Nostalgia: GP2 and racing lines
Funny how songs can bring back specific memories so vividly. Here I am, sat at my computer, and I put on OK Computer by Radiohead. Airbag kicks into life and I'm instantly transported back to 1998, designing my first track using the Grand Prix 2 Track Editor.
Based on the Estoril circuit — as nearly all early tracks were, thanks to its simple pitlane layout — it swept down and to the right from the start/finish straight. The opening bars of Airbag often accompanied this stretch as I popped in a CD before starting play-testing. That first corner will forever be strongly connected with Radiohead for me, which is no bad thing. I loved creating tracks and I still love OK Computer.
The track, I believe, was called Cheviot, named after the hill in Northumberland. This was a highly apt name, as I completely misunderstood the editor's height settings. What I thought was a change in absolute height was actually a gradient change. Consequently, when I tried to make a slight hump four corners into the track, the thing went so steep that your car struggled to accelerate.
Still, I kept it as the track's unique feature and released the circuit to the community. Enough positive remarks came my way that I was hooked and went on to create 3 or 4 more tracks, one of which — Alderley — was even adopted by an online racing team as their test track.
The hardest part of track editing was getting the computer cars' racing line right (known as the “cc-line”). The editor didn't quite display it correctly, so you had to tweak it, then fire up the game, go through the menus to a quick race, and drive it to find where your racing line actually went.
This made it an incredibly painstaking process, but it was essential to get a good track with realistic opponents. With minute tweaks, you could even watch the AI cars' performance and see that they got chicken and backed off if they approached the edge of the track too closely. Put a wide-enough rumblestrip in the right place, however, and they'd drive it like a pro, getting a good exit from the corner. It was these things that made all the difference between a good track and a great track.
Actually, I remain convinced that the rigours of getting a cc-line that worked well for AI cars aided my driving skills in the real world. In karts, on trackdays, and in the Michelin Renault Scholarship, spotting the best racing line for a competitive lap time became second nature. Alas, those days are behind me now, as attested to by my last trackday. My lines were all over the place. :(
Can I get it back? Dunno. But if I am going to, I'll need to:
- go karting much more often (I swear I used to go monthly at one time)
- buy a different car (in which I can afford to drive fast all the time)
These days, I'm lucky if I go karting more than once a year. And I pretty much never exploit the potential of my road car, due to financial concerns as much as anything. Well, that and the fact I have now have a regular passenger to consider.
So... two more things to go on the ever-expanding to-do list. :(
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