BHMS: Anytime a new "Sim" title is announced it seems like the first question that always seems to pop up is the physics. How would you classify the physics engine within FlatOut? Would the handling characteristics be similar to Rally Trophy or is this title going to be more geared toward an arcade?

BugBear: FlatOut is very different from typical racing titles. I guess it's easiest to explain this by elaborating on our design process first. You see when we started working with FlatOut we used a completely different genre of gaming as inspiration. While all of us are hard core racing fans we were in fact looking at the recent developments in the FPS genre where physics and interactive environments are fast becoming a norm. As part of our research we were looking at games like Half Life 2 and going "hmm� almost none of this stuff is done in the racing genre" and "wouldn't it be cool if you'd have a racer which not only was a competitive driving game, but also included all those cool features".

So when we are talking about the physics we don't limit that just to the way the car handles. Yes, we're still using the same simulation technology that was used in Rally Trophy, but we've considerably expanded that. Now we're not just simulating the way the car handles and reacts, but rather we're simulating the way the whole world acts and reacts.

As the handling of the car goes we're internally calling FlatOut "a hyper realistic arcade title". This means that we are literally still doing all the simulations things we did with Rally Trophy, but at the same time we've wanted to make sure that the title is easily accessible. For example while we do calculate damage to the car based on all the nitty gritties you could wish for, we've tuned down the effect that this has for driving. In a real world simulation the first time you crash through the fences going over the top while doing 150 it would be a game over. But we don't really want that. We want to keep the player on track and fighting for each mile most of the time instead of spending their time in the reloading menus.

BHMS: What kind of tracks will be in the game? Will all tracks be simply bull-pin style arenas or will there be a mix of rally-circuits, road courses, oval tracks and possibly stadium style racetracks with jumps and dips?

BugBear: The tracks vary a lot. Some of them are old school rally driving in the gravel pits or forests. But at the other end of the spectrum we also have city tracks and asphalt racing tracks, not to mention the special tracks that are available in different minigames�

BHMS: Does BugBear plan on including a track editor or possibly other open source-code goodies to entice the Mod Community?

BugBear: We haven't made final decisions about this yet so it's too early to say.

BHMS: Rally Trophy had some very creative ambient music. What can we expect from FlatOut in terms of background music and other sounds as well?

BugBear: Music would be one of the topics that I'd also hesitate to comment given that we're still going through different alternatives.

BHMS: There's a rumor going around that not only parts of the cars fly around with other objects and debris but the driver could also suffer some damage. Just exactly what kind of particles are we going to see in an incredible wreck in Flat Out? Are we going to see drivers thrown from their cars and if so what will happen if the drivers are ejected? Explain what we will experience from the damage modeling.

BugBear: Hmm... It's certainly true that we want FlatOut to be a very aggressive and violent driving experience. If you're doing a 140kmph four-wheel-slide on gravel and someone slams into your side tearing away your right side door that should be a violent and personal experience! But I'll withdraw any comments about drivers for now. Suffice to say that we don't want to do anything tasteless (this is Half Life of racing games, not Soldier of Fortune for heaven's sake! :)

Another part that really makes a difference is the debris and the environments. When we started to play around with the physics we went "oh my god but that's cool" when we finally saw on screen how the cars could be wrecked. Visually it is really, really rewarding to have the racing world react in an ultrarealistic manner. But we didn't want to leave it at that. We actually wanted to make sure that dynamic environment and persistent car wreckage was something that would factor in as a real game play element. And this is working out really well.

When you're racing in FlatOut you can actually use the environment to your advantage. Each track has many different shortcuts or situations where you can either win time for yourself or cause obstacles to your opponents. In addition, given that everything on tracks is both dynamic and persistent, you'll never know what the track is going to look like for the next lap. After crashes there might be someone's hood, door or windshield lying on track just after the next turn and this will keep you on your toes all the time. In other words the tracks really keep constantly changing based on the way people drive and this makes especially multiplayer way more challenging.

BHMS: Will we see a replay option with a healthy supply of view angles to watch and move around, trade and enjoy? What format can we expect these replays to be in?

BugBear: Yes, absolutely. You can't have a game like this without the heavy duty replay functionalities. We're still working on cameras etc so I won't go into details about this.