Producer: Paradise City a 'postage stamp' compared to Fuel's size

by Ludwig Kietzmann { Sep 25th 2008 at 2:00PM }

Four-letter racing game news now, with developer Asobo talking up the tech it's concocted for its open-world racer, Fuel. The in-game map, a blend of satellite information and procedurally generated data which stretches across 5,000 virtual square miles, would reportedly be a couch potato's worst nightmare if assembled via traditional means. "In the context of that map, which is one small corner of it, when the guys showed us this technology, if you were to build it in a traditional manner it would fill about four Blu-rays," Fuel producer David Brickley tells VideoGamer.com. "A gargantuan amount of data, just enormous."

That last word is what we'd normally use to describe, say, Burnout's Paradise City, but Brickley seems to imply that we need a change of perspective: "I did a little Power Point internally to do it and it zoomed them [Fuel and Paradise City] in to each other. It's like a little postage stamp because I think it does like four kilometres or something." Well, Criterion, it seems come 2009, you'll be licked in terms of sheer size. But will there be a restart option?

Tags: Asobo, Codemasters, Fuel, Open-world, Procedural, Racing

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Nick the Hero of Canton @ Sep 25th 2008 2:05PM

Uhm....so?

Obie @ Sep 25th 2008 2:05PM

Bigger is not always better. I am always getting lost in Burnout....they better have a GPS system!

Maverick Saturn @ Sep 25th 2008 2:23PM

I agree, some girls think its not how large it is, but how you use it :)

Although, saying that, 200gb + for a crap game would take the piss.

Hashbrown Hunter @ Sep 25th 2008 2:44PM

Also, Paradise City is filled with fun areas to race around and procedurally generated things tend to be sporadic in terms of consistency. I'm guessing that in Pure, I'll be driving around for 5 minutes in open terrain with nothing to do and then all of a sudden 7 ramps show up.

Hashbrown Hunter @ Sep 25th 2008 2:48PM

Sorry, I meant Fuel not Pure.

Zephiel @ Sep 25th 2008 3:44PM

procedurally generated doesn't have to be randomly generated, they can still put some thought into the level design.

Hashbrown Hunter @ Sep 25th 2008 7:10PM

@ zephiel

Yeah I know, but that only happens IF they put thought in to it. If they just lay out the procedurally generated stuff and leave it like that we could get some pretty boring stuff to play with.

uh-oh polio @ Sep 25th 2008 2:08PM

anddd 4 blurays = how many 360 dvds?
anyway,i highly doubt its 200gb.

aggrazel @ Sep 25th 2008 2:41PM

I don't think its 200GB, from the way I read the story, it would take approximately 4 blu-rays if assembled in the traditional manner, but it's not, the terrain is produced procedurally. Meaning, the thing is guessing where to put trees and stuff and is using satelite based topography to map stuff where it thinks it should be. Hyper compressed.

But I could be wrong.

kaneda @ Sep 25th 2008 3:33PM

Four single layer bluray discs (25 gigs each) would be 100gbs. Dual layer bluray discs are twice as big. I'll leave the math in your capable hands.

kaneda @ Sep 25th 2008 3:34PM

My bad, I misinterpreted your statement. I share your opinion that this game will not be 200 gigs.

anonim1979 @ Sep 25th 2008 4:53PM

Burnout Paradise is 3,5GB ISO on PS3.

Krigger - 100% proceduraly generated FPS on PC is 96kb! (written in C++).
0,01MB
0,0001GB

X360 has hardware suported (special CPU commands and cache menagement) for procedural generation.

There should be no problems with this game.

Ignatius @ Sep 25th 2008 2:10PM

I just hope they don't have the horrifically bad restart mechanics as Burnout Paradise.

Can you imagine racing for 50+ miles and then have to turn around to restart because you screwed up once?

Bennyishere @ Sep 25th 2008 10:00PM

Yeah, I'd totally complain about it instead of enjoying the game.

Ignatius @ Sep 25th 2008 10:23PM

After the fiftieth time or so, I'm done 'enjoying' the game and starting to get a bit irritated.

CAHLITO @ Sep 25th 2008 2:10PM

Hm... I wonder how long the install time on the PS3 will be.

PS: I have a PS3, my psn is the same as here

Dirty @ Sep 25th 2008 2:12PM

I prefer more motion in the ocean.

KeenCommander @ Sep 25th 2008 2:16PM

It may be huge, but honestly - it just doesn't look...good.

WRE @ Sep 25th 2008 2:30PM

That's what she said!

*high-fives*

eugene @ Sep 25th 2008 2:18PM

Yeah... one is a highly detailed city, the other is a big open patch of brown... hmmmm... hmmmm...

Whoppy @ Sep 25th 2008 2:24PM

Who cares about that, will it support retrospective trophies? :P

CAHLITO @ Sep 25th 2008 2:34PM

I think you mean retroactive

Hashbrown Hunter @ Sep 25th 2008 2:50PM

No, I believe Whoppy like to think back about all the Trophies he's won, the visceral thrill he receives when that little chime goes off, and the ability to brag to friends that he has more Trophies than them because he played Burnout for 12 hours straight without food and hyped up on Monster. Good times.

Whoppy @ Sep 25th 2008 3:16PM

:( I feel silly now.

Gonna go watch the Starwars Retroactive to cheer myself up.

Evan @ Sep 25th 2008 2:53PM

I prefer a small but well designed game world that's densely filled with carefully planned challenges, over a large wasteland of randomly placed stuff. With 5000 virtual square miles, it's unlikely the developers could have spend enough time to plan and tweak every square mile. But with only 50 square miles, we can expect each square mile to be that much better planned and refined.

mr bean @ Sep 25th 2008 3:04PM

The same outhouses with the "Drink Dr.Pepper" signs flashing by for 50+ hrs.-gawd, sign me up quick! lol.

In A World (XBL) @ Sep 25th 2008 3:05PM

A pill that can make a map larger? *chuckle* If extenze didn't do something amazing, could we afford to DO this?

Increase that certain part of a map, all for chance to be bigger than a postage stamp!

nick @ Sep 25th 2008 4:22PM

I'll have to be frank, the size of Paradise IS what turned me off on that game. Sometimes big is too big. That you had to return to areas you already traveled was a bit of chore. In that respect, I like how Test Drive Unlimited handled it, in that you could transport to any place you've already been.

In A World (XBL) @ Sep 25th 2008 5:46PM

I love TDU! Takes like 20 minutes to drive from one end of island to the other, but "Fuel" would have approx. 10 times that area, so I certainly hope there's a fast-travel feature like TDU had.

Edge @ Sep 25th 2008 4:56PM

How can you say how much space something takes up? I know you can have "uncompressed" audio or hi-rez textures. But, how can you have roads, dirt, and trees built in a "traditional" manner?

Wouldn't that be real life? Are you saying real life can fit on any number of BluRay disks?

All this irrational trumpeting of BluRay is really getting on my nerves.

rivaldi22 @ Sep 25th 2008 7:17PM

5000 square miles. That's bigger than the continental US.

WHAT.

THE.

FUCK.

Why does any game ever need a map of this size?

rivaldi22 @ Sep 25th 2008 7:22PM

Oh, my bad. Square miles. Not miles squared. 5000 square miles isn't anywhere near as ridiculous.

But it's still ridiculous.

Giroro @ Sep 25th 2008 8:40PM

A postage stamp compared to what?

...2 postage stamps?
...First class air mail?
...a smaller postage stamp?

lorddshadow @ Sep 25th 2008 10:31PM

BUT will the environments be as diverse or will it be all brown like the pic up there? and is bigger better? in an open world game, not really. i'll stick with paradise. sorry fuel.

yh @ Sep 26th 2008 2:29PM

Thats very true. As long as the environment is interesting, size takes a back seat. I mean, there are times in some racing games where I wished there was a 5 mile stretch of pure nothingness just to see how fast a car can go, but beyond that... lots of dirt and cactus can get rather boring. Take a page from Far Cry on this one... Make the environment bigger slightly bigger than what the player will ever reach, and it will seem to the player like they can go anywhere. Oh.. and provide places where you can see a decent horizon... thats always good for increasing the sense of scale.