BREAKING: GT Legends Rebirth Confirmed

[Paul Jeffrey]

RaceDepartment have been made aware of an ambitious new project to rekindle the spirit of yesteryear with a return of the fabled GT Legends franchise, bringing a much anticipated sequel to the 2005 hit title some 11 years after its original release.

Simon Lundell is heading up new development team Tiny Feet Studios who aim to bring a second installment of the fabulous game to PC sim racers sometime in the coming years.

Although the project is very much in its infancy at this stage, RaceDepartment have been speaking with the team recently and share the enthusiasm for this project and the prospect of once again recreating the classic age of racing on modern PC simulators around the globe.

Simon is no stranger to GTL as he formed part of the SimBin development team that re-released on Steam classic titles RACE Injection, RaceRoom Racing Experience and its derivatives, GTR, GTR 2 and GT Legends. Leaving SimBin during the Swedish developers bankruptcy struggles in 2013, Simon has been concentrating his efforts on bringing the GT Legends name back into the gaming arena.

Speaking to RaceDepartment Simon had the following to say regarding the future of GT Legends

"Ever since the SimBin bankruptcy I have been working towards the GT Legends rebirth. I finally have all the paperwork in place to let you know of our plans. There are a lot challenges, and a long project, ahead of us but we remain excited and motivated for the challenges ahead and look forward to bringing a game people will love to race "

RaceDepartment are due to sit down with Tiny Feet Studios in the coming weeks and discuss what plans are in store for this new adventure however in the mean time you may have already noticed the freshly restored GTL sub forum (here) has made a return to the main section of our site… please keep an eye out for further news and stories being posted in the coming months as progress develops with this title.

We at RaceDepartment are delighted to see such a wonderful concept coming taking its first steps towards coming back to life with a proposed sequel so long after the original made its debut. We will aim to keep our readers abreast of all the latest news and features as and when they become available.

Excited about the news? Have any burning questions you want to know the answers to when we do our interview? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Mark Reynolds]

GT Legends was one of the most favourite titles I worked on back in the day....

If you need any reference type stuff Simon then drop me a shout, ironically I am now racing with the Classic Touring Car Club with many of these legendary cars for real, so have unparalleled access to drivers and reference at the race weekends.

 

[DucFreak]

There seems to be so many wishes for this across various discussion boards, all of which go through different spectrum of cars/series/eras, game engines from other modern games and whatnot. Etc, etc, etc.

Considering how each and every newer sim-racing game has missed the mark and botched things in so many ways (don't even get me started on that), I'd be much more satisfied if this new game title would be build over something completely new and unseen. Not based on freaking Rfactor2 or Arsetto Cosa, each with its own set of considerable failures and dead-ends.
Or, otherwise, perhaps built over a severely revamped platform with proven record (even if "old").
Whatever the case, it needs to be robust, light on resources, features rich and very versatile (including modding abilities), and a product that is fully working and polished at release.
(Please, enough with the "early access crap" and "eternal betas"!)
Failing to prove any of these aspects will mean a decay in userbase after a certain period, when the hype and novelty focus ends.
Likewise, sacrificing original features/qualities, decent framerate/performance, and even moddability, for the sake of "eye-candy" is out of the question and non-negotiable, IMHO. We already have had enough of that crap.

For all of this, and knowing how much effort a game with such varied and rare content like GT-Legends would take for the modern age, I'm down to earth and modest with my wishes. And that is - make a modern iteration of GT-Legends, as in, for 2016 standards. With the features and variety the original provided. Basically, that's it.

The community is already there (for many years now) and will easily embrace it and nurture it, so long as the sequel (and migration to it) proves to be valid.
I also believe many of the expert modders, be it in the form of the lonesome artist or the bigger mod-teams (GTLWorkshop (P&G), Virtua-LM, HistorX, BLT, and so many more) can also help this developper if the need ever arises.
Most of all, I'm a firm believer in that games like GT-Legends and GPL are such special cases, that a supposed sequel (spiritual or direct, doesn't matter) has to be done right.

 

[Ulli Haus]

Awsome News!
As many pointed out before, a purchase option during beta phase in order to financially Support the developers would be a great idea --> I'd be in right away

Additional questions @ Paul Jeffrey:
1) Are they planning to make efforts including the fabulous Canadian American Series with it s Lola, McLaren, Shadow and Chaparral beasts?
--> They'd be the first to offer this greatest of all leagues in a racing game where back in the day drivers reported fear when hitting the straightaway due to these cars immense power

2) What about maximum cars in one race?
--> Cranking this up so le Mans races with huge starter fields and all the different classes would be awsome.

3) Will they include infamous cars such as the Porsche 917, the Chaparral 2D, 2E, 2F, and their sucker 2J

4) Last but not least sounds: please bring us awsome engine sounds that also include the differend nature of engine noise when lifting the throttle (see youtube video of Porsche 917 right at the beginning under breaking)

 

[oneWonders]

Ulli, if you have GPL, then maybe these will be of interest to you:

1967 Sports Car Championship mod:
http://www.sportscarlegends.net/

1971 CanAm mod:
http://canam71.gplworld.de/

Re-made, corrected 1967 Spa Francorchamps:
http://spa67.gplworld.de/

A 1966 Can Am mod is coming out soon too, so you may want to check on that.

I doubt it will be publicised anywhere, as GPL modding doesn't seem to get reported on sim racing sites any more (in fact i posted when the spa67 track was released on virtualr and it got deleted for being off topic, hah! Well if they won't post about it then of course it will be "off topic"). Check srmz.net for updates if you are interested.

I know GPL is antiquated physics wise, but it still has a good mod community releasing tracks and series mods. And there is no other game with the amount of historic tracks available (sadly).


There are some really cool historic track versions that are modern sim only though, the GTL version of Fuji looks cool! Did they ever update the GTR2 release of it? From what i can find i don't think that they did which is a bit of a shame, would be cool for P&G.

 

[Ulli Haus]

Hey thanks One Wonders
I remember GPL but that was a looooong time ago LoL.
Last time I checked nogripracing.de, there were still mods and stuff being released for GTL and GTR2, so you might be lucky with Fuji

 

[MegaDoomer83]

I am as excited as I am worried.
I thing they'd be better off making solid rF2 mod if they could charge for it (no idea if this is possble, rF2 is still ridiculously expensive so I am not even considering buying it right now). I honestly don't believe they could make a profit developing decent game from scratch if they want to charge for it something reasonable. In my mind they would have to set price pretty high just to call it even in the end.

 

[David Wright]

I think most of us share your worries over a new unknown developer taking on this franchise. Which engine they will use is probably the first question any of us would ask.

However producing the game as a mod for another game isn't a solution. If you wanted to buy GT Legends 2 you would have to buy both rF2 and the mod and this would make it very expensive.

While racing sim engines have been developed by very small teams (look at LFS or NetKar Pro) the most likely scenario is Tiny Feet use an existing engine. The front runner for graphics could be the unreal engine as used by KartKraft and being tested by S3S. Maybe they could license the S3S physics engine or perhaps the rF2 physics engine.

Hopefully we will get the promised interview soon.

 

[MegaDoomer83]

Good point with buying existing engine, no idea why it did not come up to me.

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

Hopefully we will get the promised interview soon.

We will indeed

I did the interview some time ago but on further review decided it probably needs revisiting once several key areas of Simon's plans are more formalised so I've held off for a while.

I will be picking this back up with Simon in the near future and hopefully we can put something interesting together for you guys to enjoy.

Cheers

 

[David Wright]

Thanks for the update Paul. I am really looking forward to it.

 

[hodge like]

I'm not going to say I'm excited as only recently discovered GT Legends & by damned it's enjoyable, especially with the wealth of mods available. Just love the MK2 Escorts on UK circuits. Equally enjoying GTR Evo. RRE, AC, DiRT etc are not getting a look in now (although great titles).

 

[Denis Betty]

I'm not going to say I'm excited as only recently discovered GT Legends & by damned it's enjoyable, especially with the wealth of mods available. Just love the MK2 Escorts on UK circuits. Equally enjoying GTR Evo. RRE, AC, DiRT etc are not getting a look in now (although great titles).

Check out HistorX v1.96 mod for rFactor. It's based on the cars from GT legends.

 

[Ernie]

Sorry for being a little bit impatient but because it was very quiet the last months ....... Are there any news (even "tiny" ones) about the project? Is it still alive?

 

[Vanaja]

Any news Tiny Feet Studios?

 

[Glenn Briden]

Yeah I have a feeling this project has hit the skids and may be yet another pipe dream gone South.

 

[Paul Bennett]

If it's going to be scratch built can't see anything until next year

 

[Glenn Briden]

I agree nothing solid but if you post announcing the title you should at least keep people updated about something it at least let's us know they are still alive....

 

[Paul Bennett]

Some dev's do some don't but I hope it's still alive, a good full on retro title is needing in sim racing.

 

[unseen]

Still waiting for some little snippet of news to appear somewhere about this one. I really do hope it`s still on the go.

 

[Paul Bennett]

@Paul Jeffrey , any chance of an update on this ?