Turn 10 Reviving Classic Forza Ethos for Next Motorsport – FullThrottle Media
Turn 10 Studios aims to revive the ethos of its classic Forza Motorsport game experiences and incorporate them into the philosophy of its next installment into the track-focused racing franchise. Here's the latest from Chris Esaki on the “built, not bought” Forza concept.
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Turn 10 Studios aims to revive the ethos of its classic Forza Motorsport game experiences and incorporate them into the philosophy of its next installment into the track-focused racing franchise. This idea, infused into the “built, not bought” concept that is a core viewpoint of the next title, was discussed on the latest edition of the Forza Monthlybroadcast show by Chris Esaki, a Creative Director on the Forza franchise alongside Community Manager Brian Ekberg.
FORZA RACE REGULATIONS
Esaki began by discussing the team’s continued investment into its Forza Race Regulationsadjudication system. There’s still a lot of learnings from the feature the team would like to gather, so therefore to increase its coverage, the developer will be rolling out Forza Race Regulations into its A Class and S Class Hoppers in Forza Motorsport 7 sometime at the beginning of September.
This will allow Turn 10 to get additional data, insight and feedback to assist with future development of the regulations system. Esaki mentioned that A Class and S Class Hoppers are the two most popular Multiplayer Hoppers outside of the Forza Race Regulations Betafor circuit racing. Whilst there’s still many people playing Open Meetups, the Leagues system doesn’t have a huge population compared to the aforementioned Hoppers.
Esaki also noted that Forza Race Regulations uses an “automation style” that isn’t ready to be deployed across the entire game, which means enabling the adjudication system in only a few Hoppers is a much safer approach for the team to take. Whilst this doesn’t mean any further development on Forza Motorsport 7, which concluded with the release of the August 2019 Update, it does allow Turn 10 to deploy a super small change into the game that will help the team on future upgrades to the Forza Race Regulations infrastructure.
TURN 10 STUDIO FOCUS – FORZA AUDIO DIRECTION
With attention shifting towards the next installmentinto the Forza Motorsport series, Esaki discussed the overall focus of the studio and revealed that most development internally is on tools, framework and pipeline. Those working on such aspects of the game and its ForzaTech engine aren’t necessarily feature developers, they aren’t working on Forza Race Regulations, nor Driver Gear, so they don’t get discussed a lot since they aren’t forward-facing features, but rather the underpinnings of the game. The work done across tools, framework and pipeline is what allows Turn 10 to build cars, tracks and “ship to themselves,” a term used internally that sees the team iterate much faster. Esaki hopes to show off more of their work in the future.
Sound is one area that’s receiving significant overhauls in the next Forza Motorsport game. Led by Audio Director Chase Combs, his team are building a larger system around customization and even sound customization that is directly about how you put together your car. They noticed EA and Ghost Games launch their new NFS Heat Studio app for its upcoming open-world street racer, delivering new customization options along with exhaust sound tuning. Esaki admitted that it’s “really, really cool – our audio team is really excited about that.”
Turn 10 is also trying to figure out a system that programmatically generates different sounds, tones and resonates, based on how you put the car together – therefore shaping the audio of the vehicle centered around your build. Obviously, Forza isn’t a car building simulation, but the audio team is looking at ways it can bring this personalization to life when you are upgrading and building your car. “It’s a pretty cool system, we’ve seen some demos of it already,” Esaki said. “It’s pretty exciting.”
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