Smackdown:Just Bring It Q. When is the game going to be released? A. Right now, the game is set to be released sometime in the fall/summer of this year. Q. What is the price of SD3 going to be? A. SD3 will be 50 dollars, like most PS2 games, unless it uses DVD capabilities. ABOUT THE ENTRANCES Q. Are there going to be full entrances, or just titantron and moves like in the past Smackdowns? A. Yukes is considering putting in full entrances. Take Yukes' poll to tell them that you want full entrances in SD3! Q. Will the game have real pyro or just a "boom" sound? A. If Yukes decides to put full entrances, in there will definitely be pyro. ABOUT THE WEAPONS Q. How many weapons is it possible to have on the screen at the same time? A. As of right now, it is too early to tell, but with the power of the PS2, you can expect at least 8-10 weapons. ABOUT REFEREES Q. Will there be a referee, a 3D referee? A. There will be most likely a referee in 3D. Q. Will the referee hold your arm up and down and drop it like in real life when you are knocked out? A. I don't think that they will do the 3 count when you are in a submission. The biggest of all questions remains to be answered -- no, we don't know whether you can do the 3D through a table -- but this should still be a fine kickoff for the PlayStation 2's wrestling library. The wrestler models were primarily what we were shown just before the Tokyo Game Show, animating within preliminary versions of the SmackDown, RAW, and pay-per view arenas, including a stadium patterned after the one that hosted Wrestlemania XVII. Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock were the only wrestlers complete enough to show, although they could perform animations specific to several other characters -- as those who tinkered around with SmackDown! 2's create-a-stable mode can attest, watching them dance like Too Cool was pretty entertaining. Just standing still, though, they're impressive enough, with 800 polygons making up each wrestler's body and 500 for just the head. That will allow complex facial animations, from smiles to grimaces to, yes, the People's Eyebrow, adding up to a total of 1,000 different animations. Just Bring It is also the first SmackDown to incorporate motion-captured animation, although it will mainly be used for more natural movements -- walking, idle animations, and the like -- rather than wrestling moves. As you can see from the shots below, that animation will be matched by considerable smoothness of texturing and modeling in each character. Skin tones are more realistic, and there's more depth to musculature and other physical features. They're not just textured on anymore, but properly drawn in 3D. The engine handles all of this with ease, though, kicking the framerate up to a clean 60fps as compared to the PlayStation games' 30. Similar improvements have been made in the arenas, which have always been one of SmackDown!'s strong points. Built with 3 times as many polygons (6,000 total), they are more expansive, more animated, and more interactive, especially with regards to lighting. The huge lighting rig above the ring appeared in the PlayStation games, but on PS2 it will direct many more complex realtime lighting effects. The upper reaches of the arenas are also modeled with greater detail, including animating crowds and billboards up in the cheap seats. Below, the character-specific signs and other tailored elements of the environment will return, and hopefully the ringside environment will become more interactive. The developers are looking to include more elements along the lines of the announcers' tables in SmackDown! 2 -- hopefully, there will be even more items to break and fly off of around the ring. Of course, if you want out-of-the-ring mayhem, you can always head a little farther away. Just Bring It will include a full complement of backstage areas, with the same kind of interactive environments that appeared in SmackDown! 2, and they will all be linked together, allowing hardcore and falls-count-anywhere matches to progress through a series of rooms and areas. The current listing of accessible areas is as follows: SmackDown! Arena Outside Lobby Plaza RAW Is War Arena PPV Arenas Parking Garage Boiler Room WWF New York WWF Times Square Entrances into the arena are likely to be expanded in comparison to the PlayStation games. Many fans have asked for something more realistic than the superimposition of characters over FMV, and Yuke's is hoping to oblige by integrating that FMV into the 3D arena for the complete entrance experience. That would be a tall order, considering the number of wrestlers included, especially since every character is going to demand much more modeling time. Next Page |
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