HTH meets H2O

Matt Small, Andrew Silber, Detmar Peterke, and Ralf Knoesel prove they are masters of water physics and beer drinking.On Thursday night, March 3, 2011, history was made when Hydro Thunder Hurricane developers Matt Small and Ralf Knoesel sat down to dinner with two of the developers of H2Overdrive to eat foods, drink beers, and gossip about the wet, wild world of water racing video games.

Andrew Silber and Detmar Peterke of Specular Interactive were in town for GDC 2011, and agreed to meet with us at Thirsty Bear Brewery in San Francisco.

We were pretty stoked to meet up with these guys.  For one thing, as I've said before we're huge fans of water racing games of all shapes and sizes, and H2Overdrive is a primo example of the genre.  Detmar actually worked on the original Hydro Thunder at Midway (as did several of the Specular team) and Andrew worked on Offroad Thunder around the same time, so it was awesome hearing about the bad old days of arcade development and getting a little behind the scenes scoop.

For another thing, reading the forums out there you'd think there's this intense rivalry between our two studios -- particularly since Specular has the HT pedigree, and because H2Overdrive and Hydro Thunder Hurricane came out around the same time. 

And maybe there is a little element of competition there.  But it's the healthy kind that still gives you room to drink beers together and share war stories. 

So thanks again for meeting up with us, dudes.  We'll definitely swing down to Irvine one of these days for Alco-Thunder Part 2.

The existentialism of Hydro Thunder

I don't know about you, but personally I love philosophical ramblings about video games.  We spend so much time talking about high def graphics and multiplayer teabagging and flaming each other about whether Bioshock looks ever so lightly better on the 360 or the PS3.  But what about the deeper truths?  What about the soul?

Well Richard Clark at Kill Screen has turned his minds eye upon the churning waters of Hydro Thunder Hurricane, and has mined hidden veins of meaning that even I didn't know were there.  

In Hydro Thunder Hurricane, as with most videogames, we're never really dead. On the contrary, all human frailty is cast off in exchange for the pure power and mechanical nature of the speedboat. We no longer need to sleep. We don't even need to slow down. If the game has a brake button, it is the rare player who is actually aware of it. There are only two speeds: boosting and not boosting.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane portrays speed in such a way that it seems like a defensive and necessary response to the world.

To be honest, all I heard was "blah blah blah Hydro Thunder is totally awesome blah blah."  But I appreciate the love.

Actually, seriously, I got a kick out of this article, and I highly recommend it.  It's amusing, and actually really well written.  Thanks, Richard!  I'll remember you next time I'm lying awake at night thinking about the ontology of boost.

Fan Mail: So good your girl will hate you

From time to time we get mail from people telling us they love Hydro Thunder Hurricane.  Which is no surprise, because we think it's ten kinds of awesome.  But we still like hearing it from other people because we also think Blood Wake was awesome, so what do we know?

But every now and then we get a letter that's extra special.  After reading it we slowly lean back in our seats with a little smile and just let the warmth from the email window expand out and envelop us.  It feels like a Hawaiian sunset.

Such a letter is Parnell Lutz's:

To whom may concern and the entire VU team,

Sorry if this is a long winded story, but I thought I would share my excitement and enjoyment to see a fantastic game brought back and executed so well.

I remember as a young person going into the Arcade and seeing HT for the first time. Blew my mind, and became an obsession to find it at every arcade we stopped at. When the dreamcast was released and HT was available for it, my dream of playing the crap out of the game and beating it could become true! This is one of my favorite games, ever. I was at E3 2010 and got to see the game. My childhood memories and excitement erupted with glee. You know, like when you're a child on Christmas? That sparked my desire to play the original again, in its entirety. I went on a mission, bought a DC w/ HT, and HT for pc. I think I went on a month binge of only talking about HT and had it on a few of my laptops so I could play it, everywhere. Got a few coworkers obsessed too, in the process.

I bought Hurricane very soon after release and I love the freaking hydro out of it. I literally cannot get enough of the game. I have put more time into this single game than any other game I have ever owned on a console. This has been the best $20 (I had to buy the expansion) I have ever spent on a game. My excitement and obsession with this game has made one girl hate me and many friends, and coworkers purchase the game. I'm on a mission to unlock everything, almost there. Recently my coworker and myself have been on a mission to beat each others track times. Even playing the same track 40 times in a row to get .10 seconds ahead of said coworker, still does not bore me with this game. The expansion was great, and has added some life and fun. But I am wondering if VU will release another expansion. I really think more tracks would be perfect addition for 2011. The boat selection is good and vast, so even porting the original HT levels to the game would be fantastic. If you can even give me a hint that more DLC would be out, to hold me over, I would appreciate the tip, but understand if you cannot. 

Thank you again for making such a fantastic game, and I hope you keep supporting it with DLC, to keep my addicted.

Parnell Lutz

p.s. How do you feel about h2overdrive? I played it, enjoyed it, but still LOVE Hurricane more, so again thank you for bringing it to console :)

Ahhhh.  Feels great to get kudos from (a) a fan of the original, (b) a well-written gentleman of letters, and (c) anybody who likes HTH better than H2O.

Thanks, Parnell!  I actually answered him personally.  The rest of you will have to guess the answers.

Cheaters (almost) never win

One question we get a lot is:  "When are you going to clean those dirty rotten cheat times out of the Hydro Thunder Leaderboards?"

Well my friends, the time of reckoning is at hand.  

We just tested the clean-o-matic code on Partner Net, which is the internal Xbox LIVE test network at Microsoft.  And it works, so now we're applying for a certificate to let us make changes to the real Leaderboards.

Sorry it's taken so long.  You'd think maybe the ability to edit or clean the Leaderboards would be something that Microsoft would include in its standard XBLA tools.  But you'd be wrong.  

Every developer needs to roll their own solution, and we've been busy with other stuff, like working on new game concepts.  And eating nachos.

But thanks in large part to some incredibly generous support from the guys at Red Lynx, we have broken through to the other side, and are now prepared to unleash the cleansing fires of justice.

Cheaters, you had your day in the sun.  But that day is over.  Your ill-begotten times will not stand!

Now about those nachos...

Multiplayer balancing

Ask a Developer!

Ed Drake from Pensacola, Florida asks:

Why are the boost powerups in Hydro Thunder different in multiplayer than they are in single player?  What made you decide to go with the handicap silver powerups?

The "loser helper" powerup system in HTH's multiplayer mode was something that we added later in development, after months of playing online with each other and the team at Microsoft.

Originally the powerups were identical in SP and MP races.  Not surprisingly, the best players (cough *RALF* cough) consistently won most of the multiplayer matches, while noobs and, shall we say, the more joystick-challenged players, almost never climbed up out of the bottom half of the pack.

You might say, well that's how it goes.  Skillz winz.  

The problem we noticed was that the less skilled players quickly grew frustrated with their inability to compete and dropped out.  Again, not entirely surprising.  The surprising thing was that it was actually less fun for the best players as well -- there's no sense of challenge when you're 10 seconds ahead of everyone else and you know you can just cruise to an easy victory.

To maintain a rich online experience, you need as many people playing as possible.  If players -- especially new players -- are too easily frustrated, they just say screw this and drop out, which reduces the number of players and the number of available online games.

Originally we were skeptical when our producer at MS proposed the loser-helper boost system.  We feared it would take all the challenge out of the game, and frustrate skilled players.  Once we implemented and tuned it a little, however, we realized the opposite was true.  Giving players at the back of the pack more boost kept the races close and exciting.  Even if you're really good, you have to watch your back all the way to the finish line.  

There's still plenty of strategy and skill; you have to drive well, but you also have to carefully manage your boost for that final sprint to the finish line.  When you play online, you'll notice that the best players still win almost all the time, but they don't win by 10 seconds or 5 seconds, they win by half a second, or sometimes less.  And the new players feel like they at least have a chance at the top three.

I think the decision to include the loser helper boost system has worked out well.  There are lots of multiplayer games on XBLA, but good luck finding anybody to play with in most of them.  Hydro Thunder Hurricane has been out for 3 months, and you can still regularly find online games to join.

Loser helper FTW!