We got an early Christmas present from Santa/Bernard at Pole Position yesterday - more car sound for Power Racing! This time for one of the “American” cars (the design, properties etc is inspired by a variety of cars from over there…)

Sounds fantastic, as always, and I’m still amazed with the impact great sound has on the entire gaming experience.

Completely forgot to tell you, we had our weekly demo yesterday (part of the sprint review: demo, retrospective and impediment backlog) where everyone (external stakeholders, other teams etc) gets to see what’s been worked on during the sprint. Or rather, what’s been worked on and finished = what stories are “done done”. Done done means, according to our definition of done, that the code is deployed to next release environment, comitted to sprint branch, tested and bug free and we’ve not added to the technical dept.

So, there’s been much sound work done lately. As you know we’re working with the Supernaturally Talented guys at Pole Position. Erik and Bernard are working hard to get the tools and program adjusted, tuned and just like Pole want them to be. And at yesterday’s demo  we could “show” some new sounds! Updated curbs, environment and transmission sounds if I’m not mistaking. And there are plenty more to come during the next couple of months.

One don’t always realize the importance of sound, until it’s removed. Sound has a magical impact on our perception of presence. Add that wind, vague noice from the gravel or curbs etc etc and suddenly you’re THERE. You’re actually in the car, on the track, going like a billion km per hour hopefully in the wrong direction (adds that extra sense of recklessness that is SO much fun)

Whether it’s environmental sounds or music, it’s superior when it comes to adding nerve, atmosphere and …well presence. Imagine that tear filled ending in any rom com without the violins, the stabbings in Psycho with the sound muted, Silent Hill with a mix-tape soundtrack consisting of all the greatest hits by Vanilla Ice, 2 Unlimited, Britney Spears and Ace of Base… it simply wouldn’t be the same.

Sound matters. And to sort of prove my point I activate the classic Powerslave album, anno 1984, now transformed into a spotify playlist. I couldn’t be happier if I was twins. 

This weekend (as you can also read in Richards post) there was an intense event at Barkaby Airfield - a couple of the guys from the office and Max from Pole Position teamed up with some total racing maniacs for an entire day filled with fun and games = wicked Japanese cars, skid marks, smoking tires and what have you… I’ve seen the pictures and it looks awesome. Max and the rest of the guys were more than happy with the recordings (and the driving).

Don’t you just want their job?

So, what else is new? Well, this week we’ve had a really interesting and impressive meeting with some guys from Donya that create polygon reduction and optimization miracles. Of course, highly relevant to an online gaming company that certainly think that size matters! And people, let’s face it. Less is as a matter of fact less, not more, no matter what someone might try to tell you. It’s less. Littler. Not so much.

On the scrum side of things I can tell you that the burndown chart is looking great for the racing team this sprint! (and for those of you that aren’t familiar with the terminology - just follow the links to the Scrum Alliance’s glossary) My boys have worked really focused and estimated their slices well so the burndown looks splendid! I told them to take an hour off Friday afternoon but as usual they didn’t pay any attention to me.

Everybody seem to really enjoy working in a scrum environment. More power to the people that actually build the stuff, less talk about things that aren’t gonna happen anyway and more insight in what everbody is actually working on.

If you’ve ever thought of trying out agile development, read “Scrum and XP from the trenches” by Henrik Kniberg (or some other book on the subject - but Henriks book is very to the point without being to “heavy” for a beginner) After that - give it a try. Just do it, like som famous sports company usually says.

Have a great midsummer everyone!

Yesterday really sucked. =)

I had to spend the entire day with our sound supplier, at a closed-off airstrip (Barkaby Flygfält) in the outskirts of Stockholm. Oh, yes, together with a bunch of heavily tuned Japanese cars too; a Nissan Skyline GTR, a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution and a Subaru Impreza WRX STi. We were also visited by a couple of crazy BMW M3s and a Saab 9-3 Aero.

The mission? To record car sounds for Power Racing.

To help out with that, a bunch of car tuning and racing enthusiasts (THANKS, guys!) had joined with those maxed out cars, and given us permission to rig microphones at various places. We recorded things liker engine, turbo, BOV, intake, exhaust and cockpit. To be sure to get a really diverse range of samples to work with we recorded during slight, medium, heavy accellerations through all the gears, during idling, during engine breaking, starting, stopping, etc. We did pass-by:s too, to pick up that sick outside sound as the cars flew by. Trust me… 400 bhp in full accelleration is pretty noisy :-).

Additionally we also recorded tyre noises, skids and burnouts.

I really can’t wait to hear and experience the results of yesterday! One thing’s for sure: we’ll spend a great deal of time and energy on tweaking the sounds… Everyone in the team, many being sim racing geeks, we all know by experience how important that dimension of a racing game really is… Looking back now, I really feel that yesterday provided us with a great bank of raw material to nail that part of the game.

Imagine how much fun it was for me to get in my Volvo V50 diesel to drive home, after experiencing those 400+ bhp cars all day…

By the way, I forgot to introduce myself. I’m the executive producer at Power Challenge, and consequently of Power Racing. And I’m a petrol head and a racing game geek too

I don’t know if you remember, but I said something about our great sound guys at Pole Position and their next recording session on an air field… Well, it takes place on Sunday, it’s gonna be great and there will be three seriously cool Japanese cars making some serious noise. And yes, I’m gonna miss out completely.

There is a certain birthday party I have to attend to. My son’s. I guess it would be pretty rotten to just abandon ship and break a 13-year old’s heart. Even though we all know they’re only in it for the presents.

Best of luck to Max, Bernhard and Mats at Pole Position - I hope you’ll have a great day. Don’t forget the snap shots!

/ Linda

Hello you all! I guess you though the Power Challenge Racing Team had disappeared - but no. We’re still here, writing code, making schedules, drawing trees and what have you. Basically trying our very best to make this the best racing experience ever. Things have just been a bit…upside down around here lately. Everybody is still as busy as ever, no doubt about it, our focus is just slightly altered. There are som really important issues being handled, features being built and changes taking place in the soccer department - and of course we’re all joining in, making sure Power Soccer rises to yet another level.

Well not all of us actually. A couple of us are still keeping the racing game alive and kicking, building new tracks, designing more cars, dealing with network puzzles… All those things, give or take a few, that need to be taken care of before the release!

Another Very Important Part of a quality racing game is… the sound! Nothing gives you that illusion of presence and tingling sensation of speed like raw realistic high quality sound. Metal against metal, flying gravel and shrieking breaks. Of course we only want to give you the very best, and to make sure of that we hired the guys at Pole Position to do all of our sound work. They are complete racing AND music/sound freaks, so there couldn’t be anyone else more suited for the job. We just got some nice recordings from a stock car session - very nice. And in a couple of weeks, there will be another recording session with some serious driving: a bunch of japanese cars - on an airstrip… Hopefully closed off! Like I said, these guys are seriously into both cars and sound.

I promise to write again soon. Yes, seriously, I do. Even though we’re slightly behind the original schedule, we’re still destined to rule the racing world…

See ya!

// Linda

That might sound a bit dramatic, but I’m simply referring to the last day of the conference. It’s Friday afternoon on this side of the globe and everything is slowing down here at GDC. Simply not as many people running around crowding up the place. Of course there’s still that constant noice in the background of a couple of thousand people talking at the same time, in different languages barely disguised in English.

I didn’t write anything about what I did yesterday. Bad me (still blaming the jet lag). Among other things I invited Fabian (a new friend of ours here at GDC who’s representing Pole Position Production, our gifted sound providers) to come along and attend a roundtable session called “Hentai, Hardcore and Hotties: Sex in games”. As a “gender aware” human being I felt it to be my duty trying to spread the knowledge on these matters. However it didn’t quite live up to my expectations as the discussion turned out to focus more on branding issues (what will happen to my company - image wise - if we provide the technical solutions for a strip poker online game?) and other stuf in that area. Brenda Brathwaite, the speaker/moderator, is a veteran within the gaming industry and is no doubt an extremely well spoken and interesting person. And of course, in just one hour of discussion, there’s gotta be a lot of topics you DON’T have time to attend to.

Besides that I attended Laura Fryers lecture “Production Basics and Beyond”. Laura is also a veteran, now working as an executive producer at Microsoft. She came across as a naturally gifted speaker, her presentation was really funny yet serious at the same time. Of course, for me, it was very interesting listening to her as she’s a woman (yes it makes a slight difference as there are so few and it calms me down when they’re successful) working/struggling/coping with the same issues as I am - how to get that game out on time, at the right quality level, while keeping the team happy. Interesting was to hear how she, although concerned with how the team is doing, not at all seemed to consider game development being possible without the crunch process - unlike several other speakers on these subjects.

So that was great. And prior to this I had listened to another great lecture, held by Petter Sydow from Massive Entertainment. The topic was how to make a 90 + game (World In Conflict) while breaking all the rules. Besides being a catchy title for a lecture it referred to the change of project methodology that took place after several months of production. From handling things the old fashioned waterfall way the teams went agile, influenced bý scrum (which for you who don’t already know is one of several agile project management methods). And although the agile way is becoming more and more acknowledged and widespread through the game industry many people are still sceptical considering it to be a vague and uncertain way of production. However - Petter gave a presentation with examples tightly connected to the production process and the every day situations that occured during the development of World In Conflict. I’m extremely impressed they pulled this off, not only handling the transition to an agile working method mid way through the project - but also without any crunch… Go Petter and the teams!

Seriously, it’s truly inspiring and I only hope I can be just as wise and clever and super-talented in my role as a producer for my team.

Ok - now I still haven’t told you about todays lectures and no you’re not gonna hear about it either. Not now. I’ll be going in a minute so I’ll leave the Friday lecture excitement for a later post. I must keep myself busy at night aswell, leaving something to do later on. A hotel room doesn’t leave you with many choices really - the computer is your best bet.

Picked up a few dvd’s today on certain areas of game development. And I placed an order for the lecture dvd/audio recordings! All of them. So soon we can arrange miniature lectures for the entire teams at home, in the conference room! How about that folks?

And you poor guys at home having trouble with the coffee machine - you just wait, I’ll be back soon and of course I’ll sort all that out. Hang in there!

// Linda