Game Dev

I've been giving DiRT 2 a new excuse to stay installed: DiRT2VR, my experimental cockpit VR mod. It adds stereoscopic rendering and head tracking, keeps the original menus on a virtual screen, and comes with a Windows launcher for getting into a race without a pile of manual configuration. Somewhere along the way, it also picked up quick races, controller setup and LAN multiplayer.

It is still a work in progress, but the tested Quest 3 setup is already driving in VR. Here's a look at what it does, what the interface looks like, and the bits that still need work.

Go Jače FPS has a new look for its entire player roster. The familiar DEFAULT sprites are still there, but PRERENDERED now offers a second interpretation of all fourteen characters: modelled forms, more consistent angles and an eight-pose walk cycle. Here's the old and new artwork side by side, starting with Knight.

DEFAULT

PRERENDERED

Silver plate, blue cloth and gold trim, reinterpreted with broader shading across the armour.

I've been giving two of Go Jače FPS's cargo-yard arenas a very different home. Shipment 1519 is a tight, lantern-lit harbor at night; Shipment 1519 Big opens that idea into an Adriatic-style waterfront district, with surrounding streets, elevated galleries and a warm sunset. Both revolve around enormous wooden cargo stacks, but the interesting difference is how you move around them.

I've added a rather different way to play Go Jače FPS. Heroes Arena takes the game's first-person shooting and retro characters into a 3v3 battle of lanes, towers, creep waves and destructible cores. You still aim the guns yourself, but now there's a bigger question than who's winning the firefight: are we actually pushing toward the enemy base?

GoRacer is starting to get a garage of its own. Alongside the tracks and the driving, I've been building original cars for it: a lightweight 16V hatch, an 800 hp hillclimb monster, two very different desert trucks, and rebuilt versions of the rally cars that started it all. Fictional names, their own bodywork and liveries, and plenty of that old arcade-racer character.

I've been working on AssettoServer Race Control, a Windows app for setting up and running custom Assetto Corsa events. Cars, grids, bots, weather, live race monitoring... all fairly sensible things for a racing simulator. Then there's the other mode: choose a loadout, grab a rifle, and play a Call of Duty-style deathmatch. Inside Assetto Corsa. Yes, really.

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube