STACK #138 Apr 2016

GAMES FEATURE

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dirt Chief games designe Paul Coleman chats with STACK about Codemaster's DiRT Rally. Dishing the d t

“We really went deep into our old codebase and stripped out a lot of areas that were just plain wrong and rebuilt them. I guess we had gotten away with it when we were making our more arcade-handling games, but they simply didn’t cut it when we started to go down this more authentic route. “We actually started with how we model the surfaces of the road; specifically the density of them. Once we had that feeling right we rewrote the tyre model, the engine, transmission and suspension. We did a lot of work on the differentials, too. We worked on pretty much every component and improved it.” As for customisation, the options are available for players to tweak performance. Or if you prefer to avoid getting involved and would rather just buckle up and race, DiRT Rally caters for that too. “We’ve made it as detailed as we possibly could,” explains Coleman. “Each car has settings related to the way it is engineered and you can tinker with plenty of stuff. We’ve given the cars really decent default set-ups and we tweak those based on which location and surface you are competing on. So if you don’t want to get your hands dirty, you can just jump in the cars and drive. But for those looking to dial in a good set-up, there are plenty of tuning options available to them.” And for gamers looking to take the competitive streak online, there are challenging options for that too. “Our online championships net you some pretty decent rewards that will help you buy more cars and keep the best engineers in your service crew,” says Coleman. “However, for me it’s all about bragging rights. Knowing that you’ve finished an event in the top ten per cent means a great deal to me and a lot of our players out there, so I think that is its biggest hook.”

that the Force Feedback on steering wheels was terrible. We invited a particular guy into the studio based on a YouTube video he put together and he gave us some good pointers on where to go with the game. “We ended up completely rewriting the system and incorporating a load of additional features that the community had asked for. I’ll be honest and say that it made the game feel completely new again. It was miles better than what we had released with and we have those community members to thank for it.” Coleman details how Codies decided to completely overhaul the physics engine to fit in with the studio’s vision of what they wanted the sim to be.

"W e set out to make the most authentic rally game ever made and the result is something that rally drivers are already using as a training tool.” Paul Coleman, chief games designer at Codemasters, is talking about the studio's latest racer, DiRT Rally. Touted as a true sim, Coleman describes the title as suitable for “gamers that are up for a challenge”. “The key thing is that these cars are not hard to drive in real life and they are not hard to drive in game; it’s driving them fast down a narrow rally stage that is the challenge.” Almost 12 months ago, Codemasters put DiRT Rally up on the PC-only Early Access to garner feedback from the race community. Coleman says the response really helped to shape the direction of the game and identify important design flaws. “The PC sim community judged us based on our claim that we were a sim, and were very quick to point out

GAMES

Where does DiRT Rally fit into the DiRT series?

PC: In my opinion it’s the latest and greatest DiRT game. It’s not a spin off – it’s just where we have taken the franchise based on what our fans had been asking us for.

We've made it as detailed as we possibly could.

• DiRT Rally is out April 8

APRIL 2016

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