DiRT Rally Road Book – 20/05/15

We’re fast approaching the end of our first stage like a MK II heading downhill on Greece. Sure we’ve clipped a few rocks on the side of the road but we’re still in one piece. Back in the service area the team are getting ready to fix us up for our first major service with the beautifully named DiRT Rally V.0.4. Otherwise known as the Pikes Peak Pack.

I’ll hand you over to Chief Game Designer Paul Coleman now for some more info on that and an update on what we’re working on this week.

“Since the last time I spoke to you, the guys in the studio have been busy getting things wrapped up for our next big update. I promised I’d give you some info about Pikes Peak so here’s a bit more detail about what is going into the pack. We’ve got the full paved version of Pikes Peak as it exists today and a mixed surface version based around the layout of the course circa 2007. You’ll be able to play Hillclimb in Championship Mode, Custom Events and in our Online Events as well as including it into your Leagues.

At this stage we’ve got some of the most iconic Hillclimb cars from the last 30 years available. The real challenge with Pikes Peak is learning the course. There is no co-driver to help you out here so it’s all about mastering each and every bend to try and get the maximum potential out of your car. One other bit of advice I have is that if you want to start your Hillclimb Championship as soon as the update lands, make sure you have a decent chunk of in-game credits saved up so that you can purchase a car and start with no delay.

Aside from the work we have been doing with v0.4 we also had a visit from Hyundai WRC driver Kevin Abbring last Friday. Many of you will know that Kevin has been setting some impressive times on the DiRT Daily Events but it was great to get him in and have him giving feedback directly to our simulation team.

His experience driving pretty much every car we have in the game meant that he was able to give us plenty of insight into areas where we can refine the simulation and we’ll be working on these improvements over the coming months. He was also able to get hands on with our new Force Feedback systems and he has helped us dial in some base settings that have got things weighted correctly based on his real world experience. Next on the list is to tie up that hard work, make some improvements to our settings screens and hopefully get in your hands for some testing in the next few weeks.”

10 Million Kilometres

Last week we hit a pretty big milestone: Collectively, DiRT Rally players have managed to put over 10 million kilometres on the clock! If you put down one of them – thank you.

Early Access Bug Tracker

Keeping on top of bugs is another major priority for us and to hopefully make this a little easier to follow we’ve set up the bug tracker on the Steam forums. We update it every time we drop and patch and each Thursday so if you want to keep an eye on how we’re doing you’ll find it here.

Suggestion Box

Your feedback and ideas are always welcome so we’ve set up two suggestion boxes to help gather them up; one on the Codemasters Forums and another on the Steam Forums. If you’ve got an idea, we’d love to hear it. You don’t need to post in both, just use whichever forum you feel most comfortable with.

Over To You

Save the best until last ‘n all that. This is my favourite part of the Road Book in which we round up the very best of what you’ve been up to. Here’s a list of what’s worth checking out this week.

/r/dirtgame League – The official league of our DiRT subreddit and the largest league currently running for DiRT Rally

#WishlistWednesday – We’re always looking for your input on DiRT Rally but once a week we like to get together and build a wishlist of things you’d like to see in DiRT Rally. This week’s no different so pop along to the Codemasters Forums and join in.

Suggestion Box – This is a place for you guys to pitch your ideas to the world and vote on other peoples’ ideas.

That about wraps things up for this week but remember it’s a good weekend for Rally with the Rally de Portugal and the FIA World Rallycross from Lydden Hill. We’ll be back soon but for now, I’ll leave you with our favourite video of the last week.

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