Second, I’m happy to give you the final installment of our behind-the-scenes look at ModNation Racers PSP. It was a crazy year, and in this video you can see it all come together as we get ready to ship for our May 25th shelf date. As you saw in the last video, we have some of the best programmers and artists in the industry and in this follow-up you can see how the entire team comes together, whether at 10am or 4am, to ship a killer game. Working side by side with us is our QA group. You met several testers and management in the last vid, and here you will see how integral this talented, dedicated group is.

This game has been an amazing journey and we are all very proud to be part of the ModNation family. Keep an eye out for some of the names you see in these videos while racing and throughout the community. Our guys have made some great Mods (including Biff and Gary, Mom, and the rest of the Career family), Karts, and Tracks that are some of our favorites. The thousands of creations that the community has already published is making our goal of unlimited download possibilities become a reality!

Hope you all have enjoyed the look ‘behind the curtain’ and enjoy the game as much as we do.

What we haven’t talked about yet is price. You can get all of this amazing content for a low price of $29.99, whether you prefer to buy it on UMD or digitally through the PlayStation Store. With over 25 tracks, a PSP-version exclusive Last Kart Standing Mode, and virtually endless user-generated content, this really is an incredible purchase for the long summer days.

Speaking of long days…just how hard have we been working? Well I kind of touched on that in my previous post, when I mentioned a Behind-the-Scenes video that was coming. It’s here now to watch, and watching it myself I am reminded of all the fun we had making ModNation Racers as well as all that hard work. Throughout the video you’ll see some of our daily meetings, trips to QA, and nearly every person focused on making the game all that it is today!

From day 20 down to the final hours before we shipped, from funny moments to the serious make-or-break decisions that have to be made on the fly, everything is chronicled in this video. You will see the design decisions, bug reviews, programmers and artists working side-by-side and some of the levity that breaks the tension of a team at 4am.

Anyway, hope you all enjoy this first installment of the video, above. And alas, now I can finally see you on the track!

We were so stoked about all the cool things everyone has been saying about the game that we decided to put this demo out for everyone to get a little hands-on experience before hitting the track on May 25th, when the full game will be available. In this demo we included a couple of our favorite tracks, some familiar Mods and their karts, and of course, a sneak peek of our amazing Track Studio.

To start you off we dropped in eight Elite and Pre-made Mods and their karts to light up a couple of new tracks, including Lost Temple and Flaming Jumps. Both tracks provide all the opportunities you need for Big Air, Long Smooth Drifts, and lots of weapons to keep the action hot!

Again, with all of your comments about our Track Studio, we had to give you a little taste of creative freedom in our Alpine theme. With so many options for making each track unique and all your own, and so many track parts available we had to limit it in this specific demo, but we think you’ll really get the idea on all the possibilities available in the full version.

Thanks again for all of the support you all have shown us. We hope you have as much fun playing the demo as we did making it.

This video gives you a chance to meet the head of our programming staff and our art director and get our take on how it all came together. We’ll also give you an idea of some of our favorite parts of the game, such as the Track Studio and other Create tools!

Following this introduction we’ll start dropping some more behind the scenes vids that shows just what goes on “behind the curtain.”

Until then, enjoy this one and we’ll see you on the track May 25th!

Here’s where we left off: I have the terrain sculpted and painted, I have my ocean setting all lined up and got the track obstacles placed and modified their Dynamic Options. Now all that’s left for me is to put the final layer of polish on this track. I want to give it that certain something that will help it stand out amongst the crowd of other great user-generated content. I’ve seen some of the creations that people have been able to make using the Track Studio tools, so I’ll need every advantage possible if I want to make the top five weekly downloads!

One of the things I like to do with a track is use the theme-based trees and plants to give it a unique feel. This being the Seaside Theme, I have the option of using some palm trees, rocky outcroppings and a bunch of different plants and bushes.

It’s important to remember that when someone is racing your track, they’re not in the default birds-eye view. For a good idea of what people will see, I can go into the Prop Placement screen and press the Select button. This will take me down to a Track View and allow me to preview what things will look like when I’m actually racing! This function is great for lining up buildings, or for seeing how the layout of your trees will look, or whether you’ll get a nice shot of the sunset while racing over a hill. I go into this camera mode frequently while building a track, so I can get the best possible idea of how my track will look from a racer’s perspective.

There! All the details are in place. I added some directional signs, threw in some more trees, picked a sky selection that works best for my track, and populated the rest of the track with more theme-based props.

I’m now ready to Test Drive this track. Test Drive allows you to save your track, then hit the asphalt to see how your drift lines look, how the obstacles are tuned and, of course, how good your track looks from the racing perspective!

Yup! There it is! After about 15 minutes of creation and a few more minutes spent polishing the track to a shine, I’m now ready to share it with the rest of the ModNation world.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this Track Studio tour of one of the four themes available in ModNation Racers PSP. We’ve had a great time working on this game, so I hope you all have just as much fun playing it!

We’ll be hitting store shelves on May 25th, so start your engines and get ready to Race, Create and Share! I’ll see you on the track…

In today’s post, I’ll be populating that same track with a variety of the props available for use in our Track Studio – Seaside Theme. While I’ll only be showing one theme for this post, be sure to keep in mind that we will have four themes available when the game launches on May 25th!

So I’ve got the foundation of my track already in place and am now ready to throw down some props. There are some things on the HUD worth noticing. On the left side of the screen is the “Prop Thermometer.” As you start placing props, this gauge will start to fill up. It’s a quick visual representation of where you stand while you’re placing props, so you don’t get caught unaware if you’re not quite finished populating your track! The other important HUD element to note is the prop panel on the right side of the screen. This panel can be expanded by pressing the Circle button, which brings out a large, categorized prop menu, so you can browse through the props and categories with ease!

After finishing up the terrain, I like to populate all the track obstacles first, so I can get a feel for how the track will race. In this part of the track, I’ve placed some interactive track obstacles for the racers to contend with. Each interactive obstacle can have their “Dynamic Options” edited. That means you can adjust the speed at which the obstacle occurs, the frequency, trajectory, the initial delay, and so forth. If you want to make the obstacles easy to navigate, crank down the values. Want to test the skills of the people playing your track? Crank those values up!

Here’s a section of the track that has a tunnel built, with a kart launcher guarded by some “Wanderers.” These particular wanderers have their “Dynamic Options” set to stay in one place and jump up and down. I’ve got to get my timing just right to sneak under them to hit the kart launcher, which I have set up as a shortcut. If I mess up on my timing, those wanderers will explode my kart and I will have wasted precious time re-spawning. You can set up endless scenarios such as these, as you create a track that you can publish to the world and show everyone your track building prowess!

In these pictures I’ve started to populate the beach area of my track with buildings, boats and some signs. I’ve also changed the track surface to a cobblestone pavement with red brick run-offs. You’ll also notice I changed the racing style fence to a lamppost and chain style of fence. The combinations are limitless when customizing the track to your needs! Each theme boasts their own style of pavements, run-offs, fences, buildings, trees, rocks, plants, wall rides, skies… You name it!

In these screenshots I got the buildings set up to my liking, touched up on the heights of the environment a little bit to fit the buildings, threw in some boats, some trees, a communications tower and changed up the default fences, pavement and run-offs. This track is just about ready to race! I’ve still got a lot of space left on my “Prop Thermometer,” so stay tuned for my next blog post. It’ll include the small details that make a track look pro, like checking the different skies to see which lighting and backdrop settings look best for my track or placing plants, chairs, tables, phone booths, rocks, trees, signs, chevron signs, rumble pieces… so many choices!

I’ll also showcase the whole track with all the fixings as I take it for a test drive! See you next time!

We start off by selecting one of the four available ModNation Racers PSP themes; I am going with the Seaside Theme. In this post I’ll explore the ability to drive the “spline” for the first time (to create the foundation of the track) and also shape, sculpt and paint the terrain to give the track some personality.

So, first we start off by deciding where we want to plop the Start Gate down by pressing the L button… and then we’re off! You’ll notice a couple of things on the “First Drive” screen.

The first thing of note is the mini-map in the lower right corner of the screen that gives you a birds-eye view of what shape your track will be. Another thing that you’ll notice is the leader lines ahead of you. These are the “Auto-Complete” lines that, if you hold down the Triangle button, will auto-drive the rest of the track for you. For this particular track though, I want to get a little more creative. You’ll also notice the “Track Remaining” meter, but we’ll get to that in a minute…

Okay, so I am going to go ahead and start driving my track using the same controls as in the game (accelerate and steer). If you want to get even more variety out of the First Drive, pressing the X button raises the track and the Square button lowers it (changing elevation gives you a lot of unique situations to set up when we get to preparing the race).

All right, we have a pretty good track spline going right now and you’ll see that the Track Meter at the bottom is nearing full. At this point I can just hold the Triangle button to complete the track. Easy, huh?

That brings us to one of my favorite parts of track creation, Deform Terrain. So here we have the green selection cursor (which is one of the main tools used throughout Track Studio) and on the right side of the screen we have the Terrain Brushes. Now the first thing I like to do is press the L button to Zoom all the way out and check out my track and how it fits into the rest of the environment.

From this starting view I can visualize where I want a… seaside community. So I choose the Terrain Brush at the top of the list and hold the Square button to sink the terrain, creating some water. By pressing the Circle button I can control the size of the brush to something that’s more to my liking! Now let’s bring in a little water from that Ocean out there…

The Deform Terrain tool is quick and intuitive to use, allowing you to create some great cliffs, hillsides, lakes and mountains in just minutes! Here, I’ve decided to make the raised portion of the track my mountainous area. All said and done, I’ve spent about three minutes in Track Studio so far.

I’ve got some hills set up, a nice beach near the water and a mini-archipelago. Now I’m going to give the track a little bit of flavor by painting the terrain. With the Paint Terrain tool, you can change the terrain color in big swipes for quick changes, or you can get really detailed by breaking out the precision sized Terrain Brush and highlight changes in the terrain. I took a couple minutes to really flesh out the environment in the custom colors to add a lot of depth to the terrain. You can get as detailed as you want!

As you can see, you’re only really limited by your own imagination! Here are a couple more pictures of my track to give you all a good view of how quick and easy it is to set up and beautify a track in ModNation Racers PSP! And we’re just getting’ started…

Be sure to check out my next post, where I’ll take this track and populate it with a wide selection of items! I’ll be throwing down buildings, interactive objects, kart launchers, trees, chairs, vending karts, restaurants, billboards, fences, spectators…well, you get the idea.