14 DAY TRIAL // Codemasters released the next entry in the popular Dirt series, Dirt Rally, on Steam Early Access last week, without much fuss or ceremony.
The upcoming racing video game is setting out to faithfully recreate the thrilling experience of high-speed driving, of a high-stakes rally.
The developer published an interesting blog entry detailing how it aims to deliver an authentic rally experience, based on the real thing, on the exciting motorsport, and how a realistic co-driver is a huge part of the package.
Chief Games Designer Paul Coleman notes that he looks over many of the key aspects of the game, including not only the way the vehicles are modeled but also how the environmental design is coming together, in order to make sure that the game experience is a solid and faithful one.
He has been pretty busy accumulating real-world experience over the course of the past few years, since Dirt 3 was released in 2011, in order to make sure that Dirt Rally would deliver the most accurate simulation of the sport that Codemasters has ever produced.
Co-driver calls make the experience come together
The co-driver calls are an important part of the experience, integral to making it feel authentic, and the team has experimented with several systems for audio calls. The devs eventually settled for using the 1-6 system, signaling how slow or fast a corner is, including the direction and even possibly supplemental information on the shape of the turn.
In addition to this, there are cues that reference the distances between turns, and there are also co-driver call icons that let players get a visual representation of the corners ahead, conveying the severity of the turns and any bumps, dips and other such information.
Codemasters even provided a handy diagram tying the various calls to the angle of the corner, also mentioning that the Route Notes are meant to describe the road as best as possible, and that they are different from the more subjective Pace Notes that individual rally crews create depending on the vehicle they are using.
Codemasters have a pretty busy schedule for this year, with F1 2015 and Overlord: Fellowship of Evil confirmed to be in production, in addition to Dirt Rally.
