Exclusive - GamesCom '12 - Interview with Paul Jeal

So we're working on that at the moment. Basically we've got an R&D team who work on specific features which probably are going to take longer than one game. So for example, localized weather, which we've managed to get into this game, wasn't originally going to be planned for this game at all. It was just, you know, whenever the guys kind of finished it. So it's the same for being able to record out replays, just because the amount of data the way that we're storing it, it's a little bit more complicated than the dirt system, but it is in progress. Won't be in this year's game. So at the moment you can spectate but not record, and then hopefully in next year's game you'll be able to save out the replays. Yeah, so we've worked a little bit on that in the last few weeks really on the project, trying to determine which sections of a track would deliberately constitute cheating, punishing the player further for going offline. So if you're offline, then the grip levels will slow your car down more than if you're on the track, then it really sort of takes your car speed away this year. We've also— if you kind of jump off the track but you're not deliberately overtaking someone, obviously the game sees that you overtake that car off the track. So now we bring up a little bit of kind of on-screen display which gives you a certain number of seconds to give the position back. The game says, we think that you've done an illegal overtake, you've got 5 or 6 seconds to let the other car pass. So yeah, we're trying to improve the penalty system all the time. It's something that we've looked at. We've had a couple of different goes at what would, you know, the way that it works on a Formula 1 car with letting one clutch out and then let the other one out slowly and just how that constitutes across the different wheels and different pads options. So we've had 2 or 3 goes at it, but it didn't quite feel right for us. So we'll carry on developing that, and when it's ready, it'll be in the game. Yeah, so one of the— we've improved the physics system this year and the suspension, so kerbs are more more treacherous like they used to be. It was a bit too easy to ride the kerbs in 2011. That's all down to the suspension updates, which has also made it easier to overheat tyres. If you're driving too aggressive, you'll wear your tyres out faster than if you don't. So one of the areas of R&D that you can really improve on is the tyre preservation, if you like. And we're trying to look at the trends that exist in real life as well. So for example, Sauber are easier on the tyres. So if you're behind a Sauber car and he's on newer tyres to you, or about the same level of tyres, you're probably not going to outlast them because this car is going to be more gentle on the tyres. Whereas if you're behind a Mercedes, you know that it's likely that theirs could burn up between yours. Also things like DRS. With the DRS when we implemented it in 2011, it was perhaps— it took away too much downforce when you opened it up. So in things like 130R, if you were kind of going in with the rear wing open, you would just spin it. So that's different for the different teams. So the better the team, the teams like Mercedes that are running fancy DRS and Red Bulls, you could open the DRS a lot earlier now than what you can in, say, an XRT, so you've got to kind of learn all these things as well. So we've worked, we've worked quite hard on the race pace, just giving them an overall feel, taking away some of the assists that they were using to try and make them drive a little bit more human-like. So the real sort of difference in lap time is probably a second, maybe a second and a half in terms of their extra speed this year. They use fuel mixture a lot more aggressively, so if they're chasing you down, they'll dial that fuel mixture up. That helps with the overtaking. They're better in the DRS zones, they're much better at race starts, so you can just dive down the inside and overtake about 5 off the grid anymore. They kind of have variable starts, but they're much more challenging. Yeah, I mean, that's something that we're always looking to do, to be honest. We're looking just to balance it out between the extra speed boost that KERS and DRS does. I mean, in terms of specifics, I can't remember exactly what the balancing numbers for that, but literally every area of the game has undergone, uh, under the microscope this year to try and improve it and move it forwards. PC version is on Steam this year rather than Games for Windows Live, but essentially there's a separate team that works on the PC version and tries to sort of move that forward. There's nothing new on the PC that isn't on the console versions. That's kind of an ongoing sort of battle between the teams in terms of— it will be easier to modify, yeah, but then you need to put more people on that, so you wouldn't get something like adjustable brake bias, which is something that's gone in the project this year as well. Yeah, I mean, it's quite difficult in terms of the way that the game processes bandwidth and the way that we use the sort of flow into the game. So going from 12 players in 2010 to 16 was relatively straightforward. But now it's each additional AI car that you add just kind of— or sorry, human player that you add just makes it much, much more complicated. So at the moment, the tech guys are looking at it. But it looks like if we did 24 cars, 24 human players, there would literally be "know other new features." That's the only thing that we would do in an entire year. That's how complicated it is.