Hey there,

The most recent patch has just come out of Sony FQA now. Some of the extra features we’ve got planned – such as improved character stat functionality will be coming out in the DLC.

Patch V1.02

  1. Updated direction of waves in Ledge Rock and associated level information. The wave is a right hander now to better help new players. This is a major re-engineer based upon player feedback. The wave sizes are also varied
  2. Free Surf: We’ve restructured the level loading sequence to allow players to load other unlocked levels directly from the level they are in, as opposed to moving back to the main menu
  3. Free Surf: We’ve restructured the music track list to ensure that the tracks rotate from level to level in this mode
  4. Fixed Free Surf scoring bug
  5. French shop text fix
  6. L’Ossauire Stats alteration for Free Surf/ Single Session/ 1P Championship
  7. Added new animated foam texture to the waves
  8. Added new animated ripple effect to the waves
  9. We added the ability for the foam to animate in a specific direction across the wave. We added this to the Fernando’s level and the Ledge waves
  10. Updated UI imagery for PUMP and Super Combo
  11. Added a number counter to all load screens
  • For the next immediate phase we’re essentially juggling a few different things at once – porting our code to the latest Phyre, completing this DLC along with extra features, building the next levels and even more features for the DLC and if we’re really lucky, ordering new kits for a new platform.
  • DLC: If we can get through this next FQA period on the patch, then we’re getting on with the Monsters DLC. The four levels at each location have varying sized waves – Round One has a 27-29ft wave, Semi is Jet-ski tow-in level at 40ft, Repechage is also a Jet-ski tow-in level at 35ft and the final is a paddle in event at 19ft. The wave sizes are largely sorted now, although we’re currently got a few new annoying collision problems that have just occurred this week. So we’re working through that. We’ve also begun work on the skyboxes – the first one – Round One is quite nice looking but the three remaining skyboxes need to be higher res as the test / placeholder skyboxes are speckled and low res looking. The land model is basically sorted and so after the skyboxes are done, we then move on to working on the updating the lighting and water effects for each level. We’ve got the character paddle stamina stats code done, the air rotation spin code done, but we’re looking into adding another value now because we’ve realised we might need a duck-dive depth value. What happens with really big waves in Monsters, is that because the wave profile is so thick and large, there is a real difficulty for the user to actually duck-dive under a wave (and make it) at all. So as an addition of an extra depth skill should alleviate this issue. The next feature we’ve added is another four jet-skis and riders, for more powerful jet-skis to tow into theses bigger waves. All of that is functional now but they just need some polish. The final part is then getting the cut-scenes together for each level. This involves getting hold of more opening scene footage, dropping in the character actor voices and editing it all together. For the cut-scenes, also we need to model and texture the scene itself and add a camera pan along the path, capture and edit the lot.
  • The next two levels (after the Monsters) is an indoor stadium event set in Japan, followed by the final level which is set in Morocco. The name of the Japanese location is the Nami Surf Park –“Nami” is the Japanese word for wave. Nami Surf Park is a surf stadium and is based on the recently closed Dome wave pool in Miyazaki, Japan. We’ve actually been planning to build this level for years, so it’s a cool to see how far the wave pool technology has come since our first early concepts for a level like this back in the naughties. The other odd coincidence (for us) is that surfing is now an Olympic sport and that the initial event is going to be held in Japan, so it will be interesting to see how it all pans out. We’ve got the shell of the level built now. There are waves in it and a basic grandstand model surrounding the waves. In the next few weeks we’ll start to look at refining the model and then adding the first textures, lighting and skyboxes to the scene. It’s a little way off but we’ve mapped out a proof of concept a while back with an intern, Paige Davis who did a really good job working from concept drawings. Thanks Paige – this level will live now, so special thanks to you. The final level is actually a bit further along than the Nami level. This location is called Supertubes and is a classic Moroccan styled point break. With this one, we’ve got a bit of the modelling and texturing working currently. This was put together by an intern, Nick Borowitzka, who did an excellent job. So while the landscape is approximately 40% complete, the wave is a way off. One of the experiments we put into place with the Ledge level re-work was to figure out how we can get a wave to run in a more diagonal angle running along the point. We’ve managed to do that now, but, we’ve got to re-shape and re-configure it to run along the rocks in this new level.

The Bungarra Team

PS. We’re still in a state of shock over the recent cancellation of the WSL Tour event here at Margaret’s. A real bummer.