Paul Jeffrey
Premium
Kunos Simulazioni look likely to be busy in the months ahead, having already released 'build five' of the sim and a new hotfix today, the team have confirmed a sizeable rewriting is underway.
When I say rewriting, what I mean by that is Kunos are hard at work revisiting some of the code created for ACC so far, in an effort to maximise how the software will be developed going forward in order to bring new content and features to the simulation more quickly, and with greater ease than is possible at this moment in time.
Unfortunately for Kunos, that means a lot of work 'behind the scenes' will need to be undertaken to achieve this change in direction, a feat that the small Italian development team are in no way underestimating how time consuming and difficult that might be. With the simulation still at such an early stage of development, it is excellent to see Kunos are so dedicated to bringing about the best experience they can with this Unreal 4 game engine, and yet more evidence that the makers of netKar Pro and Assetto Corsa fully intend this new title to be their biggest and best creation to date.
The full Kunos statement:
Having a look at the 0.5 release patch notes, you will find that most changes are either new content or physics related. Regarding gameplay elements – including Multiplayer features – we decided to opt for a different path, which may need some explanation for non-developers.
While developing software, especially games, you constantly invent patterns and concepts. When we built the ACC gameplay during 2018, we aimed for a certain way to write the game logic, including everything from session handling, race timing, laptimes, penalties and so on. Our solution had some amazing feats and ways of working, but we also had to learn that one of the disadvantages was making the development of Multiplayer features not as efficient as we had wished for. You may have noticed that although we met our roadmap targets on time in terms of content and features, several things involving Multiplayer were late. This is not really unusual or surprising; moving a whole development team to a new engine and framework required us to learn about the new situation as the project evolved (but we didn't know where this would happen, obviously).
In December we faced the choice to either keep proceeding like that, adding as little changes as necessary to achieve a stable 1.0 Multiplayer, and then never to touch it again.
The alternative route is a rewrite of (a lot of) the code to switch to concepts that support our current needs and the things we learned. The disadvantage is obvious; we'd have to spend a lot of work to change ACC without – seemingly – adding gamplay related features and fixes for a certain amount of time, however, the gain is a much more stable environment, where we can keep adding features and also speed up future development.
I can tell it's unusual to go for a rewrite, but it expresses our approach and our plans to go on, even beyond ACC 1.0. Technically speaking, a few developers forked off the codebase and worked day and night to do the re-coding, with the goal of bringing those improvements to the main code as soon as possible. The new features on the list therefore are there, but not in this build, and we most probably will also bring them one after another even looking beyond the 1.0 release, since the development will continue to bring our audience the 2019 Season update, and more.
Being myself also responsible for ACC Multiplayer development, I needed to slow down the work on the Rating System, but likely this re-work on some of the code that we use as a foundation will help the Rating System, too, to proceed even smoother.
As a bottom line: enjoy the new content, both the car and track (in my opinion) are fabulous, and see how ACC keeps developing in the future.
I'm writing this between Multiplayer tests (on the new code), we are on a very good way – but sadly we will not see this outside the test systems for the time being.
While developing software, especially games, you constantly invent patterns and concepts. When we built the ACC gameplay during 2018, we aimed for a certain way to write the game logic, including everything from session handling, race timing, laptimes, penalties and so on. Our solution had some amazing feats and ways of working, but we also had to learn that one of the disadvantages was making the development of Multiplayer features not as efficient as we had wished for. You may have noticed that although we met our roadmap targets on time in terms of content and features, several things involving Multiplayer were late. This is not really unusual or surprising; moving a whole development team to a new engine and framework required us to learn about the new situation as the project evolved (but we didn't know where this would happen, obviously).
In December we faced the choice to either keep proceeding like that, adding as little changes as necessary to achieve a stable 1.0 Multiplayer, and then never to touch it again.
The alternative route is a rewrite of (a lot of) the code to switch to concepts that support our current needs and the things we learned. The disadvantage is obvious; we'd have to spend a lot of work to change ACC without – seemingly – adding gamplay related features and fixes for a certain amount of time, however, the gain is a much more stable environment, where we can keep adding features and also speed up future development.
I can tell it's unusual to go for a rewrite, but it expresses our approach and our plans to go on, even beyond ACC 1.0. Technically speaking, a few developers forked off the codebase and worked day and night to do the re-coding, with the goal of bringing those improvements to the main code as soon as possible. The new features on the list therefore are there, but not in this build, and we most probably will also bring them one after another even looking beyond the 1.0 release, since the development will continue to bring our audience the 2019 Season update, and more.
Being myself also responsible for ACC Multiplayer development, I needed to slow down the work on the Rating System, but likely this re-work on some of the code that we use as a foundation will help the Rating System, too, to proceed even smoother.
As a bottom line: enjoy the new content, both the car and track (in my opinion) are fabulous, and see how ACC keeps developing in the future.
I'm writing this between Multiplayer tests (on the new code), we are on a very good way – but sadly we will not see this outside the test systems for the time being.
While the rewrite is a project that remains ongoing, Kunos are still working hard at the latest build of the software, and that can be further evidenced today by a very small new hotfix update for the recently released Emil Frey Jaguar G3, the car having come with a couple of issues (mainly around the audio), which has been addressed as part of the latest hotfix build, details below:
0.5.1 Changelog
- Improved intake sound EQ (onboard view) for the Emil Frey Jaguar G3
- Minor LOD tweaks on the Emil Frey Jaguar G3
Busy days, weeks and months are ahead at Kunos HQ!
Assetto Corsa Competizione is available on Steam Early Access now. Currently at build release 5 status.
To keep abreast of all the latest news and discussions from the world of Assetto Corsa Competizione then don't forget to check out our very own ACC sub forum here at RaceDepartment.
Like what we do here at RD? Follow us on Social Media!
To keep abreast of all the latest news and discussions from the world of Assetto Corsa Competizione then don't forget to check out our very own ACC sub forum here at RaceDepartment.
Like what we do here at RD? Follow us on Social Media!
