IGN AU: Grid is a stunning looking game. Tell us a little about Ego - what modifications did you make to Neon to create it?
Ralph Fulton: The EGO Engine is basically an evolution of the NEON Engine that powered Colin McRae DiRT. The Engine itself is a continuously evolving and growing multi-platform project that has already had over 3 years of development from our Central Technology unit. For GRID, the main changes have been to allow for features which DiRT didn't have - 20 car grids, night racing, a 24 hour day-to-night cycle for Le Mans - and there have been numerous changes to our lighting and shader systems which mean that GRID is visually stunning. We've also completely rewritten our car damage and deformation system, and implemented a crowd system which allows us to populate each track with up to 40,000 fully modelled, animated spectators. So, there are a lot of improvements!
An absurd level of detail, really. Other devs can consider the gauntlet well and truly thrown down.
IGN AU: What are the biggest strengths of Ego?
Ralph Fulton: Biggest strengths? Well, on a purely practical level it's a multi-format engine designed to make development on all three platforms - PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC - as simple as possible. We don't have a lead platform so differences between the platforms are pretty negligible and it has the obvious benefit for us that we can focus on really nailing the good stuff rather than splitting our talent and resources between platforms. So that's a massive benefit.
Then there are the obvious gameplay and visual improvements – the damage, the huge amounts of spectators, the physics, the visuals, all this cool stuff we push as far as we can, and it's all powered by the EGO Engine. So it helps us build brilliant games.
And finally, there are big advantages to having a multi-genre engine. You know EGO as a great engine for racing games, but it's also being used for Operation Flashpoint 2 and other internal action projects, which means that a huge number of coders are working on it and improving it constantly.
IGN AU: In terms of art direction, what kind of visual style are you going for with Grid? While very realistic, it also seems larger than life to us.
Ralph Fulton: Yes, there is definitely a deliberate visual style which carries across the whole game. As far as realism goes, when we're producing licensed content – like tracks and cars – it's vital that we are as realistic as possible; the licensors demand that. And when we create street circuits around real-world cities, we want to recreate those cities as accurately as possible, so there's great attention to detail there too. However, we wanted to achieve a much more cinematic quality in GRID's visuals – it's motorsport through the lens of a Hollywood director and that means using lighting and colour and particle effects to create a really immersive and exciting world.
IGN AU: Tell us about the car damage system in Grid, and how persistent debris will factor into races.
Ralph Fulton: Damage is a hugely important part of racing, so it has to be an important part of a game about racing – it just doesn't make sense to us not to try to make this as realistic as possible. So after DiRT, we had some really clear ideas about how we wanted cars to damage in GRID so we started again, and the results are amazing. You can play back a crash in slow motion using the game's instant replay system and watch the car buckle in an impact from any angle.
All debris which comes off cars during a race is persistent so the remnants of an accident can become a hazard to be avoided. For the most part we're talking about small pieces of carbon fibre which have physical properties but probably won't damage your car too much, but occasionally you'll see somebody's bumper thrown up by a car ahead and that could really hurt.
Proveriću.
