Can anyone confirm different weather conditions and time of day? I seem to recall the last few games missing those.

My favorite rally game to date is still the original Colin Mcrae game on Playstation. I loved the long stages that needed concentration to get through, with no rewinds either. It might seem punishing now but it was pretty immersive and often you were tense at high speeds knowing how quickly it could all go wrong. A couple of sections were in the dark too, you just had the short range of your headlights and you had to listen very carefully to your co-driver. I haven't seen footage of this new game yet, is it returning to this kind of game?

I actually liked that stuff too, but it's admittedly a pretty big departure from what the DiRT franchise had been about prior to that.

There are indeed weather conditions and time of day. All available courses have morning, afternoon, evening and night, Wales has rain (which seems to make things a lot more slippy slidey), and Turin has snowy conditions (which appears to increase the amount of snow and ice on the roads for the courses and significantly reduces visibility). Right now the windshield animations for rain and snow are a bit rudimentary but it still looks pretty good. At night you have headlights, which of course you can smash so you can't see anything.

Fun side challenge: I dare someone to finish one of the longer Turin stages with all assists off, cockpit view, night time, snowing, with the co-driver bug, in the BMW. I think the furthest I've gone before flying off a cliff and having to retire is about half a stage. It's so slick that I struggle to complete it in cars I'm good with, like the Subaru or the Audi Sport quattro, let alone a RWD BMW. It basically gets to the point where if you even accelerate a tiny bit at the wrong time you immediately spin out.

I did manage to win a 3 stage race. I got that achievement that has the title that makes fun of other game companies' use of the word "visceral" that you get for playing HUD off, no assists, driver/cockpit view only. It turns out the way I like to play is apparently the difficult way.

Also, I think the 1960s Mini Cooper might be my favorite vehicle now. It's so tiny but it feels like you are going so fast, and you have so much control with it. I did 5 stages in a row without a single crash with it.

Yep, it has night, rain and snow. here's a picture I took after crashing and breaking my headlights, bending my hood and getting dirt on my windscreen. WHERE IS ROAD?

Absolutely it is.

@iron1c: I loaded the game up one more time before heading to bed last night and I think I found some good settings for my wheel. Mine is the Fanatec CSR Elite. I set the wheel to 270 degrees, which did seem to be pretty close to the in-game wheel (hopefully there'll be an option to disable driver arms so that we can see the true wheel rotation). I also set the Wheel Weight to 0%, with the other two settings at 100%. And finally, I set the wheel saturation to 100% since that's what the pedals defaulted to, though I'm not sure what effect that has (need to do more testing).

With those settings, racing on pavement felt pretty good. Racing on gravel/dirt felt better than it did before, but still not great. It's like the car is rotating from the center rather than being guided by the wheels and suspension, which was a problem in the older Codemaster rally games. Force feedback, no matter how you configure it, is almost non-existant, resulting in an almost complete lack of road feel. I'm not worried about FF though, I'm sure they know it's not fully implemented. I just hope they don't forget to keep working on the steering and underlying physics. With the way it currently exists, this game plays great with a controller, but doesn't feel much like a sim with a proper wheel.

@khann: @ben_h: thanks for the answers duders. It says about weather in the store description but they've said that about the previous games and they were extremely limited. Super glad to hear this. This sounds amazing and a super odd thing to throw up on EA with no build up but it seems a lot of people are excited by this. I'll have to inform my dad. He was a big fan of these games back in the PSX era but he didn't really care for DiRT 2 or 3 very much. I hope Drew does a QL soon.

Unfortunately it's nigh on unplayable with the co-driver/hud notification bug going on currently. Supposedly only affecting NA users. In the meantime I'm still bombing around crashing into crap because this really does look good and feels great.

Based on achievements I may already be done!

@Trace: I'm the current king of the Giant Bomb league event. Even though I'm drunk and have no co driver... If you chose all the weather conditions, you're devious

@fleabeard: I chose the weather for each stage, yes. I thought it was a nice progression...

....FROM HELL.

@rickyyo: Same, why drive around in a Rally car if you're just doing donuts around a street lamp. I want my 30 minute long course through Italian back country.

@Trace: It worked out, especially when I broke all my lights and couldn't see a thing

Yes, yes you are. The gymkhana stages was the main reason I stopped playing Dirt 3.

Patch went up that fixes the co-driver.

Vocal haters do. I sure don't. Anyone bitching about this stuff is annoying to me and can't come to grip with realities. If it wasn't for stuff like this we probably wouldn't be getting a lot of these awesome, more niche games.

Awesome! Can't wait to play the game without going through the stages blind. Though I will admit I was getting used to it and there was this weird cautious zen to the game when you had to be safe to prevent flying off a cliff and hitting a tree.

Happy they fixed it so quickly too. They apparently had found the issue almost immediately.

Patch changes:

• Audio Fix - We had a word with the co-driver about his attitude and he should now be talking to you if he wasn't before.
• Audio Fix - Resolved several instances of your co-driver speaking French for non French players (he's been taking lessons and wanted to practice).
• Online Fix - Fixed the Daily Online events so you will now be correctly rewarded for completing the event.
• Championship Fix - Resolved instances of incorrect weather combinations being generated during later championship events... We blame global warming.

Also, for the Force Feedback people, they're working on that right now and will have stuff out for that soon for people to test.

Here's the full change list:

http://steamcommunity.com/games/310560/announcements/detail/141079003706274703

Playing without the co-driver is playing the demon/dark souls of driving games. The level of trial and error is similar and I enjoy gunning down corner with inevitable failure. I find that I have a good intuition for what does and doesn't work within a couple runs of a track. It doesn't help that the first track I played was all gravel and super rainy, but that is Wales. (I also made it intentional)

Colin McRae Rally 2 is the game my father and I played together the most.

Since Colin's passing, and the decline in popularity of the WRC, I was always concerned with whether Codies would make another pure rally game, without any of that rallycross, Ken Block claptrap.

To sneakily put it on Steam Early Access, with a decent amount of content for $30 AUD, is just a dream come true.

Danny is close to these guys so I hope this gets a mention on Alt-F1. Too bad rally is almost always highlights shows rather than the whole event.

Not a fan of this, I'm afraid. I wanted a rally only Dirt title, but the overly sim-ish handling is turning me off.

I just wanted a dirt title with everything else but the rally segments removed.

They did this with grid autosport as well. It seems like their reaction to fans criticism is to do a complete 180.

Well to be fair, autosport isn't as much as a departure from standard grid when compared to what they did with dirt rally.

Man, I'm just gonna replay grid 1 and dirt 2. Those were the best codemasters games.

Glad you guys made a league. Nobody I know would ever care about this game, and I really need times to aim for as I suck ass at this game!

This is my first early access game and I'm really glad I jumped on board. I've been wanting a good rally game for a long time. I joined the GB league, tried the event today, launched my car off a ledge in the 2nd race and couldn't finish. Wonderful, (not sarcasm, I actually really like that aspect!).

so they're finally making the game people have been screaming at them to make since the first dirt disappointed us all.

I hope they dont fuck it up again. (I know most don't share my opinion here but I have always been saddened by the dirt games)

On a side note! I think the only way for a rally game to truly work is if it uses some kind of procedural generation. YOU SHOULD NEVER RACE THE SAME COURSE TWICE IN A RALLY GAME. One of the main things that is appealing about rally is that its mostly driver instinct and not just memorizing the course. Multi-player is kind of pointless if everyone just has all the courses memorized.

that said. I'm dying to play this.

If they make it like Mobil 1 Rally Championship for the PC, it could be great.

Damnit, I wish the old Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel had force feedback drivers for PC. It does work with the PC with the wireless dongle, but no feedback, makes it almost useless in rally games. Still, I think I'm making competitive times using an Xbox One pad (top 3 consistent, the occasional first in an event against AI). A G27 would be very nice; but money lad, money!

Also, I'm finding the 1960s discipline by far the hardest to drive. The FWD aspect is so strange to control("I think I'll understeer now!" "Nope! 'Changed my mind, here's some oversteer!"), I almost never use the 4th gear on the Lancia, because at that speed, it feels like driving an articulated lorry. And it's sooooooo bouncy; I'm always wary about fine tuning set-ups, because I know just enough about it (but not enough) to be dangerous and to completely break things.

@casinoghostt: I've found the opposite, I've really enjoyed the Lancia and have primarily driven that but when I now hop into the RWD cars, the 70s Ford, I have a hell of a time getting around some corners and managing my throttle to not spin out. I don't think I've touched on enough of the RWD and AWD cars though to make a determination on my favorite.

3rd on the GB league with about 2 hours left to post times. Feeling pretty good about that. Had a few hairy moments near the end where I almost banked it for a DNF. A good 6 seconds was spent Italian Jobbing on a wall trying to get it to reverse back on the tarmac. Oh dear.

If anyone wants to add me to populate their Daily/Weekly/Monthly Challenge leaderboards btw, feel free.

@casinoghostt: Re set-ups

You would probably be better of if you start changing your set-up from the defaults.

The basics suspension this depends on the road material / surfaces: for tarmac, ice, smooth surfaces you should have firm suspension and low ride height. For loose surfaces mud, gravel use softer suspension and high ride height.

By having a firm suspension will you have higher grip on smooth surfaces you will also reduce body roll and your car can therefore change direction quicker.

Low ride-hight gives your car a low centre of gravity allowing for tight corners

Soft suspension allows the car to absorb the rough surface preventing damage and gives better grip on lose roads.

Higher ride-hight increases the travel of the suspension giving the car better handling on uneven roads and jumps

Dampers if you set the value high will your car be more rigid and will bounce after jumps etc. a stiff suspension requires stronger dampers

Brake Bias a front brake bias will induce understeer and help the car slow down on tarmac. A rear brake bias will give the car oversteer and easier drifting. You can change some of the car behaviour but it is of cause depended on the drivetrain.

The game is generally god at telling you what the different components do, if you are in doubt or want to know more look for a guide for the original DiRT it is pretty much the same.

I need a handbrake!

Really like this game, but a little too buggy to keep on playing until the next update. I never had an issue with co-driver, but love how the "Pause" just closes the game. It also doesn't save any of my controls so I need to set them up every time. Not really painful, but in combination with the former, it is.

Hope they spend some time on FFB; it just feels weird.

Extremely excited for this game though once they give the wheel some love and polishing.

Do you think this will get a console release?

@tajasaurus: They've said they'd consider it if there's enough demand once it's released.

how are the daily/weekly/monthly events?

I want this damn game so bad!

Love the online events. Dailies are a single stage, with a set car provided for you. Weekly & monthly are class specific and have an increasing amount of stages that become open over the week or month, but you'll need to have a car in your garage for those. All cars can be driven in custom mode, so you don't have to buy blind.

All online events are a good opportunity for earning extra money for the main career mode, rewards increasing with the size of the event and there's 3 tiers of reward in each. A cautious run will typically get you in the top tier for now, as the community gets better overall there may come a point where that might not be the case. The events are also wonderfully tense as they're a one-shot deal (unlike other modes), with global leaderboards & friend filtering. It would be nice if we could see friends' replays at some point - or anybody's for that matter - but that's a fun thing to maybe have later after more cars & courses. There's plenty to be getting on with for now, mind.

Any chance anyone will start a thread for the league? Is someone in charge of the league? I'm not completely sure how that all works, other than I did terrible in the last round and finished last I believe haha

Yeah, I'm running that whole deal by accident. A thread's not a bad idea, so here it is.

I look forward to cries of anguish. Remember: It's my fault. I choose every stage by hand. I do this to hurt you. I'm tearing at your soul through digital rally.