Need For Speed: Undercover

Maplassie_GTR · Post by **Maplassie_GTR** » 03 Jul 2008, 09:38

Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello has stated Undercover has a considerably longer development cycle than its predecessors since the Need for Speed development team now is split up into two teams, both of which will work on a 24 month development cycle with future titles, alternating releases between them. When this change was implemented in mid-summer 2007, one team started working on Undercover (giving it only a 16.5 month development cycle), while the other team finished ProStreet (the previous release) and then started working on the next title in the series (coming out in 2009), which will have a full 24 months. He also confessed to "torturing" the development team in the past, in terms of their tight work schedule. He admitted that ProStreet "isn't good" and he is confident Undercover will be much better and more innovative, as well as future releases.[1][2]

Riccitiello also stated Undercover is taking inspiration from action films such as The Transporter, with a large embedded narrative.[1][2]

[edit] Features
Frank Gibeau (president of the EA Games label) has stated that due to the fact that the sales of ProStreet didn't live up to EA's hopes for the game, the Need for Speed franchise will go back to its roots with a number of features, including open-world racing and a new highway battle mode.[4]

John Doyle (developer at EA Black Box) has hinted Undercover will feature a brand new game mechanic and a "Most Wanted-ish" sandbox style of gameplay.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_Speed:_Undercover

Pieterpan · Post by **Pieterpan** » 03 Jul 2008, 10:54

Interesting mmmmmmmm................

Maplassie_GTR · Post by **Maplassie_GTR** » 03 Jul 2008, 10:57

Wether it's needfor speed or not. What matters is the Most Wanted influence.

Cause Most wanted ROCKED!

TheModDoctor · Post by **TheModDoctor** » 03 Jul 2008, 11:10

This is awesome!!! Wait, didn't I predict this?

TheModDoctor wrote:I would like to see something like NFS: Undercover

Maplassie_GTR · Post by **Maplassie_GTR** » 03 Jul 2008, 11:13

loooooooooooooooooooooooool

psYChowIt · Post by **psYChowIt** » 03 Jul 2008, 11:56

you sure did modDoctor! haha, can't wait

Post by **Ron2K** » 03 Jul 2008, 12:14

Maplussie_GTR wrote:What matters is the Most Wanted influence.

And here is my problem with the Need for Speed franchise, and indeed with EA in general. They don't know what "innovation" is - their policy is that if you beat a dead horse vigorously enough, its constant twitching and juddering will at least give a semblance of activity.

I think I've seen too many Zero Punctuation episodes.

Maplassie_GTR · Post by **Maplassie_GTR** » 03 Jul 2008, 12:28

What you say is 100% true.

I retract my most wanted statement.

Rephrase.

I want TEst Drive unlimited with the modding of NFS series, the Sound (specially spool and dumpvalves) of Pro street, with the cops from GTA 4

Nookie · Post by **Nookie** » 03 Jul 2008, 13:51

i cant wait for the new NFS. Pro Street sucked...

so with this new Most wanted influence hopefully it will make it alot more popular.

looking forward to this one

endev8003 · Post by **endev8003** » 03 Jul 2008, 13:57

Ron2K wrote:And here is my problem with the Need for Speed franchise, and indeed with EA in general. They don't know what "innovation" is - their policy is that if you beat a dead horse vigorously enough, its constant twitching and juddering will at least give a semblance of activity.

I think I've seen too many Zero Punctuation episodes.

I agree with you. The world doesn't need another Need for Speed game.
Which one will this be NFS MCMLXII?

v1p3r · Post by **v1p3r** » 03 Jul 2008, 16:53

endev8003 wrote:I agree with you. The world doesn't need another Need for Speed game.
Which one will this be NFS MCMLXII?

So if they rebadge it as something else and made a really good racing game again you'd accept it?

I for one love racing games and i don't care if it's from the NFS series/Test Drive series or TOCA series - if it's good is what matters.

The world needs another good racing game - if EA wants to do it under the NFS name, I'll happily accept it.

Test Drive 5 sucked balls - and instead of killing the franchise - they made it better and we now have the wonderful TDU.

Need for Speed 2 sucked major balls, and along comes Hot Pursuit and every installment after and gives people lots of eye-candy and hours of fun (up till Carbon which sucks again)

So I for one do not think NFS deserves to die. EA CAN make good racing games, and they should have a chance to redeem themselves with a super racing title that can rival TDU, GRID and the racers of old for detail and fun.

Hex_Rated · Post by **Hex_Rated** » 03 Jul 2008, 17:28

We need more circuit racing, like GTR crossed with Gran Turismo with hardware physics acceleration, damage modeling and aerodynamics. That would be awesome! Unfortunately setting up cars using a real world Motac data telemetry software system doesn't appeal to everyone. You need a degree in mechanical engineering to set the car up correctly.

A GTR game that allows you to work your way up from a 1955 model 1.3 VW Beetle to a 2008 F1 is a game that I'd love to play. Only PC game that got that sort of play style right was NFS 5:Porsche Challenge (or was it Porsche unleashed?). NFS2, NFS5 and the first Underground were the best NFS's. NFS1 was also good, NFS3 was OK. The rest all suck donkey balls.

Toca is OK, but their physics modeling gets weird on some of the games. Driving using the view of the bonnet feels real but when you switch to chase views, the car seems to rotate around the center axis instead of turning properly. It doesn't look and feel real.

EA Superbike 2000 was also realistic racing, I loved playing it on full simulation with enhanced AI patch and a microsoft sidewinder force feed back joystick. You could actually feel the bumps in the road and push the limit to just before high/low siding the bike. Also epic races where you battle for positions in a tightly grouped bunch, struggling to keep the bike on the road and take positions, not this catchup mode crap they got now on racing games where you crash three times and still take the lead.

Hman · Post by **Hman** » 03 Jul 2008, 17:55

GTR2 crossed with GRiD and TDU with GTA 4's cops.

And for Pete's sake COCKPIT VIEWS PLZ. I hate chase cams.

With regards to difficulty, a system like GTR2's should be fine, on it's lowest settings you don't have to tweak your setup to win. So it should be simple enough for arcade racers and give us simheads something to enjoy in sim mode.

And tweaking a setup with Motec is not that difficult Hex. It helped me get into the high rankings for lap times with GTR2. Was 13th at a time at Hockenheim with the Saleen, and I can hold that pace in races as well.

WiK1d · Post by **WiK1d** » 03 Jul 2008, 18:02

Forza still takes the cake. If you take Forza, give it some form of free roam, add a greater car inventory (Such as F1 cars) and add a police segment. That can only be good.

Hex_Rated · Post by **Hex_Rated** » 03 Jul 2008, 18:13

Hman wrote:GTR2 crossed with GRiD and TDU with GTA 4's cops.

And for Pete's sake COCKPIT VIEWS PLZ. I hate chase cams.

With regards to difficulty, a system like GTR2's should be fine, on it's lowest settings you don't have to tweak your setup to win. So it should be simple enough for arcade racers and give us simheads something to enjoy in sim mode.

And tweaking a setup with Motec is not that difficult Hex. It helped me get into the high rankings for lap times with GTR2. Was 13th at a time at Hockenheim with the Saleen, and I can hold that pace in races as well.

I prefer viewing from the behind bonnet, feals most realistic like your looking through the windscreen, not at the gauges in the car. But chase views are easier to judge distance since your viewing through a 2D screen. If it was holographic, cockpit / bonnet views would be the best by far.

Ja, I was exaggerating a bit about the tweaking, but you need to know something about graph analysis. GTR1 had a more hectic Motec system. You could graph all sorts of weird crap and was taken from an actual real world telemetry system. Making sure your hitting just below the rev limited in top gear on the main straight and that your suspension isn't bottoming out isn't too bad but getting recoil, suspension damping, swing bar set up, front - back bias as well as left - right bias with camber toe in and ride heights on anticlockwise vs clockwise tracks is not something your average non-technically minded individual could get done right without some sort of guide.

Getting ride height and stiffness, aerodynamics overstear/understear and break bias right is easy. The rest starts getting flippen difficult. Especially if you start playing with tire wear, etc.

The guy in first place was probably someone who had some real world experience with tweaking cars. Or he followed a guide / downloaded setups.

Hman · Post by **Hman** » 04 Jul 2008, 02:11

I still prefer in cockpit views, it gives in my opinion a better feel of where the car is pointing.

Edit: And of course in GTR2 this gives you access to the car's Motec display so I can keep an eye on tyre and brake temps on the track.

I've tried running time trials with them, and some guys are just freakishly quick, still they can't hold their pace in a race.

I've gotten to a point with the Saleen that I have made my own setup I use instead of the default, then I just adjust that to the track I'm running at. Motec helped me get there. I can manage to out brake people with the S7 even though it's common knowledge that the S7's braking is not as good as other cars in the game.

endev8003 · Post by **endev8003** » 04 Jul 2008, 06:44

v1p3r wrote: So if they rebadge it as something else and made a really good racing game again you'd accept it?

No. I don't like racing games. Just like I don't like sport sims.

Maplassie_GTR · Post by **Maplassie_GTR** » 04 Jul 2008, 08:58

WiK1d wrote:Forza still takes the cake. If you take Forza, give it some form of free roam, add a greater car inventory (Such as F1 cars) and add a police segment. That can only be good.

I want forza on pc!

PureFire · Post by **PureFire** » 04 Jul 2008, 09:55

we as a pc community that love racing sims deserve something like gran turismo on P$.
hundreds of cars, as many tracks and all the options available.
after all, we have the superior machines with gigs of space available!
we need to be able to customise our cars as we wish, adjust our cars as we wish, and race in free world and track styles!
with proper support for accessories like the Logitech G25 and others!

Maplassie_GTR · Post by **Maplassie_GTR** » 04 Jul 2008, 13:43

PureFire wrote:we as a pc community that love racing sims deserve something like gran turismo on P$.
hundreds of cars, as many tracks and all the options available.
after all, we have the superior machines with gigs of space available!
we need to be able to customise our cars as we wish, adjust our cars as we wish, and race in free world and track styles!
with proper support for accessories like the Logitech G25 and others!

Yeah I have allways pondered why the PS and Xbox can get games with hunfreds of cars but we dont.

Yeah sure 300 cars with the detail level/polygon count/etc of games like grid and Pro street would require plenty gigs of HDD space, but erm, WHo cares? HDD space is cheap, and I would have a 30 GIG game on 9 billion dvd's if I could have a Racing simulator/game on my pc with 500+ Cars.

But it will come one day. Full blown racing sim, hundreds of cars, cockpit views, customization that no nfs game has ever touched, etc.

Hman · Post by **Hman** » 04 Jul 2008, 14:25

Well, I've got 135 different models in GTR2 (default and add-ons) not counting the different liveries.

bosaap · Post by **bosaap** » 04 Jul 2008, 14:27

Well lets c what we get.
Like they said a "most wanted" effect bring it on.

I or one cant wait for NFS new game been wondering since i finished Pro Street what the new one would be like.
Wonder if we can put all our ideas to EA and they can see what we want and start on it for the next generation.

v1p3r · Post by **v1p3r** » 04 Jul 2008, 14:55

endev8003 wrote:
v1p3r wrote: So if they rebadge it as something else and made a really good racing game again you'd accept it?
No. I don't like racing games. Just like I don't like sport sims.

Ah I see, noted. Then are you so adamant that NFS is killed off, why don't you just leave the series to people who actually care?

Fallen · Post by **Fallen** » 05 Jul 2008, 10:13

Nookie wrote:i cant wait for the new NFS. Pro Street sucked...

so with this new Most wanted influence hopefully it will make it alot more popular.

looking forward to this one

Im totally with you on that one. Loved the NFS series (since the first). But Prostreet was another story. I installed, did one lap, uninstalled. EA has a tendency to totally screw up some of their titles, in my oppinion.

DAE_JA_VOO · Post by **DAE_JA_VOO** » 05 Jul 2008, 10:20

WiK1d wrote:Forza still takes the cake. If you take Forza, give it some form of free roam, add a greater car inventory (Such as F1 cars) and add a police segment. That can only be good.

QFT x 98739873123 + 1

Forza definitely sets the bar here.

I wish EA would just stop... omw i wish they would just stop. They are just MILKING the NFS name, and the more games they make, the more the games suck.... MW was an exception, but it was still far from brilliant.

EA should've just stopped at Underground 1