Video game development is full of names that have made groundbreaking steps you’ve never even heard about. Shawn Nash is a behind-the-scenes pioneer responsible for SODA Off Road Racing’s incredible physics, Papyrus’ graphical advancements and iRacing’s use of laser scan data for the physical track surfaces.
This interview with RSC, published in 2021, details his early life and career, through both his own company, Papyrus, Electronic Arts, to his time at iRacing.
Asobo, known today as the Microsoft Flight Simulator developer, created groundbreaking technology for large scale maps that was intended to be used in a high quality rally raid title. It was never released and ended up as FUEL, a post-apocalyptic open-world racing game. What happened?
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According to lead programmer Victoria Stamps (who developed under the name Mark) in a series of Tweets, Network Q RAC Rally was a project that began in June 1993 with a deadline set only five months later. It was developed in pure assembler with hand coded 32-bit instructions as it ran in 16-bit DOS mode, with a front-end written in C.
Development began with no game design, but was created with similarities to previous third-person rally games like Lombard RAC Rally. It took one weekend to get a basic model together for car based on a Fiesta RS Turbo and placeholder track later replaced by courses based on RAC stage maps that Neil English transposed into courses for the software in what Victoria described as a “very limited” tool. The developers attempted to give a realistic sense of speed by driving real roads at speed and matching movement in the game to footage recorded on video camera, though some reviewers felt the game moved more slowly compared to other racing games.
The hands on the wheel belonged to Richard Vanner and the man drinking tea along the stage routes was Neil Beresford.
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