SSX | ‘Complicated, Dynamic Snow System’ Ensures High Replay Value

EA have revealed to OXM that the devs opted for a more complicated, dynamic “snow system” to ensure a big replay value with the upcoming SSX. Being a sport game of sorts, this is great news as replay value is hugely important with the genre.


Producer, Todd Batty explained that the original plan for avalanches was to create a “big, awesome, scripted experience: player drops onto a certain mountain, player rides through invisible trigger volume and the game spawns an avalanche in a place where if the player takes the correct path or rides fast enough he narrowly escapes disaster.”

Batty further explained that with this type of scripted experience the studio can trigger different cameras and “really pay off the big moment in a cinematic manner, and I’m certain it would have been very cool,” but that the problem was that this sort of design is “not scalable,” and therefore the replay value is not that high.

Batty reveals that EA opted to “create a snow  system whereby on any level in the game, every time the player carves a turn in deep enough snow, we are spawning a volume of physics particles proportional to the force that the rider is exerting on the terrain.

“We then release those physics particles and they start to flow down the mountain, analyzing the terrain they are rolling over. Depending on how stable or unstable that terrain is, they either die off or start to grow and trigger even more snow particles.

“So, depending on where they started from and where they go, the snow can grow into anything ranging from a small slough slide to a full-blown category one avalanche. This creates some spectacularly unexpected moments, particularly when you unknowingly trigger an avalanche down a different section of the mountain and then meet up with it further down the drop,” concludes Batty.

SSX will make its triumphant return to the snow-capped mountains in January 2012.