The Big Assetto Corsa Competizione Interview (Part 2)

[Paul Jeffrey]

Catch part two of our exclusive Assetto Corsa Competizione interview with Marco Massarutto and Ste'fano Casillo of Kunos Simulazioni...

Causing a mass panic of excitement from the sim racing community following the announcement back on February 21st, it is probably fair to say plenty of people are excited for the upcoming Assetto Corsa Competizione racing simulation, and with a potential Early Access release coming to Steam this summer, we answered the community call and sat down with two of the men behind the simulation - Marco Massarutto and Stefano Casillo, founding members of Italian development studio Kunos Simulazioni.

If you are interested in learning more of about the official racing simulation of the Blancpain GT Series, check out part 2 of our exclusive interview at the head of this article.

If you missed it earlier, part one can be viewed HERE. Oh and please consider doing us a favour by subscribing to our YouTube channel if you enjoyed this coverage and are looking forward to more of the same in the years ahead...


Assetto Corsa Competizione should be available on Steam Early Access Summer 2018.

Check out the Assetto Corsa Competizione here at RaceDepartment for the latest news and discussions regarding this exciting upcoming sim. We intend to host some quality League and Club Racing events as well as hosting some great community created mods (we hope!). Join in the discussion today.

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Enjoy the interview? Looking forward to ACC? Learn anything new? Leave a comment below (and subscribe to our YouTube page too!)

 

[Will Mazeo]

So when a full course caution comes out for the turn1 carnage (along with the carnage that will happen while the field comes back around for a lap and a half to pick up the pace car), how many laps do you guys want to crawl around behind the pace car before rinse and repeating the procedure?

If you dont like just turn it off bro, but it is a real life feature that should be in any sim that calls itself a racing sim
And btw as a league admin full course yellow reduced drastically the amount of people that would leave a race after a first lap crash as if some more cars are involved a FCY is called and they have time to repair without going a lap down (or more). Tho for online racing a virtual safety car is better than a FCY, but having the option to bring the FCY in case there is too many debris is also nice and feels real.
For offline use it is very nice and immersive.

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

So how many 7 minutes laps do you want to ride around Spa in order for your experience to qualify as realistic?

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I can see Stefano coding a safety car to lead the pack during the formation lap, but I will be flat out shocked and amazed if full course yellows are included. I somehow doubt anybody at Kunos will lose a minutes sleep over ACC not being considered a 'racing sim' by a handful of people for not including X feature.

 

[Will Mazeo]

As many as in reality, if you can make guardrails deformable and animate its repairs bring it on, I'll throw my money on the screen

 

[Metla]

So how many 7 minutes laps do you want to ride around Spa in order for your experience to qualify as realistic?

As many as it takes to clear the track, so my guesstimate is 1.3 laps.

Personally, I'm all for the safety car, It means crashes change the dynamic of the race.

 

[Will Mazeo]

As many as it takes to clear the track, so my guesstimate is 1.3 laps.

Personally, I'm all for the safety car, It means crashes change the dynamic of the race.

it does, man it's bloody amazing when they mess up with ur strategy, or when you have alternatives counting on FCY. Just too bad not many leagues use this

 

[Marko-13000]

Personally, I'm all for the safety car, It means crashes change the dynamic of the race.

Yeah that's what I think too - races without a safety car just feel lifeless.

Of course, handling, weather simulation and basics comes first, but it'll be a nice immersive addition

 

[ShredatorFIN]

What r you talking about??? 600k game users
Nearly 100k downloads of 1 track+1car mod!
Do you have any idea of how many mods are out there??? Not even mentioning how many mod share websites with their own links.
Even Kunos recognized that mods were that important to make AC popular.
Please....

You can't count that way lmao... both are in most occasions downloaded by same person.

Yes I have idea of how many mods out there (while majority of them are garbage), I have over 100 mods installed for AC. RD is the largest/most popular mod site as far as I know.

Yes modding adds some extra value to AC, but saying "a game is doomed to be failure because it has no modding" is f***** dumb.

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/2017_best_sellers/

Tell me how many of those games has native mod support? Many of them don't have any kind of mods, period. For example PUBG or Rainbow Six Siege, you will get banned if you try to "modify" your game.

Hitman, Assassin's Creed, Tomb Raider, Dark Souls, Battlefield series, Call of Duty series. Are they famous for of all the mod levels, you can download?

Dirt Rally doesn't have mod support, doomed to fail rally game eh? Codemasters F1 2017, very popular game. Yes both have some mods, but no official support.

ACC will have mods too... just no support. How is that different. Except that it will have better physics than Codemasters can ever produce.

 

[motoliser]

We all know you are far from it....

Yep.

Except that it doesn't.

-------
Not really sure what you are on about anyways, modding isn't happening and crying about it over and over isn't going to change that.

Racing fans will buy any major racing title that comes out but only specific DLC or Mod can bring new people to the game.
Mods have brought AC to the light period.
For simracers AC was never a choice for racing it was on the other hand a great platform for driving on a huge variety of new content every week.
I know loads of people who not only bought the game but also hardware primerly to have the chance to try a specific mod track or car. Many of them only play AC on private online races only with moded content.
AC2 would be the right way to go. They only thing they need is to improve what's already a sucsess. Creating a new title with a few cars and tracks and better graphics will compete against What?? Pcars??? If that's what Kunos is aiming for I am realy disappointed!

 

[Marko-13000]

Creating a new title with a few cars and tracks and better graphics will compete against What?? Pcars??? If that's what Kunos is aiming for I am realy disappointed!

"For ACC this element will have to be put in stand-by mode"
They would also want mods to happen, it's just that it has to make sense considering how much time they invest into figuring it out and making it work since it's still a big unknown and could therefore cost them so much time that they could have probably used to improve other areas.
As for now, the focus is going to be reproducing the Blancpain Series as good as possible.

 

[natedogg1867]

Rocket League

Not to deny the point your are making, but this is a pretty bad example of a game that doesnt have modding.

RL has a ton of modding. Early on in the game's life, people would mod in 'training courses' that you could use to practice your dribbling and stuff like that.

Not to mention all the people that use cheat engine to give themselves all the alpha items.

 

[Epistolarius]

not really a solution. You leave that option open and people will try to run 50 cars on a 486 and then claim the game is unfinished because they can't.

Why's that the dev's problem? And what would make it any different than the arbitrary limit at 30?

Make it a game setting that unlocks larger grid sizes with a warning tooltip about it requiring a high-end CPU, reflect it in the recommended specs, done. If that's not enough put it in some INI file.

Also, whatever number you'll put in there, somebody will complain because to be "proper" they "need" that number +1

I read there's a maximum grid size that Blancpain GT allows, why not use that?

I have no issue with limiting/removing a feature because of limited dev time (and testing) or because it's not technically feasible (and sure there's a sensible upper limit for the best consumer CPUs out there, just not some arbitrary number and it's not like better performing CPUs won't come out). Nothing to be done about it. But because someone would complain about it...?

 

[ltcars]

Sorry, but I must say: I hate when people bring up the AI subject!! Gzus Christ, in the internet era, where multiplayer is the key point of particularly every single new game that comes out, and specially in a simulation environment, AI is totally dispensable!!!

Wow, 105 disagrees, that must be a new record
EDIT: I didn't even bother to press disagree as the point is made

 

[Ralf Brinkmann]

Very interesting and informative Interview, thanks a lot @Paul Jeffrey and @kunos! How many comments until part 3?

 

[Epistolarius]

Nevermind.

 

[Marko-13000]

Very interesting and informative Interview, thanks a lot @Paul Jeffrey and @kunos! How many comments until part 3?

Haha maybe it'll come in a different form - I'm hoping for a new "Look What The Cat Hacked In" - Series for ACC

 

[ShredatorFIN]

Not to deny the point your are making, but this is a pretty bad example of a game that doesnt have modding. .

Ah well don't play Rocket League, assumed. Often MP-only games with competitive focus have anticheat that prevents fiddling with the gamefiles (or, makes it risky).

 

[Eugene Abramoff]

@Paul Jeffrey well done man, really great job with the interview!

 

[randMracer]

Sorry, but I must say: I hate when people bring up the AI subject!! Gzus Christ, in the internet era, where multiplayer is the key point of particularly every single new game that comes out, and specially in a simulation environment, AI is totally dispensable!!!

Congrats, I think you set a record for the highest disagrees that I've seen in this forum.

 

[Patrik Marek]

there's no point crying about modding ! and yes, in a way it's actually good that it won't offer it, so that modders can get bit of a break
as long as it's back in AC2, which imo would be a mistake if it wasn't , then i'm good with that

mods are by far the biggest reason why I have so many hours in AC , and why I enjoy it a lot. If AC didn't support it, I would still have bought it, but maybe not every DLC though .. and wouldn't have played more then 40-50 hours imo, ... but? Kunos would still get the money, so it won't really matter to them

as many people have said, for closed series game , especially one that offers career mode ( which hopefully will be done well ) there's definitely less of a need for mods,
sure they would be great but it's not a deal breaker

I would love to be able to do mods for F1 from codemasters, to enjoy my stuff in nicely done career mode, but it's not a deal breaker to not enjoy the game

now on the other hand, something like rFactor or AC1, where lot of the content is from all over the place ( old road and race cars, modern road and race cars, old and modern open-wheelers) , no proper career mode, .. well without mods, these games have really not that much to offer - at least to people like me
major advantage of mods is LONGEVITY of the game, it extends it by far! ( look at GTR2 or GTlegends for example) , BUT longevity doesn't bring more money, so it's not really priority for game devs

one of my favorite type of racing is either touring cars or GT4 cars, and AC has like 2 or 3 cars in each of these groups, which isn't really enough for variety

now, if they released a GT4 or TCR specific game, then I wouldn't need any mods what so ever !! so yeah, ... as much as I would love modding to be available, I don't think it's necessary

if not including it will give them more time to focus on getting most out of the UE4, so that they can apply it to AC2 with full mods support, then I'm behind this idea and can't wait

 

[Bernd Graf]

SO LET IT BE WRITTEN

SO LET IT BE DONE.