Further details about Assetto Corsa EVO’s modding are now clear, and it will be more open than originally planned, with all-new tools.
In Traxion’s latest interview with Marco Massarutto, the Kunos Simulazioni Co-Founder and Executive Manager addressed several concerns the sim racing community has raised about the future of Assetto Corsa EVO.
Thanks to a troubled Early Access period, where delays to the game’s roadmap were compounded by server connectivity issues and multiplayer lag, the Italian studio had controversially opted to dispense with the game’s nascent career mode.
Massarutto spoke with Traxion to explain the decision in more detail and revealed a couple of interesting tidbits about the game’s future.
One of these concerns how easy the game will be to mod, a major reason why the game’s predecessor, Assetto Corsa, remains so popular today.
Originally, EVO was to feature tightly controlled modding procedures, with community-made content going through an official Kunos-led vetting process before release.
This was designed to eliminate, or at least mitigate, the risk of stolen or misappropriated content being released for the game. This would both help keep OEM license holders on board with the project and prevent the release of poor-quality content.
No limitations
Mods and modding tools were originally slated to arrive after the game’s v1.0 release, but that is no longer the case, with modding tools set to be released while the game is still in Early Access.
In fact, EVO modders can now expect to see a much more relaxed attitude from Kunos in future:
“The modding in EVO, we recognise that has been a question mark [for] too long,” stated Massarutto.
“And one of the reasons was the struggle at Kunos to create a modding platform that can coexist with a deep structure game economy. We had several discussions to figure out how to create modding tools that wouldn’t destroy or make the game economy inconsistent,” he explains, citing a reason for dropping the game’s career mode.
“Thanks to the decisions we have taken that we published last week, we are going to provide all the community with the modding tools with no limitations,” he concluded, emphatically stating that EVO will be a modding-friendly sim more in tune with AC.
Alongside this change in philosophy, modders can look forward to harnessing EVO’s comprehensive modding tools, like its terrain editor, something Traxion covered in more detail a year ago.
“The new one [EVO’s modding tools] is a different story, completely different story, because it’s a proper editor,” explains Massarutto.
“It’s much more powerful… and our dream is that at some point we’ll be able to release also our terrain editor, the one we use for the free roam [mode].
“The terrain editor can generate a mesh based on LiDAR [laser-scan] data encoded with spawned trees, vegetation and buildings. Possibilities are infinite,” he continued, excitedly.
“A very recent mod I saw for AC that is based on the Transfăgărășan [a mod of the much-loved driving road in Transylvania, Romania]… that is a beautiful course and I saw that the modders… based the model on LiDAR data.
“Imagine a situation where instead of modeling the mesh, from an artist’s point of view, you can use the terrain [editor] to read the data, the LiDAR data, and you can automatically generate the very same mesh, so that instead of using your time as a modder to model everything, you can use the very same time to make it richer, better, you can place details, houses and anything you need.
“Imagine this brought in any part of the world where LiDAR data are available. And you will understand that the modding in EVO is going to bring infinite possibilities for growing. That’s just one reason why EVO is going to be better for modding than AC,” he added.
But the modding tools won’t just enable larger and more detailed open-world environments:
“Not to mention the cars: how you can tune, you can customise the cars in the editor,” concluded Massarutto.
Collaboration with modders
Although less detail was revealed on how cars could be edited using EVO’s modding tools, Kunos has suggested these will be previewed and released gradually over time, giving modders a chance to build up their knowledge of the new systems.
Massarutto went on to mention that he’d like Kunos to work more closely with modding studios, stating that “there are a lot of very talented modders we would like to cooperate with,” which suggests a more collaborative approach from the Italian studio going forward.
“The idea is to provide all the very same functionalities [that Kunos uses to develop EVO] also to the modding community, both for the cars and the tracks. Also, the terrain system that can generate the mesh, you will need to spend time to study it, like we did at Kunos.
“But to create the free roam Eifel [region around the Nurburgring Nordschleife], we spent years” he explained, although he also stresses that “60% of the time” was spent working on the tools to make it happen.
“But the idea is that at some point we can share all of this with the community, because if they did those incredible things with AC, I can’t imagine what they are going to do with EVO.”
Despite EVO’s troubled development, Kunos’s openness to modding could well be the key to the game’s future success on PC. Time will tell if this is to be the case.