Prologue by Cristian Luis:
In F1 Challenge '99-'02, I have been considered in recent years what many fans and enthusiasts of this old-fashioned but venerable simulator call an old-school mod creator. An F1 Challenge '99-'02 mod maker with a passion and determination that has not been impeded from his exercise, even when I have come to find myself spitting and coughing blood for hours with puddled lungs, in full anemia, and with pale skin and retained liquid, symptomatic messengers of the transition from my chronic kidney disease to end-stage (which I luckily survived two times). And with the love and catharsis of a child who when they try to financially reward, suffers the psychological phenomenon called "overjustification effect". Always denying the idea of living or earning money from it, and proved when, welcoming the honor with due and imperishable respect, I rejected in desperate socioeconomic and life-satisfaction conditions that made me a prisoner of impotence, a job offer to work in one of the leading racing simulation video game companies on July 14, 2020. In this offer, I was presented with the idea of working on artificial intelligence, flexible agents in a large set of ordered and stacked parameters elaborated in such a way that players, content creators, casuals, those who (re)discover this game, and the members who made this Formula 1 season a reality with which some young people from Elazig (a city victim of an earthquake on January 2020) alleviated their sorrows but not their regrets, will be able to enjoy in this title for always by work and grace of the accredited, who in one way or another made it possible and left their name or pseudonym for posterity, with the vehicle physics of Carlos as the heart of all this computing anatomy.
This F1 Challenge 2020 is, in my modest value judgment, a graceful demo; a laconic emissary who with undisguised discretion, warns about what is going to come to the F1 Challenge '99-'02 community if its members, collaborators, and volunteers want and decide to continue until the end. All of them play in some of their spare time to be gods when their lives allow it; We are owners and creators of their own dreams, in the search to recreate and relive the history of Formula 1 in its entirety in an accessible, free and dizziness-free video game for everyone, where anyone can take part, and they are the first in the queue. From the most venerable old man who sees on a computer screen running hand in hand with Fangio, Moss, Farina, or Ascari; childhood idols from his remote yesterday, to the young man who has made the digital environment his second home and feels hurt that he cannot choose to play Codemasters F1, having video game modifications as an imposed alternative that can be offered if the benefits of your personal computer give it the green light and treat the lag as if it were unaware of its existence, be it due to low latency or smooth processing.
Forgive me if the quality of this artificial intelligence as a result of my research - I taught him the tricks, and I think he makes good use of it - which works under any weather condition and level of difficulty is not the maximum desired, but modeling it by means of the synchronization of physics in which the work of recreating the most suitable speed curve by curve of all circuits is added; being that step by curve changing automatically according to the parameters of the adjustment that the artificial intelligence loads by default for itself, requires a time that I and my successor have seen much more profitable in balancing scales, putting out fires, completing bases and putting quality of life in the user experience as a whole, where anyone can appreciate every detail and where each member feels and lives that they are doing their important part in the project. In F1 Hero it is implemented, and there it stays exclusively. It has 14 years of development, more than half of my life at last, and still increasing.
The publication of this Formula 1 season in its pre-final phase, in the absence of programming a race engineer and the long-awaited eighth gear, will not in itself mean the resurrection of the Constrictor Modding Team. Neither did his return. The quality of this F1 season will be at the service of all the others that this group decides to publish on the network of networks; those that the leader has written down in his own agenda. The public release of all of them will truly mean his return to the ring and therefore, his resurrection demonstrated and therefore confirmed.
The purpose of the release of this modification to which I have had the access and pleasure of writing this foreword (thanks for that invitation at the beginning of January, Alfredo) has been indicated, but the curtain continues to cover the declaration of intent regarding the essence of CMT: the realism within the maximum potential that F1 Challenge '99-'02 itself can offer, maintaining several constitutive points of the original game that make it endow and detach from all its identity with its particularities, options, parameters, and values. In the characteristics of the settings and in the audio comments. In the software defects in the repetitions and in the exploitable aspects that its multiplayer mode has sought to censor to bring a fair game between fans to compete against others online. No matter how radically changed a modification in its central parts by an act of Constrictor is: it continues to do honor and homage to being a physics simulator, which is the niche that the leader of the project is able to squeeze with plenty of solvency thanks to his qualified training as an engineer, problem-solving ability, intelligence, years of a university career, professional experience and above all, the team and their teamwork. A work is prominent enough that it can never be said that he makes physics more zero. For all members, new and veteran, creating content in F1 Challenge from time to time as a means, with more or less activity, that gives them quality of life without acting as a substitute for their personal and professional projects justifies everything, a decision that they take through their actions towards the modifications of Formula 1 seasons; artworks are love rather than just good reasons.
Many members of the group, and I personally, believe that the 2020 Formula One season has been emulated in F1 Challenge '99-'02 in a truly reliable way, for which the simulator is able to continue giving almost twenty years after its release on the market. In a purely personal observation, sometimes the single-seaters that I try to see as cars in a video game, by dint of being alive and showing completeness in every aspect, from configuration to historical data, rebel against me and, throwing off the mask of "simulation accessible without the intention of competing against "that I have sought to place them and make a character, they go out of my hands, transmitting and doing what I, out of modesty, did not want them to try or snitch: to be a reasonable alternative to Codemasters F1 2020, at least on individual play for those who want to have fun from time to time with a video game with no need to broadcast themselves to the world and win a few coins or bills in the process. Especially this F1 2020, where under the direction of Frank T. Sagnier the official game does not recreate the historical Formula 1 calendar that this year has been full of peculiarities. Perhaps because its true architects have imposed their law conditioning the choice of the true Grand Prix calendar of this 71st season of the Formula 1 World Championship, despite being hundreds of times smaller than us humans. And they have turned everything upside down. Absolutely everything. They have come to stay.
And all fighting against the CoViD-19 pandemic from the barricades of confinement; some of those responsible for this modification were infected in a specific period of the disease suffering the bad shot, and struggling with myself not to consider this F1 Challenge 2020 more realistic than Codemasters F1 2020 in some areas, I write this presentation which I prefer not to be on the official download page or as an easter egg of its creation. I do not think that my former colleagues have managed to make users who try this modification avoid asking themselves after playing if, in certain aspects and sections, F1C 2020 is better than CM F1 2020, despite not having the much-desired eighth gear. Keep thinking always that official titles are always better than modifications of the same genre, purposes, and sub-purposes on a general level. It is as it should be. As it will almost always be. And for everyone, it is better this way.
While it lasts, enjoy everyone's crafts, for everyone. One that the previous generation of children anywhere on the globe would not have dared to dream of. It is all theirs, at the service of recreating those battles that they have enjoyed so much through audiovisual reproduction, throwing imagination into photos, or traveling through readings.
Download link
Constrictor Modding Team FB website
Wookey's F1C forum