Drivingitalia interview with marco massarutto

There are 66,000 members on this forum. If 10,000 of them subscribed to an on-line racing/ranking server and database for say, US$14.99/month that would be $150K per month in perpetual income. Blizzard made bank with World of Warcraft. Aside from charging for cars and tracks ala carte (which I don't think is a good idea) I believe that Kunos should seriously look into creating something like iRacing for Assetto Corsa. I would be one of the first to sign up.

 

I'm not even going to reply on the comments from the -Ermagherd, no rain or night, this is now a simcade-guys. I'm pretty sure that I'll get an insta-ban then
Now, I'm pretty sad that Night racing won't be a part of AC(1) (Don't really care about wet weather) but I can also see some positive things in this. Less time will be 'wasted' on making the 'perfect' day/night situations and on writing new code to simulate rain. That time can be spent to get the physics (including FFB) optimal and also create more content so that it won't be too much of a work to eventually add that content to AC2 (if that will be made) with a new engine.
Some people only want to see the negative things while there are also good things being said and done.

 

What we now have in 1.0 is what was planned to be in it, weather/night wasn't planned for 1.0 so logically you shouldn't feel disappointed, because it was never promised nor planned.

Right now for 1.0, racing flags and improvement of penalty system with invalidated laps (or time penalty of the current lap, and in qualification sess) are more important for the continuity of organized racing and general multiplayer, than weather/night is.

 

When it comes to weather night/day I don`t care so much but I like to have preset clouds - About to rain, Very cloudy etc
would make it less static, it is already mods out for this! all that is needed is an preset system to make it easier to change!

 

True, simulating the weather mood would be cool, just the way day is represented like you're saying. Not actually raining, but having other moods than sunny day.

 

Here is Marco's response at Virtualr:

Marco Massarutto • an hour ago
Hello everybody. I think it would be right to recognize that sometime, some sentences in a language cannot be reported directly in another without changing their sense, so I think it would have been better to ask me to confirm some passages before to post a news like this, instead to base it on an automatic translator. I'm sure the author is in good faith, anyway maybe my thoughts could have been reported more fairly.

Therefore, without any polemics, let me just clarify in english some sensible points:

rain: in future we might plan to introduce wet conditions in AC: the premise was that we know that wet conditions are very important for some people, but game statistics tell that aren't really used so much. Being a little studio (sometime people forget it), we must be focused on those features and contents that we are sure people really will use.

Out of records: about comments like "without rain AC is not a complete simulation", I answer: you're right. A 15-people studio can develop a good simulation. But not necessarily a complete simulation. Some racing simulations do not have rain, some do not have AI, some do not have a proper physics model, some have fictional or very few official contents, some do not have laserscan tracks. AC does not have wet conditions. For now. Because I haven't said that AC will not ever have wet conditions. The correct translation is "we might have plans to introduce wet conditions in future".

night conditions: the correct translation is "I doubt we'll have night race conditions". This feature would require a work-around, because the AC engine has not been designed to support this feature in a native way. AC will support endurance races on a 10-hours cycle, from early morning to sunset.

Assetto Corsa 2: the question was: average lifetime of a videogame is about 3 months, with very rare exceptions: does KUNOS want to support AC for long time with DLCs and future updates, or you are already thinking about an AC2?

My answer: we plan at least one year with updates and additional contents. We'll use next year also to evaluate the feedback and reaction of people on mid-long term. Assetto Corsa is going very well, and its success can evolve it by a successful game to a successful brand. If this will be the case, it would be natural to make some plans for an AC2 in future (with night and rain conditions - and this part was intended to be auto-ironic), but for now, we prefer to stay focused to finalize AC and its future updates.

So, AC2 is not in our plans, at today, and it would be a total nonsense. Because we are still working on AC.

Hoping to have been helpful, take care.

 

double post

 

I would settle for a 10 hours of Sebring.

I will be gone, the thought of them going subscription gives me the hives. I'd never give them another dime. I refuse to irace because while the entry level fee seems cheap, it never ends that way. It reminds me of facebook trash games, just pay a little today, want a small perk, repeat.

 

what if it was optional? you could still play public servers and organised private leagues without fee, but could sign up to "fairplay/ranked" servers, fee would support servers, coders and admin behind it together with ongoing dev

 

Now this sounds pretty nice imo. (I would love to see a lower fee than iRacing though) But a lot still has to be done before that should even be considered imo.

 

i want to see a interview in greek with Aris!

 

Papyrus NASCAR Racing had both options. You could play offline or on open public servers *or* you could race on iRacing's ancestor TEN (Total Entertainment Network) and get ranked and work your way up racing with people at the same skill level. I wasn't suggesting that Kunos go entirely subscription based.

 

How many units do people think AC has sold to date? I know they never release sales figures and neither do steam, but what do people think? 100,000? 150,000?

 

Well, I think about 100,000.
It's very interesting see global achievements, too: only 44.1% has "Clean Drive - Obtained if the player completes 5 laps without getting any damage to the car. Any mode." and only 42.7% "300Kmh - Obtained at 300 Km/h"...

 

I'm just wondering this, a long interview with lots of details so much about weather and night and not even a question on 'application of the regulations, if they are present in the final version, if they are developed in the future ... anything ... that can many of you do not feel this as a serious failure in the simulation of a raging game? personally I do not have many incentives to drive knowing that in every battle with an opponent AI enters strongly in my guide and magically takes my speed ... and want to continue ... because no blogger, journalist ever is interested in this?

 

I feel with you bro Such a shame ! I was looking forward to do endrance races in Assetto Corsa and now? So disappointing

 

fyi, endurance races aren't day+night per sé.
You'll still be able to do 10 hours long races from dawn to dusk. And if you've read what Marco posted you'd know that there are workarounds which might be implemented but aren't being thought of right now due to other (more important) things to be done first.

 

But for Endurance Racing you need driver Swap I don't want to drive 10h alone thats not the spirit of real endurance racing...

 

Im fine without weather and night, but is there any info - I just always hear rain and night - if:

1. The overcastlevel will be adjustable via the game-menu?

2. The overcastlevel will change during a race?

3. Variable fog

Night and weather change, besides the physics and visibility, the mood and atmosphere, that would be someting I would appreciate without any effect on the gameplay.
Different conditions for the different tracks would be cool, too.
I would think that this would be possible, cause you can allready archive it with ini-changes, while sure, that could be changed by a mod, while the tracks would need seperate weather and lightning-ini's.

 

Did I read that reply correctly? Does time pass in AC? So if I load up a track and car and just drive for 10 hours the sun moves accross the sky?

AC does need to implement some kind of racing regulations. Nearly all racing games except iRacing are like the Wild West. And even iRacing can go sideways in some races... But if we could get some kind of disapline and structure it will encourage cleaner racing, discourage wreckers, ranking used to group racers etc. I'm all about freedom but racing is a stricktly governed sport outside of video games.

Racing game Designers should think like real racing organizations, pretend the driver can get hurt or killed, find a good balance of fun and limits...