 With just three months left to the release of Pro Cycling Manager 2013, it's about time that the first news about the game start to surface.
And luckily for us, they just did. PCMFrance (link in French) has interviewed Cyanide's Clément Pinget about the upcoming game, and below you'll find the main conclusions.
Gameplay
This seems to be the theme of the year. First of all, it appears we'll see a new graph/bar in PCM13 which indicates the riders' freshness and recovery between stages. If you've been in a 200 km long attack two days after each other, the energy bars will be reduced on the next stage.
The much critiicized accelleration stat has finally been 'fixed', so there's now a difference between an explosive rider and a diesel engine (Contador and Basso, for example). This stat will also affect the strategies and tactics used by riders and teams.
It also seems that the AI will be more aggressive in stages where the human player does not take control/initiative.
Cyanide also also planned to make cobblestones more difficult.
Career
For those of you who have been playing PCM for years, you may remember a time when riders were asking to race in specific races. Well, it seems it's returning in some form. Riders will be asking for certain races and goals throughout the season, and following(not following these will havesome sort of impact (rewards and penalties are mentioned in the interview).
The race planner that was added in PCM12 has been developed further, so it's now possible to group riders into e.g. Ardennes, Tour de France etc.
It is also planned to add more interactions with the sponsor (in terms of goals, possible budget increase), but this hasn't been added to the game so far.
Graphics
I may have overlooked this piece of news, but it appears there's a new shirt format coming. It's the same as the previous one, except now doubled in size (910x626) to make it HD. This also means that PCM13 jerseys will be compatible with PCM12 - you'll just have to reduce it in size.
As a minor detail to this shirt change, it sounds like PCM will now use .png files rather than .tga.
There's a bunch of new animations to look out for in PCM13, as (maybe?) discovered by lluuiiggii a while ago.
In terms of the stage editor, there's two new graphic kits for stages (Corsica being one of them), more houses/homes, new objects for creating beautiful sea shores and the possibility to play with HD textures.
Graphic Interface
With the new rider control panel, people on higher resolutions claimed it was too small. It will be possible in PCM13 to increase the size of the rider panels.
It will be possible to open a map of a stage to make it easier to foresee changes in wind direction, for example.
Multiplayer
Two new multiplayer modes, according to Cyanide. However, don't get too excited. One of them is in the integration of track racing in Armada. The other is a new tour mode which allows you to create stage races (as friendlies, won't count towards the Armada ranking. |
