As the eagle eyed among you may have noticed last week DiRT Chief Game Designer and myself took a trip to Sweden for round 6 of the FIA World Rallycross Championship in Höljes. We had a lot of fun and it really was a pleasure to work with the amazing people from World RX, the teams, drivers and the Swedish Motorsport Federation. More on our adventures from Sweden a little later…
One of the best things about this weekend was watching the drivers from the FIA World Rallycross Championship play our game, what was even better was just how often they came back for more. These guys were quick too and setting times faster than one of our fastest gamers who joined us for the weekend.
The cherry on the cake was the feedback we received from the drivers, we’re really pleased with how close we’ve managed to get the in-game versions of the cars close to their real world counterparts but… Close isn’t good enough. If you’ve been following us for Early Access since the start you’ll have noticed that we tend to drop our big updates towards the end of the month. We want to spend a little bit of extra time polishing these 600bhp monsters so we’re currently planning on taking about an extra week to get them as perfect as possible based on the drivers feedback, which will bump the World RX update just into the following month.
I’ll hand you over to Paul now for more info on what we got up to last week.
Kick It With Kick_up
Wow, what a week it has been. I’ve been to a FIA European Rallycross event before at Lydden Hill back in 2011 but Höljes was something else. They call it the Magic Weekend and it really was something special.
As always these trips away from the studio always sound like a holiday but we worked very hard to get this event together and despite some fairly substantial logistical challenges thrown at us by the problems in Calais we managed to get a very successful event together.
As Lee has mentioned, the feedback we got from the drivers was very encouraging but there are some areas that we need to look at improving. We are currently working with World RX and their partners to get the cars dialled in so that they are as close as possible to their real world counterparts. The plan is to get these improvements validated by some of the drivers out in Sweden before we set it live early next Month.
All in all it has been a very busy week filled with everything from Speeding Fines to Moose Salami but now that we are back in the studio its back to work getting the FIA World Rallycross Update feeling as good as possible.
DiRT Rally World RX Cup
Last Friday night we invited all the drivers in the paddock down for a little bit of friendly competition before the race; the rules were simple, 3 laps, all in the same car and you had to take a joker. It got pretty tight at the top and we even needed to have our own steward’s enquiry following some cheeky corner cutting.
But we’re pleased to announce that the winner of the very first DiRT Rally World RX Cup is…
…Andreas Bakkerud, driver for Olsbergs MSE who also finished on the podium this weekend! Huge congrats on both trophies but we know which trophy gets pride of place… Our one right?
Video of the Week
We’ve got two this week; I really wanted you all to see this. It’s the highlights of the Supercar Final from this weekend and it’s probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. In the space of six laps we had crashes, overtakes, cars jumping and door to door rubbing. As for the final corner… Well I’ll let you see for yourself.
It’s a perfect example of why we wanted to work with World RX for DiRT Rally and we can’t wait to get it in your hands. To find out more about the FIA World Rallycross Championship swing by their website here.
Stepping away slightly from this weekend and following on from our Tarmac Terrors update, Michael E has put together another of his awesome video guides – this time focusing on our advanced tuning options which makes our second Video of the week.
Tweet of the Week
In a #WorldwideExclusive, here's a first look at the @dirtgame #WorldRX update! Look out for more info this weekend! pic.twitter.com/hUgDvjs8CD
— FIA World Rallycross (@FIAWorldRX) July 2, 2015
More Tomorrow
I’m not going to lie I could write a book about the last few days, I’ve got over 1,500 photos to show you, the tale of the infamous Happy Street and we’ve not even told you everything about how we’re working with the team at World RX yet.
We’ll have more on that tomorrow; just make sure you’re following us on Twitter and Facebook and the World RX team on Twitter and Facebook and you shouldn’t miss a thing.
Don’t Cut, Be Brave.
