Hello and welcome to this week’s slightly delayed Road Book. As some of our regular followers may have noticed, we had a mini crisis this Wednesday when the Rood Book would usually go live but everything is sorted now.
To catch those up who weren’t around the TL;DR version is we accidently put a still-in-development build of DiRT Rally live which contained some new stuff that wasn’t finished and could have potentially screwed up a lot of people’s game saves.
Thankfully we caught it early enough and managed to put it right but it did still hit a few people (less than half a percent). Regardless of how many it hit we’re sorry it happened. Since Wednesday we’ve totally rewritten how we go about managing putting our patches live and it shouldn’t happen again.
It was a little bit like when you clip one of those rocks at the side of the road in Greece and you spin your car out - we knew we’d hit something eventually and the best we can do is prepare and trust in our skill to get back on track.
A big thank you to you guys for being so awesome and understanding during our little spin in the road.
Speaking of getting back on track, here’s Chief Game Designer Paul Coleman with news of what we’re working on this week.
Kick it with Kick_up
“I spent the first half of this week on holiday driving my family around the excellent roads of North Wales and the Lleyn Peninsula so I haven’t got as much to update on this week. On my return @BettaLines travelled down to get hands on with the new Force Feedback system.
I know some have been frustrated about how long this has taken and the fact that we accidentally revealed our Tarmac Terrors content may have made some people think that we are just making content and not looking to improve the areas that have been called out in your feedback.
I just wanted to clarify that FFB has been the priority of the Simulation Team and it is our next update to DiRT Rally. The Germany content you may have seen is actually much further from being completed and it’s our environment team that are putting that together. I want to say a big thank you to @BettaLines for taking the time to come and see us. Hopefully this tweet gives you a good idea of what he thought.”
Building A Mountain from the Ground Up
Hi DiRT fans! I’m John Barnes, Experienced Level Designer. On DiRT Rally, besides being responsible for building the Monte Carlo stages, I also got to build what is probably the most requested track in Codemasters’ history: Pikes Peak!
For those who don’t know, Pikes Peak is a track set in the stunning Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
It’s a steep, twisting, death-trap of a road, up a 14,115 foot tall mountain.
Each year, a Hillclimb event is run, playing host to such luminaries of motorsport as Rod Millen, Nobuhiro ‘Monster’ Tajima, Stig Blomqvist, and Sebastien Loeb, and numerous other new and veteran racers. They each push the limits of themselves and their machines to try to beat the mountain, developing ever more powerful engines and lighter vehicles. Many have tried to best it, many have failed. A rare few have earned the right to call themselves Champion of its treacherous curves.
This rather awesome video tutorial video popped up this week and it’s all about the basics of rallying. If you’re new to DiRT Rally or even one of our aliens it’s worth a watch; with instructions on weight shifting, Scandinavian flicks, power on/power off and more. Give it a watch and you’ll be sure to shave a few seconds of your stage times.
If you want you to create a video teaching other players how to get the most from DiRT Rally, be sure to send it over. In return we’ll add the best tutorials to our playlist on our YouTube channel and host them in the tutorials section of our website.
We’ll also have exclusive DiRT swag for those we host on the playlist. Simply tweet your tutorials over to us (@dirtgame) when you’ve put them together. If you need some logos you’ll find them here and a collection of hi-res screenshots and artwork here.
Over To You
Twitter Followers League – This week we set up the Official @dirtgame Twitter League (or DTL for short). This week we’re running Monte in Group A cars. Just click the link if you’d like to take part. It is just a bit of fun but we may have DiRT Shirts for the winners.
#FeedbackFriday – Once a week, we like to take stock of how we’re doing and find out how you guys feel about DiRT and what we’re doing with it. If you’d like to take part there are loads of ways. You can reply to this tweet, post on the Steam Forums or even join us on /r/dirtgame.
And to wrap up this week’s Road Book we’ve another video for you. This one’s by griev0r and is the perfect way to chill out after a pretty hectic week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8scNHa9swBs
Patch V 04.1 (Safe to Download)
So... As some of you may be aware we hit our first big rock on the Early Access road today and we pushed an incorrect version of DiRT Rally live.
This was essentially our development build containing parts of our Germany update, which is a bit of a problem because we haven’t finished that yet and chunks of the game were missing and would appear broken.
This next part is where it gets complicated.
We’ve now set the correct patch live which is 1.6 GB. However if you had already downloaded the large (and wrong) 4 GB patch you will now be asked to download another 1.6 GB patch.
TL;DR - The 1.6 GB is safe. The 4 GB one is not safe.
Please do not download the 4 GB patch. If it is half way through, paused or stuck midway please stop the download, log out and close your Steam Client and re-open it. The correct patch should then download.
If you have already downloaded the 4 GB patch, please do not start the game, download the 1.6 GB patch and you should be fine.
If you have already played the game after the 4 GB patch and downloaded the new 1.6 GB patch we’re expecting this to corrupt your save file when you try and play the game.
If you happen to be one of those whose save has corrupted please post a reply below and let us know, we may want to get hold of a copy of your corrupt save so if you can make a copy of your save file before overwriting it that would really help us out.
The reason it corrupts is because when you loaded the version with Germany it introduces new items in your save file to check the game against, now we’ve taken the unfinished content out of the game your save file will be looking for something which isn’t there and corrupt.
If you’re having trouble loading the game once you have the most up to date patch please verify the integrity of the game cache. To do this right click on DiRT Rally in your library, select properties, click the local files tab and then press the “verify integrity of game cache” button. If it still does not load after this please let us know in the comments below.
The unfinished patch was live for about 40 minutes, starting at 12pm (BST). During that time our data tells us that a very small number of people played the game (less than 0.5%). We’re hoping that the corrupt save won’t affect all those players but regardless of how many it has hit we are sorry.
Now on to the correct Patch notes for DiRT Rally V0.4.1
Save Game Fix - Fixed an issue which prevented the game from saving mid event
Achievement Fix – Hillclimb achievements now unlock correctly, these will award from now on but we will retroactively award the Going Up In The World achievement in a future pack
Track Environment update – J.McG’s Invisible Towing Services have now removed the invisible Burger Van that sometimes rolled into the middle of the road on Pikes Peak and their permit has been revoked (they tasted like thin air anyway)
Online Events – Daily challenges now feature the full fat fully upgraded versions of the cars.
Audio Fix – Sent the co-driver on another recce of the Col De Turini and asked him to redo his notes
Again we’re sorry for all the confusion and to those affected, we hope you enjoyed your sneaky peek at Germany. You’ll be able to play a much more stable version soon.
Hugs and kisses
Team DiRT.
Now Updated - Patch Problems
Update - It is safe to download now. See this thread http://steamcommunity.com/games/310560/announcements/detail/141082177881651526
Update - We've got to the bottom of the problem, just checking how different versions of the game will behave. Info/patch notes to follow
If you receive an update for DiRT Rally today please do not download it. If your Steam auto updates then please don't run it.
Look's like we've hit our first rock in the road and you could potentially lose your save game.
We'll update you later on our progress.
Building Pikes Peak From the Ground Up
Hi DiRT fans! I’m John Barnes, Experienced Level Designer. On DiRT Rally, besides being responsible for building the Monte Carlo stages, I also got to build what is probably the most requested track in Codemasters’ history: Pikes Peak!
For those who don’t know, Pikes Peak is a track set in the stunning Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
It’s a steep, twisting, death-trap of a road, up a 14,115 foot tall mountain.
Each year, a Hillclimb event is run, playing host to such luminaries of motorsport as Rod Millen, Nobuhiro ‘Monster’ Tajima, Stig Blomqvist, and Sebastien Loeb, and numerous other new and veteran racers. They each push the limits of themselves and their machines to try to beat the mountain, developing ever more powerful engines and lighter vehicles. Many have tried to best it, many have failed. A rare few have earned the right to call themselves Champion of its treacherous curves.
Recently, some controversy has surrounded the decision to re-surface the road completely in tarmac, with some claiming that the essence of the race has been lost. Whatever your stance on this issue, you’ll be able to test which is best in the DiRT Rally Pikes Peak Update, as it features both a full tarmac and the half- gravel variant.
As far as Hillclimb events go, Pikes Peak is arguably the most famous, so it was a no-brainer to include it in DiRT Rally, now more accurately modelled than ever!
This article aims to give you a bit of an insight into the processes behind track research and construction here at Codies.
Here it is, the first Road Book following the launch of DiRT Rally V.0.4, more commonly known as the Pikes Peak Update.
Here’s a rundown of everything we added in yesterdays pack.
The world famous Pikes Peak – Built from the ground up in its full-fat modern tarmac state (the first time in a video game) and the mixed surface variant we all grew up loving. We’ve also included a variety of weather conditions and three iconic Hillclimb cars to add to your garage.
You’ll find that we’ve rolled Hillclimb into our Championship mode; it will crop up from time to time in our Online Events and you’ll now be able to select it in Custom Events and add it to your Leagues.
That’s not all though, we’ve also made some improvements and additions to the rest of the game including:
Some of our AI drivers have got fed up with watching you driving so well so expect some of them to start trying to rival your performances and giving you more of a run for your money.
A few changes in the UI where we’ve labelled the stages in custom events ‘Long’ and ‘Sprint’; new players will see little pop up tutorials on first visit to each game mode (don’t worry they aren’t unskippable videos). We’ve also added some new messages in other areas of the game so you know what’s going on.
We’ve changed how your engineer slots unlock so that they now pop based on distance driven rather than cold, in-game cash. If you’ve already blown a load of cash on those slots… sorry!
Custom Events will now use the fully upgraded versions of a car rather than the poor man’s version and we’ve made sure that your favourite livery will be stored for the next event.
We’ve also added in some new liveries including the Rallysport Development wrap for the Fiat 131 Abarth, the Peugeot Sport livery for the Peugeot 205 T16 Evo 2 and the Phil Collins Rally livery for the Ford Escort Mk II. Teams like these were kind enough to give us access to their awesome machines during development and without these guys and the rest of the rally scene here in the UK, DiRT Rally wouldn’t be the game it is.
Seeing as it’s becoming a regular feature I’m going to give Rally Co-Driver and DiRT Chief Game Designer Paul Coleman is very own section. Here’s what he has to say this week.
“We’ve had a pretty hectic week getting everything ready for our first content update. While it wasn’t as terrifying as pushing the button on the launch pack it was still pretty exciting to see the buzz around the studio.
Again, the initial feedback has been great but I know that a few of you we’re disappointed that we didn’t put the FFB update into v.0.4. There were a number of reasons for this but the main one is that we need to get all the configuration and options screens in place and that takes time.
While this is early access we didn’t want to be rushing through changes and causing more problems than we are fixing. I plan on giving you all more info on this and the changes we’re making next week.”
DiRT Weekly Bug
So we got a little carried away in the v.0.4 update and in our excitement to push the buttonon giving you six stages we didn’t anticipate that it would cause an issue for everybody who completed the weekly before the update.
The short version is that if you took part in the weekly before the update you won’t be able to do the two new stages (unless you reset the event from the details screen,) if you have started the weekly since the update then you won’t have a hope in hell of beating the players who did the older four stage version.
Now we could have wiped all the four stagers from the leaderboard but that wouldn’t be fair on those who already finished it so what we’re going to do is base this week’s rewards on only the first four stages (if you started after the update you’ll still need to complete all six to register a result).
Next week everybody will run the new and improved six stage event.
DiRT Show
If you missed yesterday’s DiRT Show you now watch it again below. In this month’s episode we talk a about Pikes Peak, Rallycross, Germany and so much more (we even let a few upcoming cars slip).
https://www.youtube.com/embed/JOUXy-rFswM
Over to you
We had our very first bit of fan art this week! It’s called “Left five over jump” by /u/Shinojii and we love it! We love it so much in fact that we’re going to send you over some DiRT Swag!
VajbTV - There’s this crazy Viking guy who streams a lot of DiRT Rally, he’s one of our favourites to watch and you should go check him out.
And to wrap up this week’s Road Book I’m going to leave you with Elmnators totally mental rig. 9600x1080! That’s five screens!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/3gMqlcQzZYQ
Pikes Peak - Out Now For DiRT Rally
It seems like forever ago when we pushed the button and surprised the world with DiRT Rally. To everybody reading this screen we can’t thank you enough. Today we're really pleased to be able to push the button on our first big update, the Pikes Peak Pack which is available now and included in DiRT Rally no extra cost. It should start downloading the next time you log into Steam but if it just so happens that you don't own a copy of DiRT Rally yet you can purchase it on Steam right here.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/310560
Here’s a brief rundown of what we’ve added in v0.4
The world famous Pikes Peak - Built from the ground up in its full fat modern tarmac state (the first time in a video game) and the mixed surface variant we all grew up loving. We’ve also included a variety of weather conditions and three iconic Hillclimb cars to add to your garage.
You’ll find that we’ve rolled Hillclimb into our Championship mode, it will crop up from time to time in our Online Events and you’ll now be able to select it in Custom Events and add it to your Leagues.
That’s not all though, we’ve also made some improvements and additions to the rest of the game including.
Some of our AI drivers have got fed up with watching you driving so well so expect some of them to start trying to rival your performances and give you more of a run for your money.
A few changes in the UI where we’ve labelled the stages in custom events 'Long' and 'Sprint', new players will see little pop up tutorials on first visit to each game mode (don’t worry they aren’t unskippable videos). We’ve also added some new messages in other areas of the game so you know what’s going on.
We’ve changed how your engineer slots unlock so that they now pop based on distance driven rather than cold, in-game cash. If you’ve already blown a load of cash on those slots... Sorry!
Custom Events will now use the fully upgraded versions of a car rather than the poor man’s version and we’ve made sure that your favourite livery will be stored for the next event.
We’ve also added in some new liveries including the Rallysport Development wrap for the Fiat 131 Abarth, the Peugeot Sport livery for the Peugeot 205 T16 Evo 2 and the Phil Collins Rally livery for the Ford Escort Mk II. Teams like these were kind enough to give us access to their awesome machines during development and without these guys and the rest of the rally scene here in the UK, DiRT Rally wouldn’t be the game it is.
On behalf of everybody at Codemasters thank you to those awesome rally folks and a huge thank you to you for playing.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/1A6WusIwZsE
Here’s the full list of everything we’ve changed, added and fixed in DiRT Rally V.0.4
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROwrb6BDNXg
DiRT Rally Road Book – 13/05/15
Greetings and welcome to the second edition of the DiRT Rally Road book. In this week’s issue we’ve rounded up the very best of what you’ve been up to, Chief Games Designer Paul Coleman has an update from studio and we’ve a sneak “peak” at what’s next for DiRT Rally.
It’s been an interesting week in the DiRT Studio. Everybody is still riding high following the announcement and we’re starting to flesh out some of your ideas and feedback to see what’s possible to incorporate into the game on top of the planned new content. Plus, we’re also working on some improvements of our own.
We’ve also been watching your videos, reading your forum posts and keeping an eye on your tweets. Oh, and our swag has shown up so it might be time for a few giveaways - more on that later – but, for now, here’s Paul with an update on what we’re working on this week.
“We’ve got things feeling right as far as the Force Feedback is concerned but it has taken a complete rewrite to get us to this point. Next we are going to get it in the hands of some rally drivers to get their feedback (pardon the pun). We are also working on the in-game calibration, configuration and options screens to give you more control over how the wheel feels.
Pikes Peak is really coming together now. It’s such a different challenge tearing up the hill with no co-driver giving you instructions. You really have to learn the route and there is plenty to learn. From a simulation angle we’ve improved the way we model the Aerodynamics. The Hillclimb cars have some extreme wing setups and this extra component of the simulation has given us plenty to layer back into the rally cars you are already driving, we’ll be getting on the case with that as soon as we can.
Another key element of Pikes Peak is the change in altitude. The difference in air pressure has a huge impact on the power the engine can produce and how much downforce is created by those big wings. Power loss with altitude is something we already simulate (you may have noticed a difference in car performance between Wales and Greece) but in Pikes Peak you actually get to feel the power drop as you climb. I’ll talk a bit more about Hillclimb next week so watch this space.”
Tutorials
You know how in the past you tended to hate our ingame tutorial videos? You couldn’t skip them and they just annoyed you? Well we still like the idea of those videos but we want to do them better. We got looking around and we really like the way the guys at Frontier do it with Elite Dangerous as a series of videos hosted on their YouTube Channel and website. Then we thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we asked the fans to put their ideal tutorials together?’
So we’re turning to you for help! We want you to create a video teaching other players how to get the most from DiRT Rally. You can focus on whatever aspect you feel you’re an expert in - how to set up your car, how to host a League, how to understand pacenotes, how to take part in the Online Events - it really is up to you!
In return we’ll add the best tutorials to our playlist on our YouTube channel and host them in the tutorials section of our website. We’ll also have exclusive DiRT swag for those we host on the playlist. Simply tweet your tutorials over to us (@dirtgame) when you’ve put them together. If you need some logos you'll find them here and a collection of hi-res screenshots and artwork 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
You guys are creating some amazing stuff, and getting more creative with your leagues to videos and livestreams. Here is a list of what we think you should be checking out this week.
Instagram.com/dirtgame – For a behind the scenes look in studio, see what we’re up to, what’s on our desks and on occasion what we’re having for lunch.
The DiRT Daily League – Set up by some of the guys from r/dirtgame this league lets you relive last week’s DiRT Daily Events in league format with no restarts or retries. How consistent are you?
NeoGAF League – Only the brave need apply, this thing is brutal!
I’ve Been Your Community Manager, Ask Me Anything – For the last two years I’ve been teasing the game to some of our super fans and the DiRTy Gossip Thread became the home for it all. I promised those guys an opportunity to ask me anything about those little hint drops once this was all over so true to my word here it is.
There you have it, another crazy week at Codemasters. I’m going to leave you with a competition where you could win some of our DiRT swag and a copy of the game simply click the photo for details on how to enter.
And you should check out this particularly tidy run in the Stratos with no assists and no HUD from SgtMustang
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mzg9TN7POYY
Patch V 03.3
We just set another small patch live for DiRT Rally which should hopefully reduce the number of Error 41 messages which some users are experiencing.
Since we started working on the problem we’ve come to learn that there are apparently a few different causes of this particular error code and as a result we know we won’t have fixed it for everybody.
We’re estimating today’s patch should work for about 40-50% of players who experience it, which is good because it means we’re finally breaking the back of this thing, but it also kinda sucks for those who are still having the issue.
We’re not finished with this though, we’ll continue to work on it and we still need your help tracking it down so if you do still experience the issue after today’s patch. Please let us know, you’ll find more info in the technical support forums. Thank you to everybody who helped us test this patch over the weekend.
We’ve also made a change to the Weekly Event so rather than waiting for stages to unlock as the week goes on you can now take on the whole thing in one go or at your own pace.
Outside of the game we’ve made some changes to dirtgame.com and you will now be able to view the leaderboards for past Daily, Weekly and Monthly Events.
We’ve also updated the Steam Store page to make what spec rig you will need to run DiRT Rally clearer, we haven’t changed the minimum spec but we’ve had some people asking us questions like “will my XXX graphics card work”.
So we’ve added in a list of graphics cards which we know work with DiRT Rally. This isn’t a complete list but it is the most common cards, if yours isn’t listed or if you are unsure you’ll need to check that your card is a DirectX 11 graphics card. You’ll normally find this info on the manufacturer’s website.
Coming up next we’re continuing to work on bug fixes, FFB, Pikes Peak and more. Keep an eye out for this week’s Road Book blog post later this week for more info and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Like us on Facebook for the latest news
Patch V 03.2
Hi all,
You know how sometimes the game hangs in-between stages on the car repair screen?
The tiny patch we just pushed live should fix that.
Trading Cards - After spending ages ticking different boxes the Community Manager finally called a grown-up and the Steam Trading Cards are now live (though technically this happened earlier in the week).
As for the error 41 issues... Following our test patch at the weekend (which annoyingly didn't seem to work for many) we've been talking to Valve and working together on our next attempt to solve the issue.
We'll have more info on error 41 in the next few days.
For all the other issues we're working on currently be sure to check out the bug tracker.
