Q&A with Slightly Mad Studios: Ian Bell [Read OP]

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The_American
Had a chat with the guys about, agree it's a weakness and will _attempt_ to add some reasonable variability to career weather to enhance replay value for a single event.
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@The_American - Kind of related. In the pCARS1, if we started a custom race, with 4 weather slots added, each with 'Random' selected. The weather was indeed random, but it was the same "random" during all of the 4 weather slots during the course of the race, it wasn't a different random weather during the 4 time periods in the race - hope that makes sense?

Is there an improvement there, that each "Random" weather selection would be different during the course of 1 race? (*if a player selects more than one Random weather options for 1 race)
I imagine, that's not something easy to implement though... :confused:
 
The_American
Had a chat with the guys about, agree it's a weakness and will _attempt_ to add some reasonable variability to career weather to enhance replay value for a single event.
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This would be HUGE.

I'm very curious as to why this seems so difficult to implement though? I'm guessing its not just as simple as toggling the 'random weather' switch (or maybe it is) but some insight as to the complexities involved would be interesting to hear. I'm guessing it's to do with precipitation and how AI handles mass pit stops on some tracks? If so, maybe 'problematic' tracks could just have variable cloud cover, fog, mist etc and other tracks mix it up with rain?

Failing all that, simply having random cloud cover during the career would be a step up from pCARS.
 
Hello @IanBell, I kind of had some thoughts about Project CARS 1, and I was hoping this question you could answer for not only me, but to the whole community here at GTPlanet. It's kind of an underrated question, Burt I was hoping I could get some light shining on it. Okay, so here it goes;

Will the flag procedures of a real life race will be implemented in game (like a local yellow if a car spins off and can't get going, then it calls to a a FCY, or a Safety Car if a couple cars crash, or even a red flag for hazardous weather conditions)? Thoughts on a FCY or an ACTIVE AI safety car driver?

I know you guys do an impressive job delivering as real of a racing simulator as possible, but I want to make sure it's a real as it can gets. I know the FCY / Flag Proccedures (Blue Flag, Black Flag, etc.) don't get a lot of attention in some sim racing games, but this a is an idea/question I've been REALLY dying to ask you.

I've already pre-ordered the game from what I've seen, and I REALLY hope Project CARS 2 delivers on being as the most realistic sim racing game as possible, thanks. ;)
 
RoadRageDudez
Hello @IanBell, I kind of had some thoughts about Project CARS 1, and I was hoping this question you could answer for not only me, but to the whole community here at GTPlanet. It's kind of an underrated question, Burt I was hoping I could get some light shining on it. Okay, so here it goes;

Will the flag procedures of a real life race will be implemented in game (like a local yellow if a car spins off and can't get going, then it calls to a a FCY, or a Safety Car if a couple cars crash, or even a red flag for hazardous weather conditions)? Thoughts on a FCY or an ACTIVE AI safety car driver?

I know you guys do an impressive job delivering as real of a racing simulator as possible, but I want to make sure it's a real as it can gets. I know the FCY / Flag Proccedures (Blue Flag, Black Flag, etc.) don't get a lot of attention in some sim racing games, but this a is an idea/question I've been REALLY dying to ask you.

I've already pre-ordered the game from what I've seen, and I REALLY hope Project CARS 2 delivers on being as the most realistic sim racing game as possible, thanks. ;)
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This is how it will be done for PC2. Join the Pre-order club.

The_American
Yes, AI will not "fight" faster cars under blue flag.

We wanted flag waivers and those nice "immersion" things but i dont think we will do it. So you will see icons on your screen for the flag situations.

Yes we have manual formation and cooldown/victory laps. I mentioned before during cooldown/victory lap your vehicle will be non-collidable so you cannot catch up to other still racing and mess up their race.

If you fall out of formation you will get penalty.

Ok some information on safety/pace car. For most circuits (road and city tracks) we will have Code60 local yellow and for ovals we will basically Code60 the whole track for couple laps and aim to "reset" or recollect the field behind leader. Indycar does single-file restarts so this is what we will do for all classes on ovals.

We will not have pit open/close logic for this game or real/visible safety car with "waive arounds" which is much more complicated.
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xSullx
@The_American ...4 weather slots......4 weather slots.....4 time periods...
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Personally I hate this "slots" business, too nerdy. I think for pC3 we'll just ask you to pick the race date and "% precipitation" and the game will figure out all the slots for you. It also gets you the variance you guys are asking for, bit of surprise element and also boosts the replay value for career events.

Masscot
I'm very curious as to why this seems so difficult to implement though? I'm guessing its not just as simple as toggling the 'random weather' switch (or maybe it is) but some insight as to the complexities involved would be interesting to hear. I'm guessing it's to do with precipitation and how AI handles mass pit stops on some tracks? If so, maybe 'problematic' tracks could just have variable cloud cover, fog, mist etc and other tracks mix it up with rain?
Click to expand...
Just to make sure it doesn't get stupid random. We already limit certain weather based on track geography. It will never snow in Dubai for example (not in the game at least!)

sanatreides
Will we have an option to save midrace in offline endurance races?
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No plans for this. We understand the request but it is not so easy.
 
The_American
Personally I hate this "slots" business, too nerdy. I think for pC3 we'll just ask you to pick the race date and "% precipitation" and the game will figure out all the slots for you. It also gets you the variance you guys are asking for, bit of surprise element and also boosts the replay value for career events.


Just to make sure it doesn't get stupid random. We already limit certain weather based on track geography. It will never snow in Dubai for example (not in the game at least!)


No plans for this. We understand the request but it is not so easy.
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That's a much better way to do it. Does that mean we've still got the same slot system in the current game? Apart from adding some new weather types, is there much change?

Also, do time/weather progression go up in increments of 1? Slightly unrelated to the original point but i'm sure a few people would like to see this.
 
A few questions:

1 - When doing multi-class races, how will pit-stops be handled? What I mean is, suppose I select F1 and GT3 as the classes. F1 pit-stops have more people and take significantly less time than GT3 pit-stops, an unfair advantage. Will the time it takes for the car to be serviced depend on its class or will you have a standardized method for pitting?

2 - Regarding night races and cars with no headlights, how will that be handled? For instance, the Nissan 240Z you revealed has working headlights that have covers. Will those covers come off, magically, at night, allowing to car to shine its lights, or will you have some sort of setup you can do to that?
 
warp9engage
A few questions:

1 - When doing multi-class races, how will pit-stops be handled? What I mean is, suppose I select F1 and GT3 as the classes. F1 pit-stops have more people and take significantly less time than GT3 pit-stops, an unfair advantage. Will the time it takes for the car to be serviced depend on its class or will you have a standardized method for pitting?

2 - Regarding night races and cars with no headlights, how will that be handled? For instance, the Nissan 240Z you revealed has working headlights that have covers. Will those covers come off, magically, at night, allowing to car to shine its lights, or will you have some sort of setup you can do to that?
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1 - yes, we have some differentiation for pitcrew animations based on vehicle class. Indycar and top-class open-wheels will have the most pitcrew guys out during service. We also modeled "fuel fill" rates for the classes. Again, Indycar and open-wheels fill fuel the fastest. As for "unfair advantage" for multi-class racing...so these classes aren't "racing each other"...they are only racing the opponents in their own class. Our code tracks the classes separately. Our results screens and Online Championships screens....all that is class driven when you do multi-class racing.

2 - damn, that's a really good question. I'll need to check.
 
If the PCARS 2 singleplayer career calendar is built upon the one from PCARS 1 then I have the following question. For recurring events like all the invitationals, would it be possible to skip the ones you have already done? It's so painful having to print out a guide of all the possible championships and invitationals and mark with a pen which ones I have already done in previous seasons. Each time the next race shows up on my calendar I have to grab my printed guide and see if I already done that championship/invitational or not.

It would be great to have the following setting under the PCARS 2 gameplay settings :

[x] Hide recurring invitational events on the career calendar once the highest medal for them has been achieved.
[x] Hide recurring championships on the career calendar once the highest medal for them has been achieved.
 
@The_American Two more questions:

1 - Can we just pick 'Random' for each class?

2 - If yes to the first question, how will the game fill the grid under certain scenarios? Say I have a grid of 4 cars and I choose 4 classes, will it be one of each class or can there can be 3 of one class and just one of another, you know, genuinely random?
 
The_American
Personally I hate this "slots" business, too nerdy. I think for pC3 we'll just ask you to pick the race date and "% precipitation" and the game will figure out all the slots for you. It also gets you the variance you guys are asking for, bit of surprise element and also boosts the replay value for career events.
Click to expand...
But I like being able to script a sequence of weather, like a heavily clouded sunset (for pretty clouds) that turns to rain, building up to a thunderstorm before relenting to light rain with fog. Or just to choose any fixed weather condition.

It would be great to have an option that "simulates" weather based on the date, location, and a value for humidity or precipitation -- which I agree would help with repetitive weather in the career mode without making things too unpredictable -- but please leave the player-selectable slots for us nerds. :)
 
@The_American I'd like to add a third question to the two on my previous post:

3 - Regarding multi-class racing, will classes always be tracked separately? For instance, a GT3 car catches a GTE car and they're both on the same lap, is that a pass for position or does one have to let the other go?
 
notanexpert
@The_American Are you basing the road cars purely on whether or not they fit in a class? I ask because if a super awesome car is going to be left out since it won't have competition would be a big downer.
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--In P Cars 1, they could get away with just 5 road car classes (thanks to a small car list). Now, we're talking 175 cars.

--If the current road car class format remained (D, C2, C1, B, A) it would get very ugly, especially trending toward the middle & top. Imagine ALL the variety of cars between a Mustang GT and a 918 Spyder. But now imagine only dividing them into either A Class or B Class...That's what we're facing if there are not more classes. That's quite frightening! But...

...just to get the creative juices flowing, I edited my former post with classes that contain natural, real-world rivalries. Because road cars are not regulated like race cars, balanced must be derived in another form: GT and Forza use performance points (as we've all gotten used to over the years). The other option is restructuring the current classes while creating new ones. There's so much to love in this sequel, but little details like this create so much more depth!





The_American
Well i dont know about more/new classes
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Looking for a bit of clarity here. Perhaps you could follow up with another person (unless it can't be divulged). Much appreciated! :)

The_American
a. we will continue to offer braod range of cars and b. we will focus more on keeping the interclass battles competitive with no clear winner or "go to" car
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Absolutely.
 
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Hello @IanBell and @The_American, love PCars, big fan, I have a question for you guys:

Have you ever noticed any discussion about players finding certain gloves or race suit color combo being very annoying? For example the yellow and green color combo when driving an Audi R18.
Some people found ridiculous to be annoyed by this, others agreed it was distracting or an actual issue for "immersion".
Others funnily enough never payed attention or noticed this problem but then feared they would probably find it annoying after realizing the existence of this issue.

The point is, have you guys considered allowing one to choose the skin/liveries for gloves or race suit? Or maybe just an option to disable the ones we dislike so we don't get them?
 
TexasTyme214
@The_American for multiclass, are we able to make a class of single cars but a another class out of its full grid? Example:

Class one: Aston Martin Vulcan only
Class two: all of GT3
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No guys, "Aston Martin Vulcan" is not a vehicle class. Neither is "Random" a class.

Class is like "GT3" or "GT4" or "LMP2" or "Hypercars" etc

There might a couple single-make classes but those are mainly for the racing cars where there is no competition (or we have not licensed any additional competition)

GenPattonX
Hello @IanBell and @The_American, love PCars, big fan, I have a question for you guys:

Have you ever noticed any discussion about players finding certain gloves or race suit color combo being very annoying? For example the yellow and green color combo when driving an Audi R18.
Some people found ridiculous to be annoyed by this, others agreed it was distracting or an actual issue for "immersion".
Others funnily enough never payed attention or noticed this problem but then feared they would probably find it annoying after realizing the existence of this issue.

The point is, have you guys considered allowing one to choose the skin/liveries for gloves or race suit? Or maybe just an option to disable the ones we dislike so we don't get them?
Click to expand...
Do they want a manicure and some light jazz music while they're racing? I can investigate.
 
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@The_American i'm really looking forward to play project cars 2 , multiclass racing , animated pit stop ..... thats the perfect game for me . although I have one question , how many cars we can have in the grid ? one of the things that I love in pcars 1 is the fact that you can race against 45 cars in a track .
other than that I can only congratulate you for the work you are doing .
 
@IanBell @The_American Hi i have a few Mclaren P1 question about Project Cars 2

1 - Will Project Cars 2 give me the ability to choose different driving modes on the P1 (e-mode, normal, sport, track, and race) Really hate just having the P1 on race mode.

2 - Well the P1 Be easier to handle in Project Cars 2 then it is in Project Cars 1?

3 - Well i be able to apply the P1 GTRs Liveries to the normal P1 (assuming the P1 GTR has different Liveries)

Thanks :)
 
The_American
No guys, "Aston Martin Vulcan" is not a vehicle class. Neither is "Random" a class.

Class is like "GT3" or "GT4" or "LMP2" or "Hypercars" etc

There might a couple single-make classes but those are mainly for the racing cars where there is no competition (or we have not licensed any additional competition)
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In other words you can't turn one class into a single make while multiple classes are racing. Understood.
 
Do you all at SMS think this is possible on today"s system? Supercars team DJR Team Penske, are launching virtual reality pitstops.

Would be cool for eSports teams.
 
@The_American Allow me to rephrase my question:

In PCARS 1, when setting up a single-race, we could choose between: having everyone drive the same, have everyone drive cars within the same class or select multi-class. Now, picking multi-class resulted in the game choosing random cars from various classes within a supergroup (Road, LMP, Touring etc...). How will this work in PCARS 2? Will we be able to just say multi-class and the game will choose from all cars in the game at random?

Maybe that's what you meant with your answer so, sorry if I misunderstood.
 
If I am understanding it correctly you can choose something like this for example:

Class1: LMP1
Class2: GT1
Class3: LMP2
Class4: GT3

But if this is all you can do, I mean if you can't pick every specific car that will enter the race for each class and the game does it for you randomly, then I say everyone on console is going to be disappointed because it simply won't be satisfying. Players on PC have the custom grid tool. There you can pick every car specifically and their liveries I believe, that's what we want...
 
GenPattonX
If I am understanding it correctly you can choose something like this for example:

Class1: LMP1
Class2: GT1
Class3: LMP2
Class4: GT3

But if this is all you can do, I mean if you can't pick every specific car that will enter the race for each class and the game does it for you randomly, then I say everyone on console is going to be disappointed because it simply won't be satisfying. Players on PC have the custom grid tool. There you can pick every car specifically and their liveries I believe, that's what we want...
Click to expand...

It's somewhat limiting, but this is more than enough for me on console. It's more than what we had in PCARS 1. You had to specifically go to the Endurance Championship in Career to get close to this. Even then, you didn't have the flexibility for choices.
 
This how I imagined:

Pick classes 1 to 4
Pick the amount of cars for each class
Pick the cars for each class and liveries of each car

The numbers of cars per class is actually important, for example I might want only 8 LMP1s. If the game sets that amount randomly I might get 20 LMP1s in a 40+ cars race which is what happens in PCARS1 and its annoying.
 
Question about replays:

It was a real feather in pCARS' cap to have 60fps replays on console, but there were some technical issues like stuttering, phantom cars, missing cars etc., but these all seemed to improve dramatically when I moved from PS4 to PS Pro. I remember somebody (Ian maybe?) mention somewhere that 30fps replays for consoles were originally considered in PC1 and that they might feature for consoles in PC2 (Noooooooooooooo.gif). If this scandalous proposal of gargantuan horrendousness does unfortunately come to pass then please, if at all possible, investigate enabling a toggle for 60fps replays on PS Pro and Scorpio. 30fps replays are like acid in the eyes after playing the main game at 60fps.
 
Masscot
Question about replays:

It was a real feather in pCARS' cap to have 60fps replays on console, but there were some technical issues like stuttering, phantom cars, missing cars etc., but these all seemed to improve dramatically when I moved from PS4 to PS Pro. I remember somebody (Ian maybe?) mention somewhere that 30fps replays for consoles were originally considered in PC1 and that they might feature for consoles in PC2 (Noooooooooooooo.gif). If this scandalous proposal of gargantuan horrendousness does unfortunately come to pass then please, if at all possible, investigate enabling a toggle for 60fps replays on PS Pro and Scorpio. 30fps replays are like acid in the eyes after playing the main game at 60fps.
Click to expand...

Hope SMS show some PS4Pro love......
 

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