A day of listening to the cars
Nothing new went into the game today, on purpose. We sat in the garage, played the Coast Road with our eyes half shut and listened to what the cars have been trying to tell us.
Some days in a studio are for making things. Others are for finding out what you have already made. Today was the second kind. Nothing new went into the game, and we did that on purpose: when a pre-alpha build has had a busy week, the most useful thing you can do is stop adding to it and simply play it.
So we played it, mostly with the sound up and the picture half ignored. A racing game tells you a lot through your ears. A good engine note tells you when to change gear. A good tyre tells you it is about to let go a moment before it does. A bad one tells you nothing until you are in the sea.
Close your eyes. Not while driving.
The voices of the cars
We wrote here a while ago that each car in Rally Mortis has its own voice. The Black Tie burbles like a large dog dreaming. The hearse has a deep, patient hum. The lorries on the Coast Road sound like furniture being moved upstairs. Today we checked whether that was still true, one lap at a time.
Mostly it is. The Black Tie still sounds like money that has been left out in the rain. The hearse still sounds as if it has all the time in the world, which, given its line of work, it has. The lorries are as unhurried as ever and as hard to get past.
What we listened for were the gaps: the moments when the engine says one thing and the car does another, or when the rain is louder than the race. There were a few. We wrote them on cards and pinned them up, and they will keep until the morning.
Port Saffron at night
The other thing we did was drive around Port Saffron when there was no race to win. It is a different town at night. The promenade lamps hiss in the rain, the sea keeps up a low complaint against the wall, and the Black Tie’s tyres make a sound on wet cobbles that we would very much like to keep exactly as it is.
A good tyre tells you it is about to let go a moment before it does.
None of this is a feature. It will not appear on a list of improvements, and nobody will ever thank us for it. But a player who has spent an evening on the Coast Road should be able to tell, with the screen off, which car is behind them and whether it is about to be beside them.
That is the standard. We are not there yet: it is pre-alpha, and a few of the louder moments still drown out the quieter ones. Tomorrow we go back to making things. Tonight the cars did the talking, and for once we let them.