| GeneRally | |
| Developer: | Hannu Räbinä, Jukka Räbinä, James Burgess and Markku |
| Genre: | Racing |
| Modes: | Single-player, Multiplayer | Same Computer |
| Platforms: | Windows |
| Released: | May 16, 2002 |
GeneRally is a freeware racing game developed by brothers, Hannu and Jukka Räbinä,[1] from Finland. Although it features a 3D graphics engine, GeneRally plays from a top-down perspective. It has a similar art design to games such as Super Sprint and Slicks 'N' Slide.[2]
Races consist of up to six cars at once, either human or computer-controlled. The game offers three game modes: time trial mode, race mode, and championship mode, which involves a season of several races. The game has a basic damage model along with tire wear and fuel consumption, causing the necessity of pit-stops during the race. The game is highly customizable allowing players to alter the performance level of each AI opponent or the points awarding system of a championship.[3]
GeneRally does not support online or local (LAN) play.[4] However, up to 6 human players can play on one computer sharing the same keyboard or by using a combination of peripherals like game controllers and joysticks.
GeneRally 2, the sequel to GeneRally, has been announced, and is currently in the pre-alpha stage of development. A day and night cycle has already been showcased for GeneRally 2 in a video on the Curious Chicken Games YouTube channel[5] and is expected to be in the coming sequel. A demo is ready to play on the GeneRally 2 website[6] which players can only play on the Unity (game engine) web player.
The demo has all the basic features of the original GeneRally, plus newly added features. It has a dynamic shadowing feature and a day and night sequence; however, according to the Developer Blog, many additional features haven't been added yet and are under development. Respected community player and car modeler Kimmo Kaisla[7] joined the development team to help create the game and a Kickstarter campaign was started on 9 June 2014.[8]
Unfortunately, soon after the campaign launch, the team were unable to contact Kimmo for reasons that were unknown at the time. Since Kimmo held a major role in the development of GeneRally 2, the rest of the team was unable to deliver new updates to the backers, and this caused a knock-on effect on the whole campaign, which did not reach the funding goal.[9] Sometime later, Kimmo informed the team that he had some important issues (not disclosed to the public) which made it impossible for him to continue the development of the game.
GeneRally 2 launched onto Steam Early Access in May 2023.[10]
Most of GeneRally is customizable. It is only not possible to change the models of in-game objects and the layout of the user interface. GeneRally is deeply customizable by 3rd-party content. This possibility allows to the player to set the game precisely to their needs and interests.
GeneRally cars are made up of a maximum of 40 polygons. Building them is done using community built tools. Most of the cars that you can choose to drive are fully color-customizable.
The tracks that come with GeneRally are small and simple, unlike most current third-party tracks. An official track editor lets the user put different objects (e.g. trees, walls, bridges and buildings) around the track, make elevation changes, draw the areas with surfaces (asphalt, grass, mud, gravel, snow or water), and export and edit land maps into various advanced external graphic editors like Photoshop or GIMP.[11] Every month since July 2003, the community sets up Track of Month,[12] where the members of the community vote for the best tracks published over each month. The default game itself comes with two basic folders of tracks, an [Old Tracks] set, with a variety of creative courses, and a [World Tour Tracks] set, with courses based on several countries. They are all fictional, but some hint at or resemble real-life locations. In the recent version of 1.10, an additional track set was released by TuomoH and included in GeneRally.
Drivers can be created within GeneRally, and each can be assigned to be either a computer-controlled driver or a human-controlled driver. If human-controlled, the commands for Accelerate, Brake, Left, and Right can be assigned. If computer-controlled, a skill level from 0200 can be chosen, with 200 being the "most-skilled". Also, each driver can choose primary and secondary colors for themselves, both of which are selected using a "color mixer" of primary and secondary colors (both in RGB scales).
Various third party fonts for GeneRally are downloadable, rather than a TTF file.[13]
A palette is a file (with the extension ".pal") that allows you to change the in-game colors in order to create a specific atmosphere (fog, rain, autumn, night, etc.) or just small changes to the environment (blue kerbs, grey wooden planks, darker grass, etc.).
The community of GeneRally has created several types of competitions to address the lack of online competition. For all of them, it is common that the racer who is taking a part runs his event alone and is not affected by other humans. Then he submits, before a set deadline, predefined types of files of event to the organizer (including save-game with full replay of his ride, the file of track that he used, and finally a screenshot of the game menu with after-race summary). The organizer then analyzes the files to verify their values (to prevent frauds), creates summary classification of all human drivers, merges the submitted replays, and releases results to public.[14]
Three types of events exist: race, where a human racer runs together with AI racers. The human racer with fastest race time wins. In a hotlap event the human racer has to race alone, without AI racers, and attempts to set the fastest single lap the racer with fastest lap time wins. It's very similar system to game's mod time trial. However the term time trial has another sense in competition's terminology: it represents a combined version of race and hotlap a racer runs a ride without AI racers like in hotlap, but on distance of several laps, trying to set as short summary time as possible like in race.
The classical GeneRally event allows unlimited tries. The racer can choose which ones of his several tries will be submitted and counted by organizer into the results. It eliminates natural accidents, failures, mistakes, and influence of vis maior on racing.
GeneRally World Ranking provides a classification and statistics for each driver, team, or nation who has joined one of the supported competitions. It compares the performances of GeneRally racers according to their runs in various competitions, indicating difficulty levels. Sometimes it's compared with various real ranking systems, like tennis's ATP. Since March 2003, every event which fulfills GWR's rules is classified, and racers, teams, and nations taking part are awarded a certain number of points according defined scales.