Work

So last Wednesday, we got invited to Sony headquarters in London for a private screening of the GhostRider movie. Climax paid for some Limos to take us up there

Rob took some photos, Heres a few.. Click on the images for larger versions.

Inside of the Limo.. I was actually in the other larger one.


Ahh the lights of London. I forget what these are called tbh..


Supping free beer in the waiting room, prior to going into the private cinema.


Looking up to the offices in the main up-light room of Sony HQ.


Me pondering on the merits of the movie...


Walking back to the limos.


Uh oh!! The other limo, (thankfully not the one I was in) broke down on the way home!!


All in all, it was a fun day out. Shame the other limo broke down, they all had to walk to the nearest train station and catch the train back to portsmouth! Doh!

Well I'm pleased to say GhostRider is done and dusted. Passed through Sony Cert. quite easily. I do believe it was our publishers 1st ever PSP title to go through 1st time So I heard anyway...



Those are the box shots for the game. The official website has also been updated with loads of new stuff to!
GhostRider Official Site

Already well into production on our next title. I'll post up what it is when I'm allowed to do so.
laters,

Howdo all
GhostRider is going into Cert next week I believe. Finally got the movies back from the publisher, so those are being translated and integrated right now. Fingers crossed cert passes 1st time, though we've got time allocated for 2 submissions anyway.

After that we're taking forward the GR codebase and using it for a new PSP project, that was originally started over in the LA studio. Things weren't going quite soo well over there, so we made them a demo for this project using the GR codebase as it was quite a few months ago, which went down really well. So thats why we're kinda taking over that project. And the fact our LA studio is being shrunk down to just an American headquarters base.

It should be a really fun short project anyway. We have a nice bug-fixed codebase that we're all familiar with to start on. We'll be making significant improvements to it as well, so I'm quite confident this upcoming project should go extremely well. Its quite a big franchise game too.

You may or may not have seen the news about us selling our Brighton racing studio to BVG.
BVG Acquires Climax Racing
This should open up a whole load of new opportunities to us cash wise, and as such we're expanding considerably.

Thats about it for now

Just a quick update. Colds gone.. yay! Still got this wierd niggly thing in my throat, but its just annoying rather than causing grief.. Work continues ok. We have alot of bugs that dont seem to be spread round very evenly. Most people only have a couple, but a certain few are hoarding loads. Need to address that really if we're to hit our 0 bug target for PSP. PS2 is backburning a little as submission on PSP takes longer, hence we need to get that in earlier. I think we'll do fine. We have done quite alot of bug fixing through the development of GR.. Our bug counter is a fraction of previous titles I've worked on.

Team spirit is aces at the moment.. I love how crunch time brings people from far reaches of the team together to get stuff sorted.. Everyones stressed, so cracking jokes constantly to keep people laughing.. Eating curry or chinese in the boardrooms together, everyone staying late and putting in the effort.. I love crunchtimes me!! I think its the best time on a project.. and when it goes out the door you have the huge sigh of relief and some relaxation time..

.. unless you're me and off to help some other studio in crunch! Spoke to Simon today, he confirmed I'm still scheduled for LA as soon as my work is done on GR. It'll proabably be hard, but should be a bloody good experience for me. I've never worked anywhere except Climax, so it'll almost be like working for someone else for a little bit.

I need to stop procrastinating soo much and get my arse in gear and sort things out before I head off...

The official GhostRider game site has gone up on 2K's server..

http://www.2kgames.com/ghostrider/

Theres some halfway decent screenshots up too!

I have a cold at the mo.. blurgh.. Cant remember the last time I've been ill, but when people at work are coughing and sneezing right next to you, its a bit hard to avoid it.. I wish people would stay home when ill instead of spreading it round the air-conditioned offices. I guess its a bit hard todo that in crunch-time though hey.. Still annoys me though.

Mood: Phlegmy!

Had confirmation from the director the other day, about me flying out to LA in October to help our sister studio over there, with some technology that the GhostRider team and I developed. Should be quite an experience. I haven't been abroad for a very long time, and that was just a short 3 hour flight to Ibiza.

Only thing stopping it now it seems, is if the game they're working on over there gets canned. I dont think thats going to happen though, as its another film license.

I'd be lying if I said all this plane security shenanigans wasn't praying on my mind a little.. I've never liked flying that much. Well, thats a lie.. I love flying, it's the prospect of the plane I'm in crashing or blowing up I dont like. Still, cant live your life in fear really, or you'd never do anything.

Alpha milestone tomorrow for GhostRider. Friday in the office was quite hectic. Well thats what I heard.. I was sitting at home having a very nice relaxing day off I expect tomorrow will be nice and mental again. I love crunchtime me!!

Time marches onwards.. Next week starts the last 2 weeks of alpha phase on Ghostrider PS2 at work. Will be doing some lates from now onwards, then after that an opportunity arrises to possibly help out some other teams abroad.. I put my name down for that.. Just gotta see what happens really. Would be aces if it happened.. Though my producer is reluctant to let me go..



The game looks ace! I kid you not.. We even got some very kind words from somewhere.. but I prolly shouldn't say where. Gah NDA's and all that.. you never know who might get the uppity if the wrong thing leaks out! I'm gonna be quite chuffed when this game goes out tho.. I think its probably one of the best our studio has done.

Not sure whats happening after that.. like I said, possibly helping some other teams out that are using our codebase we developed for Ghostrider, or doing some new action tech. Over the months of GR, we've really pushed the editor Barry and Charles originally developed.. It currently runs about 1 frame in 5 seconds with the main player state tree! Heh.. I dunno what the hells up with the saving mechanism (uses some .net synch thing) Takes stupidly long time to save the files..

I think we're planning on a fresh rewrite of that anyway.. I've already started it.. well, started in the technical sense. I think we have a fair grasp and idea in the way we want to push that forward. Really looking forward to leading the development of that myself. Top priority is usability for designers.. the speed issues, reliability and alot more data verification. Possibly even synching to the game via networking and seeing it actually move while the game plays.. That would be pretty sweet I reckon.. should aid debugging alot..