it to slow-mo uber tricks in On Tour. I explained that I thought the slow-mo in that killed your flow in-game, and that the slowing-effect of the shockwave was analogous to it. He kind of nodded and was like "alright, that's some good feedback". Not sure if anything will come of it, but hey, I said something regardless.

The Graphics
The game looked surprisingly good playing it first-hand. You don't need to worry about the level of detail on the characters - they looked great. And overall the visuals the game is throwing on the screen are pleasing to the eye, just exaggerated enough to look like SSX, and all-around pretty impressive. The game ran very smooth, as well. Of course, when I stopped moving and really took a close look it started to look kind of underwelming (you've all seen the screenshots and videos of the 3 tracks). Not to mention, that avalanche-snow in the deadly-descent was a very cheesy-looking particle effect. However, given the state the game is in right now, it's probably par for the course. Given that the trick-system isn't even finished, I'm surprised they've completed this big an art-pass at all. ;)



tl;dr, Here's what I found out:
-There are a lot of fucking mountains in this game.
-The menu is great.
-Mountains are not open sandboxes. Topographic data is (presumably) being used as the foundation for enclosed levels and the 3D skyboxes. They'll probably make it so there's no need for an "Out of Bounds" reset thing, but the tracks do have boundaries. I think this is a good move on their part.
-The boarding feels more weighty than past games, like the characters preserve momentum (no spinning on a dime just by holding left or right).
-The trick-system and controls are yet to be nailed down.
-You can use either the R stick or X/A button to jump.
-Steering and winding spins/flips is (for now) all on the L stick.
-You select loadouts for each event, which has at least enough flexibility to require a "chance of success" metric.
-I had fun playing it.
-The game is still early in production. Keep requesting features and giving feedback, because the game can and will change!
Last edited by Dr. Spud on Wed Jun 08, 2011 11:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Wed Jun 08, 2011 11:09 pm

well, so much for being one of the first 5 play it! jk, i'm just being jealous.

damn! good news. not sure i like the whole L stick and a/x or skate ollie jump, but i guess it could be worse. i just really hope they nail it down. stoked to see it!

Wed Jun 08, 2011 11:13 pm

This is AMAZING! Spud you are my hero, thank you for sharing your experiences first hand.

Since I have the opportunity, I want to ask a few questions from what you experienced:
- Loadout: you said you weren't supposed to see it, but you did anyways. Can you go into more detail about what you saw? Did you see character boxes? (maybe boxes with questionmarks representing who you can play as?). How many items did you see? Did the interface seem easy to go through?
- Shockwave: Is this the only way to knock people out? Can you punch? Can you go into more detail about what each of the controls did (at least those that you remember)?

SO glad about the Out of Bounds thing. I'm really happy that they still restrict you!

Wed Jun 08, 2011 11:22 pm

Thanks for posting this interesting info, can't wait to hear what else Tunes, Sick One, and Gondee can find out!

Wed Jun 08, 2011 11:34 pm

Thanks a lot for the impressions, interesting info!

Good job telling him the shockwave pause is retarded. :)

Thu Jun 09, 2011 1:26 am

Thanks! Great info. Using the right analog stick for tricks was actually an original idea from On Tour.

I knew this has to be pre-alpha but the tunnel level in Kenya looked pretty complete to me. I can't help but ask what happened to all the trees? I hope they will add them during the final stages.

And thanks for telling about the shockwave thing. It's completely redundant.

Thu Jun 09, 2011 1:30 am

Kav wrote:Since I have the opportunity, I want to ask a few questions from what you experienced:
- Loadout: you said you weren't supposed to see it, but you did anyways. Can you go into more detail about what you saw? Did you see character boxes? (maybe boxes with questionmarks representing who you can play as?). How many items did you see? Did the interface seem easy to go through?
- Shockwave: Is this the only way to knock people out? Can you punch? Can you go into more detail about what each of the controls did (at least those that you remember)?


The character selection didn't have empty spaces, it was the kind of thing where a queue of cards with their portraits on them slid onto the screen, so I only saw 3. In terms of items, it seemed like there were a whole bunch. For the 1 category I clicked on, a grid of 12 or so things was visible (but I didn't actually see what they were, so I don't know if there weren't duplicates or whatnot).

I didn't get to play the race event, so can't say how the shockwave plays out during it; I just know what the dev told me about it. And I don't think I could punch, so for now I guess that's a no.

I didn't remember how I did specific grabs or ubers, but there's few more tidbits about the controls. I did have to get into "tricky" mode to do ubers, and I can also say the R stick wasn't the same as the On Tour uber system. It let me do both grabs and ubers, so there was a little more to it. It definitely didn't force be to do ubers when I was Tricky, yet I was still using the R stick.

I guess I also forgot to mention that to grind I had to press L2 - may or may not be important.

Thu Jun 09, 2011 1:42 am

Thanks alot for your report, Spud, it was a nice reading. :)

Thu Jun 09, 2011 3:30 am

Superbly balanced post Dr. Spud. Glad it felt fun playing it (albeit a very early version), sounds positive. Thanks for the info.

Thu Jun 09, 2011 3:51 am

MacsimousOwnag3 wrote:Thanks for posting this interesting info, can't wait to hear what else Tunes, Sick One, and Gondee can find out!


We'll probably be playing the same exact demo so dont expect too much.

Thanks for your report spud and i hope you enjoyed playing. This extremely long and detailed post is appreciated But to be honest i didnt read your post on the grounds of i wanna see it for myself. I dont wanna travel all the way to vancouver to play this little demo already knowing what its like.

Thu Jun 09, 2011 3:56 am

I was watching the Survive It video and ol' Toddy mentioned you could trigger an avalanche in any event, so if the camera angle stays normal during those ones, maybe I won't mind these 'cinematic set pieces' so much. Though, I don't know how well it'll translate into the other ones. What were they anyway? Freezing, rock fall, lack of oxygen, what else? I'm eagerly waiting to see how they'll make suffocation cinematic.


Were there any sounds? Music? Anything worth mentioning on that?

Thu Jun 09, 2011 5:44 am

Todd Batty made sure to mention how the Kilimanjaro mountain was huge and completely open to ride on when talking about the fact the race it track was a little short. So... Who to believe in...

It's clear you found barriers. Yet he mentions all mountains will be open and huge.

Thu Jun 09, 2011 9:10 am

bakalhau wrote:Todd Batty made sure to mention how the Kilimanjaro mountain was huge and completely open to ride on when talking about the fact the race it track was a little short. So... Who to believe in...

It's clear you found barriers. Yet he mentions all mountains will be open and huge.


The game can't be completely open, otherwise how are we going to race it? If you saw the race it video, I think that's pretty much the best example so far of what they meant by open and huge, everyone drops into a crater and races within the crater, but are able to take as many routes as they'd like - unlike all the past SSX games where there was always a single route that you had to follow, with occasional shortcuts. It's not as though you can go around the crater, and even if you could - who would? You wouldn't win the race by spending all your effort trying to not enter it.

And thanks Spud for answering my questions :) Really insightful, I'm excited to see what the new items are. This game's sounding kind of like LOZ with the items :lol

Thu Jun 09, 2011 10:19 am

does anyone else think that L2 to grind is lame? this control system already sounds confusing...

Thu Jun 09, 2011 10:59 am

I agree Tunes, feels too Tony Hawk. I'm also not sure if I'll get used to face buttons for grabs either. It's going to be harder to do combinations on face buttons than shoulder buttons. You guys need to push for shoulder grabs!

Thu Jun 09, 2011 11:28 am

Nice once Dr. Spud, thanks for the hands on info :thumbsup

Thu Jun 09, 2011 12:07 pm

You are awesome, Dr. Spud! Thanks for writing all that out and giving us the details they haven't touched on during all the video time. I'm going to pick a few of your points to respond to that I found the most interesting.

That brings me to the jumping. There are two ways to jump. #1 is hold down X like usual. #2 is R stick held down, then flipped up like in Skate. I switched between the two and couldn't decide which one I liked better (really). Both methods were very function and felt just fine. Don't worry, there's no need to get all worried about "oh god they're turning into Skate," because they're totally not.

I hope not, because I don't consider flipping the right analog up and down to be more intuitive than pushing the X button. So I take it there's no prewinding, like in SSX Blur. Not sure whether that's good or bad, since it means less control and that your jumps are always based on the speed you are going.

However, the way it played was the R stick up/down/left/right corresponded to grabbing the top/bottom/left/right of the board.

This is their "deep" trick system? A grab for each direction/face button? You didn't mention a tweak button, so I take it the only way to do Uber tricks is to get "Tricky", which means that every time I jump with Tricky, I will do an Uber trick. You mentioned you didn't think that was the case, but I would wager you were mistaken and just did regular grabs when the Tricky bar ran out. It only seems to last no more than a few seconds and is wildly variable on its duration. Without some button input to activate Uber tricks, you will do them every time you jump with "Tricky" full, which gives you less choice in how you control your character's tricks than last games. It's a bit like SSX On Tour, where when you got trick and touched the right analog, you did an Uber trick. If the shoulder buttons are unused, have some button activate Uber tricks for an "Advanced" control setting.

I then asked "oh so is it like Skate where I can diagonally move the stick and stuff and I do different grabs?" He said it would be but they're still making it

This is like Skate - and like On Tour. So despite saying it wouldn't be like Skate they are still leaning towards that direction, and they've already done something like this in the past (Trick Stick in On Tour) and shown it was less-deep gameplaywise than SSX 3. I hope they come up with some way to deepen the overall system.

One thing I've been curious about is whether the mountains are open world, or series of enclosed tracks. So naturally I restarted, turned right, and boarded off the track. I went about 30 yards over what was obviously not supposed to be seen, then reached where the geometry ended and only skybox remained. So that answers that question I guess!

Of course they are only enclosed tracks. If you jump all over the world to play them using this Google Earth interface, they would have to have thousands of miles of terrain between each mountain range. :lol I swear the EA guys think gamers can't think for themselves. :rolleyes

The guy then told me that, indeed, it was not an open world game. Their eventual aim, he said, is to make natural barriers that look legit, and that players wouldn't really want to go over anyways.

Peter Moore is full of hot air - he might go on and on about how this game is Open World, and it might have small sections of Open World (ie. if a mountain range like Patagonia is made up of 3 mountains, they might connect those 3 mountains, but they won't connect Patagonia to any other range since it is in an entirely different continent.) But overall, it's going to be like Tricky was - tracks that are self-contained, each with a different theme. When they were talking about SSX going "back to its roots", I think this is what they were talking about. Oh, and don't expect any connected mountains to be as large as SSX 3. :no They'll be a 10-minutes each or something.

And if it's a series of separate, self-contained tracks, then we run into the same problems we always have - how do you deal with Out of Bounds areas? Will you reset the player with judicious OOB reset areas (like SSX 3), or just have them run into an invisible wall (like SSX OT)? My guess would be the second - but don't kid yourselves - there are ways of building these worlds, and EA Vancouver isn't rewriting the books on the game, despite what they may be saying. They'll resort to classic ways of building things as they always have, especially since they are more than halfway through the development cycle.

Earlier on in the presentation the person talking noted that "raw topography data makes awful levels", which makes sense

Again - of course it does. I think EA is trying to convey the sense that they built Mountain Man and pushed a button and had 70 full-formed mountains at your fingertips. I'm sure it was nothing more than raw geometry unsuitable for playing. That's why Mountain Man is good in one sense: it was the hook needed to get the game approved by the executives and out the door. But it's bad in another - it created a TON of "content" which is nothing more than generic geometry, that the world builders have to go in and make fun now. That's why we may be seeing such bland tracks. You notice they only have 3 tracks ready, and the only one that is really in "classic" SSX feel is the Himalayas? It takes time to build these tracks, even if you start with generic geometry.

Yeah, it's sort of weird, but not as bad as it looked in the videos. Interesting to note: they are not exclusive to the trick mode. The guy I was talking to said that they will also factor into races, perhaps letting tricking give you the ability to knock riders away from you upon landing. He was sort of hand-wavy about it, because apparently it's another feature they're still playing around with.

Oh please, don't tell me they're gonna be that dense. :rolleyes The shockwave thing MUST be exclusive to Showoff, if you're gonna have it. I think this was just a person blowing smoke, I can't see them making the shockwave thing work in any sense in Racing. They just didn't have time to limit it to racing - the game is still pretty rough, as you've said.

So all-in-all, this hasn't really altered my expectations. They are where I expected them to be in the development process, and everything I've seen at E3 has reinforced my beliefs in why they picked the Deadly Descents direction and what they are looking at as far as content goes.

The real challenge here is the timeline. I think they might be a little behind on that stuff - they are more than halfway through the development cycle and they only have a few mountains done, and they have a ton of content they have promised. The good news is they seem to be gathering their resources to get everything in gear, but with less than 50% of the original timeline left, they have a challenge ahead of them.

Thu Jun 09, 2011 12:29 pm

The Kilimajaro cave reminded me a bit of Alaska's cave section actually, although much more naturally constructed and with no huge fans giving you a speed boost in the end.

Thu Jun 09, 2011 1:20 pm

Or Untracked's cave section.

Thu Jun 09, 2011 1:30 pm

gondee wrote:The real challenge here is the timeline. I think they might be a little behind on that stuff - they are more than halfway through the development cycle and they only have a few mountains done, and they have a ton of content they have promised. The good news is they seem to be gathering their resources to get everything in gear, but with less than 50% of the original timeline left, they have a challenge ahead of them.

Well, I don't care if they need to delay it a month or a year, this is the first promising SSX in a long time and I don't mind if I have to wait to get it! ;)

Thu Jun 09, 2011 1:33 pm

I agree with you andrew. I wouldn't mind if they delayed it a few months to make it from an 8.0 game to a 9.0 game. But I doubt the executives will approve the extra budget for it.

Thu Jun 09, 2011 2:36 pm

TrickyEmu wrote:I can't help but ask what happened to all the trees?


My guess is altitude and a ruddy big volcano happened to them :wink
Take a look in Google earth and you'll probably observe that huge forests are an endangered species around big mountains. You'll start to see them, hopefully also so in the game, as you enter the tree line, which is significantly lower than the peaks of most of these mountains.

Thu Jun 09, 2011 4:59 pm

Wow, this was really refreshing to read! Thanks Dr. Spud. This was kind of a heads up for me, because anything still goes regrading the controls, characters, environment, etc. There's still 7 months left but I'm glad to know SSX is still in there somewhere.

The controls sound troubling. Thanks for letting them know about the shockwave, I hope they keep it around and tweak around it so it can be a win/win for everyone.

Thu Jun 09, 2011 6:42 pm

gondee wrote:You are awesome, Dr. Spud! Thanks for writing all that out and giving us the details they haven't touched on during all the video time. I'm going to pick a few of your points to respond to that I found the most interesting.

...

So all-in-all, this hasn't really altered my expectations. They are where I expected them to be in the development process, and everything I've seen at E3 has reinforced my beliefs in why they picked the Deadly Descents direction and what they are looking at as far as content goes.

The real challenge here is the timeline. I think they might be a little behind on that stuff - they are more than halfway through the development cycle and they only have a few mountains done, and they have a ton of content they have promised. The good news is they seem to be gathering their resources to get everything in gear, but with less than 50% of the original timeline left, they have a challenge ahead of them.


One takeaway from the amount of video game coverage / podcasts that I take in is that it's difficult to track the progress of a game based on a preview demo.

The demo build would have been taken out of the production code months ago, and polished up for e3 (and the "first look" event). At least some of the things we're talking about have already been implemented into the actual game.


As the guy who's been harping on the lack of control detail....what I'm hearing isn't much of a surprise to me. For all the talk about how innovative and improved the Todd Batty 1.0 controls were, it seems to me like the game does less with its controls, and not more than SSX 3 (which I list exclusively, since it added hand-plants and board presses over Tricky). In one of the facebook videos, I did hear the first hints of Batty 2.0....in that they're looking into adding the classic controls. (I take that to mean the current build has that option, but they haven't committed to it yet. I'm guessing they're waiting to see what kind of feedback they get, between e3 and the first look contest.)


Controls are the biggest hurdle that the game developers need to get over before I can commit to buying this game.

Thu Jun 09, 2011 6:52 pm

bjkrautk wrote:Controls are the biggest hurdle that the game developers need to get over before I can commit to buying this game.

I absolutely agree, that's why I pushed it so hard during the live event today. I hope I didn't sound mean to Todd. =/
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