Earlier this week, 1080° Snowboarding programmer and Vitei head Giles Goddard revealed that he was working on a prototype for a new snowboarding game, and in a recent interview, he elaborated by talking about how the game would be a spiritual successor to the game in how snow physics were accurately implemented. [Thanks, Eurogamer!]
Here are the highlights:
On the simulation of snow:
Giles Goddard, Vitei head: “”I’m aiming to emulate the snow across an entire mountain – that means overnight snowfalls lays fresh snow, you jump on your snowboard and go down and then compress the snow, and as you turn the snow pushes out and sprays across which then creates a new lump there which other people can then jump on that. It’s basically simulating snow realistically – a fluid simulation, but with snow.”
“1080° Snowboarding, I feel at least, there was so much depth to the control system, things like crouching down to go faster and then you have less control, when you jump and in order to soften the landing if you time the button press right your legs take the impact. One of the reasons for doing 1080° Snowboarding originally was to show off the controller of the N64 – the analogue stick side of it. Nintendo games up until that point were left, right, up and down. All the games that come out with the N64 were very much focused on the controller, and that pushed us towards that analogue feel.”
Other highlights:
- Goddard wants to add depth with the use of fresh snow, and the danger of causing an avalanche if the fresh snow is on too steep of an incline.
- The game will focus on optimizing for one particular platform, whatever that platform ends up being.
- Goddard believes the game will take 18 months to 2 years to complete, and some publishers are already interested. However, as Nintendo’s not involved, the 1080° brand won’t be used.
