Release week! Ramblings & thanks from T4RG4

*T4RG4* · 21-09-2010, 12:44 AM

And so... we've finally arrived... it's release week!

I'm sure many of the Codemasters staff feel the way I do right now. It's a strange sense of moving into the unknown. We've worked so hard over the last few months, to complete this game people appear to be desperate to get hold of, and yet it didn't finish in a blaze of glory. There was no sudden midnight deadline that we had to hit so that the shops could have our game on the shelves come morning. We submitted the various builds to Microsoft and Sony and, over time, they each received approvals. Discs went to manufacture and we started to disperse, using some of the additional holiday we'd built up to simply get out of the studio, to get away from making games for a short while. I've been meaning to post about the development process but there is simply not enough space on the Internet for me to do that this evening. Therefore I'll just comment on the highlights that come to mind knowing that I'll likely pass over some classic points and completely miss many of the key contributors - the best way around this is to say that this game was put together by a great many people, many of whom I'd consider to be the best I've worked with. Without them there would be no game. Special thanks has to go to the guys that worked for me directly (Gareth who put so much design into the Paddock, Mark with the Career, Tibi with the penalties and upgrades and of course Lee with the handling).

Tomorrow the game launches in America, over the next few days across Europe and on Friday (our traditional release day) here in the UK. I've been out of the office for a week now but not away from the pull this game seems to have generated. I can't really tear myself away from the game what with the forum, Twitter and the occasional promo event. This has become a very big part of my life and, like a few of the developers, I'm both scared and excited to see people's reactions to the title we've battled with over the past two years. Will they like it? Won't they like it? Will they see what we were trying to get across? Do they realise how much we've put into this and do they understand we're not some corporate monster trying to fleece them of their hard earned money? Time will tell.

For me it all started back around Christmas 2008. I'd heard Codemasters had acquired the F1 license and, if I'm honest, I wondered what they'd make of it. Formula One used to generate some great games... Chequered Flag on the Spectrum... Super Monaco GP on the Mega-drive... the classic Geoff Crammond series. I played them all to death but what happened after that? Bizarre Creations put out some interesting racers but I honestly don't remember them having the same impact on me as the aforementioned games. I wondered if I could have another shot at making an F1 game ten years after my last attempt.

I'd started working for Sony back in '97 and became lead designer on the F1 series when it was decided the titles would move in-house for the launch of Playstation 2. I remember seeing what the PS2 was capable of at the time and wondered if it could get any better. I learnt an awful lot during the development of that title, not least the fact that handling is everything. We had some rather cool physics and AI routines at the time but I'm not too sure I managed to get that across in the game. I didn't play it all that much once it was released. I was into Gran Turismo during that era, absolutely loved it all - especially the oil change to stave off the effects of long-term engine wear which resulted in power loss, it's the small details! This gave me the idea of looking after your engines during the season. One of the aspects I have carried across from my last F1 outing is the ability to tweak things whilst in-car. I think we called it Live Dynamics back then.

I left F1 behind after putting togehter the outline for th e'02 game. A management change at Sony led to a change in project direction and, rather than throw my toys out of the pram, I decided to move on to pastures new. I entered the phase I call my 'tour of duty' during which I moved around the country and industry working for a variety of developers some great, some small. Each taught me something new, but with each new game came the realisation that it is... really, really, really difficult to get a great game together. It's made all the more difficult as team sizes get bigger because (and this might be somewhat controversial) there just aren't enough good developers to go around the industry. Sometimes a development team gets the right kind of balance and is then able to produce a single or entire series of triple-A titles. Look at how many games enter the market each year and you'll see many fail to make any kind of significant return, if any at all. This is not to say it's always the teams fault, certainly not. Often too many people become involved in the decision making process when it comes to development. Yet I digress...

So what's it like here, at Codemasters (specifically the Birmingham Studio)? Much better than I thought it would be. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't slightly sceptical of Codemasters taking on the F1 license but after joining them I was very quickly converted. I've met some great people here and I can see some quality games coming out of this company over the next few years. All the ingredients are here. My in to the project came about thanks to a designer working for me elsewhere. I'd taken him from the Birmingham Studio which was, at the time, known as Swordfish. He used his contacts to get me an interview and I passed through each of the various meetings despite nearly losing the opportunity thanks to my claim that handling was more important than anything else in a racing game. Fortunately one of the people in that interview happened to be Paul Jeal (Senior Producer who had joined for F1) who I later discovered, cared as much about making a great F1 game as I did. I'd put together some notes on what I thought F1 was all about and I think the cover of that document had on it a picture of Ayrton Senna's helmet. He raced in the era that captured my attention. The great rivalries, the amazing cars, Mansell, Prost, the struggles of Ferrari, the different engines... amazing times. I've spent 20mins searching for this and, despite it being my meeting notes have decided to put it online for anyone interested in seeing how my thoughts back then translate into the game you will shortly have in your possession. There are some errors in it but I might as well show you what I took to one of my interviews, warts 'n all!

When I moved to Birmingham in March 2009 the basic foundations of Be the Driver, Live the Life were already set. I bought into what they were trying to achieve thinking it to be a novel approach to their objective of reinventing the series. From the very outset Codemasters appeared determined to make a big deal out of the license and knew they needed to take their time. The Wii title developed by Sumo was due out that year but internally we were still unsure whether our game would appear with 2009 or 2010 data. Our release date moved around a few times but I, like many others in the studio, was adamant we had to release with current season data. Whilst the 2009 season was fantastic, seeing the birth of a new (ish) team help Jenson to his first title, we wanted people to be playing amongst the cars, tracks, drivers and technologies of the current season. Then Schumacher announced he was returning... three new teams were to appear on the grid, Mercedes would run their own team... new tracks... to say we were pleased with the decision to launch with 2010 data would be an understatement. This would be one of many brave decisions Codemasters would take in order to boost the quality and ultimately appeal, of their first Formula One title. This put additional pressure on us in terms of licensing but it was worth it.

*T4RG4* · 21-09-2010, 12:45 AM

Part II (wow, I wrote a load - again!)

Even when I'd arrived there was a great deal of cool technology surfacing but little of it was in a playable state. The weather system was looking great and ended up being something we're all very proud of. Over time the physics were adapted and refined so as to better hit the handling goals we set ourselves very early on. The AI started to move over and defend its position... (I've wanted to see that for years), the pit-lane filled with crews working on their team cars... mechanics resided in the garages, interviewers waited in the paddock for news on your season thus far. Things came on quite slowly to begin with. Let's not forget that whilst the team were using the powerful EGO engine on which other famous games had been based it was now in the hands of a new team unfamiliar with the technology. Fortunately we had many other people around the Codemasters family helping in critical areas, a real company effort, but inevitably there is a learning process. Some areas are rewritten or modified in order to take account of the specifics of Formula One (not many racing games have to deal with 24 cars) and it'd be fair to say there were periods when many of us thought we'd never get the game out in 2010! Beyond the development aspects one of the things I was very keen to do was involve the community more. At a previous studio we were very open in allowing certain developers to post on our community forums. I saw how people responded to that and looked to take that attitude to every place I worked thereafter. It wasn't met with unanimous applause when first raised with the community departments looking after F1 (looking back I can see what they were trying to protect us from) but after many tense meetings and discussions we finally agreed to allow me access to the forums. I'd seen the calls for information and wanted to start providing it. At the start of 2010 the doors started to open, the company geared up for promotion of F1 and I jumped on the coat-tails to get my Twitter account approved. It's not an official channel, but when you're talking about your employer and their project it stands to reason you want those above you to sanction its use

This community interaction has snowballed massively since then and I take my hat off to the PR, Brand and Community departments at Codemasters. We've all become closer and work together tirelessly to promote the game. I'd go so far as to say it's the best I've experienced in my time in game development and I take my hat off to them all - a very talented bunch. @AndyGray_ still laughs at the fact I am always very critical of everything. I can't help but look for ways to make something better. I hate acceptable! They hate me sometimes

Yet at the end of the day I think the promotion of F1 has gone extremely well. In some areas we've tried to do things a little differently and I dare to say it's worked. I think this will filter through to other projects (I see it happening already) and I've therefore been hatching plans to increase our transparency further on the next project. Just wait until they hear what I want to do next...

There were development highlights in March this year when, at our first public showing, people (including some from this very forum) responded positively to the game. I for one was very apprehensive about showing the game because I felt it both looked and played nothing like version we had in mind for release. I specifically remember one of the community guys saying he remembered my first F1 post back at Sony in 2001. A reminder that your words on the Internet remain forever! The showing went down very well and during this time we became progressively more open about the development of the game. The forum started to become ever more busy and there were finally concrete things to be discussing. In the summer we really ramped up the development process but I wasn't too sure, at that point, whether we'd overcome a really serious problem with the handling model. Ant Davidson who we'd contracted to help us with handling feel was rightly trying to get us to move towards something we could only ever fleetingly hit - a realistic driving feel. We'd take one step towards it and another away... we couldn't ever seemingly pull everything together at the same time and people started to doubt whether we ever would...

The unusual thing is we had just one designer (@TheLeeMather) working full-time on the handling. Normally a developer would have upwards of three on a title like this and to make it even more challenging, Lee was new to game development. He'd held a few roles at the studio over the years but we plucked him from IT as he was incredibly keen to get into development as a designer, loved F1 and loved cars. He knew his stuff and his enthusiasm kept things ticking along. He was tied to the Physics coder (Neil) for a few weeks in an attempt to get to grips with what the system offered currently and could provide in the future. After this period of forced 'marriage' Lee moved alongside myself as I was becomingly increasingly involved in the progress of this area. I felt that if we had rubbish handling nobody would care about the other aspects of the game. Anyone that followed progress of our development will remember Lee and I working in that studio until all hours. Credit to Neil and Lee, they eventually pulled it together as various modules were either modified or rewritten. Throughout I had regular pressure from all sides to sign-off on the handling model and class it as complete so other areas reliant on its stability (e.g. AI) could be made easier to balance. Every time the pressure reached breaking point I'd announce it as practically complete in order to relieve that pressure and calm those alongside me. In reality I was merely buying Le more time to move the handling along. As he discovered new ways of pushing the system he found ever more appealing handling traits we were desperate to get into the game. Many nerves were damaged but the model you'll get your hands on is far, far better than it might otherwise have been. I found myself staying late in the office just to drive the cars around the track, I was loving it. We'd hit a sweet spot. During this period Lee and I raced many supposed rival titles. rFactor we enjoyed playing when attempting to break one another's lap record around Silverstone, at one point I qualified ahead of Lee by a thousandth of a second. We really were very close despite having quite different driving styles. Where'd I'd shift up early Lee would thrash the engine. This played a small part in our exploration of driving styles and upgrades found within the game. One thing we didn't enjoy was the countless restarts we used when trying to race. It was quite hard trying to drive consistently fast in that game. We resolved very early on to make it easier to lean on the cars in ours. We wanted to enable people to enjoy shaving time from their laps, not thanking their lucky stars they'd stayed on-track for another lap. This would give players scope to consider other aspects of their car and the race.

During production of this game many people have asked me why we didn't include X, Y or Z features. I've been told so many times that X is a vital ingredient only for the person next to them to disagree. There is no ideal feature list that'll gain unreserved approval from everyone. We simply cannot include everything in our first game and tough decisions have to be made. We didn't include mechanical failures (for example) because I would like us to do this properly. For starters I don't like random failures so straight off it'll take us longer to implement a system whereby wear and tear on the car feeds into the likelihood of systems shutting down. I want the player to be able to work around them if spotted early enough. For the older gamers out there, think of the crack that'd appear at the top of the screen as your car took a pounding in Crammonds wonderful Stunt Car title. Why no Safety Car? That became quite a topic of conversation in the office! The SC issue is quite black and white, even amongst the community. Yes, it's quite cool in real life because it sparks a lot of activity, change of strategy and brings the cars closer together but I want all those elements in our game not just a car that trundles around the track when an accidents occurred. We want to include things that we have time to do justice to and that proved extremely tough with the game you'll soon have in your possession let alone anything on top of that. We built this game from the ground-up and everything took a great deal of planning and effort. We pushed the development period as far as we could... we're always very aware of what's being called for. Sometimes I feel as though the gap between F1 games has played against us because people have had so long to imagine all the features they'd love to have in their ideal F1 title.

Shuper · 21-09-2010, 12:46 AM

Nice post!!!

4 days to go!!

thanks t4rg4

F1George · 21-09-2010, 12:46 AM

i love you and codemasters for making this game <3

*T4RG4* · 21-09-2010, 12:46 AM

Have we made the best F1 game ever? Well, that's not for me to call. Personally I think there are elements in this game that tower over games I've loved in the past but we're in a different era now. We're aware that when this game launches we're compared against other popular series such as FIFA, Madden and the like. They've had years and years invested into them yet we're to appear alongside them after a relatively short development period. Gran Turismo is still around and I'm looking forward to seeing what that can offer after an unbelievable period in development but I no longer have as much passion for that as I once did. I think it's because it's not moved on as much as it could have. Forza caught my attention, I loved the second one but put little into the third. Road cars offer something very different to the experience had when racing F1... it's been a long time since everyone could get their hands on an F1 game and the reviews have been as positive as I could have hoped for but the opinions I really value, the ones that'll have the most impact on me personally, are those of the community. I sincerely hope you enjoy playing this game as much as I've enjoyed making it.

Many of us will be keeping a close eye on your feedback over the next few days and weeks, not just for the follow-up title but some other more immediate bits and pieces. I hope to see many of you online over the coming weeks and months! My favourite track is Melbourne if anyone's setting up a private race...

Steve (T4RG4)

(I see I didn't get time to put the third piece under the other two though - blasted 60second time between posts

)

*SynGamer* · 21-09-2010, 12:49 AM

Best. Thread. Ever.

Sonicfan49 · 21-09-2010, 12:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SynGamer

Best. Thread. Ever.

Massive understatement.

IMO, words can't describe this thread. That's how powerful and meaningful it is.

*T4RG4* · 21-09-2010, 12:53 AM

Those quick can grab the interview notes I took with me to my first set of interviews at Codemasters. Limited to ten downloads at the moment though!

RapidShare: 1-CLICK Web hosting - Easy Filehosting

retrofly · 21-09-2010, 12:54 AM

I'm sure you'll be getting hundreds of thank-you messages soon enough.

Best chief games designer ever! Codies best development team ever (Of course they are, the're British)

Cheers!

Wooo got the interview document. So if I take this to codies I get a job right? As long as I change the name and move a few words around of course

fka fly · 21-09-2010, 12:54 AM

thanks for all your hard work hoody, and jewely, and the rest of the team, ive never been looking forward to a game, as much as this on. but one little moan, how come some bloke from brazil has got it, and we people in the great british isles havnt..... and im from brum lol...

21-09-2010, 12:44 AM	#1 (permalink)
T4RG4 Creative Director Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Birmingham, England Posts: 1,607	Release week! Ramblings & thanks from T4RG4 And so... we've finally arrived... it's release week! I'm sure many of the Codemasters staff feel the way I do right now. It's a strange sense of moving into the unknown. We've worked so hard over the last few months, to complete this game people appear to be desperate to get hold of, and yet it didn't finish in a blaze of glory. There was no sudden midnight deadline that we had to hit so that the shops could have our game on the shelves come morning. We submitted the various builds to Microsoft and Sony and, over time, they each received approvals. Discs went to manufacture and we started to disperse, using some of the additional holiday we'd built up to simply get out of the studio, to get away from making games for a short while. I've been meaning to post about the development process but there is simply not enough space on the Internet for me to do that this evening. Therefore I'll just comment on the highlights that come to mind knowing that I'll likely pass over some classic points and completely miss many of the key contributors - the best way around this is to say that this game was put together by a great many people, many of whom I'd consider to be the best I've worked with. Without them there would be no game. Special thanks has to go to the guys that worked for me directly (Gareth who put so much design into the Paddock, Mark with the Career, Tibi with the penalties and upgrades and of course Lee with the handling). Tomorrow the game launches in America, over the next few days across Europe and on Friday (our traditional release day) here in the UK. I've been out of the office for a week now but not away from the pull this game seems to have generated. I can't really tear myself away from the game what with the forum, Twitter and the occasional promo event. This has become a very big part of my life and, like a few of the developers, I'm both scared and excited to see people's reactions to the title we've battled with over the past two years. Will they like it? Won't they like it? Will they see what we were trying to get across? Do they realise how much we've put into this and do they understand we're not some corporate monster trying to fleece them of their hard earned money? Time will tell. For me it all started back around Christmas 2008. I'd heard Codemasters had acquired the F1 license and, if I'm honest, I wondered what they'd make of it. Formula One used to generate some great games... Chequered Flag on the Spectrum... Super Monaco GP on the Mega-drive... the classic Geoff Crammond series. I played them all to death but what happened after that? Bizarre Creations put out some interesting racers but I honestly don't remember them having the same impact on me as the aforementioned games. I wondered if I could have another shot at making an F1 game ten years after my last attempt. I'd started working for Sony back in '97 and became lead designer on the F1 series when it was decided the titles would move in-house for the launch of Playstation 2. I remember seeing what the PS2 was capable of at the time and wondered if it could get any better. I learnt an awful lot during the development of that title, not least the fact that handling is everything. We had some rather cool physics and AI routines at the time but I'm not too sure I managed to get that across in the game. I didn't play it all that much once it was released. I was into Gran Turismo during that era, absolutely loved it all - especially the oil change to stave off the effects of long-term engine wear which resulted in power loss, it's the small details! This gave me the idea of looking after your engines during the season. One of the aspects I have carried across from my last F1 outing is the ability to tweak things whilst in-car. I think we called it Live Dynamics back then. I left F1 behind after putting togehter the outline for th e'02 game. A management change at Sony led to a change in project direction and, rather than throw my toys out of the pram, I decided to move on to pastures new. I entered the phase I call my 'tour of duty' during which I moved around the country and industry working for a variety of developers some great, some small. Each taught me something new, but with each new game came the realisation that it is... really, really, really difficult to get a great game together. It's made all the more difficult as team sizes get bigger because (and this might be somewhat controversial) there just aren't enough good developers to go around the industry. Sometimes a development team gets the right kind of balance and is then able to produce a single or entire series of triple-A titles. Look at how many games enter the market each year and you'll see many fail to make any kind of significant return, if any at all. This is not to say it's always the teams fault, certainly not. Often too many people become involved in the decision making process when it comes to development. Yet I digress... So what's it like here, at Codemasters (specifically the Birmingham Studio)? Much better than I thought it would be. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't slightly sceptical of Codemasters taking on the F1 license but after joining them I was very quickly converted. I've met some great people here and I can see some quality games coming out of this company over the next few years. All the ingredients are here. My in to the project came about thanks to a designer working for me elsewhere. I'd taken him from the Birmingham Studio which was, at the time, known as Swordfish. He used his contacts to get me an interview and I passed through each of the various meetings despite nearly losing the opportunity thanks to my claim that handling was more important than anything else in a racing game. Fortunately one of the people in that interview happened to be Paul Jeal (Senior Producer who had joined for F1) who I later discovered, cared as much about making a great F1 game as I did. I'd put together some notes on what I thought F1 was all about and I think the cover of that document had on it a picture of Ayrton Senna's helmet. He raced in the era that captured my attention. The great rivalries, the amazing cars, Mansell, Prost, the struggles of Ferrari, the different engines... amazing times. I've spent 20mins searching for this and, despite it being my meeting notes have decided to put it online for anyone interested in seeing how my thoughts back then translate into the game you will shortly have in your possession. There are some errors in it but I might as well show you what I took to one of my interviews, warts 'n all! When I moved to Birmingham in March 2009 the basic foundations of Be the Driver, Live the Life were already set. I bought into what they were trying to achieve thinking it to be a novel approach to their objective of reinventing the series. From the very outset Codemasters appeared determined to make a big deal out of the license and knew they needed to take their time. The Wii title developed by Sumo was due out that year but internally we were still unsure whether our game would appear with 2009 or 2010 data. Our release date moved around a few times but I, like many others in the studio, was adamant we had to release with current season data. Whilst the 2009 season was fantastic, seeing the birth of a new (ish) team help Jenson to his first title, we wanted people to be playing amongst the cars, tracks, drivers and technologies of the current season. Then Schumacher announced he was returning... three new teams were to appear on the grid, Mercedes would run their own team... new tracks... to say we were pleased with the decision to launch with 2010 data would be an understatement. This would be one of many brave decisions Codemasters would take in order to boost the quality and ultimately appeal, of their first Formula One title. This put additional pressure on us in terms of licensing but it was worth it.

21-09-2010, 12:46 AM	#3 (permalink)
Shuper Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Chile Posts: 37	Nice post!!! 4 days to go!! thanks t4rg4 __________________ ################ ################ ################ ################ ################ ################

21-09-2010, 12:49 AM	#6 (permalink)
SynGamer Forum Moderator Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Buffalo, NY Posts: 4,184	Best. Thread. Ever. __________________ New users, please read the [FORUM RULES] and [SEARCH] before you post. The views expressed in this message are in no way the official views of Codemasters and are of a personal nature. My Twitter \| My Blog

21-09-2010, 12:54 AM	#9 (permalink)
retrofly Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: United Kingdom Posts: 452	I'm sure you'll be getting hundreds of thank-you messages soon enough. Best chief games designer ever! Codies best development team ever (Of course they are, the're British) Cheers! Wooo got the interview document. So if I take this to codies I get a job right? As long as I change the name and move a few words around of course Last edited by retrofly; 21-09-2010 at 12:57 AM.

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21-09-2010, 12:45 AM	#2 (permalink)
T4RG4 Creative Director Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Birmingham, England Posts: 1,607	Part II (wow, I wrote a load - again!) Even when I'd arrived there was a great deal of cool technology surfacing but little of it was in a playable state. The weather system was looking great and ended up being something we're all very proud of. Over time the physics were adapted and refined so as to better hit the handling goals we set ourselves very early on. The AI started to move over and defend its position... (I've wanted to see that for years), the pit-lane filled with crews working on their team cars... mechanics resided in the garages, interviewers waited in the paddock for news on your season thus far. Things came on quite slowly to begin with. Let's not forget that whilst the team were using the powerful EGO engine on which other famous games had been based it was now in the hands of a new team unfamiliar with the technology. Fortunately we had many other people around the Codemasters family helping in critical areas, a real company effort, but inevitably there is a learning process. Some areas are rewritten or modified in order to take account of the specifics of Formula One (not many racing games have to deal with 24 cars) and it'd be fair to say there were periods when many of us thought we'd never get the game out in 2010! Beyond the development aspects one of the things I was very keen to do was involve the community more. At a previous studio we were very open in allowing certain developers to post on our community forums. I saw how people responded to that and looked to take that attitude to every place I worked thereafter. It wasn't met with unanimous applause when first raised with the community departments looking after F1 (looking back I can see what they were trying to protect us from) but after many tense meetings and discussions we finally agreed to allow me access to the forums. I'd seen the calls for information and wanted to start providing it. At the start of 2010 the doors started to open, the company geared up for promotion of F1 and I jumped on the coat-tails to get my Twitter account approved. It's not an official channel, but when you're talking about your employer and their project it stands to reason you want those above you to sanction its use This community interaction has snowballed massively since then and I take my hat off to the PR, Brand and Community departments at Codemasters. We've all become closer and work together tirelessly to promote the game. I'd go so far as to say it's the best I've experienced in my time in game development and I take my hat off to them all - a very talented bunch. @AndyGray_ still laughs at the fact I am always very critical of everything. I can't help but look for ways to make something better. I hate acceptable! They hate me sometimes Yet at the end of the day I think the promotion of F1 has gone extremely well. In some areas we've tried to do things a little differently and I dare to say it's worked. I think this will filter through to other projects (I see it happening already) and I've therefore been hatching plans to increase our transparency further on the next project. Just wait until they hear what I want to do next... There were development highlights in March this year when, at our first public showing, people (including some from this very forum) responded positively to the game. I for one was very apprehensive about showing the game because I felt it both looked and played nothing like version we had in mind for release. I specifically remember one of the community guys saying he remembered my first F1 post back at Sony in 2001. A reminder that your words on the Internet remain forever! The showing went down very well and during this time we became progressively more open about the development of the game. The forum started to become ever more busy and there were finally concrete things to be discussing. In the summer we really ramped up the development process but I wasn't too sure, at that point, whether we'd overcome a really serious problem with the handling model. Ant Davidson who we'd contracted to help us with handling feel was rightly trying to get us to move towards something we could only ever fleetingly hit - a realistic driving feel. We'd take one step towards it and another away... we couldn't ever seemingly pull everything together at the same time and people started to doubt whether we ever would... The unusual thing is we had just one designer (@TheLeeMather) working full-time on the handling. Normally a developer would have upwards of three on a title like this and to make it even more challenging, Lee was new to game development. He'd held a few roles at the studio over the years but we plucked him from IT as he was incredibly keen to get into development as a designer, loved F1 and loved cars. He knew his stuff and his enthusiasm kept things ticking along. He was tied to the Physics coder (Neil) for a few weeks in an attempt to get to grips with what the system offered currently and could provide in the future. After this period of forced 'marriage' Lee moved alongside myself as I was becomingly increasingly involved in the progress of this area. I felt that if we had rubbish handling nobody would care about the other aspects of the game. Anyone that followed progress of our development will remember Lee and I working in that studio until all hours. Credit to Neil and Lee, they eventually pulled it together as various modules were either modified or rewritten. Throughout I had regular pressure from all sides to sign-off on the handling model and class it as complete so other areas reliant on its stability (e.g. AI) could be made easier to balance. Every time the pressure reached breaking point I'd announce it as practically complete in order to relieve that pressure and calm those alongside me. In reality I was merely buying Le more time to move the handling along. As he discovered new ways of pushing the system he found ever more appealing handling traits we were desperate to get into the game. Many nerves were damaged but the model you'll get your hands on is far, far better than it might otherwise have been. I found myself staying late in the office just to drive the cars around the track, I was loving it. We'd hit a sweet spot. During this period Lee and I raced many supposed rival titles. rFactor we enjoyed playing when attempting to break one another's lap record around Silverstone, at one point I qualified ahead of Lee by a thousandth of a second. We really were very close despite having quite different driving styles. Where'd I'd shift up early Lee would thrash the engine. This played a small part in our exploration of driving styles and upgrades found within the game. One thing we didn't enjoy was the countless restarts we used when trying to race. It was quite hard trying to drive consistently fast in that game. We resolved very early on to make it easier to lean on the cars in ours. We wanted to enable people to enjoy shaving time from their laps, not thanking their lucky stars they'd stayed on-track for another lap. This would give players scope to consider other aspects of their car and the race. During production of this game many people have asked me why we didn't include X, Y or Z features. I've been told so many times that X is a vital ingredient only for the person next to them to disagree. There is no ideal feature list that'll gain unreserved approval from everyone. We simply cannot include everything in our first game and tough decisions have to be made. We didn't include mechanical failures (for example) because I would like us to do this properly. For starters I don't like random failures so straight off it'll take us longer to implement a system whereby wear and tear on the car feeds into the likelihood of systems shutting down. I want the player to be able to work around them if spotted early enough. For the older gamers out there, think of the crack that'd appear at the top of the screen as your car took a pounding in Crammonds wonderful Stunt Car title. Why no Safety Car? That became quite a topic of conversation in the office! The SC issue is quite black and white, even amongst the community. Yes, it's quite cool in real life because it sparks a lot of activity, change of strategy and brings the cars closer together but I want all those elements in our game not just a car that trundles around the track when an accidents occurred. We want to include things that we have time to do justice to and that proved extremely tough with the game you'll soon have in your possession let alone anything on top of that. We built this game from the ground-up and everything took a great deal of planning and effort. We pushed the development period as far as we could... we're always very aware of what's being called for. Sometimes I feel as though the gap between F1 games has played against us because people have had so long to imagine all the features they'd love to have in their ideal F1 title.

21-09-2010, 12:46 AM	#4 (permalink)
F1George Member Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Hungerford Posts: 55	i love you and codemasters for making this game <3

21-09-2010, 12:46 AM	#5 (permalink)
T4RG4 Creative Director Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Birmingham, England Posts: 1,607	Have we made the best F1 game ever? Well, that's not for me to call. Personally I think there are elements in this game that tower over games I've loved in the past but we're in a different era now. We're aware that when this game launches we're compared against other popular series such as FIFA, Madden and the like. They've had years and years invested into them yet we're to appear alongside them after a relatively short development period. Gran Turismo is still around and I'm looking forward to seeing what that can offer after an unbelievable period in development but I no longer have as much passion for that as I once did. I think it's because it's not moved on as much as it could have. Forza caught my attention, I loved the second one but put little into the third. Road cars offer something very different to the experience had when racing F1... it's been a long time since everyone could get their hands on an F1 game and the reviews have been as positive as I could have hoped for but the opinions I really value, the ones that'll have the most impact on me personally, are those of the community. I sincerely hope you enjoy playing this game as much as I've enjoyed making it. Many of us will be keeping a close eye on your feedback over the next few days and weeks, not just for the follow-up title but some other more immediate bits and pieces. I hope to see many of you online over the coming weeks and months! My favourite track is Melbourne if anyone's setting up a private race... Steve (T4RG4) (I see I didn't get time to put the third piece under the other two though - blasted 60second time between posts )

21-09-2010, 12:53 AM	#8 (permalink)
T4RG4 Creative Director Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Birmingham, England Posts: 1,607	Those quick can grab the interview notes I took with me to my first set of interviews at Codemasters. Limited to ten downloads at the moment though! RapidShare: 1-CLICK Web hosting - Easy Filehosting

21-09-2010, 12:54 AM	#10 (permalink)
fka fly Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: dover england Posts: 112	thanks for all your hard work hoody, and jewely, and the rest of the team, ive never been looking forward to a game, as much as this on. but one little moan, how come some bloke from brazil has got it, and we people in the great british isles havnt..... and im from brum lol...