EXCLUSIVE: RICHARD BURNS RALLY - THE INTERVIEW
Tell us about the concept behind the game - why Richard Burns?
Hickman: We wanted to do something slightly different with the rally genre. Colin\'s great, WRC\'s great, but we wanted something that kind of reflected the more technical side of rallying, the kind of simulation aspect.
We went back to the drawing board. Reinventing rally is the wrong term, but we\'ve introduced the element of simulation to the whole rallying genre that I don\'t think anyone else has done.
To give you a good example, we\'ve gone back to the grass roots of the handling model of these vehicles; we\'ve written a complete car simulation, similar to something that professionals would use in the car industry when testing all the initial concept ideas.
So we\'re simulating quite a lot of the interior of the car, the engine, the way the combustion cycle works, we\'re modelling things like the temperature of the brake fluid and the oil and the water from the radiator, so if you get a puncture in the radiator that has a knock-on effect on your engine, as it would in real life.
It\'s doing something different to the other rally games out there, and that\'s what we wanted - to do something that no-one else had ever done before. There\'s no point trying to copy what any of the other rally games are doing: for us that\'s not an option.
We came to Richard because he is the UK\'s number one rally driver, and has been for quite a while. There\'s a very good chance he\'s going to win this year, which would bring his world championship total up to two. Richard is very precise, he\'s very technical, and when we had our initial discussions with him he wanted that to be reflected in the game.
So that\'s why we\'ve been doing all this stuff. Other areas that we thought could really do with some attention is the detail on the stages. We\'ve had some really cool stuff from the other games, but there\'s also lots of stuff that they don\'t do, bumps in the road, potholes, proper geometry, you know? Not just textures on the ground.
We want stuff that\'s really going to affect how the car drives those stages, and we\'ve managed to do that.
We\'ve got proper geometry that reflects everything you\'d see in real life. The potholes fill up with water when it rains, there are ruts, worn areas of the stage; if you drive a gravel stage or a muddy stage, later on in the pack you\'ll find that the stage is more worn than it would be of you were driving it at the beginning.
When you drive through big puddles in our game, water can actually enter the cooling vent on the car, which does have an effect on how the car fires up the cylinders. It sounds really complicated, but most of this is going to be away from the player.
That\'s possibly the only concern; we guess you\'ve got to strike a balance between realism and playability - keep it fun...
Hickman: Yep. At the end of the day it\'s all about playability. If we couldn\'t introduce these elements without making them playable, there would have been no point in doing it.
People who play rally games have got to experience it to see how different this game is from all the others. I think we\'ve really succeeded, it\'s going to be very different, very exciting.
Could you explain the car handling/physics system for Richard Burns Rally, explaining how if affects the whole gameplay experience?
Hickman: Rather than using a single-bodied physics system, which most other rally games do, we\'ve gone for a multi-body physics system where we\'re simulating what is essentially a real car chassis, the McPherson struts, all of the stuff that you\'d expect to find in a complicated car modelling piece of software. And that adds some advantages.
If you damage one wheel that can have a real effect - you can damage the differentials, and our game allows you in the set-up screen to programme all of the differential settings of the rally car, which is really complicated; only experienced players are going to want to access that part of the game, but it just gives the whole thing more depth than anything you\'ve seen before.
Differential mappings are horribly complex things and you can really create some strange results if you don\'t know what you\'re doing, but you can also achieve something that\'s just not been done in any of the other rally games.
Can you tell us about the graphics, the weather effects, any other notable visual aspects?
Hickman: We\'ve got the usual sort of things, rain and snow. I think we\'ve probably gone a bit further than most of the other games on the market with how they look visually.
We\'ve got time of day, so our stages can take place during the morning or the afternoon or the evening. We\'ve also got real-time weather, so all of the stages can feature a huge variety of weather effects, so you play through the season once and when you come back to play again the same stage might be completely different weather.
I think the best example of that is Gateshead, where you\'ve got the Pirelli International Rally. Gateshead\'s weather is quite, er, variable [laughs]. We were up there earlier this year taking photographs for research and development, and early in the morning it was foggy, visibility was down to about ten meters, there was drizzle in the air, it was freezing cold, and by nine o\'clock it was brilliant sunshine and completely different. It was the most bizarre thing.
And no-one\'s really done that before. Colin has weather settings for stages, but it doesn\'t change. You play one stage in England and it\'s always the same - on our game it can change which can create some very variable conditions for the driver and makes for much more of a challenge I think, as they play through different seasons.
We\'ve also got light scattering on the PC and Xbox versions, which creates a much more subtle atmosphere than you\'d normally achieve with things like volumetric fog. Our game is not an arcade game, it\'s about achieving a level of realism, and achieving that with photorealism in the graphics is as important as achieving technical realism with the car model or the engine simulation.
This is much more photorealistic than most other rally games that are out there.
Can you actually play as Richard Burns?
Hickman: You can\'t actually play as Richard Burns in this game; we\'ve got Richard as kind of a mentor character, he starts off the game teaching you how to drive, we\'ve got a big rally school, it\'s one of the unique features of the game.
He teaches you how to handle a proper rally car, what the terms mean, and so on. If you don\'t know what powerslides and Scandinavian flicks are, he\'ll tell you.
So how does the driving school fit into the structure of the game? Is it essentially a one-off tutorial?
Hickman: It\'s a tutorial, completely separate from the other modes. You work your way through and you can achieve different pass levels, you can go back and take the school tests again, try and achieve a gold pass on every test that we\'ve got.
Apparently the gameplay is also different because of the attention paid to dips and rises in the road?
Hickman: Going back to the whole ethos of having accurately represented real stages, you drive along with Colin and it\'s very much a uniform surface which you\'re driving on. The level design is very good, but in our game, you get hills and valleys, with fog settling in the valleys in the mornings; the geometry of the stages has a huge effect on how you\'re going to drive.
We\'ve modelled some sections to be more worn than others, and if you can get your front tyre on that section, if you can hook it in, the reduced friction can actually slide the car round - it\'s something you see all the time in rallies, but nobody\'s doing anything like that in games. We\'re just trying to recreate everything you see on TV. Those guys are so cool [laughs].
Are there major differences between the different versions, or is this pretty much the same game across the board?
Hickman: We try to take as much advantage as we can, from the hardware on PC and Xbox, but I have to say the PS2 version looks fantastic.
I was over in Sweden last week and they\'re just doing the most amazing things, it looks as good as the PC version at the moment. The quality of the graphics are fantastic: we\'ve got real-time reflections on all the cars, we\'ve got real-time shadows being cast from all the environments, that sort of thing. It just looks really special. It\'s due out in March, and we think we\'ve done a good job.
What one aspect of Richard Burns are you most proud of, and why?
Hickman: I guess it\'s the fact that we made a decision very early on not to do this arcade-style respawning, so that if you go off the road and you crash into a tree, you don\'t get respawned.
We\'ve got this system where by if you crash into a tree, you\'re car might be damaged beyond repair, but if you can carry on you can get back onto the stage. If you\'re near spectators they\'ll give you a push and push you back onto the road, or if you roll the car they\'ll push you back over.
But it kind of creates this whole scary thing; you\'re doing well in the championship, you\'re in the lead - how hard do you push on the stage? Do you go for the win again, or do you go for the second place knowing that you\'ll retain your lead in the championship?
You\'ve invested so much in the race, and you don\'t want to screw it up, you want to be first. If you roll the car down a side of a mountain, it\'s helicopter rescue time, no respawning. It\'s scary!
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