DiRT 3 - Q&A Feature

Is the DiRT franchise having an identity crisis? Having dropped the Colin McRae moniker altogether for its latest iteration, it seems Codemasters is trying to find a middle path between the sobre tone of DiRT 1 and the brash ‘street’ branding of the previous game; with a new, stunt-based gymkhana mode, and a selection of online and split-screen multiplayer party games aimed squarely at the lucrative multiplayer market, DiRT 3 has every chance of appealing to the broadest audience so far. TVG spoke to Senior Game Designer Paul Coleman, and Vehicle Handling Designer Tim Dearing, to find out more about the current direction of the series.

TVG: What was your vision for the new game, after DiRT 2?

Paul: We looked at the reaction to DiRT 2, we saw what the fans were saying about it, we saw what reviewers were saying about it, and for us it was the first time we actually had the chance to go from one DiRT game straight into the next, so it gave us a great opportunity to build on a whole load of things that we knew we’d done right, and also, to take a long hard look at ourselves and figure out what we might have done wrong in the previous titles. So I think where DiRT 1 had a very kind of professional motor sports feel, and DiRT 2 was a bit more irreverent - a bit more fun - we’ve tried to combine those two things and create the ultimate off-road racing experience. So players can go out there and they can enjoy the depth of Rally and Rallycross racing and stuff that real off-road racing fans relate to, but they can also go out and learn about Gymkhana and car control, and all the new aspects of this new discipline that’s looking like it’s gonna be really exciting and take off in a big way.

TVG: What have you brought in from the other racing games in development at Codemasters, like the F1 series etc.?

Paul: The main thing was probably the weather tech, because F1 used rain to great effect, and because they’ve got long drawn out races, they actually have the weather develop during the race; because our stages are a bit more snapshot, and we’re trying to position the players so that they’re doing a stage in the morning - a stage in the afternoon, and a stage at night - we’ve used that weather tech to give another variation in that cycle, and essentially give the player another opportunity to feel like the day’s progressing, so the weather’s changing and they’re on a different stage and it’s raining.

On top of that, we’ve built on that weather tech. So F1, it’s rain and it’s on tarmac; for us we’ve got gravel, we’ve got mud, we’ve got grass, we’ve got tarmac, there’s also snow effects as well. There’s so many different surfaces, so many different friction variants, and - Tim and his team here - they’ve set the car up with different tyre types as well...

Tim: So the surface of the tyres react...

Paul: It’s a fantastic spectrum of friction coefficients, so as you’re driving around - you as a Rally driver or as a Rallycross driver - have to see the surface ahead, work out exactly what you should be doing, how you should be setting the car up, as you throw the car into a corner. If you see a dark patch up ahead, that probably means there’s more grip there, so you’ll try to flick the car in that direction. That’s the way we’re working it.

TVG: Where do you set the balance between arcade and simulation in the handling?

Tim: Well, you have to get the balance right, because you don’t want to take it too sim-y; we’re appealing to quite a mass market, in some respects. So the physics themselves are very sim-y, but we set them up to be fairly accessible, so depending on kinda what car it is - Gymkhana might be a little bit more accessible, because people are online - whereas for some of the racing modes, you can set it up to be a lot more accurate, just because it’s a bit more technical, there’s a bit more depth there.

Paul: Also just to add to that, I think with DiRT 3 because we were able to refine the handling that little bit more, and use more of a simulation angle, we also introduced a whole load of driver assists into the mix, so novice players are not getting left behind by the fact that the handling’s developing. So we can give those more sim-orientated players the opportunity to drive the cars much more closely to what they actually are, while allowing the novice players to get to grips with the series by giving them more of these driver assists and letting them get to grips early on. So we’ve kinda tackled it from both ends and I think we’re much, much closer to appealing to everyone now than we ever have been before.

Tim: There’s been some big big changes; I don’t think they really overpower the experience, but they subtly kind of steer you into a drift or maybe a donut. It doesn’t really ruin the experience at all, it just helps you kinda learn, and then you can move on if you want.

TVG: But in the Gymkhana mode it’s just implemented by default? There’s no option to set assists?

Paul: No we’ve got a trickster assist that you can turn on; if you turn it on you then get a choice of seeing a visual ring around the trick or it will just feel like a magic force that's pulling you in. And the aim of the trickster assist is to guide you into doing donuts and spins, because we found in our focus testing that those are the trickiest things for people to get to grips with, but you are free to turn all the assists off in Gymkhana; whenever I’m driving Gymkhana I’ll always have all the assists off because for me it feels more natural: I’ve spent 18 months playing the game now, so it just feels so right to throw a car into a drift and then turn into a tight area and do a quick spin, and go out and do a donut around a lamppost - it’s just second nature now - and we want players to grow with the help of trickster here, and then develop their driving skills further.

Tim: I’d also add that you can switch on and off those assists in DiRT 3, so if you want the actual hardcore experience, you can turn it off. But you’ve gotta be pretty careful on the road.

TVG: So in terms of Gymkhana mode, are there going to be some directed objectives? I know there are some sort of ambient missions, but is it just a Free Ride mode?

Paul: I was gonna go into it in more detail in the presentation but suffice to say, Gymkhana is sanctioned events within the career, and there’s also the compound areas that you’ve seen today. The compound area is more about hanging out, exploring, practising away from the competition spotlight, but then we’ve got the sanctioned events where you get a score; you can rack up combo multipliers and points by going from trick to trick, and that is essentially like a street skating competition where judges will give you scores based on your performance. So in the competition spotlight, there’s Gymkhana events that you can take part in, and that gives you that whole competition angle, you’re up against 8 other drivers, and just trying to get the highest score you possibly can. And then there’s the fun side of it where you can go off and explore the compound area and find the hidden packages and do the missions, and then of course you’ve got the whole online experience with party modes, and all of that angle, so we’ve taken Gymkhana and we’ve used it in many different areas of the game, and I think it feels right to have it in all those different places.

TVG: So as far as the online goes, you’ve got some new social networking aspects to the game. Is it going to be as expansive as the Autolog stuff, or similar to that?

Paul: We decided to empower the user with the Youtube feature, and then it’s really up to them to spread that through their social network. But you know, to be fair, if you do do a really cool trick in Gymkhana, you’re going to want to show it off, and because we’re letting them send it to where they want to send it, it should give the community a much broader appeal and will get people more interested in the game that might not have seen it before.

I think we’re definitely looking at more Autolog-based stuff for future titles, but for this we felt that Youtube was the best thing to focus on, because doing Gymkhana is very very cool, and what better way to show it off than to upload it onto the internet directly.

TVG: So you've got the new deformable tracks on the snow and ice stages; is that going to carry through to some of the other tracks - like say, if there’s rain, are the tracks going to deform?

Paul: The tracks change their character but it’s only really snow where the deformable stuff comes in. I think it’s something we’re going to work on for future titles, but realistically we’ve given the players this great selection of surfaces and environments to rally through, and snow’s the logical one to put deformable stuff into because it gives you an opportunity to run a bit wider on a corner and not get completely punished for it. But yeah, we’ll build on that tech in the future I think.

TVG: I know in the past there’s been comments about future games in the F1 series maybe becoming more of a platform, and releasing stuff more as DLC; do you ever see the point where you evolve the simulation of DiRT to a point where you can just have one game out there, and just bring DLC out?

Paul: I think I’d still like to have our games hold their own place in the market, but there’s no reason why we can’t start unifying features so that players can actually build a persona with all of our games, so if you play DiRT, it’s going to tie into your Formula 1 career as well. We’re looking at this kind of stuff, so there might be some stuff coming out soon about it, but right now we’re focusing on making our individual titles, and making the best games we possibly can.