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RALLY UK Dev Diary #2 Feature
Derek dela Fuente
27/04/2004
Brain in a Jar give us an update on the progress of Rally UK & talk about troubles faced so far…
At the start of April we had to make some tough calls on what would and wouldnât go into the game. Much of the art and code is being handled by outsiders â“ contractors, friends, etc. â“ and we had to take stock of what we had and get everything nailed down. A lot of games are delayed or lose their direction because the team lets a game get to a stage where every part of the game is ânearly finishedâ but nothing is completely done, so with under three months to go we had to be disciplined about this â“ stop tweaking and get things finished off.
With the art this was quite easy. We had a dozen tracks in some state of near-completion, but nothing absolutely done. Even the UK tracks, where weâd done the track design, layout and all scenery, were looking a bit bare, without roadside barriers, road signs, buildings⦠and the foreign tracks were nowhere near done â“ so, much as we were enjoying tweaking the desert and arctic tracks, we just had to buckle down and start getting each done in turn. This also means that by the end of April weâll have screenshots that show off the tracks nicely, which will give the press something to show the world.
Code involved some harder calls. We had to call a halt to any restructuring of the code, and the X-box version (which had always been a âweâll do it if we canâ) was put on hold so that we could concentrate on the PC and PS2 versions. But here we also had some good news. A lot of the little code changes, like the controller input, were working nicely; and Matt had spent the best part of a month overhauling the tyre physics, which was the one part of the car mechanics that we werenât happy with.
Tyre physics is a strange subject for anyone to get passionate about, perhaps, but passionate we are. The actual mathematics are quite well known: a physicist named Beckman has spent ten years researching the subject and publishing his findings, while Hans Pacejka has defined a âmagic formulaâ which deals with tyre slip⦠but with the code as it stood we werenât happy that the maths were working correctly. So, out went the old code, and in came a whole raft of new equations. Now, this may sound like over-kill â“ weâre going for a slightly arcade-ish feel to the game, so do we care? Well, yes, we care: a lot of games that fake the physics have a really annoying over-steer, and by getting the physics absolutely right and then âsofteningâ things for the player weâll end up with a much better feel than by faking it. And to be honest, thereâs an element of pride here. With the tyre physics in place, we know that our physics are as accurate as any other developerâs, anywhere in the world.
Only one big question hangs over our head. Our publisher, Oxygen, had the idea that weâd provide the player with a single real car, which we would simulate accurately and then âopen upâ to the player, so that all the mechanics can be refined and defined by the player. As an alternative to a dozen less-well simulated cars, this proved an attractive idea, but it has introduced a new problem: the car manufacturer isnât just approving a single depiction of their vehicle â“ which is how games normally work â“ but has to approve every possibility. Not an easy process to explain, but the upshot is that weâre still waiting for some technical details and permissions from the manufacturer. And the result of this is that we still canât reveal the details of the car to the public, or even be certain that weâre going with this particular car.
Now weâre feature-complete. Weâve got some code that we started tweaking that we need to get finished off â“ things like the way the shadows fall across the car â“ and then we have to get the in-game display finished and the front-end wired up. The car code is done, and weâre just waiting on confirmation of what car weâre giving the player. And we have the first tracks laid out and playable. Fingers crossed, all the scary stuff is behind usâ¦.
Remember to check back next month for Developer Diary #3 and discover whether anymore troubles have arisen.
