With only a few short weeks to go before Trials Rising is released on the world we’d like to give you a more in depth look at some of the new features and improvements we’ve made. This week we’ll be looking at creative features but check back in each week before launch as we take a look at other topics like sharing, economy & cross-platform features.
Giving players the power to customize the Trials experience has always played a big part for the Trials series, and with Trials Rising, we’re aiming to expand on the creative features we put in the hands of players. We’ve listened to our community’s feedback and have created the deepest customization system to ever be seen in a Trials title to date. Our legendary track editor also returns, along with some new tools and updates giving creators more freedom than ever before! Let’s take a look.
Customization
Throughout the Trials series, customization has evolved a lot with each iteration giving players more power for creativity. In Trials Rising, you will be able to experience a completely new level of customization that gives you much more control over your appearance than ever before. We’ve included a wide variety of gear from traditional motorcross items to more fun and crazy outfit options. Gear has also been separated into more individual parts than previous titles. Helmet, shirt, jacket, gloves, pants and footwear can all be independently equipped with the gear in a player’s inventory and we’ve added more accessories that can be added to a players helmet for some extra flair.
“In one meeting I had the greatest idea ever,” says Associate Lead 3D Artist Arno Male, “What if we would have hat on hats? And so accessories got invented. They are probably my proudest idea that I came up with for the game. It needed lots of jokes to warm up others that it is a good idea. But once they saw the rubber duck prototype on top of a helmet they were sold. Inventing different accessories was so much fun. Almost every idea we came up was put in the game.”
The bikes won’t be left out either, each bike will have a number of parts the player will be able to customize. This will alter the bike’s appearance, the performance of the bike will not be affected, meaning everyone will be on the same playing field.
The amount of gear and colorization options is already deeper than in previous Trials titles but in Trials Rising that’s just the beginning. For the first time we’ve included a sticker system that will allow players to further customize their bike & rider gear to make them truly unique. The possibilities are endless!
https://youtu.be/vcINSsJRV7Q
When asked about improvements to customization Mr. Male immediately brings up the sticker system but quickly pivots to the variety of gear available. “We felt that in Trials Fusion the customisation was a bit limited with only helmet, upper and lower body clothes. We wanted that players could really change any piece they want and create the rider that they envisioned. Braking outfits from 3 to 7 pieces added so much depth to customisation but made creating them so much more complex,” he says speaking about some of the challenges they faced during production.
“The trickiest change was that players could change the shirt under the jacket. Making that work with our old system would be impossible causing a huge amount of clipping issues. To make it work, we created a totally new system which hides all the polygons that the top most cloth is covering. Of course we still had lots of tweaks to do.”
In addition to all the gear that can be applied to your rider we are also offering for the first time context based rider poses and animations that appear in various menus. There are loading screen poses that appear in loading screens for single or multiplayer matches. There are also victory & losing animations that appear in the results screen after a match. Combined with the other new customization features these animations allow players to display their own sense of style and attitude to a greater degree than they have before in a Trials game.
Track Editor
The legendary editor is back and better than ever before. This is the same editor that our own level designers used to create all of the tracks in Trials Rising. The editor will include new objects for Trials Rising as well as objects from every other Trials game since Trials HD. With over 8000 objects, this is the greatest variety we’ve ever offered in a Trials game.
“The amount of work that we did for that, oh boy,” Arno says of including older objects into the game. “All the objects from Trials HD & Evolution used totally different graphical shading system. We basically had to retexture all the objects from the older games and reintegrate them to the editor. It was hard work but so worth it!”
We asked Arno if players would be able to recreate their favorite tracks from previous games. “No,” he says with a sly smile, “they’ll look better.” He goes on to clarify that recreating tracks from previous games should be totally possible. While there are some objects that did not make their way into Rising’s editor almost all objects from previous games are present and accounted for.
Editor improvements don’t end with the wide selection of objects though. Now you’ll be able to add vistas, allowing more options for the far background. The sticker system for customization has also been made available in the track editor giving creators even more possibilities to customize the look of their tracks and the objects within them. We’ve also added the ability to scale objects, a frequently requested feature from the track building community.
“Scaling and decals. Those two changed everything,” says Arno about the track editor. “Anyone who has made trials tracks knows the feeling ‘I wish that this object would be just a little bit bigger.’ Well now you resize it. Also the 3d team doesn’t need to make different size variations of every object, what a relief! And the decals, wow, the visual integrity that they add to levels makes a big difference. So much easier to connect objects to the world. Making a good looking snow level was so much harder before decals.”
This is just a taste of some of the new features and tools available in the track editor. This is a very powerful tool. To give players the level of freedom the Trials editor provides means that some of the tools can also get very complex. To help new and returning track builders learn these tools we’ve teamed with community track builder and tutorial creator SwampBalls to create an in depth series of tutorials covering everything from the basics of getting started in the editor up to using the most advanced tools.
With the power of these tools, players can create a lot more than just Trials tracks. We’re incredibly excited to see just how players will use these tools, and what wild creations will be waiting for us all on Track Central come February 26.
That’s our Trials Rising development diary for this week. Tune in next week when we take a look at the sharing options coming in Trials Rising. Until then, we’ll see you on the leaderboards.
