Today's games require a very high level of authenticity, so making up our own sounds would just not make the cut. Armed with a DAT recorder we flew out to the Stena Line Ulster Rally and linked up with John Horton the Championship Manager - he was able to gain us access to pre-rally scrutineering. As the cars came in we kindly asked each driver to rev his car up for our sound man Darren Ithell (Dith) to record. They were all kind enough to provide us with plenty of source materials, from loud exhaust bangs to long high pitched rev sounds. Dith is now in the process of creating the required sound loops for all the different car types.

We have an invisible "best rallying line" which the computer cars will follow. The AI routine then looks down the course watching for pace notes to decide when the braking and accelerating should take place. The AI also mixes in the attitude of the computer component - is it an aggressive or conservative type driver? Very aggressive drivers will damage their cars more often as them brake later and block drivers trying to overtake (arcade mode). We certainly are adding a new evolution of AI into the game this time around. We'll also be running all the computer cars through the physics model, so the cars will act and react just like the player's car.

In circuit based games the AI is somewhat easier to predict, we have the challenge of controlling cars through stages that are as long as 26 miles, this I can assure you is difficult to manage.

We aim to include all the drivers from the 1999 British Rally Championship. So for example, Martin Rowe (last year's champion) will be driving a Renault Magane in the game.

At this stage I must point out the fact that there are two types of car in the game. There are "F2" cars, which qualify to drive in the full Simulation section of the game (the British Rally Championship). Then there's the World Rally Cars - these can only be selected from the Arcade, Time Trial and Single Rally sections in the game.