July 2004

Remark: The development of Rig'n'Roll started in spring 2001, right after the previous game in the series, Hard Truck 2, was released. The project was first announced in July 2001 at 1C' seminar for business partners, and was publicly announced in spring 2003 at Russian Game Developers Conference in Moscow (KRI 2003), then at E3'03, ECTS'03 and E3'04 exhibitions.

During HT2 development we had many ideas on the third game, but the general concept was formed only when HT2 was already selling and we had estimations, confirmed by tests, for capabilities of our future game engine.

First of all, we decided to place the game into the real world, not into a made-up one (as in preceding games). We wanted the landscape, the road network, cities, buildings and landmarks to be real, not fictional, so that the realism of the environment would emphasize that of the game.

We wanted our trucker experience vast, ever-changing, detailed landscapes, miles and miles of highways, variations of the climate, time of day, changes of weather; we aimed to create a multifaceted, living, dynamic world that would be interesting to live in.

But the world a trucker lives in is not just one of roads and beauties of nature; it is also the world of people and their relations, business as well as human. Hence we considered it important to enrich the interactions of the gamer with other characters of the game world. The gamer is supposed to become not just a driver, but also an active and full-fledged participant of all events of the game world one is in. He would make friends and enemies, fellows and rivals. He would open additional company branches, manage the company resources, make decisions on advisability of this or that contract, resolve disputes and make deals. In other words, he is to supposed to live, interacting with the game world for one's choice.

Finally, after many arguments and thinking, we fixed upon California, the most beautiful US state. Why California? It's simple. A golden state, with thousands miles of highways crossing the snowy peaks of Sierra Nevada, along the Pacific coast, blossomy valleys, deserts and scorched canyons, with huge cities and small towns in a "western" style, with blazing midday sun and heavy rains, California is a truly ideal place for Rin'n'Roll background. And finally, there exist a whole army of truckers who make seventy percents of all cargo transportation in the state and support an infrastructure that employs to ten times as many workers as there are truckers themselves.

To get a complete picture of California as seen by a trucker, we went on four expeditions on the state roads. The SoftLab-NSK and 1C staff drove in all more than ten thousand kilometers of California highways, having visited virtually all more or less significant towns and cities, so they have seen everything that the California truckers see every day.

We been to the trucks cabins, talked to the drivers, stopped at truck stops and weight stations, pestered service station mechanics and spare parts shop workers, were caught by the California highway patrol, paid fines, studied the traffic laws and various trucker handbooks, in other words we immersed into the life of those people as much as we could.

The result of the expeditions included more then 100 hours of video and audio, more than 18000 photographs, many books, specifications and booklets, software for the transportation companies, and also many impressions from what we saw, heard and felt.

We were shocked by the first impressions. The freeways are often ten meters above ground, the grade-crossing elimination structures are up to three levels, and LA downtown with half of the city is unobstructed and clearly visible. Hundreds of thousand of 3D polygons would be used just for the terrain and the buildings and this does not take into account the vast number of vehicles in view. All the capabilities of the modern 3D engines would not manage a tenth fraction of this...

Therefore, Rig'n'Roll was based on a completely new engine. When the engine managed to crunch the already made LA center, we felt more confident. When it was followed by the first trucks (50000 polygons each), we had no further doubts.

Currently the development goes full blast, most of the technologies are either complete or almost complete, the modeling of the most of the cities is approaching completion, most of the vehicles and characters are ready, the work on the physics, AI and the script is continued, and the negotiations on licensing of the objects in the game is under way. The release of the game is planned for year 2005.

A selection of photos made on the 1C and SoftLab expeditions to California
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