F1 2012 F1 2012 Demo

[Justin Swan]

Looks like we are getting a 1st from Codemaster! A demo of an F1 game 1 week prior to its release
I'm glad to hear that because I want to make sure my PC can handle it before I buy it.

 

[Graham Laing]

I've figured out the understeer issue with a bit of close analysing.

The game has a speed sensitivity type filter on, it limits how much steering angle it allows you to apply based on your speed and gear choice. After you hit the limit for your speed the game ignores further input and you can even feel this through the wheel's FFB and see it on screen (The wheel hits a sort of squidgy dead zone feeling), in order to then add more lock you have to slow down. As the speed decreases through a corner the ammount of steering angle available increases, in a low speed 1st gear corner the squidgy dead zone is completely gone because 100% steering angle is available.

It is a strange system but its liklely responsable for both the lack of typical dynamic oversteer effects and the understeer.

I can't be sure, but isn't the 'speed sensitivity' thing down to the wheel's linearity setting?

So at linearity 0 the wheel rotation is linear across the whole range of movement 1:1, and at linearity 100 the wheel is less linear around the centre, and more linear towards the extremes of lock. Almost like a sensitivity setting. This probably is why the 'twitchiness' that most people complained about using the default settings at speed in a straight line, was fixed by adding linearity, typically in a range of 10 - 30 for most people.

If this is true, perhaps there is a way to compensate for the loss of sensitivity by adjusting the saturation setting?

Whatever the answer is, I think I will wait and see how it goes in the final product. Or we may get a clue about this when Tom releases the Race Department's F1 2012 Review on Monday.

 

[Jan-Olov Johansson]

Well, now I know first hand that the savegame bug is still there...sigh

 

[Graham Laing]

Well, now I know first hand that the savegame bug is still there...sigh

Quite a few weeks ago now (maybe a month?), a tester under NDA tweeted to Steve Hood about it being there. I believe that tweet has been deleted, but they must be aware of it, but perhaps not in time for the demo (which is meant to be a bit 'old' as a game version).

Now with the demo I lost my autosave on the 2nd day after release. I couldn't recover it and so I started again afresh ........... but I still live in hope.

It also means that for the final game I am going to use manual save, and just like F1 2011 I am going to run a VB Script to make scheduled backups of the save files, multiple times per day.

I will continue doing this, and after a few weeks or a month of scanning the racing forums for reports of broken career saves, if all is good I'll go back to autosave, and stop the script.

 

[Jan-Olov Johansson]

Quite a few weeks ago now (maybe a month?), a tester under NDA tweeted to Steve Hood about it being there. I believe that tweet has been deleted, but they must be aware of it, but perhaps not in time for the demo (which is meant to be a bit 'old' as a game version).

Now with the demo I lost my autosave on the 2nd day after release. I couldn't recover it and so I started again afresh ........... but I still live in hope.

It also means that for the final game I am going to use manual save, and just like F1 2011 I am going to run a VB Script to make scheduled backups of the save files, multiple times per day.

I will continue doing this, and after a few weeks or a month of scanning the racing forums for reports of broken career saves, if all is good I'll go back to autosave, and stop the script.

The problem with 2011 was that even doing manual saves was no guarantee that you wouldn't get corruption anyway....and we really shouldn't have to be writing scripts for something this basic in a game.
Also, it's not really helping CM's reputation releasing a demo with such a fundamental error...hm ?

 

[Graham Laing]

You are totally correct, we shouldn't be doing this, and manual saves were not the final answer. A working career/game save is fundamental to the game, just about it's most critical aspect to the majority of players.

I did get bored with it all (the backups and restores) in F1 2011, and gave up on career mode, just playing online. I really don't want this to happen with this game. I'll do the backups for while with this game, just in case, but only for so long. In F1 2011 my script ran every 2 hours whenever the PC was on, whether the game had been played or not.

With so many backups (which were tiny in file size), it could take some time to find the last good backup when as restore was required

Considering I have already had an autosave failure, it would seem to blow the theory that GFWL was the cause in previous releases .....

Please let this ONLY be a demo problem, that doesn't carry over to the final release

 

[Jan-Olov Johansson]

Yes, me too...did a attempt to do a co-op season but gave up on that and career mode aswell before going crazy with the savebug (and not to mention the tire bug).

Anyway, I wont be buying this one, at least not until it's been out for a while and the reports start coming in on how good/bad it is.
I sincerly hope they get it right this time (love driving the 'real' cars on the 'real' F1 tracks ), but I have a bad feeling about it...can only hope I'm wrong, but time will tell.

 

[Mitchell Smith]

I just did a few races at Monza. Mm. I dunno.

We need more options. There's alot of camera movement that there is no option to get rid of, the speed sensitive steering is a pest, and the understeer makes everyones brain hurt, but in reality, this is a good game, even with those problems. Take those away and this is a perfect arcadey racer.

 

[Bill Devery]

Yes, me too...did a attempt to do a co-op season but gave up on that and career mode aswell before going crazy with the savebug (and not to mention the tire bug).

Anyway, I wont be buying this one, at least not until it's been out for a while and the reports start coming in on how good/bad it is.
I sincerly hope they get it right this time (love driving the 'real' cars on the 'real' F1 tracks ),.

You can JOJ and with no bugs I can't post it here but check out my latest YT posting...i did it all for you

Consider not wasting your time with this game. The bit that made me laugh with embarrassment for CM (and the thing that made me instantly decide not to buy the game) was i went off track through the grass and gravel and instead of making it rough and dangerous to accelerate out of for fear of spinning or at least fishtailing, they put a brake on the car!...that's it...no effort at all really.

 

[5partan5niper2212]

What I read about that you can't attack the kerbs is worrying. Perhaps the current (2011) version is a bit unrealistic in what you can get away with but now it sounds like it has gone back to the 2010 version. In that case driving around Singapore will be a nightmare once again.

Gareth Jones, do you have a brother called Huw?

 

[Gareth Jones]

No, I have a sister, that's it.

 

[Graham Laing]

Called Huw?

 

[kelaroost]

I hope the full game allows 30 hertz @190x1080 for this demo stays solid on 60 hertz witch drops my screen res to 1280x720.
Ive tried editing the setup without much luck.
I hope this can be fixed for i just got game on steam.