PART 2/2
ANDY TUDOR, pCARS game director
Andy was working on Need For Speed: Shift series and Ferrari Racing Legends and he gladly admits how working on pCARS is his greatest project in life
"Our tyre model is world's cutting edge"
Andy tells us about technical challenges of game development and specifics of the driving-simulation genre
We are great fans of SMS work (from times of the first GTR game), and despite interventions EA did for Shift games and challenges you've sustained for Ferrari Racing Legends, SMS clearly has a great track record for producing great driving games. Can you tell us your subjective perspective about other projects you successfully directed and participated in prior to Project CARS?
Every game we make we aim to do a) things that are better than the competition and b) things that haven't been seen before. So in the SHIFT series we introduced MMO-style XP, COD-style visuals to collisions/impacts, and Star-based side quests to do whilst racing. We also transitioned the traditional 'heartland' NFS players from the underground scene to the legitimate world of circuit racing. Both games were well-received and the NFS franchise got a much-needed reboot that continues to this day with Most Wanted.
With Ferrari Racing Legends we approached it as an anthology for Ferrari lovers - it had (nearly) every car from the first production vehicle to the latest which had never been done before and it mimicked the legacy of the Ferrari brand through three eras we identified as being the stories that your grandfather told, those that your dad told, and the contemporary age. You put it aptly when you say the word 'challenge' though since development of this title was, let's say, 'not as smooth as it could have been' and ultimately this was reflected in a lukewarm critical reception and sales.
But still, as with everything you do in life, you learn and that influences the next thing you do as you continue to strive for perfection.
Project CARS is aimed to be a community-driven racing game that will deliver as much simulation as possible to as many players as possible. How do you plan to bridge the gap among casual and hard-core players? Is it probably the main concern within the genre since its inception?
Not really, no. With Project CARS we're going back to our roots. We were on that route anyways with the SHIFT series - gradually transitioning the players towards that ultimate simulation and we're delivering on those goals with Project CARS which is squarely aimed at the simulation crowd. HOWEVER, we've taken our previous titles into account here as well and are providing all the hooks and sliders and options and functionality to dial the experience to any kind of gamer - both hardcore and casual. We call this Player Tailoring and therefore with a few changes in the options menu you can change everything from the camera shake to the position of the seat to the type of lens flare, or the level of realism in the handling model, any assists you might need, or the AI of the opposing drivers. Ultimately we'll provide presets for these allowing you to mimic your favorite game. By providing a kind of 'sandbox freedom' in this respect you make the game more accessible and inclusive.
What are the main challenges of developing and directing a unique project as CARS? You work with outsourced artists, you have to manage community wishes, SMS internal plans and timeframes. How does the direction of Project CARS differ from other projects you've worked on previously?
The biggest difference is simply that we can talk directly to the people that are playing the game and have a conversation with them about their wants/needs/desires/thoughts which ultimately gives justification and relevance for every single thing we put in the game. This is a vastly different mentality to how things usually are which is thinking of a good idea, spending two years implementing that idea and then crossing your fingers and hoping that players like that idea. With the WMD platform that feedback time is instantaneous from the moment it's put into the game so you can very quickly improve/tweak/drop that feature and ultimately get to a high quality level and more relevant product sooner rather than later.
The current state of Project CARS gives an ongoing impression how Project CARS will successfully fill the gap all racing-games lovers experienced when Codemasters decided to kill the TOCA franchise. On top of that, Project CARS will deliver stunning day/nigh changes effects, variable weather, damage, multi-car driving fields... everything that represents racing in the real world. Can the announced hardware-specs of next-gen consoles fill the ultimate demand of 60fps without sacrificing the IQ, fidelity and effects of development-spec PC hardware? Also, what will be the challenges of developing versions for current-gen consoles?
The short answer is that next-gen consoles look to aid us technically in a number of ways and alleviate the pressure of squeezing round pegs into square holes, but for current-gen consoles it's the same as every other game we've worked on and every game other people are working on - it all comes down to memory, framerate, and graphically what the hardware is capable of.
It is known how many driving games today are still using a fundamental ISI-engine developed more then decade ago. Project CARS is scheduled to introduce a complete new engine with movement to beta-phase. Can you elaborate on challenges of creating a physics-engine today compared to 10 years ago?
I’d say the biggest challenges for a physics engine today are still the limits of the hardware and the number of available cores.
The more powerful the hardware, the more things we can simulate more accurately and faster which gets us closer to real life. Our tire model is substantially more accurate and complex than it was 10 years ago and is at the cutting edge of any simulation in the world including those used by, for example, F1 teams. We also run our internal vehicle dynamics at a blistering frequency meaning we get more info from the suspension and track surface than ever before. This then gets fed back to the player through force feedback, both aurally and visually.
Ten years ago, CPUs had only a single core which was obviously a lot simpler to code. Today though we could be running physics simultaneously on 8 cores and spreading the load between them whilst also ensuring it runs independently of other systems such as render or networking. Using bridges and interfaces it can then communicate with other systems without blocking other processing threads. This of course makes the complexity magnitudes greater than it was ten years ago.
Personally, I find the FFB wheel support SMS created for Ferrari Racing Legends as one of the best on curent-gen of consoles. Vast development of FFB wheel market has certainly improved the driving genre towards mimicking the real-world as much as possible. What are the specific challenges of developing a FFB support? Why can only a handful of games create an environment where controller players are not in advantage over wheel players? Will Project CARS successfully bridge that gap?
It’s fantastic that the Ferrari Racing Legends FFB proved so popular. The actual FFB code for FRL was pretty concise; nothing too elaborate, we just take the forces emitted from the steering rack, apply a little 'magic', and a bit of damping so we don't destroy wheels and send the numbers to the API.
About controller players, yeah it's a balancing act - as developers we absolutely have to provide a playable experience on gamepads, particularly on a cross-platform title such as FRL so there's the definitely need to filter the pad inputs so that the cars are not only drivable but enjoyable. Some games can take that filtering and driver aid logic a bit too far and it becomes an easier experience, perhaps less rewarding as a result though. The wheel of course is the natural input device for a racing game and fast FFB combined with a rapid framerate can really give immediate feedback. There are always aliens though that can take any device and drive fast with it - back in the 90's I actually used a CH Flightstick for all my driving games and I'd be quicker than most wheel users! Believe it or not I still have that joystick but thankfully I made the transition to wheels and, well, it's vital to develop games for as wide a variety of wheels as we can lay our hands on.
That all said, we're tremendously excited about the brand new tire physics and FFB in Project CARS. It's incredible... we have dynamic flat spots, tread wear, tread temperatures, deformation, aquaplaning all naturally falling out of the maths with no pre-baked effects. It's still mid-development but the end result will be awesome!
The past few years have brought a crazy development within the racing genre where cars have become more important then tracks. Today we have games with hundreds of cars and only a few dozen usable tracks. What do you think about that development? Would you agree that variety of tracks and actual quantity (and quality) of courses in driving games is in fact more important then having 700 cars?
In our experience and this seems to be the same for the competition, players only really drive a small portion of the provided cars in the game… the first one they buy, their dream car, one to get through each tier that the game may have (eg.. D, C, B, A licenses), a car they saw on Top Gear, a car they used to have a poster on their wall as a child, the car they currently own. So around 10 out of 700. So there's an argument to be said "Why bother putting so many cars in the game then?" but that's really only half the story since people like variety. Both Forza and GT act as kind of encyclopedias for cars and therefore include multiple minor variations of the same car not just because it's cost-effective to do so but also so the player can drive the very specific version of that car that they're after. So we appreciate this, but don't necessarily want to go down that road ourselves. For us when we choose the car list we take into consideration what's hot right now, what's cutting-edge (eg.. electric cars), what's iconic (maybe from a movie), what's been on Top Gear recently, the classics, what people in the US love compared to what Japanese fans love, what our target audience are driving in real life right now etc.. In Project CARS therefore we're not just concentrating on road cars like Forza/GT nor one specific motorsports discipline like F1 2013, we have open wheel cars, track day cars, stock cars, supercars, Formula cars, classics, hatchbacks, touring cars, prototypes, bikes. Okay, maybe not that last one, but literally something in there that will appeal to modern racing fans.
Given this number of 10 cars therefore and the fact that people have loyalty to certain manufacturers or love for specific sub-sets of cars, tracks therefore take an increased importance in the player's minds. This is no different to Call Of Duty therefore… you love playing as a CQB shotgun soldier, maybe switching to another loadout with an SMG or something but you know what you like and you know what you're good at. So it then becomes all about learning the maps like the back of your hand, exploring every crevice and perfecting your run through the level. You're more likely to eagerly await a new map pack therefore than a new weapon pack since you know what you like and you're sticking with it.
There's an argument therefore that the same can be said for racing games. If you love muscle cars then you're gonna stick with them and therefore any new vehicle DLC packs released will have a varying degree of interest for you, whereas a track pack is a guaranteed new gameplay experience for you to invest time in to master.
So it's an interesting debate and there's an equally valid opposing argument but ultimately it's my dream to one day have a game where you can look at a map of the world and have a race circuit listed on every continent. We're doing quite well with that currently on Project CARS but there are still some spots left in South America and South Africa ;-)
From your opinion as a director and industry veteran, what is the main reason behind loosing so many great studios within driving genre in last 5 years? We lost Studio Liverpool, Bizarre Creations and last week the Eden Studios - all mainly UK studios. Has the world become too harsh for true driving games?
The one thing I'd say where racing games differ to other genres is that affirmation doesn't come in a driving game until the end of the race. Ie.. you only get told whether you're a winner after five minutes. In Call Of Duty I can jump into an game mid-progress, get a headshot and feel awesome whereas I have to wait a little longer to get a similar feeling in a racing game (ie.. setting a new best lap time or overtaking that guy in front). So in that world I described earlier where our attention span is constantly distracted by other media there's the potential that racing games aren't seen as 'instantly rewarding' as other genres. This of course is nonsense - I love racing games because they make my palms sweatier than any other genre. When I pip someone across the finishing line it's like landing a 10x combo in StreetFighter and my grip on the controller is tight, and the feeling of beating a friend's lap time by a hundredth of a second is as exhilarating as any headshot.
So you could argue that it's tough to be a racing game in today's market, yes, in so far that you have to have something unique, something
There is one unique feature that no other driving game has ever explored except Gran Turismo series - long-term consequences of actual ownership the vehicle. What do you think about that aspect of game-design?
It's great, yeah. I've been on record as saying Gran Turismo is more Pokemon than Pole Position (and I bet you'll use that as a headline ;-)) but it's true when considering the vast number of cars in that game, the motivation to grind for cash to 'collect them all', the 'showroom' presentation as if you'd just walked into the dealership, performing maintenance on it like feeding a Tamagotchi etc.., selling it on with a unique paint scheme, visual styling, and performance spec. It's a pleasurable experience that mirrors real-world culture so yes it's something that interests us greatly as vehicle owners ourselves.
Project CARS will be a multi-platform release aimed at both PC and console players. How do you intend to bridge the gap across the most notable difference of the genre among genres/public: actual career? While console players are used to having a career mode, PC players have a tradition of having everything unlocked to use instantly? what are other specific challenges of such cross-platform development regarding platform-specifics?
You’re right, people play in very different ways and this can be a distinction between casual players and the hardcore, PC players versus console, motorsports fans versus car lovers, solo players versus multiplayer.
That’s why this time around we’ve broken from two usual tropes in racing games – grinding for cash to unlock cars and the linear progression from zero to hero.
Instead we’re going with a sports franchise model which is freeform and endless. All the motorsports in the game are unlocked from the start (Karts, Touring, GT, Formula, Stock) and you pick and choose from any (or all) of three historic goals...
Either start at the bottom and work your way up to become a champion in a Tier 1 motorsport within a certain number of years like Lewis Hamilton, be someone like Michael Schumacher who dominated the same motorsport year after year, or be a legend like Mario Andretti or Travis Pastrana that excel in various motorsports.
Play that calendar of events either solo or co-op, earn accolades, and gain a reputation as a good driver to unlock further opportunities, invitations, and offers from other teams and manufacturers.
If career isn’t your thing then you can concentrate on multiplayer or weekly events, beating leaderboard times or ultimately creating your own online racing team to battle against others in leagues. Hopefully there’s something for everyone there regardless of play style.
Have you considered having multi-screen support for future console releases of Project CARS? Both greatest console franchises (GT and Forza) support multi-screen. Will Project CARS head that way too? Also, do you plan to support advanced PC features such as head-tracking (through Kinect/PSEye) or programming of the buttons (custom button assignment is something that 99% of driving games fail to deliver and many players would certainly welcome that feature, especially players that are using wheels)?
Multi-screen support - yes. Kinect/PSEye support - potentially but only as long as it actually improves the immersion rather than simply being a gimmick, customizable buttons - yes this is already in the game
With the release planned for Q2 2014 Project CARS is now probably reaching the very zenith of its alpha-phase. When is the move to beta-planned and do you think development for the next-generation consoles will meet the announced Q2 2014 timeframe?
Beta only comes once we are feature complete. Right now there are still a number of things either currently in development or on the cards soon like Season Mode, Career, Pit Stops, and Race Weekend so once they’re implemented and have been tested thoroughly we can potentially declare Beta status. As ever though, that discussion will happen with the WMD community as would the release date for next-gen consoles.
Can you give us a fast overview of the final Project CARS experience once finished, as you see it? What will the players find one day when they start the Project CARS for the first time? How much will that game be different then the current build of Project CARS that is available to the community?
Firstly you’ll be asked to Player Tailor the experience as I mentioned before. This will set the game up to your play style and your level of competitiveness. A tutorial may then further evaluate this with a hot lap. After that it’s up to the player, they can totally ignore career and set up an online racing team if they want to dive head-first into multiplayer racing or they can play solo to build up their confidence and learn the tracks/cars, or they can head into career where they’ll join their first team and start on that path to earn rewards, unlock new opportunities, and claim whatever Historic Goal they were most motivated to achieve. The choice is yours!
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