Ian Bell | Straight4Games and Hyper-Realistic Screenshots

wolftree said:

Those games all had patches that fixed major game-breaking bugs. GPL v.1.0 had totally undriveable default setups that bottomed out and spun on corner entry, while sim boomers just told everyone "that's how the car drives irl, git gud".

NR2k3 was the third iteration of Papyrus's NASCAR+GPL tyre model -game after NR4 and NR2k2, both of which were so buggy that you couldn't even do an AI race at Bristol or Martinsville because within 10 laps all the AI clustered in a huge pile-up and blocked the track so badly that the pace car couldn't plow through the wreckage.

And that's without mentioning all the other sim racing titles of that era that had even worse problems...

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You are exagerating a bit there.

I remember adjusting the setup of GPL myself, and getting the cars to run fine way before anybody told me otherwise.

I also remember grand prix 2 running flawlessly from day one.

This rewritting of history to excuse the lazyness of game dev these days gets old quick.

And i will add to this, if we take the madness engine out of the equation, all the games we are playing are more than 10 years old now. ALL OF THEM. That would be like if when GPL came out, we would still be playing grand prix from accolade, and saying thats the best thing ever. So its clear to see that something went wrong here. This happens in other game genres too. The internet and "continuous support" is maybe one of the worse things that happened to the industry.

Richard Wilks said:

And i will add to this, if we take the madness engine out of the equation, all the games we are playing are more than 10 years old now. ALL OF THEM. That would be like if when GPL came out, we would still be playing grand prix from accolade, and saying thats the best thing ever. So its clear to see that something went wrong here. This happens in other game genres too. The internet and "continuous support" is maybe one of the worse things that happened to the industry.

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Fair point but I watched the new Star Wars film and think the 1977 Star Wars was the best ever. Newer isn't better.

Better is better and GPL was better than GP from accolade just as in my oppinion Gran Turismo 3 and 4 are better than 7 and GTR2 is still unbeaten in many aspects of the sim racing genre.

Richard Wilks said:

You are exagerating a bit there.

I remember adjusting the setup of GPL myself, and getting the cars to run fine way before anybody told me otherwise.

I also remember grand prix 2 running flawlessly from day one.

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Well Grand Prix 2 was delayed endlessly until they were happy with it. I remember pre-ordering GP2 and it arrived more than a year later. Modern games are too expensive to develop to allow for such long development cycles because they have a team of dozens of programmers and 3D artists instead of two guys in a garden shed.

wolftree said:

Well Grand Prix 2 was delayed endlessly until they were happy with it. I remember pre-ordering GP2 and it arrived more than a year later. Modern games are too expensive to develop to allow for such long development cycles because they have a team of dozens of programmers and 3D artists instead of two guys in a garden shed.

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You are exagerating again.

Studios like EA already had big teams back then. The biggest names of the genre in the 3D era in the 90s already had dozens of people working on games.

Yogi99 said:

Fair point but I watched the new Star Wars film and think the 1977 Star Wars was the best ever. Newer isn't better.

Better is better and GPL was better than GP from accolade just as in my oppinion Gran Turismo 3 and 4 are better than 7 and GTR2 is still unbeaten in many aspects of the sim racing genre.

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I agree, newer is not always better. But in the simracing world, we dont even have nothing newer to compare because studios now use excuses like the ones i mentioned to just keep milking people to pay for products even before they are developed, and after that to keep selling DLC for something that should be already in the selve of history.

Richard Wilks said:

You are exagerating again.

Studios like EA already had big teams back then. The biggest names of the genre in the 3D era in the 90s already had dozens of people working on games.

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Well Grand Prix 2 was not developed by EA and had a development team of Geoff Crammond and very few other people helping him.

wolftree said:

Those games all had patches that fixed major game-breaking bugs. GPL v.1.0 had totally undriveable default setups that bottomed out and spun on corner entry, while sim boomers just told everyone "that's how the car drives irl, git gud".

NR2k3 was the third iteration of Papyrus's NASCAR+GPL tyre model -game after NR4 and NR2k2, both of which were so buggy that you couldn't even do an AI race at Bristol or Martinsville because within 10 laps all the AI clustered in a huge pile-up and blocked the track so badly that the pace car couldn't plow through the wreckage.

And that's without mentioning all the other sim racing titles of that era that had even worse problems...

Click to expand...

Not sure I remember GPL being that bad. Yeah, It was difficult at first but I managed to "git gud" (although I don't for one minute think the real cars drove like that) There was a manual that explained setup options IIRC? I'm sure I poured over that wishing it was just wing and gear ratios I had to fiddle with.

I remember AI crashes at those tracks in NR4, but I don't remember them being that often, in fact, I think I usually caused them. Maybe I'm wrong on that, all those Nascar games have blurred into one memory. I seem to recall both Indycar titles running fine too, along with Indianapolis 500 and GP1 which were a little earlier. Sports Car GT that was another, that was alright wasn't it?

Which other titles were there around that time? I've probably played them, but long since forgotten.

The first racing/driving game I ever played was on my mates Commodore 64, I can't remember what it was called but he said "hey, you like cars have a go at this..."
It was a black screen with occasional white lines coming toward me, then there was a terrible din and the screen seemed to fracture with a jagged line and the words..."you crashed" came up, now that was bad,
but, Geoff Crammonds got me over that and later when the 97 world champion got awkward about his name being in the game the No1 driver became 'John Newhouse'
I laughed at that one
Things have got so much better.

Pete Conway said:

The first racing/driving game I ever played was on my mates Commodore 64, I can't remember what it was called but he said "hey, you like cars have a go at this..."
It was a black screen with occasional white lines coming toward me, then there was a terrible din and the screen seemed to fracture with a jagged line and the words..."you crashed" came up, now that was bad,

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Sure it was on C64? Your descriptions awakens my memery vaguely thinking of a mate with a ZX Spectrum and a racing game of which I think we called "Le Mans". Possible that title was available for C64, but though already interested in simracing by that time I remember I never found a C64 version in my country. But you really had to have good imagination and internal immersion, since it could as well had been a Test Drive, Outrun, etc. - but think I remember the "you crashed" phrase related to the ZX Spectrum Le Mans game. But forgot the title, sorry.

Pete Conway said:

but, Geoff Crammonds got me over that and later when the 97 world champion got awkward about his name being in the game the No1 driver became 'John Newhouse'

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As far as my memory goes, Jaques Villeneuve's name was copyright protected, so Crammond had to use the English version of his name. As the single 'phantasy name' on the entire grid, the rest being real driver names. No joke.

stenovitz said:

Sure it was on C64? Your descriptions awakens my memery vaguely thinking of a mate with a ZX Spectrum and a racing game of which I think we called "Le Mans". Possible that title was available for C64, but though already interested in simracing by that time I remember I never found a C64 version in my country. But you really had to have good imagination and internal immersion, since it could as well had been a Test Drive, Outrun, etc. - but think I remember the "you crashed" phrase related to the ZX Spectrum Le Mans game. But forgot the title, sorry.

As far as my memory goes, Jaques Villeneuve's name was copyright protected, so Crammond had to use the English version of his name. As the single 'phantasy name' on the entire grid, the rest being real driver names. No joke.

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Yeah, that mate (still mates) had the Commodore stuff (we later got later Amiga 500+ and 1200) though my nephew had ZX spectrum then went to an Acorn.
Funny thing is, that another mate had a 386 PC and wanted 'Settlers' that he'd seen on my 1meg 500 plus, my game scrolled smoothly while his 4meg PC was like a slideshow...

Pete Conway said:

Yeah, that mate (still mates) had the Commodore stuff (we later got later Amiga 500+ and 1200) though my nephew had ZX spectrum then went to an Acorn.
Funny thing is, that another mate had a 386 PC and wanted 'Settlers' that he'd seen on my 1meg 500 plus, my game scrolled smoothly while his 4meg PC was like a slideshow...

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I almost cried the day I traded in my Amiga 500(with the 512mb memory expansion!) for a 386 SX. Forced to do it because of Ultima and Wing Commander...

Pete Conway said:

Yeah, that mate (still mates) had the Commodore stuff (we later got later Amiga 500+ and 1200) though my nephew had ZX spectrum then went to an Acorn.
Funny thing is, that another mate had a 386 PC and wanted 'Settlers' that he'd seen on my 1meg 500 plus, my game scrolled smoothly while his 4meg PC was like a slideshow...

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Heh, brings tons of memories here.
Though myself I left C64 before i386 series really entered the broader consumer market, starting at studies the i286 was for the few rich, the rest of us left with campus' Unix mainframe terminal access. A year later, remember more students starting to acquire the i386 without mathematical coprocessor (of which I regarded senseless on a technical study), before I myself invested in the i386SX which came with 2MB RAM and a HUGE 40MB HDD of which followed a compression software, so you - in theory - was able to compress near endlessly, though my mates had a laugh at the stated '340MB free space' after HDD compression with the software.
Simracing though was really nothing for my first PC, rather Pascal, C ...or built-in BASIC compilations for OS' standard games as gorilla.bas and so on. My first simracing-ready PC was the i486-DX2 (yes the one with dedicated 'Turbo' button to double clock speed from 25 to 50MHz - don't think I ever switched it off again ) of which very well suitet Grand Prix and Grand Prix 2 of which by many is regarded as the first 'real' sim So in the meantime between leaving my C64 and acquiring my i486-DX2 I relied on a friend from my hometown using the entire Amiga series.

Those were the days - now, where were we?

As long as EA is not in the picture. Any funding by EA means a poor sim.

davehenrie said:

I almost cried the day I traded in my Amiga 500(with the 512mb memory expansion!) for a 386 SX. Forced to do it because of Ultima and Wing Commander...

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Agnus, Denise and Paula certainly helped with that

Yogi99 said:

Fair point but I watched the new Star Wars film and think the 1977 Star Wars was the best ever. Newer isn't better.

Better is better and GPL was better than GP from accolade just as in my oppinion Gran Turismo 3 and 4 are better than 7 and GTR2 is still unbeaten in many aspects of the sim racing genre.

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MID RACE SAVING! How is that not a standard feature in ALL race sims? GTR2 had it close to two decades ago!

Steve Parsons said:

MID RACE SAVING! How is that not a standard feature in ALL race sims? GTR2 had it close to two decades ago!

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rF2 has a version of the save feature, where you view a replay and when you want to continue, you click the drive button and off you go!
However, BOTH titles suffer from the magic reset syndrome. When you resume, your car is fully repaired, tires are fresh, gas tank full, and the same goes for the AI. A car that was limping around suddenly becomes healed.

Steve Parsons said:

MID RACE SAVING! How is that not a standard feature in ALL race sims? GTR2 had it close to two decades ago!

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ACC has it as well.

Steve Parsons said:

MID RACE SAVING! How is that not a standard feature in ALL race sims? GTR2 had it close to two decades ago!

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Your next thread topic right there. " What unique features does your race sim have "

This is another advantage of ISI gmotor and lesser extent Kunos .
GTR2 100's of bugs have been fixed by community and still continue to this day.
Same for rF2 it will still be here in 10 years, by then maybe community realize mistake not supporting them was.
AC which is less about bug fixing and more about infinite possibility far past any sim, gmotor included. imo

Steve Parsons said:

MID RACE SAVING! How is that not a standard feature in ALL race sims? GTR2 had it close to two decades ago!

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Because it's a complicated feature to implement with little benefit. Any AI race that is long enough to require a mid-race save will almost certainly be ruined after a couple of pit stops, making it pointless to keep going for the full 24h. Either the AI have punted the player, their pace has fallen so far that the player has lapped the field, the AI have done so many superfluous pit stops that the player is far ahead, or one of many other AI bugs that exist in every single game today.

UE5 might be pretty but its not going to run well & VR will probably look awful. So for now i'm not too interested, maybe its 5-6 years away who knows.