What better way to start our brand new developer blog, than to talk to you about the past, the future and how you can get involved.

The Past

GeneRally is a remarkable game. From its inception by Hannu and Jukka over 10 years ago, until now, GeneRally has been consistently played, modded and discussed. It is no exaggeration to say that the game’s continued success is in large part due to the fantastic community that has developed around it. What started as a hobby project by two Finnish teenagers has become everything from a family Christmas tradition (as one player told me) to a competitive environment (as evidenced by the huge number of active competitions on the various community websites). Markku and myself consider ourselves privileged to have been custodians of such a fantastic title for these last few years and to contribute, in some small way, to the game’s great success.

By now, though, the vast majority of you will know that development work on GeneRally has officially ended. GeneRally has become a bit like an old pair of trainers: comfortable, familiar, but ultimately a bit past their prime. With the last 10 years has come a dramatic progression in gaming technology: from graphics, to controllers; from deformable terrain, to detailed physics – times have changed. We feel that GeneRally deserves to be part of that – we believe that GeneRally deserves a facelift.

Over the past few years, Markku and I have rewritten thousands of lines of code. We’ve optimised, refactored and revitalised a huge proportion of the source code that makes GeneRally what it is. Unfortunately, we came to the point where no amount of refactoring and optimising could improve what was there. For a while, we looked at various possible options, such as implementing a new UI system, or implementing new lighting, but ultimately we came to the same conclusion: this would be so much easier if we started from scratch.

And so, with Hannu & Jukka’s blessing, we stopped work on GeneRally and began looking forward…

The Future

For the past year, Markku and I have spent a significant portion of our spare time on the Sequel. Much of this time has been spent trying to understand the very essence of GeneRally – the thing that makes the game unique and beloved. Our firm insistence was that any sequel to GeneRally must feel the same as the original – it had to capture the magic. With that in mind, we began planning. Now, many months later, the planning is over and the real work has begun.

I know that there are a lot of concerns within the community about a sequel, so let me attempt to dispel those with some helpful information and insight.

Our primary goal with the Sequel is to bring GeneRally into the current era both technologically and in terms of compatibility. We have absolutely no desire to add to the large pile of mediocre arcade racers, nor do we have any aspirations to attempt to breach the ‘simulation’ market – we want to keep the Sequel firmly in the niche from which it has arisen. What this means is that when you look at a screenshot from the Sequel, it should be instantly recognisable and be instantly associated with GeneRally. We have a number of priorities that revolve around this principle:

The Sequel must look and feel like GeneRally (including the simplistic art-style, recognisable physics, and stylised sound).

Existing GeneRally tracks should be usable within the Sequel (either directly, or by some method of conversion).

All existing objects and surfaces should be available, with the same dimensions and properties (to support older tracks).

The Sequel should be playable on a typical computer, with no special requirements.

Modern hardware (e.g. controllers) should be fully supported, including support for local multiplayer.

Editing tracks/cars, and running competitions should be as easy as, if not easier than, in GeneRally.

Of course, this is far from an extensive list of our desires/ideas, but these particular points are non-negotiable. We want GeneRally players to be able to move over to the Sequel seamlessly and feel absolutely no regret for making that decision. We don’t want to tarnish GeneRally’s reputation with power-ups, motion-blur and first-person views – we want the Sequel to remain pure, simple and thoroughly enjoyable. This doesn’t mean we won’t be adding new features to the Sequel (things like dynamic lighting, weather, etc.) but we don’t want the core gameplay to change.

Much of our direction is currently being shaped by the results of the GeneRally Player Survey, which we’ve been running for the past month or two: we’ve collected a lot of data that is helping us to prioritise our efforts. We’ve read through each and every comment left by the 600+ respondents and have gained some valuable insight into what you want to see improved or left unchanged. One of the big questions was about cross-platform support (something that’s very important to us). In light of your comments, our current aim is to target cross-platform compatibility from the outset – we’re hoping we’ll be able to launch with native support for Windows, Mac and Linux.

In order to help us with this momentous task, we’ve already brought in some helping hands. Whilst Markku and I are solely responsible for the code-base, we’ve got a well-known community member and GeneRally “Car Master” on-board helping us with 3D work (who will introduce himself in a future developer blog); and various prominent community members ready to help with testing, as soon as we hit Alpha.

What we have ahead of us is a monumental task – one that will take many hundreds of hours of work to achieve – but we’re determined to succeed.

Get Involved

Our desire is for community members like you to become actively involved in contributing to the Sequel. In practicality, there are only so many people we can have ‘on-team’ to do the day-to-day work, but we are keen to get as many people involved as possible in beta testing and providing feedback on the game prior to release.

In response to overwhelmingly positive feedback from the GeneRally Player Survey (over 80% of respondents said they would be happy to contribute) we will be funding the Sequel’s development through Kickstarter. We will be setting a modest goal that will allow both Markku and myself to take time off from our full-time jobs to focus on the Sequel and to get the game to beta as quickly as possible (in our spare time, a project of this magnitude could take years). Of course, we plan to offer some extensive perks and rewards for contributors, including t-shirts, posters, hand-painted driver figurines, signed memorabilia (we’re looking into getting Hannu & Jukka to sign some limited-edition items) and a whole lot more.

Both this funding initiative and news about how to get involved in beta testing will emerge over the next few months, along with early Alpha gameplay footage/screenshots. We’re hoping to get new in-game content to you on a regular basis, so you can actively track the development of the Sequel for yourself!

We wholeheartedly believe that the future of the GeneRally Sequel is a bright one. We want to get the community involved in as many ways as possible in its development and we want to deliver a game that is a true joy to play and to share with friends and family!

Stay tuned for more information and please subscribe to the RSS feed and/or follow us on Twitter (the links are in the side-bar to the right).

– James