STORY TIME!
So back in
March 2018, I answered one of BigMoon's job offers over on Facebook. They asked for someone that knew about racing games and the Dakar Rally but not necessarily about programming. I guess I must have done the couple of tests they sent me fairly well because I was the one chosen,
I am in the game's credits! I started working for them in April and from day 1 I was both surprised and somewhat disappointed.
My initial task was to do
the basic tune of all of the vehicles. The 3D models were all there but the values were immensely wrong. My disappointment came because I thought the game was closer to being done and because some of the supposedly definite values were wrong. Me being a huge nerd of rally raid I knew that 4x4 vehicles, both cars and trucks, had a limit on the suspension travel (25cm for independent suspension, 30cm for the others) but the team had set suspension to around 45-50cm for cars and trucks. I had to literally screenshot the FIA rulebook to convince them but they eventually realized I was right.
From then on I started working trying to tune the cars. Since I knew certain stuff (like how the HiLux uses the RC-F's V8 engine and the minimum weight possible), I knew what figures when it comes to acceleration I should be aiming for. The
test area was incredibly basic (an oval, some hills and some barriers I could move for each of the 20+ terrains available in the game) but it made the trick. 4x4 vehicles were somewhat easy to tune. They did not drive great but they were 100% controllable. RWD vehicles, on the other hand, were basically impossible to tune within reason. The situation was so bad with buggies, quads and motorbikes that
I considered quitting, I thought it was my fault, I thought I was underqualified.
Here comes the bane of my existence while working for BigMoon and for the game itself. BigMoon was using a vehicle-making software called
Vehicle Physics Pro but that software was made for Unity while the game is on UnReal!
Dakar18 was supposed to be a Unity game but, as it turns out, that engine hates big maps. They optimized the game a lot and Unity just did not do the trick so they moved everything to UnReal. This move is why the game is so well-otpimized and why it drives horribly.
They tried to convert VPP to UnReal and pretty much failed, the converted software is missing quite a few features VPP has when you use it for Unity.
After my mini-depression, my next task started and it is possibly the one I am most proud of:
I am the game's ouvrier! I had the task to play each and every stage and give the notes so the roadbook could be rewritten accordingly. I did not write the roadbook but I did give a ton of indications on distances, headings and warnings. This was both fun and terrifying in a way because I was basically the first human to really drive the course and some notes were so wrong that the smartest thing to do was to restart the stage and follow an AI driver as they knew the route. This task also made me realize
the second basic mistake the game had: nobody at BigMoon knew that cars and trucks never refuel during a stage! Sadly, this mistake was never solved because they did not know how to deactivate refueling points without remaking the whole stage.
My final big task (outside of trying to find bugs and other issues) was somewhat similar to the one before and this one would be my favorite if it was not for something that I will explain later:
I was supposed to be the game's benchmark, the real man behind the top difficulty level. I played the Dakar Rally on cars, bikes, trucks, UTVs and quads and tried to set the best possible times without being a tryhard (I never played any stage more than twice and I always did full attempts) while playing the hardest difficulty. I guess I was really fast because
they did not want the times I set, they thought almost nobody would be able to actually beat me on any of the classes. Here are the times I set with the HiLux V8:
Day01 - 5 minutes
Day02 - 34 minutes
Day03 - 36 minutes
Day04 - 42 minutes
Day05 - 34 minutes
Day06 - 36 minutes
Day07 - 53 minutes
Day08 - 43 minutes
Day09 - 33 minutes
Day10 - 37 minutes
Day11 - 30 minutes
Day12 - 52 minutes
Day13 - 55 minutes
Day14 - 15 minutes
Once I had done everything and they were still preparing the Ruta 40 and Desafío Inca I just played for both fun and trying to find bugs, which I did find a bunch but I guess I could have messed around more. By that time, the game was being released and was doing rather poorly due to a number of complications. For example, physical copies were sent in a very uneven way, with Dakar-unfriendly markets like North America receiving thousands and thousands of copies while the core fans (France, Spain, BeNeLux and Russia) did not have many. This might sound silly but, if you know typical offroad fans, you know they want a physical copy even if it does not mean much at all nowadays.
Deep Silver did not admit their mistakes and, with not much money left, I was fired. My last job? I was the ouvrier for the Ruta 40 but NOT for the Desafío Inca.
I talked to Paulo Gomes quite a lot during my days working for his team. His ideas are rather good, both for the Dakar Rally games and for his yet-to-be-born parallel series. My former boss has met Roger Norman, owner of SCORE International, and has/had the intention to make
a Dakar Rally-sized baja game. We are talking about recreating all of Baja California (and maybe some area representing California/Arizona/Nevada) and allowing players to play a Baja 1000 where the Sun would go up and down. God, I need a game like that in my life. BigMoon only needs to solve the driving physics, it is a small issue with huge consequences, but it can shoot them into legendary status.
We were never more than 40-45 people making Dakar18 and we got really close to making one of the greatest driving/racing games ever. So damn close.
PS: I am only credited as a QA guy because of legal stuff, IDGAF.