DiRT 3

[Puddy]

The rally's get longer as you get into the later seasons and world tours, there's none longer than about 3 minutes though, it was decided a while ago that 3 minute stages are about right in terms of length for the average player who doesn't want to sit through 10 minute races

Yeah I understand that Xbox-kids have the attention span of a 5 year old.

Nah but seriously I understand the reasoning and it is was what I expected the answer to be.

If your engine allows it size-wise, couldn't you create, for example, a map consisting of 3 stages in a row and then let players to enable "long races" and these will be transformed into a single long stage?

Please? For me?

[Rick_D]

sounds like you don't know how games get made

[Puddy]

sounds like you don't know how games get made

I trust that PaulH is the main project leader overlord and that his coder lackeys stand at the ready to facilitate any change I desire.

[KungFuSquirrel]

sounds like you don't know how games get made

They actually had this in the first game, if I recall correctly. I think mostly on the Hill Climb events. You'd get shorter runs earlier in the career, then open up the long 8 minute-ish courses later in the game.

PaulH, am I insane or was that actually the case?

[PaulH]

You're sort of right, there was at least one 8 minute stage, as they recreated the full length of Pikes Peak (i didn't work on Dirt 1), i can't remember that stage time extending to all tracks though. As Rick pointed out though the development process means that we can only budget for a certain number of KM per track and to get the amount of locations and routes we currently have in Dirt 3 we settled on the 3 minute mark. We did manage to add an extra 2 to 3 km of variation to routes this time around though so that you weren't always running the same sections of track over and over, which helped

[Rick_D]

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.

[cyberjunkie]

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

[PaulH]

@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.