Threespeech: The GRID damage model is very impressive…
CM: It’s been a long haul getting there! But then, we have a lot of experience with damage modeling, it’s always been a feature of the TOCA and Race Driver games, and we just keep refining and perfecting it. We’ve actually put pretty much an entirely new damage system in Grid – and again it’s something that the Ego engine has allowed us to do. It’s a different system to what you saw in CMR Dirt…
Threespeech: In what way?
CM: Just in the way that the damage functions. I mean, the slow motion is an important element of it, and in order to do that, there’s been a fundamental step change in the way that we calculate the deformation. Previously, the car would collide with an object and you’d have a single calculation that would ascertain the damage – a two-step function. Now we’re doing that as multiple calculations – the damage calculation is being applied for every single frame of the game, so it’s bending and crumpling frame by frame. And what that allows us to do is slow the process down and let you watch the whole thing happening in slow motion. It’s a big change, and a complicated system, but realism is important.
Key to this is real-life references – that’s always our first port of call with things like damage systems. We have to understand how these cars damage in real-life, and understand the materials that the cars are made from, so if it’s metal, it’s going to bend, it’s going to crumple up and deform. If it’s plastic or fibre glass, they don’t tend to bend, they have a little bit of give and then they shatter, glass is always going to shatter… we have to get all of those materials correct as well – not only as part of the car model but as part of the damage model as well. So when you do have a collision, things bend, break, crack and explode in a realistic way.
Threespeech: Apparently, in real-life, the open wheel cars are designed to break apart into sections, and this happens in your game as a result of the damage modeling…
CM: Absolutely, and that’s part of it. That’s part of understanding how this car is going to react in a collision situation, when unusual forces are applied to it. That’s modeled in from day one - when the car artists start on it, they’re going to be setting up that car in a way that… the wheels will come off on an open wheeler in a way they wouldn’t necessarily come off in, say, a touring car where it’s all about the panels bending and buckling…
Threespeech: Race Driver Grid offers a range of multiplayer options. How important do you feel it is to encourage and maintain an online community?
CM: Community is really important and it’s something we take very seriously. We took a bit of stick on CMR Dirt for not having much of an online mode in there and that’s something we’ve really tried to address with Grid – we’ve put solid online component in there. We also have our dedicated community liaison people who are always on the forums, always answering questions and keeping the enthusiasm alive out there, and letting people know what we’re doing, what plans we’ve got. Downloadable content IS going to happen for this game, and that’s not necessarily content in terms of extra cars or tracks, that can be additional features or functionality as well. We’re just working it out at the moment, what that’s going to include.
Threespeech: So you have some new ideas for downloadable content?
CM: We do have some new ideas. There’s also a lot of stuff where, when you’re making a game, there’s always stuff you genuinely can’t fit in the time. Some of those ideas are still there and we’d love to get them in – some for the online community and some for the single-player game.
Threespeech: You’ll be supporting this title with new content for quite a while?
CM: Yes, we definitely do want to. I mean, it’s going to be a while before there’s another one – we’ll see how well this one does and how it’s received by the public. We definitely want to maintain support for the game, to keep people interested and excited. We want to be there in 12 months time, still challenging people online.
Threespeech: So with Ego, you’ve talked about it being an evolving engine… is Grid very much the start of a new journey?
CM: Yes, and it’s a long haul to be honest. It’ll be continually improved. There are very big plans at our central technology team, who own this product, they provide the technology to all of development within Codemasters – so it’s not only going into our racing titles, you’ll also see Ego in our action titles – Operation Flashpoint 2, for example, uses a slightly different arm of the Ego engine. It’s split into two elements: Ego Racing and Ego Action. They have the same fundamental core underneath, and then genre specific elements are built on top. So obviously for Ego Racing, there’s a car handling model in there, whereas Ego Action has things like ballistics physics. And we can keep adding on elements for different types of games.
Threespeech: How do you think you’ll change things for a pure F1 game? Is that going to be a new challenge, considering you’re working with one motorsport?
CM: Definitely. The fans are going to expect something a little bit different in terms of how we represent it. If you look at previous F1 games, they’ve steered down exactly the same path in terms of their presentation and maybe the handling as well, and we’d love to think we can do something to refresh the brand a little bit, to do things a little bit differently.
Threespeech: In what ways?
CM: Obviously there’s a lot of planning to go. I do think as well with an F1 game, getting the simulation aspect of it spot on is incredibly important. We have to cater for a possibly even wider audience than we do with a game like Grid – we need that full-on simulation for people who really like to get down to the nuts and bolts, doing all the very fine adjustments on their car. But similarly, to appeal to a wider audience, we need to make it simple and playable enough for those who just want to have some great, fun racing. There’s a real challenge there to try and satisfy all parties. I’m an F1 fan, I love it, but when it comes to racing games I don’t really want to get down to the fine detail – as a gamer I want to get in an have that experience, to feel like a Lewis Hamilton or a Kimi Räikkönen, a racing hero, that’s the important thing we need to get across.
Threespeech: It seems a lot of other driving games are moving toward this, openworld theme, but Codemasters now seems to be moving in a different direction, toward short, sharp racing experiences…
CM: I think there’s always going to be a place for just full-on exciting, aggressive, action-packed racing, it’s what we do well, it’s what we do brilliantly and I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t continue to do it brilliantly.
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