DiRT 3

    on an unrelated note i imagine track designer is quite an interesting job.

    i presume you are not doing the art for the levels, merely tying everything together, or am i wrong?

    also, do you get to do a fair amount of iteration on tracks or are they decided upon by outside forces? i guess you can't change real life tracks but do you get to tweak them for the game balance?

    would love to hear about the process of designing a track for a racing game, and the performance and optimisation factors you have to think about.

    Bought it earlier this month. Being a racing sim fan and a big Richard Burns Rally fan as well, I'd say it's a fair mix of simulation and arcade. It performs well, looks pretty and is a solid game overall. Only complaint I can think of right now is that the driving aid make it effortless to play (and unfair in online games to fully manual-control gamers like myself). If you guys are playing it on the PC, do post your GFWL IDs

    cyberjunkie

    There is a hardcore mode online in Pro Tour which disables all assists, removes the HUD and forces the in car view, give it a shot you might like it. Also in Jam sessions the server host can choose whether to enable assists or not

    Rick

    It is an interesting job, one that i didn't necessarily set out to get into, i was more looking for FPS design work but i am enjoying this. We don't do the art for the levels no, but we do go out on the research trips to help us plan where the key features of the track are which we then add into our 3D white boxes. So whilst we don't create the final art assets we do specify where the main ones will be. Part of our job is to split the track up visually so it's interesting to play and players can remember certain corners by certain features, as opposed to many Km of repetitive endless tree lined dirt tracks. The road surface and the few meters either side is what we mainly create, the art team can't alter that mesh they can only pretty it up. Also all the tracks i've worked on for Dirt 2 and 3 so far have been entirely fictional, so the real life track tweaking doesn't come into it, though i'm pretty sure we do have license to do that as many real world routes wouldn't translate directly to game without some alterations.

    Our general workflow is to carry out research for the areas (where possible), plan out 2D maps of the tracks and have those reviewed/signed off, create the 3D version of the track and get that through the production reviews, then send it off to the art guys. A few months later we get a pretty version of the track and then it's our job to add final AI, replay cameras, barriers, reset lines etc to the routes, anything game play specific basically. Performance and optimisation wise, that's mainly under Art control, i think that because a road travels from A to B the optimisation process is a bit easier for them than having to deal with a large open area such as those in FPS games.

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