GeneRally 2 News

In this blog post I will give an overview of our approach to modelling car physics in GeneRally 2. Here, as in other areas, our task is to build on GeneRally in a way that doesn't undermine any of the features that made that game as enduringly popular as it has been.


The largest difference to GeneRally 1 when it comes to car modelling is that GeneRally 2 models suspension in a more realistic fashion. This provides us with two potential benefits. Firstly, visually, it allows the cars to display realistic behaviour such as body roll under acceleration; wheels tracking uneven terrain; and suspension compressing when landing from jumps - this plays into our general push for a more lively and interesting world for the player to race in. Secondly, it provides a platform on which to build a more realistic handling model for the cars.

This second point, however, we have found to be a double-edged sword.

At an early stage of development we experimented with realistic steering behaviour and grip calculations, with traction calculated based on tire load and applied to turn the car by rotating the front wheels. This provided an improvement in realism, but it did not translate into improved gameplay. A realistic simulation of the tire forces often manifested simply as inconsistent or incomprehensible controls, due to the high downward camera angle making it very difficult for the player to see precisely what the car is doing at any given moment.

In the end we changed to implementing the steering the same way GeneRally 1 did: as a direct rotation of the car around its center of mass. Turning does not depend on immediate traction, or even on tire contact (to allow the car to turn happily in mid-air). This change means that the car will always react to steering inputs in a consistent manner.

Consistency is one of the keys to the kind of intuitive and easy-to-pick-up gameplay that we are going for. The handling model should be something the player doesn't have to think about, since the car simply feels right. GeneRally, after all, doesn't need to challenge the player with tricky handling - there is enough challenge in figuring out optimal lines; changing track conditions; and in planning your pit strategies over the course of a race or championship.


But this doesn't mean there won't also be new and challenging cars in GeneRally 2!



Here is where a robust physics model gives greater opportunity for building interesting handling characteristics that can take some skill and experience to master. Adjusting tyre pressures or suspension parameters such as travel and damping coefficients, allows one to play with how planted/nervous a car feels on uneven terrain and how it transfers weight under braking and acceleration. Adjusting how tire load affects grip - and the relationship between static and dynamic friction - allows for varying understeer/oversteer characteristics and for cars that can be rotated with the brakes. The choice of driven wheels (FWD/RWD/AWD), differential type and torque also make a big difference to how a car performs.

Much of this car balancing remains to be done - and testing will show what can be done in a way that remains challenging in a fun, rewarding way. We've gathered a lot of valuable feedback about the physics and the Rally car during the period the demo has been available. Obviously, as GeneRally is not intended to be a simulation, there is no inherent value to doing things in a realistic way: if a more direct approach proves to be better for gameplay, that is what we'll go for.

One such example is the demo's Rally car: it includes an additional force that helps it to turn whilst sliding - a "slide assist" if you will. This feature was implemented as being able to throw the car into corners was deemed to be more fun than trying to avoid sliding to maintain grip. This makes going fast more about choosing the correct line and timing the turn-in, rather than about being able to precisely micromanage the car's angle mid-corner.




Questions about balancing realism with gameplay can, in this system, be done on a per-car basis - and in much more depth than was available in GeneRally 1. GeneRally 2 will include some cars that are made to be as easy to pick up as possible, and some cars that come with unique handling characterics to add variety and challenge for more experienced players. We will also make sure to have some throwbacks to the "classic GeneRally feel" for that healthy dose of nostalgia!

The full list of cars for Early Access release has not been set in stone yet - and it will certainly continue to grow over the Early Access period (and hopefully after the release too). In any case, you can expect the car selection in GeneRally 2 to be more varied in terms of their handling characteristics than in GeneRally 1.


I hope you have enjoyed this peek into what goes into making of GeneRally 2's cars. In future posts I'll go into more detail about the workings of the car model and about the development of individual cars. You can also expect insights into the mysterious minds of the AI drivers.

---

Don't forget to wishlist GeneRally 2 and if you want to stay up-to-date sign up to the newsletter and follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

You can also join us on Discord!

[h3]About Markku[/h3]
Markku is one of the founders of Curious Chicken Games and has been working on GeneRally and GeneRally 2 since 2010. He is primarily responsible for GeneRally 2's physics and AI.

As part of our participation in Steam Next Fest - which runs from 6th - 13th of February - we've put out a demo of GeneRally 2 for you to try! You can download the demo from our Steam store page.

Note: The demo will be available until the 13th of February, after which time it will be
taken down, as we continue to focus on getting the game ready for its Early Access launch!

• 1x Car: Rally
  
• 3x Tracks: Tropico (Tarmac), Polarius (Tarmac/Ice), Mudroot (Mud)
  
• Track Editor with Test Mode (save/load restricted).
  
• Up to 8 drivers (any mix of local players and AI drivers).
  
• Support for Steam Remote Play.
  

The Rally car is a new-player-friendly car designed to handle all types of surface and
terrain. It may not be the most powerful car, but it's stable, and forgiving to drive.
Various cars and car types will be available when the game launches into Early Access.


The demo is limited in some ways - these limitations do not exist in the full game.

• No customisation of race settings (race laps are limited to 3).
  
• No car colour selection (random only).
  
• No load/save in the Track Editor.
  
• No damage, tyre wear or fuel usage.
  
• No adjustment of AI skill level.
  
• No key/controller rebinding (as a result, some controllers may not work).
  

We're keen to hear what you think of the demo, and if you encounter any bugs or other
issues! If you want to give feedback, you can do so by joining our Discord server - or even right here on Steam.

If you want to find out what we have planned for GeneRally 2 for the future, you can
take look at our public roadmap.

Last time, I shared my first impressions with GeneRally 2 Track Editor. Today I want to talk about the painting tools, in other words about drawing the track. This can be divided into two parts: editing the surface, and editing the height of the track. Terrain Type menu contains tools for painting the surface of the map.

The heart of the Terrain Type menu is the Surface Type tool. Currently there are 14 surfaces to choose from. Some of them are familiar from GeneRally 1, such as darker and lighter tarmac, grass, sand, mud, and snow. The biggest change from GeneRally 1 comes in the form of several tarmac types that only differ by their colors, such as green and blue. These have been included so that the users can create more delicate painting patterns, for example kerbs with varying paint schemes or trackside ornaments.

Each of the surface types can be painted with the standard round paint brush. The size of the brush can be defined in pixels unlike in GeneRally 1 Track Editor, in which only 10 preset sizes could be used. Furthermore, the brush's location isn't invisible anymore. Thanks to this, it's easy to draw the track layout one section at a time as the brush can be placed exactly at the spot where the previous stroke ended.

The surface map itself has grown from the 512x512 pixels of GeneRally 1 to 1024x1024 pixels. This enables more detailed work than before.

The Rope tool works the same as in the GeneRally 1 Track Editor. It's a nifty aid that enables smoother lines. When the Rope Length is set at 0, the brush works like your basic freehand brush, reacting to every tremor of one's hand. When the Rope is activated, the brush works as if it's dragged by a rope, so small hand movements don't affect the brush direction that much. The longer the invisible rope, the smoother the line.

The same squiggly line made with Rope Length 0, 4 and 13.


A new addition to the Track Editor is the Spray brush. Spray makes it easier to mix different surfaces such as gravel and sand on grass to make it look more natural. This tool is very versatile as every surface and setting available in the Terrain Type menu can be used in combination with it. Furthermore, the Spray Density can be defined by the user. Interestingly, the Spray brush uses randomizations that change for each click. Thanks to this, sometimes it creates cool patterns on its own.

Next, there is a wonderful tool called Surface Mask. With this tool, one can choose which surfaces will be masked - that is, can't be painted on. Any surface can be masked so there's no fear of messing with your detailed blue decorations. Surface Mask can also be used to replace a certain surface with another while not affecting the other surfaces.

In addition, the Surface Mask can be used for creating kerbs! In fact, the GeneRally 2 Track Editor is missing the kerb tool that was featured in the GeneRally 1 Track Editor. However, if you ask me, said tool wasn't too good. Now, with a little bit of patience and help of the Surface Mask, one can create nice kerbs with any color combination. This is where the new colored tarmac types are very nice. No more using grass (which turns to mud) for your green-white kerbs!

Pretty kerbs and sprayed surfaces!

Another new cool tool is called Outline. In GeneRally 1, the outlining options were very limited. For tarmac, there was white and yellow option, and they worked only for the darker tarmac. Moreover, all surfaces (except for ice and oil) had an extra outline, not of paint but some other surface, usually a type of dirt. In GeneRally 2, any surface can be combined with the outline, and any surface can act as the outline. Not only this, but the outline width can also be defined. Again, this is an improvement from the thick outline of GeneRally 1 that came only in one width.

Finally, the Terrain Type menu has the Dashed Line tool. In GeneRally 1 Track Editor, the dashed line was available for the white and yellow lines. In GeneRally 2... you guessed it: any surface can be painted with the Dashed Line. In addition to the line width, the user can also define the line and gap lengths.


As important as painting the layout is, height changes are what often give the track its life. For this, the Track Editor has the Terrain Height menu. The biggest change from GeneRally 1 must be the size of the height map (hmap) which has grown from 64x64 pixels to 256x256 pixels, making hmap work considerably more detailed. Someone might wonder why the hmap isn't as large as the landmap but, in my opinion, this offers enough precision for detailed work.

Currently, there are three Paint Modes. With Height Adjust one can raise and lower the terrain to the desired height. Fixed Height does the same, but the user can define the exact height. The limits are 0 and 255 as with GeneRally 1 and various other games that use a height map system like this. Finally, there's the Smoothing mode.

For a GeneRally 1 veteran, the Height Adjust and Smoothing work differently in GeneRally 2 Track Editor than what one is used to - at least for the time being. It must be said that the Height Adjust does somewhat cruder job than in GeneRally 1. On the other hand, Smoothing works way better than it used to work, at least in my opinion. There is a bit of a learning curve, but it isn't too steep.

There are also various

This must've been the thought of many people when the posts about Steam wishlisting started hitting the Internet. For me it was special news for other reasons: one of them was the fact that, for the first time in my life, I saw content I had created on a Steam store page. I am, of course, talking about the track screenshots.

You see, the team invited me to create tracks for GeneRally 2 using its Track Editor while also doubling as a play-tester and bug hunter - and I leapt at the chance.

As of the time of writing, I've spent around 15-20 hours with the GeneRally 2 Track Editor. The Editor, like the game, is not yet a finished product so I won’t talk about things that will change, but I am thrilled to be able to share some of my impressions with you all!


As a veteran of GeneRally 1, the first thing to notice is that the Editor is accessible straight from the game menu. When going to the Editor, we're greeted with the oh-so-familiar empty grass map. While I love the early 2000s style GR1 TE user interface after all the years I've spent with it, it's great to have a modern UI!



We have several menus with lots of features that are familiar to a GR1 track-maker: objects, terrain type (tarmac, mud, snow, etc.), checkpoints and so on. Under Track Properties we have world size, water level and so forth, just like GR1. A quick test tells us that the world size can be set between 25 and 255, again just like GR1.

In many of these things, one can clearly see that the team has taken the spirit of GR1 and the ease of use of its track editor as their guiding light. At the same time, there are many places where one can see how the team has modernized the Editor and, for the most part, the changes are only for the better.


When we open the New Object menu, the actual objects are visible. As some readers may know, in GeneRally 1's Track Editor, one had to select objects from a drop-down list with only the object names. Once an object was placed on the map, it appeared as an abstract shape. Now the objects look exactly how they'll look like while racing. This makes track creation way easier.

The big feature (at least for) me is: there are several different views you can edit the track from:

• 2D is practically the mode we had for GR1,
  
• 3D lets one rotate the view to wherever they want to,
  
• and finally, there’s the Preview mode: this shows the track just as it'll appear in the game and I'm loving it!
  

For me, the visual side of the track-making has always been very important. During the last 20 years I've spent countless hours just staring at the game screen thinking about object placement. Now I can see how the objects work with each other immediately. No surprise this became my main view mode right away. I estimate I spend 80-90% of my track-making time in this mode, using the other modes just for fine detailed work.



In addition, there are now several placement modes. The line tool, coupled with the rope tool, is a welcome feature. No more clicking single objects as in GR1: select suitable object spacing and that long continuous fence is easily made. For those not familiar with the rope tool (used in GR1 for terrain painting) it lets the creator make smoother lines - in this case lines of objects.

Furthermore, the objects can be rotated and moved even after placing them. For a newcomer this sounds given but for GeneRally 1 veterans this is a new feature. Not only that, one can now use the standard Windows shortcuts such as Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-Y and Ctrl-C/X/V as usual. Can you believe that we've lived 20 years with a single undo click for terrain and another one for height, and nothing else?!

Currently, most of the objects are what we already know from GR1: they look like their earlier counterparts but have naturally been updated to more modern standards. I personally like the approach the team has taken. For me, GeneRally has always been a cute game, and these objects retain that cuteness. They are simple but not too simple, retro but not too retro.

While updating the looks of the objects, the team has also made some nice changes. For instance, the people now have arms - love it! Furthermore, the soft wall must have been the most hated object in GeneRally 1 - with so many people saying its bright red color hurt their eyes. The team has understood this and have re-interpreted the object - the soft wall acts like a tyre wall, and it's now exactly that, but with red casing.

When it comes to new objects, at this stage they are basically variations of old GR1 objects. For instance, we don't only have a regular stand for the spectators, we also have one with a roof. There are two types of catch fencing (concrete wall and armco barrier). The round office block has been one of the most common combinations of objects in GeneRally 1 - made from several regular office blocks - and now we have it as its own object. Personally, the best new object versions are the stones with size variants - I just looove the fact we now have four different-sized stones.




Before I wrap up for today, I want to mention one more feature: Test Mode. It is exactly what it promises to be: one doesn't have to leave Editor to test a track. Instead, a car appears on the map for you to drive - very convenient, I must say. Coupled with the fact that one can rotate the view to wherever it needs to be, one can very easily test how the height changes affect driving on a certain hill, for example.

As you can see, I'm already in love with the new Editor. The wait has been long but now, as I'm playing with the Editor, I can say it's been worth it - at least for me.

In this post, I didn't really get further than objects, and there certainly are other cool features on top of what I've talked about today. I'll get to those in my future posts.

For now, stay tuned and spread the word about this cool game!

---

Don't forget to wishlist GeneRally 2 and if you want to stay up-to-date sign up to the newsletter and follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

[h3]About Tuomo[/h3]
Tuomo is one of the admins of GRIF and a track-maker with almost 300 tracks released for GeneRally 1. He has played GeneRally for 20 years and thinks it's the best game ever. He is currently building tracks for GeneRally 2!