I am a fanatic about racing games (as are the team!), I wanted Midnight GT to contain all the cool features of my 'favourite' race games as well as hopefully 'improving' on some of the things that really annoy me! My biggest influences for one reason or another have been products such as Motorhead, NFS III, Gran Tourismo, the Ridge / Rage Racer series, the Test Drive series, Grand Prix Legends and Colin McRae / TOCA1 & 2. I have played them all to death, loves and hates from all of these and more have helped decide which routes to take in a number of different areas.

The key thing was to aim to produce something that would be nearly real, a good balance between a game and a real simulation. Midnight GT is definitely biased towards the simulation route, the car acts and reacts like the real thing . . . our physics model is 100% correct. For example each wheel and suspension rod reacts differently dependent on what stresses and strains are placed upon them by the player. For instance, if the player has one wheel on gravel or an icy patch on the road whilst the other three are on tarmac, the wheel on the slippery surface will have less tractive resistance than those on tarmac. The cars within Midnight GT (std, unlockable and Pininfarina) offer a good cross section of car types and this will be reflected in the physics model.

All cars within Midnight GT (bar the Pininfarina cars) are lookalikes, players should be able to tell what cars they represent also be able associate a 'driving type' with them. (they will handle exactly like their real world counterparts). The reason we are using lookalikes is for the simple reason that we wanted to be able to damage and tweak the player cars as you would do so in the 'real' world, something you cannot always do with licensed vehicles. Things like 'chipping' the ROM, weight reductions, obscene spoilers ;-) On to damage, as far as this is concerned, I wanted to be able to emulate the real world damage that would occur if the player drove recklessly i.e. driving into a wall at 100mph, won't mean you'll bounce off as in some 'simulation' games, the cars will sustain damage according to the punishment the player inflicts. There are limitations to this, we will modify physics data and visibly change the look of cars, however, it will be virtually impossible for the player to totally 'fatally' damage their vehicle, it is after all only a game! Damage will make the difference between winning and losing a race, players may limp home or decide to retire from a race.

Midnight GT from the beginning has been headed the 'simulation route'. I wanted to race real cars or (nearly) real roads and for them to react correctly. I also wanted to feel as if I was racing against real people, not just fighting perfect drivers on perfect splines. To this end we have decided to use a variation of Neural Net AI to train the opponent cars . . . opponents will be subject to the same restrictions as the player. If it takes eight seconds for the player to accelerate to top speed, then it should likewise take the opponent the same. Opponents should not be able to accelerate any quicker than the player in the same situation, and certainly should be fallible - things like damage will affect opponents to the same degree that it would affect the player in the same situation. The aim of the AI is to create pack racing among the AI cars. They will get better the further into game they progress, so too should the player . . . . hopefully ;-)

My current favourite bit/s in Midnight GT at the moment would have to be the track design and the player cars we are building, its all really coming together - the look and feel we are trying to create is nearly there. The team are really focused on what we are trying to achieve and are pulling out all the stops to make the game as good as we can possibly achieve.