A few early concept pieces for Blur, our weird powered up racing game back at Bizarre Creations. Was a huge challenge trying to get the conflicting elements of the game and gel them together (real cars, semi-real locations, magical power ups, plus a character based story for most of the game’s development).
We couldn’t change the cars (which were all real licensed cars) in any way to look like they could fire weapons, we eventually settled on a light painting look for the power ups, light painting was something we spread out throughout the game and was central to the overall look. Turned out pretty well I think, I was always keen to make the game look distinctive, so you could look at a screenshot of it and not get it confused with the myriad other racing games out there, it’s distinctive if nothing else.
Game turned out pretty great too
http://chrisdavie.tumblr.com/post/36456033198/a-few-early-concept-pieces-for-blur-our-weird
Brighton Storm Prototype
This is part of a prototype from 2010 of an unannounced, unfinished project we were working on at Bizarre Creations when the company was shut down.
We took tech and assets from Blur, and used them to try out some new ideas.
This video shows us trying out some new visual effects, partly just because we thought it would be cool, and partly to see how more intense effects would effect the player’s experience (i.e. is driving through a storm shooting and dodging weapons fun and exciting or stupid and annoying).
So we built a load of big storm effects into the Brighton level from Blur and did some fancier animated turn markers.
The ‘Shunt’ power up also got an overhaul from the big red ball in Blur, to a big refractive energy pulse here. This new one would throw tear up the road as it homed in on its target, leaving a trail of broken tarmac and scattered, twisted lampposts.
We were pretty pleased with the results, some of the fullscreen effects when you were in the wake of the power up were a bit intense, but overall it was really fun.
http://chrisdavie.tumblr.com/post/39865111827/brighton-storm-prototype-this-is-part-of-a
Dubai
This was the final thing being worked on at Bizarre Creations when the company was closed down, it’s the same unannounced, unreleased project from earlier, but approaching alpha.
We were using a whole new engine at this point that had been developed internally, it was really nice tech that we sadly never got to ship a game with. When we were told the project was being canned and that the studio was facing closer, I bloody mindedly decided to keep working on the art on this track, so much work had gone into the game already, it seemed a shame that nobody would get to play a finished track, even the dev team, so my goal was to get this Dubai track as close to final as I could before the lights went out for good.
A couple of guys chipped in here and there and got some nice new bits for their (soon to be required) portfolios, and I started grabbing old assets from previous projects to fill in bits of the scene that hadn’t been started.
By the end it had gotten to about an alpha level, there was some really nice things in there, though we still needed to add a load of destructible objects inside the shopping mall and tram station we drive through in the video, and inside the hotel lobby of the building we drive on the outside of here. More animated scenery like the trams too, but time just ran out.
I was pretty pleased with the way we got the glass looking using a nice normal map to give the surface some imperfections, the smashing effect when you drove on it was coming along nicely too.
It’s a shame this thing will never be played, but at least it still lives on in some way in these videos
http://chrisdavie.tumblr.com/post/39869032056/dubai-this-was-the-final-thing-being-worked-on-at
. 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
.
, 
, 
, 
