View the Post on the BlogPortuguese website BGamer recently published an interview with SimBins Creative Director, Diego Sartori. You can find the interview here (but it's in Portuguese), read the English version below or directly on SimBin Insider. No news about GTR3, sadly!
BGamer: What can players expect from RaceRoom Racing Experience?
Diego Sartori: First and foremost we like to think that we are offering a high-end racing game experience in terms of visuals, sounds and handling (game play).
In general, RaceRoom Racing Experience is about connecting fans of racing around one game and one portal where we supply a digital home for the player and a selection of free content to play with.
In addition to the free content, lots of new cars, tracks, and features will be available for purchase from within the game as well as on the portal.
RaceRoom Racing Experience will feature a selection of single player oriented game modes and features as well as a multiplayer component that we have yet to reveal detailed information about.
BGamer: Do you think this is a game for hardcore-simracers only? What kind of driving experience can we expect?
Diego Sartori: RaceRoom Racing Experience is for anyone with a passion for racing games. The game features two different driving models, one is Amateur and the other is Get Real™ and they are designed to deliver two distinctly different gaming experiences through their relation to general difficulty layers within the game.
The Amateur driving model delivers a unified driving experience for all players and it will be their skill behind the wheel that makes the difference, this is achieved by forcing all players to use the same default car setup, there is no tire wear or tire heating to consider, damage is turned off and the cars are using traction control in order to keep them manageable and fun to drive.
The Get Real™ driving model asks a little more from the player. Here tire wear, tire heating and damage are optional and will play a part on how the car performs throughout a session. The Get Real™ driving model also allow the use of traction control, but the traction control system we supply for the Get Real™ driving model works in similarly to that used in real race cars.
In most racing games you can turn traction control on or off and the strength of the traction control is the same regardless of the car you drive. That is not how it works in real racing.
In real racing the team and the driver spends lots of time on fine tuning the traction control strength and in most cases the driver will have several strength settings to choose from when driving the car.
The normal dynamic would be that the driver uses none or very little traction control on the first laps where the tires are at their best, the driver can then go up in traction control strength as tire performance decreases.
That is exactly how traction control works in RaceRoom Racing Experience, players can assign any traction control strength setting to any of the 6 preset traction control positions.
These settings are stored as part of the cars setup file and will be available when a given car setup has been loaded.
To try and describe the actual driving experience delivered by our game is really hard. It does not compare with any other racing game out there, in fact SimBin racing games never do. But even compared to earlier SimBin racing games, I think that RaceRoom Racing Experience stands out as being the most complete experience. You have excellent control of the car within its limits and far greater control of the car once control has been lost and you are trying to recover from a mistake.
The sounds and the new physics together give RaceRoom Racing Experience an impact on its drivers like no other game from SimBin, and that is something we take great pride in.
BGamer: Are there any new game modes such as career or the main focus is the multiplayer?
Diego Sartori: New game mode yes, new approaches to classic game modes, yes, career mode in the traditional sense, no, main focus being multiplayer, no, allow me to explain a little further.
Apex Hunt™, a new game based on the core logic of a Leaderboard Challenge™, meaning you being alone on the track with a car of our choice, you have a target time to beat and a predefined set of Apex Markers™ to pick up during a lap to complete the hunt.
There are 4 levels of Apex Hunts for each track and track variation in the game, and the first 2 levels are designed to be a learning tool the player can use in order to get familiar with the track. There will be a ghost matching the target time and a race line to help visualize how best to drive a lap around the track.
The 3rd level gets a little harder, here the target time and the amount of Apex Markers™ to pick up requires that the player has a good understanding of the track and the car they are driving.
The last level, the Master Class is designed to be really difficult. Here the player has no ghost to follow and there is no race line, only the Apex Markers™ and a target time to beat. Complete the Master Class Apex Hunt™ on a given track and you earn a Trophy that is shown in your Trophy cabinet on the Portal.
The game also features a game mode called Track Test, in this game mode you can practice and test your skills with any of the cars you own on any of the tracks you have. You can do this alone on the track or you can add some AI drivers to keep you company.
Leaderboard Challenge™ is essentially your classic Time Attack, but we have made a few vital additions, and with those we call it Leaderboard Challenge™.
What makes Leaderboard Challenge™ stand out from the traditional Time Attack is that we use an In Session Real Time Leaderboard Bar at the top of the screen, and each time you cross the start finish line the game will check and update your position on the leaderboards. This adds a complete new dynamic to the experience and the fact that you can see how close you are to advancing up the leaderboard should motivate one more lap.
Leaderboard Challenge™ can be started from within the games menu system or by challenging one of the leaderboard entries on the Portal. Racing against the AI in a Single Race or a Championship has also been added – a new dimension through the use of Adaptive AI.
Our Adaptive AI is based on the player’s performance with a given car on a given track and the AI adapts to the players performance from race to race, so to be clear, this is not rubber band AI that waits for you around the corner or the kind that magically speeds up regardless of how fast you drive.
The strength of the AI is built around your past performances each time you start a new race session and therefore it is impossible for anyone to outgrow the game. The AI will always be a nice and well balanced challenge when using our Adaptive AI.
RaceRoom Racing Experience does not feature a classic career mode, you playing the game is your career, it is your life as a digital race driver, documented and shared through the game’s online Portal.
We have based the game on a persistent character approach where the players create the game and their gaming experience by playing the game and by adding more cars, tracks or features to the game.
Historically SimBin has only ever done one progressive game with a classic career mode in it for PC and that was GT Legends, as much as we all love that game we also acknowledge that all our other games have been based on a sandbox approach where all cars and all tracks were available from day 1, this is what our customer base has come to expect from us and that is how we prefer the games to be ourselves.
BGamer: Tell us more about the cars and tracks included in the game.
Diego Sartori: In general, RaceRoom Racing Experience takes the player on a journey through motorsports history and across several continents when it comes to the content it offers to the players.
We have classic cars, historic cars, and several GT and LMP classes from which the player can look for a car of their dreams or desires.
With the exception of two fantasy car classes, RaceRoom Racing Experience is based on licensed race cars from around the globe and our main interest and priority is licensed content.
That is also the case when it comes to the tracks, apart from a few Hill Climb stages and of course RaceRoom Raceway, the track featured in the Teaser, all other tracks are licensed racetracks.
When searching for tracks and cars to include in the game we decided that with cars we would create a strong field of GT cars, a nice selection of car what we think is cool cars, cool because of their history, their looks or the way they sound.
For the tracks the premise was that each lap had to be interesting, even if it is just you and your car out on the track, hot lapping and participation on competitions had to be as fun and engaging as racing with the AI or taking part in a multiplayer race.
So the track selection we ended up with is a healthy mix of tracks we all know and some that will be firsts from SimBin.
I will not get into actual detail about the cars or the tracks here, for detailed information you should visit the SimBin Insider.
BGamer: What graphics engine is RaceRoom Racing Experience using and which visual improvements does it come with?
Diego Sartori: RaceRoom Racing Experience is using the RendR™ graphics engine; it is an in-house development that finally allows us to do a SimBin racing game with proper visual appeal.
When looking at possible alternatives to creating our own graphics engine, it became clear if we wanted to maintain the feel and game play that makes a SimBin racing game special then we had to develop the graphics engine ourselves.
RendR™ provides us with motion blur, physics based particle system, dynamic light system, light shafts, and Driving Moods, just to mention a few of the highlights of the new graphics engine.
In addition to improved visual standard RendR™ also provides the game with much better scalability for mid and low end computers.
BGamer: The game support different times of day and weather?
Diego Sartori: The graphics engine we have created does support dynamic lighting and it does support changing weather, but we have chosen to start RaceRoom Racing Experience without either of these two systems active.
There is a wide variety of reasons to this decision, but what is important to remember is that the support is there and that we will find good ways of taking advantage of that fact.
BGamer: What was behind the decision to choose a free-to-play model for this game?
Diego Sartori: Since back in 2008 it had been a desire to create a modular game that allowed the player to build a racing game containing only the cars, tracks and features the player wanted to use and therefore not have to pay for stuff the player might never use.
Think of a food recipe, if you ask 5 people to make pasta Bolognese then you will get 5 different interpretations of how pasta Bolognese should be made, what should be in it and what that special ingredient that makes it better than anyone else’s should be.
It is the exact same logic you can apply to making a racing game, or any game for that matter, it is all about personal taste and preferences, but here we are, telling how their racing games should be, and what cars they should like, or what game modes they can play.
A modular game was the only way where we could make the player feel like the centerpiece of the game and that is what the player should be and feel like.
The idea of a modular game was an extremely hard sell within SimBin, and it was not until a change in ownership that we found a way to realize the vision of such a game.
As we all know, the games industry moves fast and trends come and goe almost at the same rate as the four seasons of a year, so when it was finally possible for us to actually realize the vision it had already become a standard, it even had a name and that is Free to Play.
RaceRoom Racing is not a traditional Free to Play game, first and foremost we like to refer to it as a Free to Race game
On a more serious note though, RaceRoom Racing Experience is not a pay to win type game, the only thing that can make you faster or better than your opponent is skill, talent and/or practice.
With RaceRoom Racing Experience we have managed to realize the vision of a modular game and we have managed to allow SimBin a chance to shine once again.
BGamer: What can you tell us about GTR 3?
Diego Sartori: At this time there is nothing I can say.
Find more information about RRRE in our forum and media gallery.
[source: SimBin | pictures: SimBin]
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