The Resurrection of GeneRally 2

A screenshot of GeneRally 2 (Image: GeneRally 2's Steam Page)

The year was 2013, GeneRally 2 was announced following the release of the new version of GeneRally. The Kickstarter campaign for the sequel has kicked off and with that, a new hope for a renewed classic that has been around since the early 2000s. The failure of the campaign, however, started a domino effect to the game's downfall, made worse with the silence of the project leader himself James Burgess (although slow but sure there were progression blogs that were written), taking its toll to the community. This doesn't mean the game is dead; GR2 was still being worked on in closed doors while GRPL Discord Server carried on activities in the original game.

Filling the gaps of the rather quiet era of the late 2010s are two games inspired by GeneRally: Circuit Superstars, the love letter to the world motorsport by the Mastretta brothers and team, putting the inspiration of the game and turned it to a new perspective, featuring a plethora of cars and customizations in terms of cars and drivers. It's clear that there are familiar elements where GR players can point out, especially given that they started out as the Apex Racing League (not to be confused with Apex Legends) and advertised it on GeneRally International Forums, with positive feedbacks throughout its development phase. RaceLeague, a newer entry to the ring, coupled the GR inspiration with more sim-esque approach with more challenging driving physics and advanced damage physics, though it is the game's track editor that made RaceLeague a strong choice for content creators, resulting in some of the best track creations available for racing.

On November 21 this year, though, a new chapter starts for the sequel that has been in the development cycle for almost a decade: GeneRally 2 has arrived on Steam. While their inclusion is just on the "Wishlist" phase, things have started to kick again after arguably a long sleep, with more than one week later a follow-up post on the newly-revamped Track Editor feature is written by noted team member and GeneRally veteran TuomoH (and just yesterday from this post, another was posted!). Once more, GR fans have something to hope on after enduring years of pain, with a potential of attracting the new ones.

As much as I haven't played GR until recently, I still kept wondering whether there'd be GR2 someday. The top down racing is as niche as it is, let alone the racing genre in general, and it's hard to compete against the tall vampires and "reformed rabbis" in gaming as a whole. However, do remember that GeneRally is one of those games whose life continues to flourish thanks to user-created contents, joining the likes of other racers such as Assetto Corsa, GTR2, Richard Burns Rally, TrackMania, Midtown Madness, and so on. The main advantage for GR, though, is the fact that it doesn't discriminate whether you have a gaming-spec hardware or a potato one. This announcement shook me in many ways as nobody expected when this particular day will come, and of course, the announcement was the field day of the long-time GR players still remaining.

If I could hope one thing about GR2, it'd be simply the fact that it would play exactly the same to the original while being the better version of it. However, I feel like there are open possibilities of more advanced features outside the game's scope given the modern times; while online playability is a no-brainer, a dedicated competition mode would definitely a welcome addition as racers have been doing this for years and years. Imagine the possibility of competition login without leaving the game, where your race is automatically downloaded as you go and the game prepares the submission for you as you've finished your race, leaving solely on your left clicking the "Submit" button and your internet connection, and eventually waiting for the result until the deadline hits. Think something akin to the Rallysimfans.hu plug-in for Richard Burns Rally where you can run your competition chores in the game. As far as the competition organizers are concerned, they can set up which rounds that'll be run throughout the competition, the car(s) used, the points system, and the game settings.

Another hope I have lies in the Track Editor. I don't hate the original game's Track Editor, but some of the functions kinda aged badly in that regards especially coming from creating tracks on another game. I kinda wish you could select and rotate existing objects, something that can't be done in the original Track Editor, not to mention a more free approach in the zooming department. Though by the time TuomoH posted his blog entries, I feel like it's possible that we might get these privileges, along with others that will come as the game enters Early Access phase, joining the other active top down racers in this era like Turbo Sliders Unlimited, Circuit Superstars, and RaceLeague, to name a few.

Last but not least would be the dedicated "Photo Mode", or in this case… the "Eye Candy Mode" just like the GR players always said so. To simply put, it's basically overriding the default camera view, something that's impossible unless you have the Juan's GR Options tool in the original game. Given the function, I'd say it'd be a good idea that this Eye Candy Mode would be available when running a race replay or during Track Editor, although it should be possible to access it from the pause menu directly. Of course, this will definitely help the content creators on composing the best shots for their showcases of any kind.

TIME TO RETURN

Celebrating GR2, I thought it'd be a good idea to restart my content creation activities for the game especially given at the indiscriminate nature of GR despite having to live with my laptop without its VGA driver enabled (as it'd randomly trigger a black screen). For this occasion, I chose to continue one of my WIPs although I did make some new ones just for the sake of it.

The first one would be what's called as Serena Park, based on an original design track I made a decade ago, crossing through parts of Central Park North and 5th Avenue. This particular track was for a fan fiction project involving TV characters from multiple series in a competitive environment which sadly has been lost to time along with the site that hosted it (although I've archived it already, but not that I would re-post that fic anytime soon). This particular track, in the lore, is used to represent the "Upper East Side" round's final heat of the said competition where competitors race their karts through the track. The funny thing about this track, though, is that I realized that this is actually located between the edges of Harlem and East Harlem, crossing through Central Park. No portion of Upper East Side can be found on the track, despiite being branded as such.

Therefore, to avoid further mental gymnastics and Creator's block concerning this track, the track gets a fictionalized design concept; while the core environment of the original track is kept, the 5th Avenue portion is re-worked as a different environment to accommodate pits, and the Duke Ellington Circle portion is replaced with Columbus Circle, sprinkled with the "may or may not be a Formula E track" juju on top. Other than that, the track paths are adjusted to fit GR's proportions, now that it's not too bound on the original source material. Height Map is also on the works, but it'll be just for the hairpin section for the track, and one for the lake. Now that I know how the lake would look like, I might consider fixing this to make sure it doesn't become a mess.

The name Serena Park is taken from Gossip Girl's Serena van der Woodsen, and the fact that it is a copy of the Central Park. For a track that's meant to be part of the Upper East Side round, I think it actually suits the theming since the show is mostly set in, you guessed it, Upper East Side. I'm not sure if those rich people visit the Harlem area on the show but they most definitely drop by in Central Park at least once.

Second on my WIP list is a new addition which is based on one of my older designs I didn't document online. Forest Dip is the working name of this particular track, and my initial design long ago was more of a rectangle-ish shape. Working on Serena Park and remembering the story behind the creation, I randomly remember about this track and how can I make it better, so I just did have a short thinking process about how can I make one of my older unpublished works better for the published version. That said, I decided to do it and managed to come up with the shape that isn't rectangle-ish, exactly as seen above.

The concept of this track was the track being a purpose-built racing track set in the middle of the forest with undulations. From my initial design, the track drops from the first turn, then climbs after the second turn. Another undulation of the same kind starts descending from turn 6 and climbs after turn 8. Of course further elevation changes would be worked on, but for now I'm finalizing the layout and base designs before proceeding with everything else.

For the time being, these WIPs will be in top priority, hopefully I have motivation to finish both of these. More importantly, though, I have high hopes for GR2 once more. In the meantime, please take your time to view Gearknob Productions' GeneRally essay video, an essential viewing for the GR fans, new and old!

~[R]