Exclusive: Rallisport Challenge 2
Added 03/16/2004 by Jman
Talk Xbox: Tell everyone a little about yourself if you would.Hi there, my name is Karl Magnus Troedsson and I’m the Producer of RalliSport Challenge 2.
Talk Xbox: What is Dice working on in RC2 right now? What percent is RSC2 completed?
RalliSport 2 is very, very close to being done. As we speak we’re finishing of the last bugs and are getting ready for submitting to certification.
Talk Xbox: What new features are in RSC2's gameplay department?
I would say that the biggest change to the game experience would be the new online support through Xbox Live and XSN. This will really change the way people play rally games and we’re happy to be the first one out there to embrace this new feature set to the max. Xbox Live isn’t just a part of RalliSport Challenge 2, it resonates throughout the entire game.
Talk Xbox: What part of the games gameplay are you most proud of?
The new physics engine which handles the cars is something we’re very happy with. The cars look and feel really great and the handling I would dare to say is unsurpassed. Combine this with the extensive demolition model of the cars and you’ll get some spiced up the races with violent crashes. The players will have a field trip just running the cars up and down and trying to rip them apart.
Talk Xbox: How easy is it to develop a game on the Xbox? What features do you like the most?
It’s hard to put an actual number or fact to how easy or hard it is to develop on a specific platform, in the end it’s all up to the skills of the engineers and artists. But the Xbox is a really sweet machine to work one much due to the amount of brute force it carries in form of CPU, GPU, memory and of course the hard drive. These are features which outperform all other available platforms which of course make Xbox a preferred choice. If only the install base of Xboxes would have been greater I think we definitely would start to see more exclusive titles being developed on the platform.
Talk Xbox: Does Rallisport Challenge 2 use a new game engine?
When we started out making RalliSport 2 we had some ideas of new features for the sequel. It soon turned out that in order to realize many of these we had to rewrite some rather large chunks of the engines. This is of course not the most efficient way to make a sequel, as a developer you’re supposed to lower development cost by reusing systems etc. But being the puritans we are combined with our huge expectations on our self and our titles, we pretty much ended up rewriting more or less all parts of the game, especially the rendering-, physics and sound engine.
Talk Xbox: Visually, how is has Dice used the Xbox hardware to take full advantage of it?
A really big change is the new streaming support we implemented in order to support the long tracks (up to 17-18 km of all unique environment). Generally we’re always try really hard to push the envelope with the visuals of our games and hopefully no one should be disappointed with this one.
Talk Xbox: Are you guys using Xbox's advanced sound processing for this game?
We’ve spent much more time than before on making sure the sound is actually perceived as a positive part of the game experience. So many games fall behind in this area today. RalliSport 2 incorporates a full Dolby Surround 5.1 support which will give a lot of push to the growling cars. We’re really happy with how the game sounds actually.
Talk Xbox: Tell us about the new online modes.
RalliSport Challenge has always been about giving the player the freedom to play any game modes with any cars in pretty much any way they want to. This is something we’ve tried to keep in the online experience (though we had to implement some restrictions on how to get onto the Leaderboards). The game supports full Xbox Live game play but we also have the System Link and Split Screen to back up those people playing at home.
Talk Xbox: How is XSN going to be incorporated in RSC2?
Since we’re coming out so early in the XSN lifecycle we’re using a pretty common XSN support I would say. The game will support tournaments with up to 64 players, all data being tracked by the web servers and such. The beauty of this is since the game is pushing so much data to the servers the actual XSN support can change after the game has been released, new ways to compete can be added etc. by changing the processing on the servers.
Talk Xbox: Will their be downloadable content later on?
Yes, some already at launch but more will follow. Stay tuned…
