Codemasters' F1 game discussion

Specs will be similar to DiRT 2 specs.

Core i7-920 Quad 2.67GHz
Phenom II X4 905e
Geforce 8800 GT
Radeon HD 4770
3 GB
10 GB
DirectX 9

I would say yes, you could start it, but not on high settings. I'd get an ATi 5770 and another 2gb of RAM.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2010 06:14PM by msater.

or get a ps3 or a xbox 360

Credits of the interview are further down.

Part 1

We sat down with Paul Jeal, senior producer on F1 2010, to get the skinny on what to expect from the game's epic-sounding career mode, its multiplayer features, possible head tracking and other gameplay details.

Here's the first half of our lengthy interview - check back over the weekend for the second half.

What did you take from the development of and reaction to F1 2009?

Jeal: The only benefit that gave us was confirming that there's a market out there for F1. It sold really well. But also it established some relationships with the teams, finding out what they're like with giving us reference material, how it'll take to get it, and just testing the waters with F1 management generally. The contract's not as tight as you might think. It's quite black and white in some places, but there's quite a lot of grey in there as well.

We've got a really good relationship with F1 in order to be able to speak to them and present a feature. The press conference feature was one they weren't sure about at first but when we could present it to them and show them what we were thinking and that we weren't going to be slamming other drivers it was cool.

In what ways does having the official licence restrict your creative freedom?

Jeal: The only thing that's been restrictive so far is that, with something like a career mode it'd be good to have all the racers change teams. It's not so much an F1 restriction, I think its more that you really have to get all the teams to approve and some of the bigger teams won't want their drivers in another car. Also certain sponsors are tied to certain teams so having one driver's helmet in another car isn't going to work.

But it's enabled the guys to innovate - so with the career mode it's actually done like a game of musical chairs. There are 24 seats open at the start of the season. At any point you can establish interest with a team - but how long do you leave it? You can wait so long like Nick Heidfield and there'll be no seats left, or you can accept an earlier offer and have a guaranteed drive on a smaller team.

So, to confirm, you won't be able to take drivers to different teams?

Jeal: No.

Some of the earliest concerns following the Codemasters license announcement surrounded how well the Ego Engine, which had done Dirt and Grid, would handle a hardcore F1 sim. How much have you changed the engine to suit F1?

Jeal: It wasn't too hard, to be honest. We had a core team from the Dirt 2 team - I was working on Dirt 2 for a little bit but as soon as F1 came in it was all hands on deck with that - and we used the skills of those guys who had worked on those games.

But actually putting F1 in a different studio from the outsets seemed like a bit of a crazy idea. The studio hadn't done racing games before (there's a few guys who did the old Sega Rally). Most of them had worked on a diverse selection of games which I think, from the outset, seemed a bit risky.

But I think the cool thing is that it's allowed us to not be attached or precious about any particular part of the engine or code. So there's no doubt the Ego is great technology and it's allowed us to be light-years ahead of where we'd be writing it from scratch, but it's allowed us to decide from the beginning which parts need re-doing.

So, more specifically, there's been a lot of work on car handling - aerodynamics, tyre modelling, the engine - it doesn't work the same here as in the other racers. So we had to re-write. There are at least five or six systems in the car handling that have been re-written.

The Ego engine is all still there, but new layers have been built over the top. Stuff like the weather system, pit stops and other stuff is brand new. It's just given us a head-start on everything.

You said you have the "most advanced weather system of any racing game". Can you elaborate?

Jeal: Yeah, that's fundamentally down to the fact that it doesn't just look good. There is a lot of under-the-hood stuff that's going on. The track system on a big course like Spa knows how grippy or how wet it is for every 30cm square of the track. It knows not just that it's wet but how much water's there. It knows what tyres you've got - if you're on the full-wet tyres they disperse something like 300 litres of water per second [it's actually around 80 litres per second according to Internet research - Ed].

So they will physically drive that water from the track. If you go over the same piece of track on intermediates, you won't clear as much water, so you won't see as much of a drying line.

Depending on where the track is, how fast the cars are going and whether there's any overhanging trees, that all affects how quickly the track dries. Even things like how high the track is from sea level and ambient air temperature. It's proper sim stuff. I nicknamed it the National Geographic when I first read the game design docs. We've spared no expense on that.

Can you tell us in more detail what the multiplayer mode will entail?

Jeal: For a large part of last season we were going on the basis that there'll be 26 cars on the grid this season. We knew we could do more cars on track than that, but the problem is we want players to be able to pick their own car, and because a garage contains two cars, we didn't want people to join only to find they've been forced into a different model.

So we will probably limit it to the number of teams, so it'll probably be 12 players on course. But that's not locked down yet. And you'll be able to fill that with AI guys.

Why wouldn't you just give players the freedom to all be in Ferraris if they want?

Jeal: That's possible. But we don't want to lock it if that's the case. The idea is that if the players want to have 12 Ferraris that's possible. One thing we're trying to implement is taking the objective system from the single-player over into multiplayer. So you can race online and take something back to single-player.

What that means is rather than your best drivers using the best cars and disappearing off into the sunset, they might want to pick a slower car; they'll be slightly down on power and speed, but they'll get more kudos for their performance. The game might only expect them to come in eighth place from their rank and car, but if they over-achieve on that they'll get super XP to take back to single-player. So if you consider that, maybe the better players online will be in the worst cars.

What about actual multiplayer gameplay modes?

Jeal: There are essentially three main gameplay modes. There's a sort-of quick play match where you can jump in and have a few quick laps.

There's an endurance race mode that brings in more of the pit-stop strategy elements - eight laps, mandatory pit-stops. The strategy there is to avoid everyone going into the first corner and crashing, and then quitting out of the game because there'll be time to make up for lost positions. If you stop early you'll be behind but everyone else has to stop too, so it leads to some interesting scenarios.

And the third mode is custom, so whatever you want race wise, season wise, rain, laps, driving assists. You can do what you want so you're the host and you set it up as you want it to be.

Mike Jackson computerandvideogames.com


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Part 2

In the second half of our interview with Paul Jeal, senior producer on F1 2010, he reveals details on head tracking features, his thoughts on motion control and 3D, and why downloadable content is NOT a good idea.

The first half of our lengthy interview, with heaps more gameplay details, can be found here.

How do the Press conference sections work in actual gameplay terms?

Jeal: The questions are asked to you, the driver, based on actual events that happened on track - it's not just random, it's all tied into the race. So if you had an incident or you got knocked out of qualifying you'll be specifically questioned on that.

Then you'll get a series of optional answers including 'no comment' to pick. Each one of your answers affects your relationships with various things. So you don't always want to slam your team mate - you might want to lift him to help him if he's a rookie driver. You can praise or criticise your team to get upgrades faster. You can use the media to announce that'd, for example, you'd love to drive for McLaren one day and start a relationship with them, although that'll annoy your current team.

Have you considered incorporating head-tracking tech - like Gran Turismo 5's expected to have?

Jeal: We've got some basic stuff in there with infra-red tracking. We're just looking into that now - we're currently going through controller support. Fundamentally our main aim for controllers is to support all the wheels and to make sure that players with the pad aren't disadvantaged. I found that, with Gran Turismo, if you're not on a wheel you don't stand a chance of winning. That's a shame, so we haved focused on balancing that.

We're also looking at head tracking. At the moment we've got a couple of eye-type devices that, if you turn your head slightly left and right you can turn the camera.

When you say 'eye-type devices' you mean you're toying with Natal and PlayStation Eye...

Jeal: Natal, not at this stage. We did look at it at one stage, but I think if we were going to do it we'd like to do it properly. But for 2010 there were too many ideas in the pool, and I don't think we could have done the tech justice. And tech like Natal, I think you can do some subtle things like head tracking but there's bigger wins to be had with that.

PS Eye we've not really looked at so, at them moment we've got what works in Dirt 2 - we've got a device on PC called the IR Tracker. It's actually quite difficult to look left and right whilst racing - it's counter-intuitive to turn your head away from the thing you want to look at so I'm reserving judgement on those things at the moment.

So, head tracking is only possible for the PC version?

Jeal: I think so, yes. But we don't want 2011 to be just an update of drivers and teams, we want to go back to the pot, ask what didn't make it this time around and how we can get it in there. There's lots of stuff I'd love to get into this game, but you've got to nail each idea - this is our first chance to impress and we didn't want to spread ourselves too thin.

So Natal and PS Move could be on the list for the next game in 2011?

Jeal: Could be, absolutely, yeah. To be honest there's nothing discounted from the game design at all at the moment. We wanted to do the 'Be the Driver, Live the Life' objective, and it's about choosing the features that'd suit that best.

Have you guys looked into 3D yet?

Jeal: We've had a quick look at it. It was on the cards but again, we really wanted to focus on the core experience. I saw Avatar in 3D and, you know when something new comes in and people smash the effects up to 15 and it really kills it, I was worried about that with 3D but looking at Avatar I think they used it quite will - nothing was too in your face and I think that's a great formula for games.

Damage in racing games would lend itself to 3D - bits flying off towards you, other elements in games maybe not quite so well.

But 3D's not something you'll include in F1 2010?

Jeal: No, there won't be any 3D in this one.

Do you have any plans for post-release download content?

Jeal: We were looking into DLC and if you take the 2009 season into consideration lots of driver moved and lots of things changed. We're less concerned that those types of things are going to happen in 2010. We're also releasing fairly late - September - because we want the game to be accurate and we've had to wait for the 2010 data.

So we're quite confident we'll be able to get the performance of the teams and replicate that quite well. So right now we're not planning on any major DLC because the core team will then roll onto developing 2011. So what you might try to shoehorn into 2010, you might really end up taking away from that 2011 experience. So never say never, but right now probably not.

There were reports of financial difficulties at Codemasters' in recent months. How, if at all, has this affected development on F1 2010?

Jeal: Absolutely not, no. We've got two key studios in the south - the racing studio and the action studio (Flashpoint). Looking over to Guildford they've got a lot of talent there. And obviously we've taken over the Birmingham studio which is where F1 is being made. So we've got four studios, it's just a case of where we can fit in all the games across the board.

I think external development was probably the area that didn't really give the biggest bang for the buck. In terms of you release a lot of quality titles under the Ego engine and then under the same brand you've got other companies developing on other platforms and other technologies and I think those are the things that depicts more than the four studios.

The four studios mentioned are the four cornerstones, if you like, of Codemasters. We've got over 100-odd people working on F1 so no problems there.

Mike Jackson computerandvideogames.com

Well the weather stuff looks pretty awesome if true, however now that they say the team making this game have never made a racing game before worries me .

I think it was the team that made the Wii and the PSP version.

The people working on this have experience with grid, dirt etc

AND ..... The YouTube vids are gone

While some initial things Codemasters said would be done aren't going to be done (i.e. laser scanning), this is looking soooo tempting, I am now honestly excited about the game and very hopeful that this time it will be good! The 2nd developer diary, extended version, has been out for a few days now.

Some interesting points:

The lead designer, Paul Jeal, worked on GP3 as a QA tester.

"We're tailoring the handling to a very different market to the likes of Dirt 2 and GRID"

Anthony Davidson appears to have had a much larger hand in the development than we previously thought too.

I know that at this stage they're just talking the talk, but I'm starting to think that this could be good!

EDIT:




Wet weather, and some damage @ just shy of 3 minutes. More damage @ 4:30



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/08/2010 08:41PM by loque.

The third dev Video has been released by Codemasters. [uk.xbox360.ign.com]

The game looks just fantastick:D i can't wait for September:D

As much as I would love to join the hype and when it gets closer I will be more get more excited about it.

But my main concern is this game is being built for console players, so the game will be more or less arcardy, I would love them to make a simulation like the Geoff Crammand games but they wont.
The thing what also makes games the way they are as well is I love the modding of the PC with games like GP4 and other games but the problem is how customisable are codemasters going to make it so modders can change the cars and allow us to change pretty much the whole game so we can have cars dating back to the 80's.

New-ish screenshots:





Looks amazing! I might actually get it - even if the gameplay's crap, even if only to look at the amazing graphics. And this is still with a few months to go!

wish they would release a few screenies with '10 cars!
looks amazing though. I will def be getting it!

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2013 - Nando must come through..

I just hope my laptop will be able to take the beautiful graphics.

WestPunx - no chance.

Really? Not even on medium?

Another amazing picture!

The screenshots are shaping up nicely - hopefully the rest of the game will too.

RE: making the game customisable/moddable. They won't. It's not their job and neither is it in their financial interests.

[Website]

The developers look very keen on showing us progress and they sound quite passionate about it, definitely a good sign of hope... one can only hope!






Maybe we'll finally have proper rain that will actually expand on the great GP3 system!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/14/2010 11:49PM by Guimengo.

The SimRacing TV people got to interview the Codies guy and had a chance to drive the pre-alpha build:


Codemasters F1 2010: Hands On… Is it a sim ?


Our first look at F1 2010 has come and gone and we had a great time meeting Andy Gray and checking out the latest offering from Codemasters. We were allotted only a half an hour of time with Andy and F1 2010, but we came with something that it seemed peaked the interest of the group before us and after. We came equipped with a Fanatec Turbo S wheel to cover any platform attached to a Rennsport wheel stand. Usually we show up at these events and have a bit of camera envy being the low budget production company that we are.. But this time we showed up with a wheel and pedal set and we seemed to be the envy of the other companies . A photographer from the magazine Road & Track actually got to test F1 2010 with the 911 Turbo as well since he was up after us and it was still hooked up.

What was originally supposed to be a half hour turned into us being able to check it out and talk to Andy for more than an hour. He told us as much as he had time for as well as doing the interview with Jessica that you will all hopefully enjoy.

Shaun and I did as much driving as we could in the limited amount of time we had but took in a lot and we’ll share it all with you for episode 65 which will air on Monday morning at 9:00 AM PST US time. We were actually able to get some footage of us driving at Montreal in the Ferrari, and you can see the screen, something they didn’t allow any of the other media that day to do that previewed F1 2010.

So is it going to be a sim ? Not like an rFactor or iRacing. Some things that are not simulated, like taking complete control over the car in pit lane. You can to an extent, but not 100%. You can setup a car, but from what we were told, you won’t be able to find extra seconds on the track by fine tuning the setups. Gains will be minimal to simulate the engineers bringing a prepped car to the track for their driver.

Is it going to be like Dirt 2 or Grid ? Far from it… It’s definitely got a lot more of a simulation feel to it. I really feel this title will appeal to the hard core sim racer as well as the casual gamer thats an F1 fan.

We wish we could share our footage with you sooner, but they have put an “embargo” on our coverage until Monday. For now, they’ve sent me a few more screenshots for you to enjoy.

Make sure to check back here Monday for our interview and hands on look at F1 2010 by Codemasters.

I won't be buying it.

Too arcade for my liking, could do better with an F1 2010 mod for rFactor 2 imho.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/18/2010 11:35PM by mika19b.