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Une interview de l'équipe
Citation:
Live For Speed interview
Live for Speed S1 is one of the most popularity car racing simulators of today, the highly detailed shaping and the online gaming put this game to between the best ones.
Popularity of the game is getting higher and higher in our country too, that's why we thought we look for the developer team and ask them some questions about the game, the sequels and their future plans. After a previous verification, Victor van Vlaardingen has answered for our questions.
HSW: Your game is very-very popular in Hungary and the hardcore racing community also loud from the success of Live for Speed. Have you expected such a good reception?
Victor : I don't think we have had any idea about where LFS would stand if you would have asked us a year ago. It was only when the gamedemo got out and we got feedback that we started to learn the good and bad sides of lfs. It was only then that it became apparent that the combination of the whole online nature and physics seemed to be attractive to people. We had no idea this would be SO attractive. We're just making a game that we'd wanna play...
HSW: It seems a good idea that you disregard a publisher company. Do you think this release mode of the game is fulfilled? Is it possible that other car racing games will be published this way in the future?
Victor : Well, partially fullfilled yes. With the online nature of the game, and the people it attracts because of that, selling through the net is made somewhat easier. But credit cards are way from being globally owned by everyone and also not every bank will accept payment from every country. So there are some obstacles there, but seen in the big picture, it's going well enough for us to be able to continue, so yes, we're very happy to be independant.
So yeah, if we can do it, others can too. Why not?
I'm personally more hoping to see that publishers stay, but take on a different role. Let the developer develop again and have the publisher do what they were supposed to do: marketing and distribution - at least while not everyone has internet and a credit card...
HSW: We have got a sample from the physics of the cars in S1. In which stage will you include tyre wear, pit stop, visible damage or other extras? What kind of extras are they ?
Victor : These features will be added over time. Many additions to the game have logical consequences, meaning that in order to create one thing, you need to have created another first. We have not yet implemented damage yet, as we needed to have set a good base first. Now that's done we can focus on adding damage, bit by bit.
So that includes the things you mentioned. Tyre wear and temperature, inner and outer car damage and as you refer to the car physics, we'd very much like to implement for example wet roads (and rain).
HSW: One of the fundamental point is the graphics. We could see the graphic features in the game as we have never seen in another top racing games, but the time is ticking away and the graphics will be out of date lawfully. Do you try to give attention to keep this up-to-date and what kind of new graphic features (for example transparent windshield) will be included in the S2 and S3 releases?
Victor : We'll I think I'd be lying if i would say we'll be actively chasing the latest technologies to keep gfx up to date. There's only so much our graphics engine can handle (read, what it's meant to do), so if we want to support all the latest card features, a big rewrite of the 3d engine will be needed and because this is massive work, it is not a big priority now (and as we only have one coder  .
Also i think it would be more effective if such a rewrite would be done when it would make a really big difference. Current technologies are nice, but I'm not sure if it would add much to the racing experience. Tomorrows technologies will be even nicer than todays, why not go for that and make a bigger difference when the rewrite if due.
For now we'll be focussing on the game itself, when we're happy with that we'll think about making it nice. One exception will probably be transparent windows, but even that requires quite a bit of work to get done (not the windows, but the whole car interior and animations). But, it will be in the game one day.
HSW: Do you plan to re-design/improve the lookout of the menu system?
Victor : Probably. It already has in fact. Many things have changed ever since the demo came out a year ago and will keep changing over time to suit the needs of the game.
HSW: In S1 there are many different tracks and cars. How many new tracks and cars will be included in the next stages?
Victor : We don't know for sure yet as we still have to see what to put in exactly, but i think the amount of tracks and cars in S2 will be around the same as S1. But as said, we just don't know yet what's going to be in S2.
HSW: The game can't be defeated in the online area, because very exciting races can be fight with other racers. But currently maximum 11(12) players can join to a server at a time. This number seems too few (according to our experiences a special game server could be able to serve more players than 11). Do you plan to increase this number in the next stages?
Victor : Yes. The next step is 16 players and will be added in one of the S1 patches. As LFS is quite cpu hungry, we'll be increasing this number along with cpu technology.
HSW: Before S1, a new patch was released at almost every week for the demo, but there is no new patch since S1 has been released. Does this mean that S1 is faultless or there is no way to release a patch and we have to wait for S2 to solve the possible bugs?
Victor : Well, compared with earlier beta demo versions, S1 does indeed contain almost no bugs. Patch release will not be as common as with the beta demos. There are several reasons for this, like the beta demo was, as it already implies, a beta. meaning we could release patches for testing every week and change things frequently. But now that S1 is the official release, you can't just change something big and have incompatible patches for example. Besides that, we needed a break after the release of S1, so not much work has been done lately. But yes, there will be some patches over time, adding more features and fix what needs to be fixed..
HSW: We think this question is a bit prickly, but we can't leave it out.
When will the S2 be released? Do we have a chance to get it let's say before x-mas?
Victor : Before x-mas: not very likely. In fact, we still need to evaluate what to exactly put in S2, so we really don't have a clue when it will be finished. But first half of next year is more likely than this year.
HSW: It's true that the development of Live for Speed hasn't been finished yet, but do you have a plan of a possible sequel? Do you have any idea?
Victor : I suppose you are talking about when S3 or something is done? No idea .
We don't plan that far ahead and prefer to take things one at a time. If S3 is out and we still have lots to do and people want more and if still want to go on, we'll go on. But I can't say anything about how things are in some years.
HSW: We know that the sound engine of the game has revolutionary features. Do you plan to implement new features or improving on this part of the game?
Victor : Yes. The car-engine sound is almost completely synthesized and we have several ideas of improving it. Many people are not very fund of the synthetic feeling it has now and that's one of the things we want to improve greatly. After giving it more breath and atmospheric feeling, along with tweaking all the functions we believe that synthesized sound can become quite realistic.
HSW: Do you play other racing games on PC?
Victor : I've played a bit of nascar2k3 but lately there's simply very little time to play games and when I do have time I like to snoop around our own community and fill my online stats a bit .
HSW: Thank you for the possibility for this interview. Good luck in the future!
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29-08-2003 01:04
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