Track environment ideas

[infoxicated]

For me, after the almost sterile cleanliness of Makana in Pure, I'd like to see a greater variety of environments in a future sequel to Wipeout. So here I'm just going to list a bunch of stuff I have in mind for what I'd want in the next one - bear with me.

I'm not saying they should be racing on the moon or in the jungle like in Fusion, but I'd quite like a more contrasting spread of track locations, and for them to be set at different times of day with random weather, too.

Imagine Gare d'europa at dawn, with smog hanging low around the buildings and billowing around the pack of AG craft as they race through the crisp morning. Or what about Vineta-K with a storm rolling into the shores of Makana, the palm trees swaying in the wind, ominous clouds in the sky, and the sea crashing in the bay.

Burnout 2 stands as a great example of the above - each of the tracks can be raced at different times of day, with different weather conditions, and the effect is tremendously immersive. It turns them from polygons and textures into living environments, and sets each new play apart from the last.

What I'd also like to see is the option for track to take its local time from the clock setting of my console. So if I'm particularly addicted and I play from the minute I get home on Friday night until I'm hallucinating from tiredness the following morning, I get to see the tracks get dark, the ambient sounds change through the night, and the sun come up in the morning to tell me I really should get some sleep.

Different track materials would be great for showing off the detail that's gone into each level. If I'm racing on an overpass above some city streets, it would be cool to have sections built from mesh so I can see the buildings rushing below. Imagine some semi-transparent sections on Sol 2 - vertigo city! As far as I can remember this happens in Fusion on a couple of the tracks, and I'd like to see it used again in future.

I'd also like to see the tracks change as they're raced on - weapon blast marks accumulating on the surface as each lap unfolds, as well as the impact marks from the craft as they hit the sides and bottom out. If a contender is eliminated I'd like to see the debris on the track, as well as the wrecked chassis of their ship sliding to a halt.

Track furniture appropriate to the setting helps the sense of speed, and I'd like to see more of it. Girders passing overhead, lamp posts rushing past, with accompanying woosh sounds. Other details like little AG bots hovering around the grid at the start, or filming the race, fans getting to their feet in the grandstands if something exciting happens on track would add to the realism and flesh out the universe. If I'm in a Feisar and I overtake a Piranha on the start/finish straight I want to see those blue and yellow Feisar fans waving their banners and jumping to their feet in the grandstand at turn one, cheering me on my way.

More grandstands! It's the most spectacular spectator sport in the world, yet historically most of the tracks have weaved their way through areas where the signs of people watching the racing are sparse to say the least. The noise of the fans at the start of a big championship race should be deafening - anyone who's ever watched the start of the Indy 500 will get what I mean here.

Tracks of different standards - if there's a league system where I can work my way up through the divisions I expect to be racing on more basic tracks to begin with. Parts of them looking a bit shabby, with people watching on bleachers rather than grandstands. There should be a big difference between, say, a rough and ready local track and one of the more modern venues like Vineta K.

Right, I think I've written enough at this point, and probably getting boring.

Anyone else have things to add?

[eLhabib]

+1
I'll have to think hard to add anything to that, you pretty much got it all - very nice ideas!

oh one thing: I would love to have a hangar of some sort in the background of the menues, and when you start a race, it seemlessly opens the roof and your craft is brought up to the starting grid. I loved the starting grid animation in Fusion, one of the few things it did better than the other wipeouts!

[Thruster2097]

+2 from me, because i'm so special.

Possible introduction of a voice guided "training" mode because I cant get to grips with this new sideshift turning thing.

Very nice touch about the time altering with the system clock. Reminds me of MSR for the dreamcast, its brilliant because it's simple and effective.

[mischiefdemon]

Love all the ideas so far.

Realistic ship damage could be interesting. Like if you mess up a hair pin and you go nose first into the wall I wanna see the nose bend and crumple. Maybe your ship would handle differently as a result.

Or is that getting too real?

[infoxicated]

Fusion had that, and it sucked a bit when the handling went, as it was like a double penalty. You could turn off the "realistic handling", though, so the effect of the ships being damaged was quite cool.

I know I strayed a little, but I want to keep this topic strictly about the track environments, so if we could stick to that I'd be grateful.

[xEik]

+3 because I'm a moderator. :

Muahaha, feel the abuse of power!

If extensive weather were added, I would not like the wind to affect the handling of the ship. It might not be realistic but this kind of random effects on piloting end up being annoying.

If I recall correctly, in the original WO you raced a circuit at different times of the day depending on the class (only Venom and Rapier).

And in a wave race 64 circuit the tides made you choose different paths which I found very original.

[Hellfire_WZ]

Yeah, if the handling is only slightly affected it'd be pretty good. Fusion's practically halved your craft's top speed for taking only a few hits, and that really put me off using the damage sim.

[Mobius]

Someone has been invading my thoughts again... ahhhhhgh!!!!

In other words... +4

[Sausehuhn]

Tracks should be at different places again, not just at one island or in one city.
You have more different places you could add. It's nearly impossible to find an island, that has all different sourroundings. Sure, it's no problem to make this possible in a game, but it's not really believable.
Wheater changing is a must. You shouldn't be able to set it yourself at first. So when you're in a league it should be random or done by the computer.
Just if you've got earned a goldmedall or something you should be able to set it by yourself.
I also would like to see detailed places with alot of atmosphere. Not just a few builidings and a few crafts lying around their programmed way again and again.
I would like to see small things like some towels hanging out of windows or newspapers on the track that are flying around when a craft passed by. Also 3D spectators with flags [like infox mentioned] and people with umbrellas when it's raining.
Also not just people on offical tribunes. Maybe people looking down to the track from high buildings or some persons that are looking out of their windows. They sould act, not just stand around and do nothing. They should shout out the names of the teams and say anything they want (and if they're not on offical tribunes they sould speak in their mother language. It makes no sense when a track is in Russia and the people speaking english [and don't say in 200 years we will all speak one language])

The track should reflect lightings - especially when it's raining. I love lightings in the dark and it just looks fantastic when they're passing by at high speed. The game should keep these holograms from Pure as well. They're looking really cool. Saw them on F-Zero and loved them from that point. I was very happy to see those ones on Pure.

I also would like to see more details on the track itself, I mean on the real road. Things like drains where water goes into. They're in Pure, but they don't look really realistic and more like these drains on the street.
I would like to see how water is flowing under long grids that are more futuristic than the ones in Pure.

Damage of the track must be there, too.

[LoneWolf]

think it would be nice

- a track in futuristic "Las Vegas", the first half of the track is desert and the other half you enter to the city where you see a lot of neons and stuff like that. the time dusk/night, or dusk and you see the sun rising in the horizon but is still kind of dark

- A european city track near of a carnival, amusing park or something when you see a giant carnival wheel with a lot of lights (someething like the special stage from Gran turismo 3). the city is located in a gulf or something and you can see the reflections of the citylights in the water.

- a Rio De Janeiro City based track

[Dogg Thang]

These are all great ideas. Definitely different times of day would be a huge thing for me, as many already know.

One thing I've always wanted since back in WO1 is to have country-specific track markings. Like you know the way road signs in certain countries have a very distinctive look - I always thought that things like that blue arrows and pick-ups in Korrodera should look unique to Russia (is was Russia wasn't it?). So US tracks would have their look and Europe would have its look etc. Almost like each country has its own AG association deciding their standards.

Also I'd love to see some more really open environments - huge fields either side of the track with only hints of the futuristic technology in the background for example.

[lunar]

While some might say it may be unrealistic, or dull, to have so many different race environments in a single place, as in Makana or Mega City, when it comes to tournaments isn`t it even more unrealistic to have pilots flying half way round the world to compete in a two or three minute race? I mean.... how far is it from Florion Heights to Mandrashee? Or from Talons Reach to Sagarmatha? A bloody long way for a very short bit of action.... and how do they get there? I suppose if they teleported there it might be worthwhile, but overall I`m quite happy with single locations, and see no reason why you can`t have plenty of variation within them.

As for the track environment itself I`d like to see more interaction with the surroundings, mainly: billboards that crumple when you hit them instead of behaving just the same as the walls - the sort of thing which will just make the experience more lifelike when things go wrong. I`d like to see the return of the wussbots. As for other details, I`m not too bothered about stuff you wouldn`t see at full speed in a race anyway, though anything which increases the sense of speed and excitement should of course be welcomed.

[Lance]

.
don't forget that in the summer Olympics, we often see very different milieus for different events only a few miles apart. there are some areas of the world, particularly regions bordering the sea, where snow and mountains, are close to hot deserts, and rivers, and lakes, and ocean. having short races in very different settings without long travel times between races is entirely believable even with our present means of transport. the environments for tracks in a single region do not have to be homogenised to one ''look'' in order to seem realistic
.

[eLhabib]

also, seeing as the AG-leagues are more of ONE BIG event, lasting, say, a week, rather than seperate events spreading out over a year, like F1, it only makes sense to have all the tracks closely together. Fans can buy a ticket for the whole tournament, rent a room on the island, and travel to the different racetracks in no time using the mono train.

[Drakkenmensch]

I've always felt it difficult to play through tournament games where events were spread all over the world - it would take days to travel form one spot to the other, adjusting to jet lag and accessing the various remote locations, often something as inane as "street full of people", hardly the setting for world class events. Pure is the first game that makes the concept hold tightly, and thus suspension of disbelief is all the easier for me.

[Seek100]

One thing I don't think many people realise, given the technology in use in wipEout, it's almost certain that you could travel from the US to say Russia across the Atlantic and Europe in a matter of hours rather than days, look at the speed wipEout craft travel at, even with today's tech I've travelled from Sicily to Essex England in 24 hours, that's about or a bit more than 3000km (just under 2000 miles for the metric impaired). In 2 centuries time public and private transportation will consist entirely of these AG craft, even if they don't go as fast as the wipEout racers, they'll still be able to do my journey from Sicly to England in a matter of hours rather than a day.

Also I don't buy the idea that all the races would take place over a week, it seems they only hold 1 championship per year - what the hell happens for the other 51 weeks of the year? Taking the 16 tracks of the FX300 league (Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta) if they hold a race every fortnight that's still only 32 weeks for the entire season leaving 20 weeks of downtime until the next tournament, this is about comparable to modern day F1. Holding all the races also doesn't make sense from a money-making perspective, if the corporations who advertise and broadcast the live feeds of the races want to make money through advertising and merchandising, it makes far more sense for the races to take place over the course of the year, if they're all done the same week (meaning an average of ~ 2.3 races per day) they'll not make much money from advertising the races, nor from merchandising as once the 'season' is over no one will care until the following year.

[mischiefdemon]

Everyone is coming up with ideas about the time of day being effected by the system clock... Which I really love the idea of.

How about doing the same for the weather? PS3 is going to be heavily online based so surely it'd beable to pick up the weather in the different parts of the world and portray that in game?

Also on certain days of the year, e.g. Valentines day, christmas or halloween the in game banners and adverts etc could change to reflect that particular day? There could be banners above the track like its a feastival or something?

Only ideas.

[infoxicated]

I did think of that, but then I figured "hey, it's two hundred years in the future... the weather could be doing what it likes!"

[steninja]

the time of day idea is well cool. i also prefer the idea of the league taking place over a longer period of time rather than a week. maybe a season stucture like F1 where every track is raced once in 1 season, im talkin all 3+ varriations of each track and maybe even the reveresed tracks too. with pilot and team league tables. obviously the weather will change over the season as summer and winter come and go etc..having to qualify for promotion to the next class/league. not like fusion where each league has a small selecion of different tracks.

other pilots develop relationships, opting to help u out or hold grudges.

insane spectators running across the track like in WRC.

birds to splatter or even bugs like in regular cars on the motorway n stuff

balloons and fallen banners

maybe, just maybe, a commentator

definitely deffo any reference to ninja's. maybe a team ninja

PSP support in which friends can spectate as would the real fans of AG racing

[randomperson1]

The PS3 is definitely going to be powerful enough to make the best wipeout ever!
The special effects could be amazing and weather effects are a definite forerunner!