Reviews for the HTH Tempest Pack

Reviews for the Tempest Pack, the new downloadable expansion pack for Hydro Thunder Hurricane, have been rolling in.  And the reviews are good.  

Here's what a few reviewers had to say:

Vector Unit have taken the triumph of Hydro Thunder Hurricane and given their fans even more to sink their teeth into, making it an essential purchase.

Console Arcade, 4/5

Over the top racing pitted with challenging maps created a great arena for players to relive and continue to have great memories of Hydrothunder. All of this for just 400 MS points, you can’t go wrong.

Gaming Truth, 4.5/5

The Tempest packs adds quite a lot to the great formula and should keep anyone who buys it bust for quite a few hours. ... If you enjoyed Hydro Thunder Hurricane, then this really is an essential purchase to expend this really enjoyable title....

- Game-Smack Ireland, 8/10

All in all, this is a great value for fans of the Hydro Thunder game. The new tracks are great, and if you enjoy player against other players, the X-Boats are a necessity...

- XBLA Fans, "Buy!"

Off-Topic: SO stoked for the Walking Dead premiere!

I know this doesn't have anything to do with video games, or Hydro Thunder, or Xboxes or whatever.  But I have the outlet so I'm going to use it:  

I am so stoked for the premiere of The Walking Dead this Sunday on AMC!

Ever since I first heard about this happening -- what, a year ago? -- and saw the trailer leaked from Comic-Con I've been counting the days.  And now the count is down to two.

I'm a strong proponent of the slow zombie genre.  None of that running crap.  For me, the zombie story is not about scary monsters -- it's about a force of nature, a slow wave of catastrophe that, unleashed, relentlessly and unstoppably lurches and seeps into every corner of human life.  

I love the old Romero movies, and I really liked Max Brooks' books World War Z and the Zombie Survival Guide, but for me the pinnacle of zombiedom is  Robert Kirkman's Walking Dead comic book series.  It's like he starts the story where most other stories leave off -- and then runs with it, and runs with it, and keeps on running.  The characters are so good, so noble and damaged... I don't know, I could go on.  

Anyway if you haven't heard of it and you like zombies (who doesn't these days?) then you should pick up the comics.  And I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the show to be good. 

One side note to any newcomers to the Walking Dead who happen to see the premiere:  The one thing -- the ONE THING -- that is kind of lame in the entire story happens right at the start.  It basically starts excactly the same way as 28 Days Later.  But don't let that bug you -- it's over quick, and it quickly goes off in its own direction and gets so, soooo good.

This fanboy rant brought to you by Matt, by the way.  Ralf doesn't care.  But maybe he will if he ever experiences the awesomeness.

Update on 2010-11-01 15:37 by Vector Unit

OK, I'm giving that first episode a "good" but not "blow my socks off great."  They've nailed the desolate post-Zombiepocalypse atmosphere, and the acting was pretty solid.  But we'll have to wait til Rick is reunited with his family and meets the rest of the survivors to judge whether AMC is going to deliver on the most important aspect of the series: the interpersonal relationships.

Vector Unit Game Engine

Ask a Developer!

Ben Wei, currently attending Purdue University (go Boilermakers!), asks us about our game engine:

Can you tell us more about it?  What is it called?  What sort of third-party tools and components did you use (things like physics, sounds, and even modeling programs interest me)?  Does your engine run on more than just the Xbox 360?

These days we refer to our engine simply as the Vector Engine.  When we first started our company, we explored using various middleware solutions, but none of them were a great fit for what we were trying to do.  Our most important requirement for an engine was content creator efficiency.  We chose this as our number one feature because we knew that as a small developer we would need to get the most out of our relatively small budgets to be competitive.

Our engine is able to achieve this efficiency with rapid iteration, a short learning curve, stable and intuitive tools, and keeping things simple.  Some examples of specific engine features which allow us to do this:

• Real-time telemetry between our tools and the game - when a content creator makes a modification in our game editor, the change can be seen instantly in the running game, on any platform.
• Assets are 'baked' on-demand by the game engine running on the target platform.  This means that there is no complicated set of processing tools to run on the PC after an asset is exported.  If a texture is modified, for example, the game itself will process this texture when needed.  No need to bake a bunch of assets that are not even in the part of the game you're working on.
• Game shaders run in hardware inside the Maya viewports.  Allowing artists to work directly with our game shaders saves a ton of iteration time.
• Visual scripting.  This is an intuitive way to create game logic.  If things get complicated enough where more control is needed (give me some lua!), then we might as well write it natively (C++).

Ok, got a little side-tracked there, but I guess the point I am trying to make is that content creation is king:  A game engine and tools are supposed to enable creation, not hinder it.

As for the next part of your question, the two pieces of middleware that we integrated for HTH are FMOD for audio, and Bullet Physics Library to handle collision detection and rigid body physics.  On the content creation side, we used Maya, Photoshop, and Crazy Bump.  For version control we're all about Subversion.

And yes, our engine is designed to be cross-platform.  Currently the two platforms we support are PC and Xbox360, but it will not be a problem to extend to more platforms when the need arises (e.g. PS3, Wii, iPhone, Android, Mac, whatever...).

Hydro Thunder Postmortem on Gamasutra

Our in-depth look at "what went right" and "what went wrong" during the development of Hydro Thunder Hurricane is now up on Gamasutra.  

We love reading developer Postmortems, at least the ones that don't BS around too much and actually fess up.  We tried to be as candid as possible in this one, and at the same time give a little perspective on what it's like making the switch from working for a big company to running your own studio.

Here's an excerpt:

When we started Vector Unit, we figured the experience we had as leads managing large teams at established game development studios would scale smoothly to the development of a smaller game project. If anything, we thought, it would be easier -- fewer moving parts. To some extent that ended up being true. What we didn't count on were the countless small surprises that small game development had in store for us.

You can read the full article here: Postmortem: Vector Unit's Hydro Thunder Hurricane

Keep 'em coming!

I have to admit:  I love getting fan mail.  

When you work at a big company like EA you don't really get much correspondence from the people who play your game.  I'm sure Spore and Madden fans send plenty of emails, but most of them end up in some PR inbox and rarely trickle out to the team that made the game.

Ever since HTH came out this summer, Vector Unit's received a pretty steady stream of emails.  Here's a particularly great one we got today, from Will Smith (I'm assuming not the Fresh Prince):

Just a very short note to say thanks. I have been playing games for so many years and this year have played all the "BIG" hits like Splinter Cell: C and Alan Wake; solid properties for sure.. But I have not enjoyed any game more than Hydro Thunder Hurricane. You guys and that SMALL team you have there have brought gaming back for me to what it once was.. I simply cannot believe how awesome this game looks, plays, and feels.. Ring Master is beyond addictive! Cannot wait to play Tempest Pack tomorrow!!

Thanks again of this great game -- please have more DLC for HTH! You've done wonders with this property!!

Ahh...that feels good.  Sometimes a bad review or a negative comment can get you down, and then an email like this makes it feel like all the hard work was worth it.

Most of the emails we get are people like Will who just write to say that they like (or love!) the game.  Some suggest ideas for DLC or future updates or games.  A few complain about this or that feature.

But we love reading all of them, even the occasional snark.  It just feels really good to know that there are people actually playing your game, and that they cared enough about it one way or another to take the time to write an email to us.

So thanks, Will, and the rest of you emailers!  You are the wind beneath our wings.  Sniff.  I'm getting all verklempt.

XBLA Fans Interview

There's a pretty in-depth interview with HTH's creative director Matt Small at XBLA Fans today.

Thanks to interviewer Miguel Coelho for asking more "out of the box" questions that your typical interview. The conversation ranges from descriptions of the new Tempest Pack tracks to the design process for new levels, to just why are those Expert Ring Master courses so damn hard?!?

Read the full interview here:  Tempest Incoming -- An Interview with Vector Unit's Matt Small.

PSN, DLC and Blood Wake XBLA

Ask a Developer!

Steve asked us three (three!) questions.  Which I would say is greedy but I like his questions and in this place I AM GOD so there are no rules except the ones I make.

Are there plans for a PlayStation Network version [of Hydro Thunder Hurricane]?

People ask us this all the time, and unfortunately the answer is no.  Microsoft Game Studios licensed the game from Warner, and as you can imagine Microsoft is not generally all that gung-ho about making games for the PlayStation.  

I say "unfortunately" because some of our best friends are PlayStation owners and we'd love nothing more than to trounce them soundly in HTH multiplayer on PSN, until they cry like scared children.  But it ain't going to happen this time around.

If sales are good, do you plan on doing any future DLC?  In regards to licensing and Warner Bros owning the IP, is it possible to do more DLC?

I don't know the particulars of the licensing deal between MGS and Warner, but I would guess it probably allows for multiple DLC packs.  

We'd love to do more; we have all kinds of ideas for new boats, new tracks, the whole shebang.  But the first part of your question hits the nail on the head:  it's all about the sales.   If you want to see more DLC for HTH, the best thing you can do is go out there and make everybody you know buy a copy of HTH and the Tempest Pack.  

Given the chance, would you ever want to re-release Blood Wake as a XBLA title?

Just a side note here:  Everybody who asks us a question about Blood Wake gets a free hug.

We would totally work on a Blood Wake XBLA port.  And it's not entirely out of the question, since last I checked Microsoft owns the rights to the game.  Of course, there are a lot of things that we would want to change or do differently, so it would probably be more of a sequel than a straight port.

Tempest Pack releases October 27

The Tempest Pack DLC will be released on October 27 for the low, low price of 400 MS points. 

"But what does the Tempest Pack have in it, Vector Unit? Is it really worth four one hundreds of my hard-earned and oh-so-precious points?" 

Why yes, sir, it is. With the Tempest Pack you get three (THREE!) brand new original race tracks, including the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, and Castle Von BOOOOOM! And of course you also get all the Ring Master and Gauntlet variations for these tracks. You get two all new original boats - the super-agile Whiplash and the slip-slidery Psyclone. 

But wait, there's more! The Tempest Pack also includes new skins for all the original game's boats, including the two contest-winning skins for Rad Hazard and Banshee. 

NOW how much would you pay? 

But wait! Don't answer yet! As a bonus we've also included six "X boats": Expert level variations of all the original boats, so you can compete online and on the Leaderboards with any boat you want! That's 11 Expert class boats to chose from! 

And then there's the little matter of 3 new Achievements worth an extra 50 sweet, sweet Gamerscore.  

The Hydro Thunder Hurricane Tempest Pack. October 27. 400 points. Nuff said.

Multiplayer balancing

Ask a Developer!

Ed Drake from Pensacola, Florida asks:

Why are the boost powerups in Hydro Thunder different in multiplayer than they are in single player?  What made you decide to go with the handicap silver powerups?

The "loser helper" powerup system in HTH's multiplayer mode was something that we added later in development, after months of playing online with each other and the team at Microsoft.

Originally the powerups were identical in SP and MP races.  Not surprisingly, the best players (cough *RALF* cough) consistently won most of the multiplayer matches, while noobs and, shall we say, the more joystick-challenged players, almost never climbed up out of the bottom half of the pack.

You might say, well that's how it goes.  Skillz winz.  

The problem we noticed was that the less skilled players quickly grew frustrated with their inability to compete and dropped out.  Again, not entirely surprising.  The surprising thing was that it was actually less fun for the best players as well -- there's no sense of challenge when you're 10 seconds ahead of everyone else and you know you can just cruise to an easy victory.

To maintain a rich online experience, you need as many people playing as possible.  If players -- especially new players -- are too easily frustrated, they just say screw this and drop out, which reduces the number of players and the number of available online games.

Originally we were skeptical when our producer at MS proposed the loser-helper boost system.  We feared it would take all the challenge out of the game, and frustrate skilled players.  Once we implemented and tuned it a little, however, we realized the opposite was true.  Giving players at the back of the pack more boost kept the races close and exciting.  Even if you're really good, you have to watch your back all the way to the finish line.  

There's still plenty of strategy and skill; you have to drive well, but you also have to carefully manage your boost for that final sprint to the finish line.  When you play online, you'll notice that the best players still win almost all the time, but they don't win by 10 seconds or 5 seconds, they win by half a second, or sometimes less.  And the new players feel like they at least have a chance at the top three.

I think the decision to include the loser helper boost system has worked out well.  There are lots of multiplayer games on XBLA, but good luck finding anybody to play with in most of them.  Hydro Thunder Hurricane has been out for 3 months, and you can still regularly find online games to join.

Loser helper FTW!