4. Pre-Release Development

It’s always difficult developing for a console that doesn’t yet exist. The development team are relying on hardware or emulators that are constantly changing and don’t really represent the final console.

Decisions are made based on best guesses and features you’ve been promised get delayed and delayed.

It’s always the same and an inevitable side effect of developing a game as the manufacturer is developing the console.

However, Microsoft did a great job of supporting us through development. Their tools are great and they were always really helpful whenever it came to problems, feature requests or optimisation help.

We don’t use .NET to build our game because we find it unsuitable for large projects and cross-platform development. We use a system based on Jam, but it’s a testament to the quality of Microsoft’s compiler technology that, utilising precompiled headers and the incremental linker, we can recompile the whole project in less than 5 minutes. A single file can be recompiled and linked in a handful of seconds. It’s difficult to over-emphasise the productivity gains that this gives you.

Last Word

We learnt a lot from making MotoGP and we got some things right and other things wrong, but the acid test is always the reaction from the journalists and public. So we were very pleased when THQ showed the finished game at E3 2006 and it went down really well, getting a clutch of awards including IGN Racing Game of the Show2.

THQ launched the game in early summer and the reception has been brilliant. Soon after, we made our annual pilgrimage to Donington Park to see Rossi and his chums burning round the track. It’s great to see it in real life and gives us loads of ideas for how the game could be better, and of course… the artists can never get enough umbrella girl reference!

1. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20020626/hargreaves_01.htm

2. http://uk.games.ign.com/articles/709/709355p3.html