While hundreds of video game fans queued to buy Microsoft's Xbox console, Brighton-based Climax was racing ahead with the development of its new game for the system.

Climax, which specialises in developing racing games, was drafted in by games publisher THQ to create the Xbox and PC versions of MotoGP URT, based on last year's MotoGP season.

The game's development was started about a year ago after a short pre-development phase focusing on the capabilities of the Xbox hardware.

Although the core of the development team was already in place when the deal between THQ and Climax was signed, additional staff had to be added to ensure the game was completed on time.

The team of 17 includes eight artists, six coders, two designers and a producer.

Lead artist Jason Green said: "We completed our code department with guys from Sussex, Oxford and Essex Universities.

"The additional art crew were mainly Brighton artists from a variety of backgrounds, among them workers on book covers, ink pots and graffiti, an animator from Teeside University and a local artist whose last job was a hygiene enforcer - we took that to mean cleaner."

Nobody on the team had any knowledge of MotoGP before the work began.

Mr Green said: "We went down to WH Smith and bought loads of videos so we could tell the difference between superbikes and MotoGP bikes. Now we're all experts."

The next step was for the programmers to begin work on the framework within which the game runs.

At the same time the software tools used by the artists and designers to create the environments, vehicles and characters were upgraded.

Teams of three people, including the producer, an artist and a designer, followed the MotoGP season around the world, travelling to Spain, Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic.

Armed with special passes and digital cameras, they took an average of 3,000 photographs at each event, of everything from the pit lane, the bikes in their garages, the riders in their leathers, the umbrella girls and the circuit from every angle. In Germany, they crew hired a helicopter to get aerial photographs of the circuit to ensure accuracy.

Sound was acquired on location and in a special testing room.

Team Sabresport allow-ed Climax to attend a test session with their 500cc bike running flat out while engineers recorded the sound.

Back in the Brighton studio, the game was taking shape with the introduction of lighting effects, the Dyne physics engine, which ensures the bikes behave like their real-life counterparts, and adv-anced artifical intelligence to make the Xbox-controlled competitors compete for track position.

Techniques were inv-ented, implemented, some refined and some discarded to get maximum performance out of the new console.

As more bikes were modelled and textured, they were added to the game.

Riders were animated and introduced.

MotoGP URT is in its last week of testing at Climax's offices. It will then be shipped to THQ and Microsoft for final testing.

The game is due to be released in late May or early June.

www.climax.co.uk