The Road To DiRT Rally
Though development began way before, the public road to DiRT Rally’s release began in April 2015 when the game entered the Early Access programme on Steam. Since then, the DiRT development team have released regular content packs and worked closely with the DiRT community to shape the game into the acclaimed rally experience it is today.
Below is the timeline of content packs and accompanying patch notes as they happened on the road to final release.
DiRT Rally Early Access Begins Apr2015
Welcome to DiRT Rally and thank you for joining us for early access.
For the last few years our fans have been asking us for a game that is pure rally with none of the fluff, one that has more stages, longer stages and repairs in between stages. You’ve told us you want your own team, you want to be able to set the car up and to feel like you own the car you’re driving. We want to deliver that game and with your help we hope we do.
So what are you getting in our launch pack?
17 Cars - Having hundreds of cars doesn’t interest us, rally is about having the right car and we intend to give you those cars. These 17 are just to get us started and we’ll be adding more cars over more classes as the year goes on.
36 Stages – Winding paths through forests, death defying drops off hillsides and narrow mountain paths are what this is all about. It’s you, your codriver and your car versus the road ahead and to get us started we’ll be heading to the muddy forest tracks of Wales, the dusty trails of Greece and the icy tarmac of the legendary Monte Carlo rally.
A-Synchronous Events – Take on the world in Daily, Weekly and Monthly challenges. These are the ultimate tests of skill and determination and it’s going to take everything you have to finish on top.
Simulation handling – We’ve accurately recreated how every part of the car works and to support this we’ve developed a brand new physics model which simulates everything from the way the surface of the road behaves to limited slip differentials. This is how these cars drive and to achieve this we’ve had our very own rally driver on staff working alongside the most talented car handling designers in the world. We’ve had countless visitors in from the world of rally, rallycross and friends from the community, helping us to make sure that we’ve got it as right as we can, ready for you.
Team Management – Hire and fire your crew members, each of which will have different skills improving repair times for different parts of the car, unlock new perks as they gain experience and work together as a team to improve your performance in events.
League Support – Get together with friends and run your very own racing league. You can join up to six leagues at any one time and run them how and when you want. For more information on setting up and joining a racing league visit dirtgame.com
As a thank you for supporting us during Early Access we are giving you a special DiRT Rally livery for the Subaru Impreza 1995.
Pikes Peak Pack May2015
It seems like forever ago when we pushed the button and surprised the world with DiRT Rally. To everybody reading this screen we can’t thank you enough.
Here’s what we’ve added in v0.4
The world famous Pikes Peak - Built from the ground up in its full fat modern tarmac state (the first time in a video game) and the mixed surface variant we all grew up loving. We’ve also included a variety of weather conditions and three iconic Hillclimb cars to add to your garage.
You’ll find that we’ve rolled Hillclimb into our Championship mode, it will crop up from time to time in our Online Events and you’ll now be able to select it in Custom Events and add it to your Leagues.
That’s not all though, we’ve also made some improvements and additions to the rest of the game including...
Some of our AI drivers have got fed up with watching you driving so well so expect some of them to start trying to rival your performances and give you more of a run for your money.
A few changes in the UI where we’ve labelled the stages in custom events 'Long' and 'Sprint', new players will see little pop up tutorials on first visit to each game mode (don’t worry they aren’t unskippable videos). We’ve also added some new messages in other areas of the game so you know what’s going on.
We’ve changed how your engineer slots unlock so that they now pop based on distance driven rather than cold, in-game cash. If you’ve already blown a load of cash on those slots... Sorry!
Custom Events will now use the fully upgraded versions of a car rather than the poor man’s version and we’ve made sure that your favourite livery will be stored for the next event.
We’ve also added in some new liveries including the Rallysport Development wrap for the Fiat 131 Abarth, the Peugeot Sport livery for the Peugeot 205 T16 Evo 2 and the Phil Collins Rally livery for the Ford Escort Mk II. Teams like these were kind enough to give us access to their awesome machines during development and without these guys and the rest of the rally scene here in the UK, DiRT Rally wouldn’t be the game it is.
On behalf of everybody at Codemasters thank you to those awesome rally folks and a huge thank you to you for playing.
Here’s the full list of everything we’ve changed, added and fixed in DiRT Rally V.0.4
- New – Added over 4,300 metres of rock otherwise known as Pikes Peak
- New – Or old depending how you look at it, yes that’s right we’ve also added the mixed surface version of Pikes Peak too
- New - Each route on Pikes Peak is available with a variety of weather conditions (Sunny\Rain\Overcast\Clear).
- Anytime soon mbm
- New - Hillclimb car class featuring the Peugeot 405 T16 Pikes Peak, the Peugeot 205 T16 Pikes Peak and the Audi Sport Quattro S1 Pikes Peak.
- New – Hillclimb career mode and full support for Online Events and Leagues
- New - Added a few tutorial messages and hints and tips to some menus and loading screens.
- New – Sent all our AI drivers back to rally school, turns out they were struggling to keep up with you guys so expect a bit more of a challenge from now on
- New - Your changes in position are now shown on the event and championship standings.
- New - Added a message to let you know when you’ve been promoted or relegated in Championship mode
- New - 13 new achievements for all you unlock and rub in your friends faces.
- New - Added the ability to map clutch and gears for the following steering wheels: Logitech Driving Force EX, Logitech Driving Force GT, Logitech Driving Force Pro, Logitech MOMO Racing Wheel, Thrustmaster F430 Force Feedback Racing Wheel, Thrustmaster Ferrari GT Experience Racing Wheel, Thrustmaster RGT FF Pro, Microsoft Wireless Xbox 360 Racing Wheel
- New – Added analogue handbrake support
- Change - Engineer slots now unlock based on distance driven rather than spending your hard earned credits
- Change - When using a wheel the ragdoll shake effect is now turned off
- Change - Custom Events now use the full fat versions of the cars rather than the poor mans versions
- Change - Improved our Steam error reporting, this won’t really change anything for you now but it will help us in the future
- Change - Made it clearer when you can’t afford a car
- Change – Improved the messages which tell you what the different game modes are
- Change – Custom events now tell you if a stage is a “Long” or “Sprint” (short) version
- Change - Changed certain title headers in the leagues reward screens to make it clearer where you finished
- Change – The weekly event is now six stages instead of four
- Fix - If you’re using a H-Pattern with clutch setup, the game no longer shifts to neutral when contact with your kit is lost.
- Fix – Turns out that sometimes the AI would overshoot the start line, we’ve had a word with them about it
- Fix - Hand braking when using manual clutch now no longer locks all four wheels on the Ford Fiesta.
- Fix – Position indicators will now stop showing the incorrect information
- Fix – Fixed a weird thing that would sometimes let you have more than one go at an online event (bet you’re gutted you didn’t notice that one)
- Fix – Ever been caught in an infinite loop of disconnects and reconnects at the end of an online event? Yeah, we fixed that.
- Audio – Increased overall volume of game audio
- Audio – Co-driver should now be clearer
- Audio – Fixed volume issues of cockpit cameras not lowering in volume when changed in options.
- Audio – Clearer audio feedback on skidding and locking
- Audio – Fixed gear grind for stuck gears
- Audio – Collisions should be more obvious
- Audio – Landings should now sound better
- Audio – New aero sound effects
- Car update - The Fiat 131 Abarth now has historically accurate rear lights
- Car update – The Fiat 131 Abarth now features the Rallysport Development livery.
- Car update – The Ford Escort Mk II now features the Phil Collins’ livery
- Car update – The Lancia Fulvia HF now features the Lancia livery.
- Car update – The Peugeot 205 T16 Evo 2 now features the Peugeot Sport livery.
Tarmac Terrors Jun2015
Month three of DiRT Rally and our next big update is now live. Version v.0.5 – more commonly known as the Tarmac Terrors update – has now been added to DiRT Rally; it’s fast paced, technical and is going to require all your focus. Here’s the full run down of what you can expect in this month’s update.
NEW
- 12 new rally stages based at Baumholder in Germany
- Owners Club Online Events – A second DiRT Daily where you compete in your own car
- A second weekly event where we’ll be experimenting and throwing new challenges at you
- 5 new rally cars featuring new Group B RWD & Kit Car Classes
- Opel Kadett GT/E 16v
- Opel Manta 400
- Lancia 037 Evo 2
- Seat Ibiza Kitcar
- Peugeot 306 Maxi
- New calibration and options screens in “Advanced Wheel Settings” (added in v.0.4.5)
FIXES
Alongside all of our new features we’ve been hard at work tracking cleaning those annoying bugs of the front of the bumper, here’s the full list of what we’ve fixed in this latest version:
- Error 41 – Fixed instances of the game not booting when there is less than 2GB of free space on C:\ drive. This was one of the causes of the dreaded error 41.
- Achievement – “Going up in the world” will now pop if you had previously purchased a Hillclimb car but not received the achievement.
- Stability – Driving the Peugeot 405 T16 would sometimes cause stability issues, we’ve fixed those now.
- Graphics – Quite a few changes for users running Nvidia SLI. That weird black and orange screen bug is fixed and we’ve solved the graphical corruption when using SLI and anti-aliasing on high/ultra graphical presets.
- Graphics – Made the lighting on the sunset routes of Pikes Peak look less… Well… You know.
- Audio – The engine audio level in cockpit view can now be properly controlled by the slider.
- Gameplay – The reset button should appear sooner during those awkward moments when you beach your car at the side of the road. Though we advise not beaching your car.
- Gameplay – Sometimes you could rev the engine so hard on the Audi Sport Quattro the “Recover vehicle” prompt would pop up, it won’t do that anymore.
- Gameplay – We’ve planted some trees and shrubs in areas of Greece and Wales where we spotted that some of you were taking shortcuts. Taking some cuts in rally is cool but these cuts were definitely not cool.
- Gameplay – Fixed a loophole which would let you continually repair your car in Online Hillclimb events.
- Gameplay – Online Hillclimb events will now factor in slower times from Run 2 and they won’t overwrite faster times from Run 1.
- Message box – Stopped the Promotion message box from incorrectly displaying when you have completed the Masters Championship and finished in the top 3 positions.
- Save – Your advanced set ups should now save as expected
- Oculus – Sometimes the background on the main menu would vanish, we’ve fixed that now.
- Online Events – You’ll now be disqualified if you don’t start moving within a minute
- Leagues – Made the text on the league screens easier to read on lower resolutions.
- Audio – Pre-update your co-driver may have become a little disinterested if you left the centre of the track from time to time, we’ve spoken to him about his attitude.
- Audio – Ever had two sets of music play over a replay? That’s not a remix version and it should stop happening from now on.
- Controller Fix – Fixed an issue which meant players couldn’t change the stage conditions when using the Microsoft Sidewinder Wheel.
Rallycross Pack Aug2015
Rallycross comes to DiRT Rally with two brand new circuits, a pack of rallycross super cars, a brand new single player career and of course fresh Online Events.
World RX Multiplayer Update Aug2015
Woa! It’s time for DiRT Rally’s v.0.7 update already, which this month introduces online competitive play to DiRT Rally. That’s right, you’ll now be able to head online and challenge your friends in officially licensed FIA World Rallycross events.
But wait there’s more! We’ve also added a stack of new features and changes including:
- A new World RX track – Hell, Norway
- New Rallycross drivers including, Liam Doran and Petter Solberg
- Wet weather for all Rallycross tracks
- Three new cars: DS3, MINI Countryman Rallycross and Subaru WRX STI
- Brand new Wager Daily Event
- Some new advanced gamepad options
- Added a “Very Early” option for your Co-Driver calls
- A frankly amazing set of Hints and Tips for you to read during loading screens
- Removed the additional time penalty when the Off Track Reset Countdown expires and upped the limit on the timer
- We’ll now show you your ‘Fastest lap’ onscreen for an entire Rallycross Event
- Clutch Override which will give you the ability to use your clutch to override the automatic gearbox clutch
Read the Full list of changes here...
Flying Finland Sep2015
We head to Finland for some of the fastest sections of road in rally with two legendary cars from two legendary drivers to go with it.
Modern Masters Nov2015
A whole new class of car for you to master in career containing some firm fan favourites
Winter Wonderland Dec2015
With a new environment to tackle and new cars to master can you keep your cool in this winter wonderland?
Patch v.03.1 Apr2015
Hi all,
Wow! what an awesome first few days it has been. Again I'd just like to say thank you to you all on behalf of the team. We love that you are enjoying the game and we've been busy reading your feedback, watching your videos and checking out your livestreams (when not working on the game obviously).
We're pleased that you all feel our launch went really smoothly but we did hit a few bumps... not as many on the side of the road in Greece though!
Here's what we've fixed in the patch that just went live
- Audio Fix - We had a word with the co-driver about his attitude and he should now be talking to you if he wasn't before.
- Audio Fix - Resolved several instances of your co-driver speaking French for non French players (he's been taking lessons and wanted to practice).
- Online Fix - Fixed the Daily Online events so you will now be correctly rewarded for completing the event.
- Championship Fix - Resolved instances of incorrect weather combinations being generated during later championship events... We blame global warming.
Known issues we're working on
- Error 41 - We're looking into this one, and will update as soon as I have more info. As it is something we need to discuss with Valve.
- dirtgame.com not loading - this seems to be an issue with Firefox users, we're looking into it but for now any other browser should work.
If you are having any of the problems below can you please take a read of this post and send your dxdiags to dirtgame(at)codemasters(dot)com. We're still trying to get to the bottom of them and the more info we can collect about your system the quicker we can get to fix.
- Game Hangs
- Input lag on some setups
- Benchmark test doesn't run correctly
- Can't full screen on mobile Nvidia cards
You're all awesome, to keep up to date with the latest news follow us on Twitter, Facebook and keep an eye on dirtgame.com.
Patch V.03.2 May2015
Hi all,
You know how sometimes the game hangs in-between stages on the car repair screen?
The tiny patch we just pushed live should fix that.
Trading Cards - After spending ages ticking different boxes the Community Manager finally called a grown-up and the Steam Trading Cards are now live (though technically this happened earlier in the week).
As for the error 41 issues... Following our test patch at the weekend (which annoyingly didn't seem to work for many) we've been talking to Valve and working together on our next attempt to solve the issue.
We'll have more info on error 41 in the next few days.
For all the other issues we're working on currently be sure to check out the bug tracker.
Patch v.0.3.3 May2015
We just set another small patch live for DiRT Rally which should hopefully reduce the number of Error 41 messages which some users are experiencing.
Since we started working on the problem we’ve come to learn that there are apparently a few different causes of this particular error code and as a result we know we won’t have fixed it for everybody.
We’re estimating today’s patch should work for about 40-50% of players who experience it, which is good because it means we’re finally breaking the back of this thing, but it also kinda sucks for those who are still having the issue.
We’re not finished with this though, we’ll continue to work on it and we still need your help tracking it down so if you do still experience the issue after today’s patch. Please let us know, you’ll find more info in the technical support forums. Thank you to everybody who helped us test this patch over the weekend.
We’ve also made a change to the Weekly Event so rather than waiting for stages to unlock as the week goes on you can now take on the whole thing in one go or at your own pace.
Outside of the game we’ve made some changes to dirtgame.com and you will now be able to view the leaderboards for past Daily, Weekly and Monthly Events.
We’ve also updated the Steam Store page to make what spec rig you will need to run DiRT Rally clearer, we haven’t changed the minimum spec but we’ve had some people asking us questions like “will my XXX graphics card work”.
So we’ve added in a list of graphics cards which we know work with DiRT Rally. This isn’t a complete list but it is the most common cards, if yours isn’t listed or if you are unsure you’ll need to check that your card is a DirectX 11 graphics card. You’ll normally find this info on the manufacturer’s website.
Coming up next we’re continuing to work on bug fixes, FFB, Pikes Peak and more. Keep an eye out for this week’s Road Book blog post later this week for more info and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Like us on Facebook for the latest news
Patch v.04.1 Jun2015
- Save Game Fix - Fixed an issue which prevented the game from saving mid event
- Achievement Fix – Hillclimb achievements now unlock correctly, these will award from now on but we will retroactively award the Going Up In The World achievement in a future pack
- Track Environment update – J.McG’s Invisible Towing Services have now removed the invisible Burger Van that sometimes rolled into the middle of the road on Pikes Peak and their permit has been revoked (they tasted like thin air anyway)
- Online Events – Daily challenges now feature the full fat fully upgraded versions of the cars.
- Audio Fix – Sent the co-driver on another recce of the Col De Turini and asked him to redo his notes
Patch V.04.5 Jun2015
So you may have noticed a small patch for DiRT Rally release today and we are pleased to say that yes... this is the FFB update (otherwise known as v0.4.5).
This latest update has been built off the back of your feedback since launch; it will change how the game communicates to you through your wheel or pad and make everything feel much more intuitive.
Alongside that we’ve also added a whole suite of advanced wheel options to help you fine tune your set up. You can read more info about what we’ve done here
We’re also pleased to say we’ve included a new batch of supported wheels. If your wheel isn’t on the list don’t worry, we are continuing to work our way down the list and we’ll be adding more as DiRT Rally’s Early Access continues.
- Logitech Driving Force GT
- Logitech Driving Force Pro
- Logitech Formula Force EX
- Thrustmaster T500 RS Racing Wheel
- Thrustmaster T500 RS F1 Racing Wheel
- Thrustmaster T300 RS
- Thrustmaster TX 458
- Thrustmaster Ferrari F430 FFB
- Fanatec CSR Elite Wheel
- Logitech MOMO Racing Wheel (keyboard required for some controls)
- Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback Wheel (keyboard required for some controls)
As ever thank you again for your support, we really hope you enjoy this latest update. Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit for all the latest DiRTy Gossip.