Racing Legends Update. 10th Sept  2003
 

 
WHATS NEW THIS MONTH?
Time for another update. Its been a really good and productive month and it is so nice to be back working. Having said in the last update that I wanted to do more on the 312 the reality is I haven't been near it. Oh well. As the images below show its been more work on the 49 and especially on the engine as well as the start of something new.
 

 
Racing Legends will feature various 'diorama' areas. We have ideas for a number of these areas eventually and the accompanying images show the current progress on one of these areas. This is the classic courtyard scene. This is where all off track work will be based. Initially a lot of the garages will be empty but as you add more cars to your collection each will be allocated its own garage area and the various cars can be wheeled out and inspected at anytime. When all the bays are full you can transfer some of the less used cars to the storage area to make room. There will be workshop areas where the cars will go to be dismantled, inspected and race prepared and somewhere to display all the trophies you win.
 

 
Selecting a car to go racing with will be a case of opening the doors, wheeling the car out and having it loaded onto a transporter to be taken to a track. Obviously you don't have to go through this procedure if you don't want to but its nice to have the choice. Imagine the scene as you roll out your latest addition, the crunch of tyre on gravel, the sun gleaming off the freshly polished paintwork, the transporter waiting! Definately a photo opportunity
 

 
Next we have the DFV again. A lot of work has been done refining and tidying up, however most of the work has been on the workings of the engine. We now have all the major components of the engine modelled including gaskets and seals and these are ready to be linked together. When done you will be able to watch the engine in action. There are few bits to do, mainly the fuel system but its very nearly complete now.
 
 
 
 The reason for all this unseen detail? Well a number of reasons really. Firstly it will allow all those that enjoy tinkering to do just that. We also envisage some race series being run that will only allow one car to be used during a season and that car needs to be serviced and maintained after events to keep it running smoothly.  
This all goes with the idea of building proper race teams to get the most out of Racing Legends. Different people seem to enjoy  
 
Having the components of the engine modelled gives the engineer a visual system to service the engine. Individual components can be removed, inspected, fine tuned and then reassembled.  
 
Each component will receive wear and damage depending on the driving style adopted during races which will reward careful drivers and penalise those who are harder on their machines.
 
I think it also interesting for people to be able to learn how these cars were put together and how they worked. I also believe that it adds to the realism of the sim knowing that you driving more than just a 3 dimensional shape with pretty textures and might prompt drivers to take more care of the machines.
 

 
 On the programming side its more of the same. Every update I ask Chris what's been happening in this area of development and every time the answer is sooo dull that I find it difficult to jazz it up to make it sound sexy so this time I am not even going to bother.  
 
What I can say is that whatever it he is doing he is very happy with and apparently it is all going to make our lives an awful lot easier later on, which I think is a good thing. The time will come when Chris gets onto the more 'nitty gritty' aspects, the bits that have some form of visual impact which I can report but for the time being it seems to be all about systems, debug stuff, scripting code, inverse kinematics exporting and planning.
 
Ok, I think that's about it for this update. I am about to start on a new modelling project for Racing Legends and I hope to show you more of this in the next update. It is something a little different and unusual so stay tuned for that.
 
To finish off here a closer look at the dashboard of the 49B. It clearly shows the work that is still to do i.e. dial, switch and light textures and currently there is nothing to go behind these dials but maybe that can rectified before the next update also.
 

Any Chris/Tony West shrines on the web you can point us to?
Mmm well there are some places where they want to rip us to shreds but that's another story. I haven't really looked. I doubt it.
 
Really? Like where?
Well our own site is a good/bad starting point www.west-racing.com the forum is as most forums are, a place of constant intolerance, flaming and abuse, best avoided. We don't update the main game site at the moment as every time we do it leads to a constant torrent of abusive emails and forum posts among the racing sim sites.
 
It seems that game has gathered a lot of interests from the fans all around the world...
Yeah does seem to have, though as I said we had to stop updating the website as it just kicks of a new wave of hysteria, so we are laying very low and just getting on with the work.