Need for Speed Carbon Q&A Part II - General Game Information
Steve Anthony - Line Producer





The Need for Speed Community Team had a chance to sit down with the Line Producer for Need for Speed Carbon, Steve Anthony, to get his take on some of the hot topics within the Need for Speed community.


Part II: NFS Carbon - General Game Information

Community Team: In the demo, the frame rate felt slow and the game lacked a sense of speed. Will this change when the game is released?

Steve Anthony: The framerate issues that some users have commented on have been addressed for the final product. Typically our optimization only takes place once all the content is in place and locked. At that point we target both the code and the environments for optimizations. The tricky part about demos is that we are usually about half way through the optimizations by the time we release them. Early reports from all the review code that has gone out to the press is that there are no framerate concerns to report.

Certainly for sense of speed the same holds true. We tuned the visuals right up until the final moment we could before we stopped.



CT: Autosculpt is cool, but feels slow and unresponsive. Will this be improved upon in the full version of the game?

SA: Again the optimizations that were done to both the autosculpt system and the vector vinyl system didn't take place until after the demo had shipped. We felt that it was more important to get the feature into the hands of the fans so that they could experience the power of autosculpt, than to hold it back by several weeks until the optimizations had taken place.



CT: Why can't we race in the day, or better yet, both day and night?

SA: We made the choice early on based on the premise of the game that a night environment better suited what we were going after. Certainly daytime racing between crews does take place but the majority of it happens after the city goes to sleep. And with Canyon racing there is nothing more dangerous than tearing down these winding mountain roads when you can only see 10 feet in front of the car.



CT: Will Carbon have content available after the game is released?

SA: Need for Speed Carbon will have a selection of premium unlockable and exclusively unlockable content available at launch and more content will be made available in the weeks and months following launch.