Response to DiRT Rally has been ‘amazing’, says Codemasters

DiRT Rally’s chief game designer Paul Coleman has said that he is “delighted” with the response the game has received so far, despite the uncertainty involved in releasing the title in Early Access.

“This last week has been incredibly exciting,” Coleman said in a post on the game’s website. “The positive response DiRT Rally has received has been amazing and we are delighted that you have appreciated the direction we have taken.

“For many of us in the studio this is the first time we have put a game out in Early Access so getting your feedback together and working out how to act on it has been our key priority. We are still taking stock of the situation but it is already clear that there are some key areas of DiRT Rally that we’d like to improve based on your feedback. Some stuff is pretty easy to tweak but other areas are going to take a bit more work to ensure that we get them right for you.”

One of the key areas Codemasters is focussing on next is improving DiRT Rally’s wheel settings and force feedback, Coleman says.

“I’ll be honest, while we had poured a lot of effort into our new physics engine we hadn’t gotten round to unravelling our wheel settings and FFB and many of you have quite rightly noticed that the settings the game have shipped with are more suited to a console racer than a PC Sim,” he continued. “We want to get this right for you but to do it right we need to get under the hood and change the way that we do things. We’ve been reading your feedback, speaking the fans directly (big thanks to Betta Lines for his time) and we have a decent handle on how to improve things.

“Our simulation team are now hard at work removing legacy stuff and adding in elements that you have been asking for. We hope to have more info on how this is progressing in the coming weeks but rest assured the early results are looking extremely positive. This isn’t all we are looking at though. There are plenty of refinements and updates that we are making based on stuff you have been calling out as well as working through any bugs that have crept into the game.”

DiRT Rally launched on Steam Early Access last week, quickly becoming one of the top-selling games on the platform. A full launch is currently scheduled for later this year, although it’s uncertain whether the game will also arrive on console.

Much of the game’s praise has been aimed at its realistic approach to rally racing, with Codemasters’ brand new simulation-based physics model powering the game’s handling.

“It is so incredible to drive one of these cars down the stage and feel every corner and every single turn and know that you’ve nailed certain sections, or kick yourself when you make mistakes,” Coleman told VideoGamer.com ahead of the game’s launch. “It’s that kind of sense of rallying that we’ve perhaps lost in some of our earlier products that I think we’re starting to return to with this one.”

Source: dirtgame.com