Known glitches in MP GTRevo

After a considerable number of possible good races that were in some way spoiled by a glitch or two, for some time I wanted to do a post about them and its possible ways of avoiding/correcteing them.


Known GTRevo multiplayer glitches and its workarounds (when there is one :p ).


First and maybe the most important advice, and these goes for all these glitches below, try join the grid between 1.30 min. to 30 sec. to go window, not earlier, not after (obviously these numbers are in a way to give a margin).


Synchronization problems.


When a player joins the server and there is very little time left before the grid formation (the very end of the previews session), there is a big chance of one of 2 things happen:


1
– The server loses full accountability of the late joiner and creates a “ghost”.
The “ghost” racer will take his position on the grid, will interact visually and physically with the others (one way only), but the others won’t interact with him. From the “ghost” side, his machine accounts well for the times done every lap, but doesn’t count the race laps/time well, has this last function is the work of the server and on this he isn’t fully present.
If the “ghost” leaves the race (drops), the server will most likely transfer his situation to the racer in first position, creating a substituting “ghost” who suddenly might feel his force feedback reduced and becomes the new “ghost”. For the others (for the server) the ex-first will drop down the classification as his laps (he is doing on his machine) won’t count and a shaking frame of his car will appear “hanging” in the last position the server accounted for him.
Eventually the “ghost” will reaper after the race (if he didn’t dropped) when everyone is chatting (he will notice his lines are now answered :D).
As you can see this one is a nasty one, as once it is formed, there is no known way of removing it (remember that if the ghost leaves, another is created).
The workaround is easy in a “closed” server, just make sure everybody is well synchronized 1 minute (for instances) before the end of the last training session leading to the race. If a “ghost” is suspected, everybody gets back to practice 1 …
On a public server, short of the general advice at the top, there is nothing that can be done, regarding this…
Once the “ghost” is created, or he will be a “ghost” to the end (maybe the best option as he involuntarily created the situation) or if he drops, another (most likely the first) will get the same destiny. Notice that for those in between (between the ghost and the first) likely there will be no interaction, regarding the “ghost”, his position won’t be correct and (as nobody sees him) he will get “rammed” and “blocked”.
I’m far from an expert, but I think in order for the developers to remove this one (and the others?), they should increase the period when one is kicked because of joining the server too late and in this way taking into account higher latency players and packet loss?! Just an idea…


2
– Again the server gets mixed and plants x (1, 2, 3 or whatever) racers on the same position (usually the 1st, as you see in this game, 1st and last are always connected :p)
The result is nasty too, but it is only temporary…
The guy in the correct position (the first on the grid usually), if he is careful (starts fast but without much slide or wheel spinning) he might get away with only a small bump in the car (loses 1 or 2 km/h in 6th gear).
Unfortunately he will usually get a “stop & go” penalty (because the others at same position are already moving before the red goes out and bump his car). At worst, all hell may brake lose and a few cars go into orbit and race might be over for them…
If you are on the other end, aka you are in the wrong position… just leave the server, there is no know in game solution so far. When the red is on, don’t move your car (or the guy in the correct position will get a stop & go) and when the red goes out, your car won’t move (unless someone bumps hard into it in wish situation the car moves a few meters but not more), even if put it full 6ht gear spinning, it won’t move far, so bad luck, just leave:(
The workaround for this is equal to the above (1) and yes, the general advice at the top also applies here.


Joining too fast to the grid, before everybody is well synchronized (or joining at same time as some else!?!)


3 – These will produce the very common situation of: “help I don’t see anyone!”
First, when in this situation, solve it (see below) or leave the server, if you continue without solving it (aka “how nice I’m racing alone, where did all go?”), in opposition with the “ghost” problem (1), this time is the other way around, the others interact with you (only) physically (you block and bump them), but you don’t interact with them (you don’t see them and also aren’t affected by their physics).
The solution is very easy, just change the view to the next car and then back to yours. This is usually done with the keypad keys of + and then -.
If that doesn’t work, you use laptop and have no keypad, map the “next” “previews car” keys to something else. Obviously the same applies to those who changed the default keys (+ -) of view “next/previews car”


Joining too late to the grid…(I’ve no experience with this one, but heard from others).


4- When someone joins too late to the grid, the car immediately in front, will get the annoying “blue flag 1st warning”, “blue flag 2nd warning” and I assume that in certain situations it can lead to penalization/disqualification.
Again I presume this is caused by the late joiner being for a time classified as 1st and the server interprets it has he his giving a lap.
Yes, the solution is again at the very top and if in any way this happens, my advice is unfortunately to give way to the late joiner (or move aside/away).
There is no point in joining late for any newbie reason… a slick tire at 60° is as cold as one at 57° or 50°, the result is the same, you will drift more at the fist corner, count with it (and not talking about the brakes temperature).
Let’s assume that you win the race because your tires were 5° hotter than mine (dugh!) and you were able to do a masterpiece of the first corner . Congratulations for live, you WON, now take the bicycle and go away from the server… :disapointed:
Almost forgot, ok, you can go and have a dump, and yes for GS, above all, wash your hands before grabbing your wheel, learn to timed them to perfection and get back to the grid… :D


Obviously, feel free to edit/change the post in any way that improves it or corrects it, if you can’t (aren’t administrator/moderator), just copy paste it… but remember, English isn’t my 1st language so it can be hard to understand.
 
Hahahaha thx Tanaka.
I've experieced all 4 but havent had no ideer how or why that happend.Was leading the race by a few seconds and all off the suddend i am driving in 18th place?????still with a few seconds on number 2 uuhhh 1.

As for number 2 , your standing in the right spot and someone gets put in the same spot ,if your carefull enough you can,as soon as the refs go up when the red lights come on,ref up and just for a second put it in 1st gear, immidietly brake and put back in neutral, refs up again and make a good start as the lights go out.
If you do it quick you dont get black flaged,you only need to go just a little bit forward.DONT OVER DO IT. lol or you'll get penelized (stop/go).

cheers Bommel
 
I experienced number 4 in the last ETC event, but I wasn't last/or late to the grid, but I did start on a Wet setup in Dry conditions by mistake. So no idea if this is a separate bug or part of the same bug as Number 4, but I did get 3 blue flags and a stop go almost instantly at the start of the race.

So chalk that one up on the board :)
 
Also coming to think about this, after I started on the wrong setup, I told my team mate so he wouldn't make my setup mistake, causing him to start very late after changing his setup. So it seems thats what caused it as he was directly behind me on the grid.

Interesting and unfortunate lol.
 
I do not understand one thing. It was in Race07, so why as Piotr wrote they did not repair it in GTR Evo! They sold the game with the errors with the premaditation because I know they knew this problems from race07, i am very dissapointing because of such behaviour.

They should have thought the quality first and later money because my trustness is each day decreasing to this company.
 
They should have thought the quality first and later money because my trustness is each day decreasing to this company.

but why simbin didn't solve such a stupid bugs, I've experienced all of them and it's very annoying :struggle:

EDIT:Should mention this is not directly aimed at the both of you.

Its and argument with two sides unfortunately, and in my estimations Simbin hold high over most, a company in my eyes much like Sports Interactive (Football Manager Series) for those of you that know them. The reason I say this is that in the grand scale of gaming they are relatively small yet seem to take exceptionally large amounts of bashing from both their communities and the outside world. Building games is not a cheap business. Building successful titles even less so, and it's also a very skilled job which takes time. anyone whos had the (dis)pleasure, as I've had in the past hunting down those niggly bugs and fixing them in a way that doesn't provide further detrement down the line knows how difficult and time consuming it can be.

Time Consuming = Cash Consuming! <<< very important.

As simbin is not the likes of EA or Rockstar I assume as with most businesses the availability of hard cash assets is not a given, so in order to facilitate further developement/bug fixing and general improvement are sizable amount of resources has to be devoted to bringing new products to market. This is not the only reason of course. If you take a look around I think you'll find that aside from all of that wether Race07 is buggy or not we actually wanted the content, which may even be a more important factor thatn the previous one.

I have at times suffered from all of the above but in releatively small numbers when viewed at the side of the large amount of bug free, fun racing I do in this title. Also I note that although the bugs are listed as Race07/Evo bugs and MP system as a whole the vast majority of problems I do have are, more often than not, whilst using addon content, tracks and cars not in away sanctioned or supported by Simbin.

Sorry for the long post and slightly off topic nature of it, but it is a really good idea to present bug information to developers but it is not such a good idea to slag them off about it. In large software pieces of any kind there is no such thing as bug free code. Only mature code can get close. This presents a problem in that as the race07 system as a whole reaches maturity we'll all be crying for a lizard release and so the cylce starts again.
 
Very true Dave.Simbin seem to be closer to their communities than many other software developers.
As Tanaka mentions in his post, if we are all disciplined in joining the race in th 1.30-0.30 secs time frame we can avoid most of the issues. As server side bugs linked to lag issues seem tough to fix from what I've seen, this is our best course of action.
 
As Tanaka mentions in his post, if we are all disciplined in joining the race in th 1.30-0.30 secs time frame we can avoid most of the issues...

Although I try to go by this window, 1.30 to 30 sec, 1.45 to 30 sec is sufficient and perhaps more acceptable to those more egger to join the grid… but they will have to wait for me :p



Just to clarify, obviously the post at the top was/is aimed to us players, the developers know about these glitches, why they didn't/don't correct them I don't know, but I suspect that they (the glitches) are too time (money) consuming.

Notice that in a "closed" network environment (LAN), I suspect none of these things happen; it is needed bigger latencies typical of long distances or bad connections.

The post was aimed to us, players, I know many people who come here, know about them (many even more then me), but there is always someone who didn’t know and can be informed about them.


Just as an example, even yesterday when doing a 28 starters race at the Nord, some poor sap was hit with glitche 2, we begged him to leave, he didn't.
Obviously his car stayed parked at the grid when the light went out, the guys immediately behind sow him and avoid him, the guys from the back... you can imagine (full force impact), 4 or 5 cars stayed right there and didn't do more than 200m in a 60km race. The funny (not) part was the poor guy was still trying to move his car on the grid when we were over Bergwerk, only after that he left...


My post “sort” of ends here, my advice is for you to don’t read anymore, what is typed below is in greater part off topic and is a follow-up to Dave’s post.



Nowadays we PC gamers, have to "protect" most developers/retailers who treats the machine in a decent way (I know SimBin develops Xbox games also). If you look around there are recent PC titles that not only are plagued with dodgy DRMs but also are plagued with impositions from the console world (some of them are a direct attack on PC game market).

The PC is an open platform (and that alone for me is a must in any computer machine I buy); anyone (theoretically) can do legally hardware/software for it. The result is at view, my top end PC cost less then 1000€ now compare this price with 80's PC? What 5000€ for a PC AT? More?

But from a developer point of view, this brings another problem, there are many, many hardware/software configurations going around and although there are standards, it’s hard to do a piece of a developed code who can handle any possible configuration.

Many people don't even know what’s inside their machines; they bought a branded PC and basically paid over the price for what they got (usually a mix of old and new hardware) and get what? A nice CPU with a crap GFX card or very slow memory sticks (or whatever)?


On the other hand the console market is the opposite (over the time a console haven’t /won’t become cheaper, unless it is old), the customer is attracted to the apparent low entry cost (less than 400€) coupled together with his (500€ +) big low resolution “HD”TV screen he already uses and is leered into buying a closed platform with all problems that come with it (
If you don’t know them, go to the economics class, but not to the marketing one). As an example, in likes the monthly fee to be on-line coupled with a 50% increase on tile purchases just to name the obvious immediate ones.

From the developers point of view, this can't go wrong (for a while), console rights owners pay "advance" to develop content, the hardware these consoles are made is old but everybody has the same so it’s easier to developed compatible code just to name a few.


The funny part is that in a country like where I leave, Portugal, a country that is developed , has a free society to go with it too, but has a certain economical delay (for instances the middle class has considerably less purchasing power then central/north European counterpart), an entire parallel/illegal market for the consoles has developed.

All kinds of hardware (to do this and that ;)) are available at very reduced cost and all the titles (games) come out at least at the same time they do officially brought to them by a less favored fringe of the society that the authorities are just happy they aren’t doing any bigger crime .

So, they indeed, have available to them a cheaper game platform (action oriented) then any PC could ever be, “grats” MS, from bringing the poor’s man gaming platform to the world
:clap:
 
:) Some nice points you make Tanaka and some I am very much aware of. I also own a 360 and there in the post above are some of the reasons (apart from the lack of sim racing) why it is not my main gaming machine. That aside, for my own ends as i posted in an earlier thread, I fully support the move for Simbin to produce a 360 game. They've taken the wise step of getting a healthy slice of the cash along with a closed tested system to produce they're own game engine and make the leap forward to a new generation of sim. As that engine is also destined to become a feature of future pc titles I welcome the fact that they can Iron out the early creases and also allow me to share the cost of such developement with the cash cow that is console gaming.

On a plus for both systems the gaming market as a whole is thriving with sales of gaming products have outstripped DVD and music sales in this country for the first time this year so the piracy issue is generally accepted to be less of a problem than most developers would have you believe (still negative no doubt). The rise of a move to online gaming has countered some of that issue on pc but one of the big negatives of PC gaming for me and one which probably provokes piracy to some extent is the fact that unlike the more expensive console games pc titles hold very little residual value.

I believe tho that the price gap will be reduced further and more quickly in the future and console gaming to move to a year on year price to far in excess of pc gaming. Due to the fact that in the console market all the money is in software for both developers and manufacturers a consoles shelf life is determined by how quickly people can learn to cheat its copy protection technology main cases in point are ps1/2 and xbox1. With an ever growing number of xbox360s with dvd mods bringing the time closer and closer for the system. The turnaround has become faster and faster to the point where games and console prices will rise and shelf life will decrease thus increase the cost exponentially.

Back on topic, ive had no problems on the 2 occasions that i have taken part in LAN games, though I don't consider this enough to make a firm judgement due to lack of players and lack of sessions.

The starters limit was set for a reason Tanaka. there are some known issues and bugs surrounding the extra runners mod and i think it is very possible that this contributed to the situation somewhat. not to say that it was responsible for all or none of them but its a distinct possibilty.
 
...The starters limit was set for a reason Tanaka. there are some known issues and bugs surrounding the extra runners mod and i think it is very possible that this contributed to the situation somewhat. not to say that it was responsible for all or none of them but its a distinct possibilty.

Maybe it is capable of increasing the number of these occurrences, but I’m sure we had the first 3 listed glitches before the extra runners mod install.
 
Tanaka, you seem to know about these MP glitches pretty well. If you have a good way to reproduce them, I think you should send that info to Simbin. That could make it much easier for them to fix these bugs.
Fixing bugs is always much easier when the developer has a way to reproduce them.
 
Although I do happen to have a full movie file from the client side (the "ghost") and one from the server side, I think that’s not what you are talking/asking about...


I think you are asking if I can describe to SimBin a situation where the glitches 1 and 2 happen all the time (100% occurrence or near it).

Just to be sure (obviously you know this, but just in case), you know that when someone joins a session and wile joining the session advances to "race", he is normally booted.


Having that in mind, the problem is that both of these glitches, 1 and 2, are "border" occurrences, they seem to happen when someone joins very near the end of the last joinable session (and it isn't booted has normally happens to late joiners) together with:
1) Perhaps with other people joining the grid without full synchronization with the late joiner.

2) Perhaps it is the late joiner moving to the grid to fast before full synchronization.

3) So far any of these seem to happen with a decent size grid, never sow them with, let’s say, 8 or 10 racers grids.

I've never been a "ghost" from the start of a race (1), nor have been dropped on the wrong position of the grid (2). I've been always on the other end of the glitch
, I was leading and become a "ghost" (when the "ghost" left the server) 3 times and I was in pole when other/s racer/s were dropped in my grid position...

What we need is someone who was a “starter” of any of these situations and was aware of it to come here and describe them.


Maybe even I got it all wrong (or at least part of it), perception of “freak” occurrences can be misleading when conjugated with single but normal events.
For instances we have a “ghost” --> “ghost” drops--> Leader becomes the new “ghost” --> and so on…
It seems logical we make certain assumption from this (for instances the “ghost” problem always goes to the leader after the original “ghost” leaves the server), but it can all be wrong ;)


So to coordinate 20+ people over the INET in order to try to track down a possible 100% occurrence, it’s a pain to say the least… it can be done, but it is hard and above all it is “work”, so I doubt there are many volunteers :p


If this was one of those “fake” shooters like CS, it would be easier… now in a race, we can’t pick up the desynchronized racer and say to his machine, “look the past 5 secs are all worng” and drop him in the middle of the pack at 180 km /h can we ? :D Or the pack is rolling and driver x desynchronizes, so to the server (and the others) his cars slows to a crawl --> instant peloton dispersive crash :)
 

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