No. 582010.2.10

New Course of “Wangan Maxi 3DX+”

Good evening, folks. It’s Takenaka, the programmer.
A Happy New Year. Your continued support for the “Wangan Maxi” series during this year will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Well, let’s leave the formal greetings aside…

In the earlier Future Lab News, “Yamamoto” posted the picture of a dubious-looking man with a black French roll on top of his head who was being busy (?) with a frown. (wry smile)
Actually, Takaneka has several other projects going on besides Wangan Maxi. That’s why in the previous issue, I asked him to write Future Lab News for me when it was supposed to be my turn originally.

So, I’m a little late to start, but, according to the advance notice from, again, “Yamamoto,” Takenaka is supposed to write about the Fukuoka Urban Expressway course.
At least this is described as scheduled. So I’ll talk about the new course of Wangan Maxim 3DX+!

In retrospect, that was the beginning of spring last year.
As a candidate for a new course, the “Fukuoka Urban Expressway” was picked, and we decided to go there to collect materials.

Fukuoka is at the western end of Japan. If you live in the Kanto area, you won’t get many opportunities to visit somewhere that far. That’s why it was my first time to drive roads in Fukuoka, too…
Actually, after driving around collecting the materials, all the members in the field felt, without exception, “This course is cool!”
There was a distinctive landscape and a variety of different course layouts.
There was no problem with the material for creating an interesting course!

We finished gathering information like that for the day, and the Fukuoka Urban Expressway was confidently determined as the new course.

Well then, as the next step, the question was how Takenaka would deal with it to create a course layout.
I decided the principle of the course by using the features of the Fukuoka Urban Expressway, undulating with heavy ups and downs, moving into a rhythmical driving experience.

At the same time, the Fukuoka Urban Expressway has the feature where winding and straight roads are mixed.
A sharp layout was fun, and it was worth creating.
(If I was allowed to wish for much, then I wanted to have enough time for creating…)
I used a little bit of a wider road width even for a two-lane road in consideration of the VS Player mode.
Many places in the course are set in that road width.

The finished data were passed onto the visual team members, and they added the background.
The visual team members did a great job, and the “distinctive landscape” which we saw during our visit is fully recaptured.

In test plays within the company, everyone gave it a good reception.
The last thing I am worried about is “how you guys will evaluate the course after its release?”
The “Fukuoka Urban Expressway” course, produced through our best efforts, is now only waiting for your evaluations.

That’s why, everyone, you must drive the course once at least when Wangan Maxi 3DX+ is released.

See you next time!

(Original article in Japanese released on 2010.1.6)