Forza 3: Under the Hood

Feature Breakdown is a new series of articles that avoid the main aspects of a game and take a more detailed look at the secondary features such as challenge, survival, editor and creation modes.

Forza 3 may be widely regarded as just a racing simulator, but under the hood, there are some features that may go unnoticed to people who just want to race. Frankly, these people are missing out on some of the other great features of the game. The two features that are being looked at for Forza 3 are the vinyl creation mode and the replay editor mode.

Vinyl Creation

Forza 3 offers gamers an immense creation tool, allowing them to create decals that can be anything from game logos to custom sponsors. These can be put up for sale on the user’s storefront, with other Forza players being able to buy these decals or vinyls with in-game credits. I sat down and took a few hours playing around with the (limited) lettering to recreate the StartGame logo on the login page, and the Twitter logo.

I put the StartGame logo onto the sides of the Datsun on the left, with a larger Start on the hood. This was all pretty easy to do, the only problem being the lack of fonts. This meant I had to create the Game part of the logo by using lines and shapes, an overly complicated task. Now, I’m not asking for an entire font library, but some more variety would have been much better.

The S|G logo that is used on our Twitter account – our ‘mini’ logo – was fairly simple to create. It was simply a matter of saving the G I had made using different shapes as a group, and creating this as a separate vinyl. The rest was ordering the layers, and the dotted line was made fairly easily by putting many lines in order. As you can see, it is a good tool to replicate most logos.

The main problem I encountered was the lack of fonts available, which I have mentioned above, a problem that can be fixed by the tedious task of arranging different shapes into letters. Forza 3 has one of the greatest car customisation tools in any game, with many aspiring designers producing amazing vinyls for all Forza 3 owners to enjoy.

Replay Editor

Once you have completed a race, an option to save your replay is present. This replay may then be viewed and edited. You can take pictures of your car and the most thrilling parts of the race, or make short movies that can last up to 30 seconds. The pictures saved are in very high resolution, and the videos can be recorded in 720p if chosen. These are accessible from the Forza Motorsport website as soon as you upload them.

The pictures can be edited with a selection of effects, such as whether to focus on the car or the road. The focus effect can convey the speed of the vehicle, whereas other effects such as brightness and exposure make the cars shine and glimmer against the backdrop. The game can be paused at any time during the replay to get the perfect shot with the floating camera, ideal for getting shots of crashes and near misses.

Creating a movie is as simple as pressing a button. No, really. All you do is select the movie option, and then a box pops up asking which resolution you would prefer, how long you want it to last for and a few other details. Depending on the size of the movie, you may have to wait a while. 30 seconds in 720p can take up to 10 minutes, and then you need to upload it to the Forza website before you can download it in preparation to upload it to YouTube. You can then embed the movie into an article or blog (much like this).

Here’s a movie that wick15 helped me to make, by crashing his car into my StartGame Datsun. Thanks!