Thrillville Developer Diary, entry 6
There’s only about a week left until Thrillville‘s eagerly-awaited release, and today we’re bringing you guys the sixth installment in the Thrillville Dev Diaries. You might remember that the fifth installment talked about building the game from the ground up for the PSP, PS2, and Xbox. Well, the sixth installment focuses on one of the key aspects of game creation: research.
How does one really start when faced with the prospect of creating such a game? According to Jonny Watts, Senior Producer at Frontier Development and the Dev Diary’s author, the first thing the development team did when they first got together was go on a trip to Blackpool, one of UK’s top theme parks. This actually worked twofold: the setting provided the devs with a great “getting to know you” experience, and it also gave them a chance to study the rollercoasters up close and personal.
In the course of the game’s development, the team also relied on a friend of theirs named John Wardley, a real-life roller-coaster designer. Wardley counts coaster greats such as Air, Oblivion, and Nemesis among the number of rollercoasters he has worked on. This combination of the team’s “research” methods and Wardley’s expertise has resulted in Thrillville‘s massive variety and depth of gameplay as a videogame. Oh, and speaking of gameplay, Watts had this to say on the subject:
Without exception, everyone working on the game is a keen videogamer, and has been since childhood. I’d hate to calculate the number of years – make that decades – of game-playing experience that the team has in total. This vast experience and love of games has informed our development of Thrillville, so you’ll find every gameplay nuance you’d expect to find in such classic genres as Thrillville’s driving games and first-person shooters. Meanwhile, our dance game has been crafted with genuine respect for the genre, and of course Thrillville’s arcade game pays homage to some excellent classics that have gone before – with our own unique twists, of course. There are also real surprises like Saucer Sumo and Trampolines – the list goes on.
It definitely sounds like Thrillville‘s development was a lot of fun, so we’re also expecting the game to deliver the goods. Thrillville will hit stores in November 21, so if you’re planning to catch a ride on one of them iron monsters, you better mark the date down on your calendars. Check out the screenshots for a sneak peek. If you wanna see the rollercoasters in action, check out this previous QJ article.
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There’s only about a week left until Thrillville‘s eagerly-awaited release, and today we’re bringing you guys the sixth installment in the Thrillville Dev Diaries. You might remember that the fifth installment talked about building the game from the ground up for the PSP, PS2, and Xbox. Well, the sixth installment focuses on one of the key aspects of game creation: research.
How does one really start when faced with the prospect of creating such a game? According to Jonny Watts, Senior Producer at Frontier Development and the Dev Diary’s author, the first thing the development team did when they first got together was go on a trip to Blackpool, one of UK’s top theme parks. This actually worked twofold: the setting provided the devs with a great “getting to know you” experience, and it also gave them a chance to study the rollercoasters up close and personal.
In the course of the game’s development, the team also relied on a friend of theirs named John Wardley, a real-life roller-coaster designer. Wardley counts coaster greats such as Air, Oblivion, and Nemesis among the number of rollercoasters he has worked on. This combination of the team’s “research” methods and Wardley’s expertise has resulted in Thrillville‘s massive variety and depth of gameplay as a videogame. Oh, and speaking of gameplay, Watts had this to say on the subject:
Without exception, everyone working on the game is a keen videogamer, and has been since childhood. I’d hate to calculate the number of years – make that decades – of game-playing experience that the team has in total. This vast experience and love of games has informed our development of Thrillville, so you’ll find every gameplay nuance you’d expect to find in such classic genres as Thrillville’s driving games and first-person shooters. Meanwhile, our dance game has been crafted with genuine respect for the genre, and of course Thrillville’s arcade game pays homage to some excellent classics that have gone before – with our own unique twists, of course. There are also real surprises like Saucer Sumo and Trampolines – the list goes on.
It definitely sounds like Thrillville‘s development was a lot of fun, so we’re also expecting the game to deliver the goods. Thrillville will hit stores in November 21, so if you’re planning to catch a ride on one of them iron monsters, you better mark the date down on your calendars. Check out the screenshots for a sneak peek. If you wanna see the rollercoasters in action, check out this previous QJ article.
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