Codemasters revs up the racing genre with “IndyCar Series”

by Louis Bedigian

 

Promising exciting races, stellar AI and incredible car crash effects, IndyCar Series is being prepared to shift your console into overdrive.  Creative Director Carl Dalton tells us all about this highly anticipated racer.

 

 

This summer, Codemasters will release IndyCar Series, a game based on – you guessed it – the IndyCar racing series.  Developed by Brain in a Jar, IndyCar Series is revving up to being one of the hottest racing games of the year.

 

Not ones to sit around and wait for a game to be released, GameZone wanted to experience the thrill of racing now.

 

Cruising down the freeway at illegal speeds, we swerve in and out of traffic, horning our skills for something a little less dangerous: a video game.  We figure, if we’re masters of real racing, we’ll have no trouble mastering a game based on the IndyCar Series.

 

We were approaching 90 in our PT Cruiser (hey, we’re journalists, not millionaires) when a cop came out of nowhere and told us to pull over.  Quickly exiting I-75, we flew into the side streets and evaded the police officer.

 

Then things got really intense: a squirrel jumped into the street!  Frightened, we swerved, crashed into a tree and lost consciousness.

 

When we awoke, we found Brain in a Jar’s Carl Dalton waving a big, beautiful screenshot of IndyCar Series over our heads.  We thought we had died and gone to Heaven…  Luckily, we had just gotten injured and were taken to Codemaster’s in-house recovery center.  (This is the place where they take careless journalists like us after we risk our lives to bring you the latest and greatest video game coverage.)

 

Although we hadn’t gone to Heaven, we did find peace, happiness and joy talking to Carl Dalton.  Carl was the creative director for IndyCar Series.  He provides us with an extremely in-depth interview about Brain in a Jar and Codemaster’s upcoming racer.

 

 

Question: IndyCar Series is an officially licensed game.  How did that change the way that the game was developed, and how will those changes affect the final product?

 

Carl Dalton: We had two major goals for IndyCar Series. The first was to make it an exciting and challenging game to play, to capture the sense of speed and thrill of traveling at over 200mph with your nearest opponent mere inches from your car. The second was to recreate the series itself as faithfully as possible. This affected the design and development of the game in a number of ways. On the positive side we had a working set of rules and regulations to work with, helping us to make important design decisions. On the negative side we had a working set of rules and regulations to work within meaning we couldn't tackle difficult design problems just by making something up that would be easier to deal with, or by leaving that element out! The development of IndyCar Series presented us with a number of technical challenges to, from simply being able to run up to 33 cars at the same time to representing actual drivers through AI to tweaking the difficulty of the game to make it both accessible, challenging and rewarding to play.

 

When developing a game like this, whether licensed or not the vision and design of the game changes incrementally as development progresses, there are elements we wanted to include in our original design that did not make it into the final game, while there are also elements of the game that came about during development and have made a real positive difference to the experience. In the end we feel we have created an exciting racing experience that captures the thrill and spirit of IndyCar racing.

 

Is IndyCar Series more of a simulation game with true-to-life racing physics, or an arcade racer with a little less emphasis on realism?

 

CD: With IndyCar Series we started by making the car dynamics and physics as realistic as we possibly could. We then tweaked the driving model and control interface to make the racing accessible and intuitive. We did this through the inclusion of driving assists that can be switched on or off and other car/controller interfaces that make the responses from both digital and analogue controllers more predictable.

 

This has meant that we have been able to model and include realistic contact patches between the tires and the racing surface, meaning that tire pressure, camber and toe-in have real effects on the cars grip and drag. Proper modelling of downforce and air resistance means we have been able to represent drafting and wing angle settings. And our engine model generates torque, which is applied to the wheels through the gears, with the whole lot affected by gravity and inertia. All of this leads to a physics model where wheelspin, oversteer, understeer and locked up brakes are all emergent properties of the physics doing what physics does and not hard coded ' fudges ' to deal with a myriad of special cases as are so often found in arcade racers.

 

IndyCar Series’ visuals are out of this world!
(Picture taken from the Xbox version.)

 

 

Track design is an integral part of any racing game.  What are the tracks like in IndyCar Series, and how many of them will there be?

 

CD: There are fourteen tracks in IndyCar Series, which make up a total of fifteen races in the full season. Texas Motor Speedway is visited twice, once for a night race and again for a day race. Being a real racing series meant the art team having to recreate the actual tracks as accurately as possible. By using CAD maps and spiral data (the changes in elevation for both the inside and outside edges of the racing surface), the team endeavored to construct each ribbon of oval tarmac down to the last dip and bump. As well as the obvious changes of location and track construction we wanted to capture the essence of each circuit from a ' what is it like to race on? ' point of view. In addition to the physical shape of each circuit the tracks vary a great deal in terms of grip, with one track even constructed from slabs of laid concrete instead of tarmac. With the build complete the tracks were then further tweaked and adjusted in our proprietary game editor to simulate the varying grip and other characteristics that affect racing.

 

Real Indy cars can exceed speeds of 200 mph.  How is that intense, exciting feeling and the way a car handles at those speeds being recreated in this game?

 

CD: We think we've captured the sheer speed of IndyCar racing really well with this game. When you're flying along at over 200mph the scenery flashes by at an incredible rate with depth of field and motion blur effects adding to the sensation. We have a tailored handling system that gives you precise control of your car even at such high speeds enabling you to get right into action and race wheel to wheel with your opponents. Close attention was paid to aspects such as drafting so that when you get into the tow of another car you can really sense the boost of speed you get from the reduced air resistance.

 

How many cars will be available in the game, and how will each of them differ?

 

CD: IndyCar Series uses two different chassis (Dallara and Gforce) with each chassis having two configurations (Short Oval and Speedway), there are also two different engine manufacturers. The two chassis differ in shape and certain aerodynamic properties, but work within the rules of the series to be close together as possible in terms of performance. IndyCar Series is primarily a drivers championship with the emphasis being on an individual's skill, nerve and determination rather than on his vehicles prowess over another's. The winner of a race does so by beating the other drivers on the track, not their cars. To do this he and his team work hard to find the right set-up for each race, and then once the green flag is out it's up to the driver to gain an edge over his competitors.

 

 

Can modifications be made in order to increase the look and/or performance of your car?

 

CD: The car has a wide array of components that you can tweak to create a fast car that suits your driving style. When you go to a track for the first time the car will have a set-up that is stable and easy to drive, but not necessarily fast enough to beat the AI drivers running at 100%.

 

This is where the garage comes into play. In the garage you can adjust tire pressures, wheel camber, spring rates, damper (shock absorber) strength, ride height, front and rear wing angles, toe in and gear ratios. By tweaking the settings of your car you'll be able to find that perfect set-up for blasting to pole position and giving Sam Hornish Jr. a run for his money!

 

 

What impact will a crash, minor or severe, have on your vehicle?

 

CD: Crash damage will vary depending on the difficulty setting you choose. On Easy your car (and the cars of the other drivers) will be indestructible, while on Normal the components of your car will only be damaged to a certain degree (it will always be drivable enough to get back to the pits for repairs). On Pro however your car will be susceptible to a wide array of damage that will impact on it's performance.

 

You may get away with a little rubbing against the wall with the only damage being some extra tire wear, but as the impact power goes up so does the damage. Heavier bashes will buckle your suspension or wing, costing you cornering grip and some mph from your top speed. Your cooling system, gearbox, electronic engine management system and the engine itself can also be damaged by impacts or even bad driving (run your car on the rev limiter for too long and you may blow your engine)!.

 

If you get into really big smashes you may completely lose your wings, totally buckle you suspension, smash your engine and leave your car and you out of the race.

 

 

Car crashes like these make it “fun” to screw up!

 

 

How is the AI being used?  How harsh are your opponents, and how difficult will it be to surpass them in a race?

 

CD: In the IndyCar Series game we have 27 drivers and their cars from the IndyCar Series. With the cars being practically equal in ability we spent a long time working on the AI to make your opponents challenging and fun to race against. We also endeavored to match our AI drivers to their real life counterparts (Sam Hornish Jr. likes to overtake on the outside, and so does our Sam Hornish Jr.). We looked carefully at data from the seasons races and tailored our drivers accordingly (just watch out for a certain South African)!

 

IndyCar Series the game employs a scaling AI difficulty, the skill and effort put into the race by your opponents will change on the fly to give you a challenging race whatever your ability. At the end of each race you'll be informed of the average strength the AI was running at. You can of course turn this feature off and run against full AI opponents that will give no quarter if you wish, in order to beat them your going to have to think and drive like an IndyCar driver!

 

The PlayStation 2 version is going to have a two-player split-screen mode, while the Xbox version will enable four players to race simultaneously.  Is this a feature exclusive to Xbox, or was the PlayStation 2 just not capable of producing a four-player mode?

 

CD: Four player split screen is exclusive to Xbox for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being the console's extra power.

 

What was it like working with Indy 500 champion Eddie Cheever on the game's tutorial mode?

 

CD: Eddie Cheever was a great help to the game. As well as providing the voice over for the Masterclasses he gave the team a great insight into the series and races from a drivers point of view, and helped to clear up some of the finer points of the infamous Indy 500 qualifying procedure.

 

 

Have you ever seen an Indy racing game that looked this real?

 

 

Speaking of which, what kind of exercises will players be asked to do in the tutorial mode, and what sort of comments will Eddie Cheever provide to help increase the player's understanding of the game?

 

CD: The Masterclasses cover everything from basic driving techniques through car set-up to caution period procedures and pit stop strategies. They are all geared towards not only giving you a better competitive edge in the game, but also giving an insight into the real series itself. Each masterclass culminates in a short driving exercise covering the points raised in the class. You can dip into the masterclasses at any time and in any order, so you can choose which classes to take in order to help improve your performance.

 

Which graphic tools and techniques were used to re-create the IndyCar drivers in polygonal form?

 

CD: We used 3D studio Max, Deep Paint and Deep UV, Character Studio and Photoshop for the creation of all the games environments, cars, graphics and characters. We also had hundreds of photos and logos, and hours and hours of video footage, both sourced from existing material and commissioned by us for reference.

 

Aside from the usual above-the-car view, how many camera angles are in this game?

 

CD: In IndyCar Series you can choose from two 'chase' cameras, an in-car cockpit view or a low to the ground nose view for a real blast of 200mph speed rush.

 

What replay features will IndyCar Series have?

 

CD: You can pause and replay a race at any point during play. When in replay mode you can skip forwards and backwards through the action, choose different cameras from TV to in-car views, choose to watch different cars and slow down the action for super slow-mo car crunching action.

 

 

I’m speechless…

 

 

Is there anything else you'd like to share with us about the game?

 

CD: We have all enjoyed the challenge and experience of making IndyCar Series, and we hope you enjoy the challenge and thrill of playing it. Go out and buy it, you'll love it!

 

I’m sure we will!

 

Thank you for your time, Carl.