Kunos Reveals Assetto Corsa Competizione: Official Blancpain GT Game Coming This Summer

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I wonder how they're gonna do DLCs. Since it's an official Blancpain game, they can't add much. Maybe older cars and tracks?
hope that's possible. Z4, 458, SLS, Mp4 etc. but i'm not sure how they would perform against newer models.
but I just fail to see how a game with so little content would be the right move for Kunos to make after AC
me neither and it worries me a bit
Given the manager's comment about the "tip of the iceberg", I'm not even so sure about an AC2 in the future. By that I mean that ACC might not just be a little detour on a secondary path that will ultimately lead back to the main one (AC2), but a whole new road with new pros and cons. Again, too early to tell so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
that's my fear. move on from a traditional type of game just to venture in modern licensed series, without street cars, older prototypes and all the other cars i love in assetto.
 
Once again, even under direct questioning, there is still no definitive answer to whether the car list will be limited only to the GT3 cars of the Blancpain series. You have to remember who you are dealing with here. This isn't PD or T10, it's the loveable little Kunos, well known as pranksters and enjoying a little joke here and there. These are the guys that put a "Simulation Value" slider into the game code. These are the guys who had a PS dev kit show up in the office, posted a picture of it and when asked what it was for basically said, "nothing, we're just playing around with it". It was seemingly forgotten until months later when they announced console ports were coming. They've been working on this game in secret for months. A couple of weeks ago a new domain name is registered without a peep from the boys and girls of Kunos. What you've seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg, is to me, the clue that there is much more to come. Who knows what it is, but until I hear someone from Kunos specifically say, "The game is GT3 cars only and nothing else and that's all it's going to be", I'll continue to have an open mind as to what will be in the game.

Actually there are some definitive answers:they are not going to bring AC content into ACC -example-.
I know this is not PD or T10 or SMS.They are more than just a "game" developer.No matter how cool guys they are and how much the enjoy a little prank or joke they did give some answers to some questions and gave no answer to other Q.
Either way I only point out what info they've given already.
-ACC is not AC 2.
-Early access this summer
-Its an OFFICIAL Blancpain GT series game (take it as you will)
-It going to be at the same "sim standards" they had with AC,adding features like day/night cyrcle and weather conditions,e-sport online gameplay and others.
-Its not a "spin-off" title.
-UE4 engine used in order to be as accurate and photorealistic as it can be (sounds and graphics).
-Lazerscanned tracks (official Blancpain GT Series tracks that is ;) )
Zero info about -examples-:
-Full game release date
-Mod capabilities (similar to AC)
-Consoles
-Officially announced car/track list
-Pc requirements
 
From RD, here is a translation of this afternoon's interview. I don't speak Italian so I can't authenticate this translation:
Thanks for that!!

I love this level of developer communication. Lots of interesting insight, and pretty much none of it could ever come back to bite them. Of course as a developer you always need to stay your tongue when it comes to features and content no matter how sure it seems that day. It always frustrated me how PD treated any inside information as such, and left everything they did a complete mystery. Kunos tells more of how they work and what they're up to in one interview (at no detriment to themselves) than PD has given is 10 years. Though the GTS betas were a big change to the positive for them.

Seems pretty smart to me.
I agree with your points. ACC as they have (apparently) planned it is smart. I trust they're putting their efforts in the right places, and hope this engine works out as well as they hope.

The silence on the topic of consoles is a bit of a bummer but just as understandable. Surely it is too early in the development process for them to know with any confidence how console could pan out. Way too much new and unknown to them. I'll still keep hope for a timely port to the current generation, but as you say, AC will still be there if it falls through.

I'll be tempted to give it a shot on my PC, but it will probably be the straw to break the camels' back, kill the poor thing. :lol: I turn it on on a quarterly basis just to keep it updated and make sure it still works.
 
The silence on the topic of consoles is a bit of a bummer but just as understandable. Surely it is too early in the development process for them to know with any confidence how console could pan out.

This is my guess, and they've learned not to comment until they have something concrete to comment on.
 
This is my guess, and they've learned not to comment until they have something concrete to comment on.

No comment means "its not coming" at least in this gen of console(s) -imo-.They did sell well (AC) in Xbox/PS4 and have a good player base that also is very supportive and "forgiving" -compared to how players reacted with other games problems/final product state/bugs-.In AC forums almost everyone seems to agree that ACC is not happening for consoles.
I also dont expect this title to be in PS4/Xbox1.It propably going to come (full game release) late 2019 or sometime in 2020 (PC) and maybe in the next gen console(s).
 
No comment means "its not coming" at least in this gen of console(s) -imo-.

Quite possible, but way too early to be jumping to any conclusions IMO. It's very early days, there's probably still a lot of decisions to be made and we're still several months away from even Early Release so lots of things could change between now and the official release. I could see it coming to consoles, I could also see it being PC only and them using it as a test to learn the engine first so they are better capable of making AC2 (or whatever) work on consoles more smoothly than AC1. But none of us knows, best to just wait for more news to trickle out and not work ourselves into a frenzy of speculation and heresy. In the meantime, it's a great chance to start saving up for a sweet gaming PC! :D (I'll save you some cookies)

They did sell well (AC) in Xbox/PS4 and have a good player base that also is very supportive and "forgiving" -compared to how players reacted with other games problems/final product state/bugs-.

You must be visiting different AC console communities than me. :odd: :lol:
 
No comment means "its not coming" at least in this gen of console(s) -imo-.They did sell well (AC) in Xbox/PS4 and have a good player base that also is very supportive and "forgiving" -compared to how players reacted with other games problems/final product state/bugs-.In AC forums almost everyone seems to agree that ACC is not happening for consoles.
I also dont expect this title to be in PS4/Xbox1.It propably going to come (full game release) late 2019 or sometime in 2020 (PC) and maybe in the next gen console(s).
People in the forums seam to agree that they know without facts. Only these words are ones to take in.

Screenshot_20180223-190509.png


That means it's not off the cards, and is obviously down to testing the possibilities. And maybe the possibility of launch coinciding with next gen.
 
No comment means "its not coming" at least in this gen of console(s) -imo-.They did sell well (AC) in Xbox/PS4 and have a good player base that also is very supportive and "forgiving" -compared to how players reacted with other games problems/final product state/bugs-.In AC forums almost everyone seems to agree that ACC is not happening for consoles.
I also dont expect this title to be in PS4/Xbox1.It propably going to come (full game release) late 2019 or sometime in 2020 (PC) and maybe in the next gen console(s).
All this time I thought no comment meant they just had no answer at the current moment. If it's at all possible I'm not sure whey they'd pass up a potential sales jackpot of around a million units based on recent sales history. Even at $25 a pop that's a lot of change to split up among the stakeholders.
 
About the "tip of the iceberg" thing, I realized that the english and italian press releases are different:
  • "The Blancpain GT Series license is just the tip of the iceberg"
  • "L'acquisizione della licenza Blancpain GT Series è solo la punta dell'iceberg delle tante novità che saranno presenti in questo nuovo videogioco"
For those who don't speak italian: "The acquisition of the Blancpain GT license is just the 'tip of the iceberg' of the many novelties that will be featured in this new videogame". That part wasn't about the future of the franchise (multiple licenses, new games or expansion etc.), but about the game itself and the new things being introduced in Competizione.
 
this might be the excuse for me to finally invest in a gaming pc. And I have until 2019 to save up. I love the blancpain series btw

Indeed.
The modding community for AC and the ACC announcement pushed me to buy a new PC on Amazon.
We will be playing early access in 5/6 months most likely.
I'm not waiting around for a console release that may never come.
 
About the "tip of the iceberg" thing, I realized that the english and italian press releases are different:
  • "The Blancpain GT Series license is just the tip of the iceberg"
  • "L'acquisizione della licenza Blancpain GT Series è solo la punta dell'iceberg delle tante novità che saranno presenti in questo nuovo videogioco"
For those who don't speak italian: "The acquisition of the Blancpain GT license is just the 'tip of the iceberg' of the many novelties that will be featured in this new videogame". That part wasn't about the future of the franchise (multiple licenses, new games or expansion etc.), but about the game itself and the new things being introduced in Competizione.
ok, so that makes more sense than the english pr, where it's just something thrown there without context.
 
I think before they can determine the status of a console release, they have to establish the details first, like grid size. If PC has 40, and console can only manage 16 etc, these are things they won't know yet.
 
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Maybe Kunos wants to establish a strong franchise with (more or less) annual releases. New year, new license, new series, new game or expansion. Or maybe something with longer release times, but still following the same path.

I cannot see Kunos spitting out annual games left and right. Codemasters and Turn 10 are the worst enemies of their own games for doing that. No doubt it keeps the cash flowing on regular basis, but the released products hardly deserve a penny compared to the passionate effort that has gone into AC.

Seems pretty smart to me. AC is long in the tooth and by this point most people who would buy AC have already bought it so there probably isn't a whole lot of revenue flowing in, but a full on successor to it that will generate a big lump of revenue is a couple years away at least. So in the meantime they took the opportunity to pair with one of the biggest racing series in the world to make an official game (this is really huge and a major feather in their cap) that will allow them to generate some new revenue to help with development of AC2. It also gives them a testbed for the new engine and thanks to the limited car/track content they should really be able to focus on the under the hood stuff to get all the features and rulesets and bells and whistles working perfectly so when AC2 happens they have a very firm grasp on how to make this engine do what they want. So not only will they have new money coming in they get real-world experience with UE4 which should be really beneficial for the next full title and it gives all of us some new toys to play with in the meantime, win/win/win.

The assumption that Kunos eventually will proceed to the development of AC2 is not something we can take for granted though. The mention of ACC being their "next big title" sounds as if this will occupy their minds for a good amount of time. Nearly everyone wanted a bigger and better AC to happen, but now it looks more like a smaller but better AC. Whether the Blancpain feather in their cap will turn out to be truly beneficial is something we will have to wait and see about. I'm afraid really poor sales will be a thing having various unfortunate outcomes, such as no backing to develop the proper AC sequel fans would want on UE4.

The added benefit that I don't see many people mentioning is that AC1 isn't going to be abandoned by the playerbase for the new game because the ACC has limited scope and not everyone will want to buy it. AC1 still has plenty of life in it so if you want to race some old cars or some open wheel cars or enjoy some mods or do some racing on SRS it's all still there and still going to have a solid player-base, but if you want to do some GT3 racing with AC quality and night/rain/driver swaps, proper rulesets, etc. you can jump over to ACC for that. Some people were complaining that it was too soon for AC2 because AC1 still has a lot of life in it, others were complaining that they need/want something new with bells and whistles, with this plan both parties are satisfied. Pretty brilliant IMO and I really don't understand all the whinging, I'm not a huge GT3 fan but I'm super pumped for ACC and what it means for the future.

It's true that the two titles can supplement each other, but those who want more of the original AC formula are probably in for a much longer wait than what Marco's end of year writeup led fans to anticipate. The likelihood that AC DLC will end with the release of the Ultimate Edition only adds to the problem for those not interested in ACC's alleged focus on proper GT3 racing.
 
I cannot see Kunos spitting out annual games left and right. Codemasters and Turn 10 are the worst enemies of their own games for doing that. No doubt it keeps the cash flowing on regular basis, but the released products hardly deserve a penny compared to the passionate effort that has gone into AC.
My guess was based on a wrong interpretation of the iceberg quote. It's clear now that he wasn't referring to multiple series or licenses (annual or not)
An off-topic bit about Forza: unless T10 really puts some life back into the Motorsport games, I will only care about Playground Games and their Horizon franchise. Still excited about FH4 /off-topic.

It's true that the two titles can supplement each other, but those who want more of the original AC formula are probably in for a much longer wait than what Marco's end of year writeup led fans to anticipate. The likelihood that AC DLC will end with the release of the Ultimate Edition only adds to the problem for those not interested in ACC's alleged focus on proper GT3 racing.
You just perfectly described all my friends' feelings about ACC in two sentences.
 
From Lord Kunos on the official forum:

Physics was one of the very few things we could salvage and bring over from AC1 to ACC moving to UE4, everything else needs to be redone from scratch.

So from any point of view you can consider ACC physics as a direct evolution of AC1 physics with the added bonus of not having 170+ cars to update and check if we decide to make substantial changes.... this is giving me, Aris and the new physics dev that joined us Fernando the opportunity to get in pretty hard in some areas and make some substantial changes that we couldn't afford to do with a big released product like AC1.

We'll have plenty of time to dig into the details of it both before the EA and after, I'll just drop one big one here tho. Although it's not really something we'll see fully utilized in ACC because of the nature of the tracks we are going to include but the physics engine is now running full blown 64bit math all around, so, as far the physics is concerned, there are virtually no limits to how big a track could be, we could literally race to Mars and back without suffering much precision losses in the calculations... again, not really something that will create a huge change in ACC but still a thing I can geek out and be happy about

The Lord has spoken :bowdown: Really happy that they managed to transfer the physics component of the old engine intact. No matter how the rest of the game turns out, this will be a win for me because of the driving experience alone.

Now does anyone know if UE4 is as easily moddable as AC engine? A lot of people are concerned about the shift in focus, but if ACC is moddable then there's nothing to worry is there? You can literally just copy paste AC mods with a few tweaks here and there to suit the new engine's file formats (car models quality can't be that much different, and physics component is the same). The only challenge would be porting tracks, because now you have to account for different/dynamic light sources and wet variants, but even that is much better than starting from scratch.

Worst case scenario, if ACC ends up being a closed box and limited in scope, we still have AC to go back to. People won't abandon AC just like that - just look at how people are still playing old ISI sims now, more than 10 years since release.
 
Wow. How did I miss this news. I'm delighted with the engine change tbh. Although not an ugly game the current engine has many limitations, but with the shift to UE4, ACC has the potential to be absolutely beautiful. And we already know what they can do physics wise. If it comes out without the ability to mod it, I'll be delighted by this... IF it is modifiable though. to say I am excited by this move is a massive understatement.

Now does anyone know if UE4 is as easily moddable as AC engine?

In it's full blown state, UE4 is quite easy to use. I doubt very much we could use that version though as 90% of the tools and features would not be applicable to ACC. The biggest difference between the two is within UE4 you have a lot more control compared to what we have now. With a few basic meshes, you could basically build a track from start to finish within that engine where as with the current tools, it's mostly done within Max/Maya/Blender then imported, tweaked visually and saved out. Whether Kunos allows that kind of accessibility is anyone's guess though.

A lot of people are concerned about the shift in focus, but if ACC is moddable then there's nothing to worry is there?

Quite the opposite for me. There is a lot to be excited about if they do!

You can literally just copy paste AC mods with a few tweaks here and there to suit the new engine's file formats (car models quality can't be that much different, and physics component is the same). The only challenge would be porting tracks, because now you have to account for different/dynamic light sources and wet variants, but even that is much better than starting from scratch.

The file formats basically the same (scale and axis may be an issue). The physics can be exactly the same as what they have now. The models may have to have a secondary UV applied for shadows. The textures will need more maps if they want to make good use of the PBR features within the engine. As far as lighting goes, nothing was baked in AC and wet to dry can all be handled easily (and dynamically) with a good set of textures/maps and a good blueprint/code. The biggest problem I foresee for tracks or road in particular, (off the top of my head) would be collisions.... Possibly...
 
I think before they can determine the status of a console release, they have to establish the details first, like grid size. If PC has 40, and console can only manage 16 etc, these are things they won't know yet.

I think they are waiting for the next gen console.Thats way they shared zero info about consoles and that way the game will propably not come in current gen.

You must be visiting different AC console communities than me. :odd: :lol:

I did say "compared to other titles".I did not say that there is no "heat".
We'll have to wait and see.Atm console players are not so happy for "no news" and a lot of PC users and not happy with the game content to begin with.And before someone quote me "its not nesseseraly GT3 cars only" title or "wait until we see the official roster",most members in AC forums and most sim racing communities I've seen,they expect a title similar to F1.
There is a "war" in AC forums with some going "too little content,this is not the AC we wanted" and others going "if you dont like it,dont buy it".
Some are saying "its just a way to test things before AC 2" and that its a "spin-off title" but Kunos said its not.
 
I've not seen a war over there, a few seem unhappy, the same ones that always seem unhappy.
Which thread is battling?
 
I've not seen a war over there, a few seem unhappy, the same ones that always seem unhappy.
Which thread is battling?

The "war" word was used because of the way some people post their opinion mate.Too "aggressive" from my point of view for a title that was just announced and we dont even have official track/car list or official release date -just examples-.
 
About mods:

We are totally aware of the importance of modding and its contribution to the success of Assetto Corsa.
It's a great way for new talents to emerge, for the community to "suggest" new directions and/or simply to make a product richer. It is not a coincidence that some of the best guys in this community are now contributing with us to the evolution of the software.

However, for ACC this element will have to be put in stand-by mode for a series of reasons. The most important one is that we have given ourselves an enormous task of rebuilding, once again our software from (almost) scratch. In a world where pretty much every product you see on the market in simracing is an evolution of games that have been on the market 10-15 years ago, our approach is to get a big axe and reset things to (almost) zero before starting with a new project, ACC is no exception.

In this case the task is rendered more complex by the fact that we are using, for the first time a third party engine that we did not design ourselves and the truth is, given the amount of time we have available to deliver ACC to the public, we have more than enough on our hands trying to figure out how to use the engine effectively to also think about how to make the platform moddable.

As you can imagine, this has been source of endless discussions in the last year and half as every decision comes with pros and cons, there is going to be pain no matter what your final call will be. It goes without saying that we believe we made the right call even if that means loosing the huge benefits of a moddable platform.

So to recap, there will be no action from our side regarding modding, both in the direction of promoting nor offering any kind of forum support for it as in the opposite direction, we have no intent to stop it from happening if some smart guy figure out how to do it.
 
Maybe a little bit early to get too excited, because he explains that trailer like this:

"When I saw the announcement of ACC, I decided to make my trailer to see how wet Poznań will look like :)
This engine has a huge potential, so ACC will be great.
I don't know anything else...
"

Still, I don't think it will take techies long to figure out how to mod the game when it hits early access.
 
So to recap, there will be no action from our side regarding modding, both in the direction of promoting nor offering any kind of forum support for it as in the opposite direction, we have no intent to stop it from happening if some smart guy figure out how to do it.

That's all I needed to know! :cheers:

TBH, that is probably the best way to go about it for Kunos. Leaving the game pretty much open to modification on a well known, open engine will get the same results without having to build and release your own tools, inform the community, or deal with the minefield that is other peoples/companies content (which is probably why most of the forums over there got locked a few summers back).
 
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