“A SimBin racing game should be 'easy to learn and hard to master' and I really do think RACE Pro offers exactly that gaming experience.”
SimBin is well known for GTR, GT Legends, RACE 07: The WTCC Game and many other simulation racing games. But if you're strictly a console gamer, chances are you haven't played a SimBin racer before. That should change with RACE Pro, the studio's first title for 
"When we first set out to do a racing game for console, we looked at what game engines were available," said Diego Sartori, Creative Director of RACE Pro. "After researching them all, we found that we would be better off creating our own engine – Lizard. We focus on the physics simulation and driving feel more than anything else, and Lizard has been built to support this philosophy.
"When doing a racing game you must compromise, there is no way to make the consoles or a gaming PC run 'full on bling bling' and our type [of] simulation at the same time. Especially on consoles this means that you need to decide on what you want; we wanted the physics controls, sound and AI to get all the 'power,' so we had to compromise a little on the visuals. Others choose to focus on the visuals and do very little with the simulation part of the game."
SimBin has worked on PC racing games for many years, but only now are you making the jump to consoles (for now, it seems, just Xbox 360). What made this the right time to make a console game?
Diego Sartori: The decision to make a console game was taken a long time ago, during the production of our very first PC game (GTR) in fact. It was made due to the small market share of racing games on the PC platform.
It is more or less a requirement to be featured on console and PC if you as a developer want to be able to get your projects published. This fact and the company’s vision of growth led us to pursue a multi-format game engine and of course to develop a SimBin racing game for console.
Console gamers tend to have different expectations than PC players. Has this influenced your development on RACE Pro?
DS: On a personal level, I tend to disagree actually. If you look at how the market is today, you will notice that most games are designed to work on both console and PC without too many design differences. Most shooters are, apart from controls, identical on PC and console and if some of the major racing game titles from console were also featured on PC, I am sure the same would apply to those.
When you analyze how console gamers treat their games and their gaming, I think there is very little to differentiate them from PC gamers. There is the same dedication and surely the same skill level. So in terms of physics simulation, there is very little we feel we have had to do differently for RACE pro if you compare to our latest release on PC. It is this mindset we have used during the development of RACE Pro. We trust that there is market for a pure racing game alongside the more arcade oriented car games on console.
RACE Pro runs on our Lizard game engine and currently our PC titles run on the ISI engine and that in itself creates some differences in feel and handling. But we have not made any console oriented changes to our philosophy of racing games to accommodate the console.
A SimBin racing game should be “easy to learn and hard to master” and I really do think RACE Pro offers exactly that gaming experience.
RACE Pro is going to offer three different race classes. What is the significance of each?
DS: I am not sure if you refer to the car classes or the three levels of difficulty.
RACE Pro features 15+ race classes. There are classes for production cars and classes for race cars. In these classes all the content is matched in order to offer the best possible racing experience.
We have three GT classes where GT Club is the “slowest” of the three and GT Pro is the fastest. There are faster classes of cars and there are slower classes of cars. They do all however, present the player with a different challenge and demand some level of skill before being able to race them at their full potential. WTCC, the official FIA World Touring Car Championship class featured in RACE Pro might not seem much of a challenge with its 280+hp engines. But being fast in these cars is to some extend an even harder challenge than with the GT cars.
RACE Pro also features three different levels of difficulty, each level featuring its own restrictions on driving aids and AI strength.
On the lower difficulty levels where driving aids are at their maximum, even a 1018hp Koenigsegg becomes manageable and relatively easy to drive. Take the driving aids off and it becomes an outright challenge to handle all of that horsepower.
Tell us about the 13 real-life tracks that are planned for the game.
DS: The tracks are from locations all over the world and RACE Pro features some world exclusive tracks. We have a world exclusive track from Macau in Asia, a fantastic city track and only featured in its accurate race layout by RACE Pro. In addition to Macau, we also have the Pau and Porto city tracks, both exclusively featured by RACE Pro and both offering some super intense city racing. We have Laguna Seca and Road America from the US, two wonderful tracks, each offering some quite unique challenges, the Corkscrew of Laguna Seca to name just one. Then we have the Valencia circuit from Spain, Brands Hatch from the UK, Curitiba from Brazil and many more.
Each track is modeled around real world data collected by the SimBin reference team.
Are there any additional courses: fictitious, mirrored, or multiplayer-specific?
DS: There are no fictional race tracks and there are no reverse tracks, nor are there any tracks made exclusive for multiplayer racing.
There are tracks featuring alternate layouts in real life and some of these may or may not be featured through the DLC plan for the game – you’ll have to stay tuned!
With 48 manufacturers represented, there are going to be a lot of vehicles in this game. Go over the process of designing some of these vehicles, ensuring they handle different, that they look and sound like the real thing, etc.
DS: Once a car has been decided upon, the reference team begins collecting the needed data. The physics and sound team begin to investigate the car; this is done by watching videos of the car in motion both from inside the car and track side.
Then as soon as we can, we go to a race track to see the car live and to talk to the team and the drivers. We look at how the car behaves on and beyond its limits and we always try to see the car early during the race weekend and during the race. This gives us some good insight into how the car behaves when the setup is not ideal and how it behaves when it is. During these visits to the track we also try to get our recording gear into the car, as well as record it track side.
When we have collected all the data we need, we begin developing the base of the car and when possible we let a driver try the car in its base form. Based on feedback from the driver and our own internal test team, we begin to tweak all the small details that ultimately end up defining the car. Each car handles differently due to all of them being developed based on real life data, so no need to artificially add tweaks or changes in that aspect.
That was the extremely short version!
What is SimBin's take on body damage? Will we see any in RACE Pro, and if so, what limitations are being applied?
DS: SimBin’s take on damage is that we like it as much as anyone else [smiles].
RACE Pro features both visual and physical damage. The visual damage system supports deformation of the chassis as well as detachable parts and the physics damage system supports amongst other things, bend suspension and steering arms as well as detachable parts. The player can adjust the damage sensitivity to suit their needs, within the limitations of each difficulty level. The game can also be configured to show the visual damage without the physical damage being active.
RACE Pro goes online with 12 players, a first for the series. What else can we expect -- the different modes, play styles, etc.?
DS: Everything featured in RACE Pro is a first for the series, as this is the very first game in the series.
The multiplayer experience in RACE Pro is all about pure racing so we have not added any out of the ordinary game modes as such. As a host, you can choose between hosting a ranked or an unranked game. Once a session type has been chosen, the host can configure the game to the hosts liking, this with the exact same options as during an offline session. When the host launches the session it will appear in a state called “waiting for players” and during this phase players on the server will be able to drive around the track as in practice mode. The host dictates when to change to the race session
Sometimes, players decide never to go into the actual race session and simply stick to online practice instead. There is much to learn from each other and with the communicator in use, players can talk about and test car setup changes as well as driving lines and tips on how to improve lap times. RACE Pro supports races of a few laps to races of 75 laps, the host chooses to have brake and tire wear on or off and what level of driving aids to allow. Weather conditions can be set to wet or dry and damage sensitivity set to off, forgiving, intermediate or realistic. The host can add AI opponents to fill up the grid but an AI opponent will never block a human player from entering the session.
Qualification can be set to on or off, if the session does not have a qualification session the grid will be formed randomly. If, however, the race does feature a qualification session this will be a hot-lap qualification where the players have one flying lap alone on the track. The grid is then formed according to lap times. Online sessions are based on class racing so the host decides what class to race.
Racing games tend to use licensed music and generally lean toward a rock-oriented sound. Which direction will RACE Pro take?
DS: RACE Pro leans towards a symphony of V12’s and grunge of V8’s! We have not added music that the player can have running in the background during gameplay because we believe the sounds from the game is music in itself.
