F1 2011 Patch #2 Update: November 2, 2011

[Bram Hengeveld]

Helios of Codemasters just released new information about the upcoming patch:

Hi all,

As promised last week, here is some more information on the specific issues we’ve been investigating for the upcoming patch and the progress made to date.

For those of you who have read the Patch Process threadhttp://community.codemasters.com/forum/f1-2011-general-discussion-1403/474356-patching-process.html , Step 1 has now been completed; many thanks to all of you who provided as much information as possible on the issues you have encountered. We are now nearing the end of Step 2, with multiple issues (detailed below) having now been fixed and verified in our test environment.

Please note that there are technical restrictions on what we can and can’t patch, due to things such as size limits on patches, knock-on effects to other areas of the game and issues that were non-reproducible in our test environment, etc. Issues which currently fall into this category are updated DRS Zones and updated drivers.

 Game Improvements:
o A connectivity rating display has now been implemented for each player in an online session lobby. This appears as coloured bars (red, amber, green) to indicate the expected online performance of the player in the game session.
o More network bandwidth is now reserved for game-critical systems in online sessions. This may result in low-bandwidth users having their voice chat restricted to fewer players, but should result in a smoother online experience.

 Strategy & Setup:
o Fixed 11/11 car setup bug.
o Fixed issue where your race strategy uses the same tyre compound three times in a row & the final set are worn.
o Fixed issue where wear-based punctures would occur too often.
o Fixed various issues with the race engineer speech logic.

 AI:
o Fixed an issue where the AI run on Intermediates for too long.
o Fixed issue where AI cars would be too fast in the wet.
o Fixed an issue where AI vehicles pitted too often during dry, online races .
o The AI has been tuned on several circuits to provide smoother and faster driving.

 Co –op Championship:
o Fixed an issue with the save becoming corrupt / not able to invite the other player when playing long race weekends.
o Fixed an issue where AI difficulty was reset to “Amateur” level when resuming a Coop game.
o Fixed an issue with tyre wear in Practice/Qualifying not being carried over to Race.
o Fixed an issue with the penalties accrued in Practice/Qualifying not being applied to the Race.
o Fixed an issue with the Race Results where lapped AI are causing player to drop positions.

 Online:
o Vote to Skip in Qualifying now requires 100% vote.
o Various Penalty system improvements have been made.
o Quick Race countdown timer is now set to 60 Seconds and no longer resets when a player joins the session.

 Graphics & Performance:
o PS3 – Improved frame rate & performance.
o Xbox360 & PC - Numerous performance improvements have been made to increase frame rate and reduce stuttering.
o All Platforms – Numerous graphical improvements have been made.
o All Platforms – Fixed various issues to improve general game stability.

 PC-specific:
o Fixed several functionality issues experienced when using DX11 cards.
o Fixed issue where users could hack specific files to increase car grip.

 Other:
o Fixed a very infrequent issue where some sessions would be skipped over when progressing to the next session during a Long Race Weekend.
o Korea tyre compounds have been changed to those used in the 2011 race.
o Fixed an issue where in career where the "on the bounce" achievement was awarded after 11 race wins instead of 9.
o Fixed an issue where all users would be awarded the fastest lap XP and stat during some online races.
o Fixed an issue where driver's hands & head popped in a few frames late when switching cameras.


We have yet to verify several other fixes at the moment, and we are still working hard on fixing a few more issues before we move into Step 3 next week. We will keep you informed on the specifics over the course of the next week or so.

As a final note, we are also working with Sony and Microsoft to wipe the Time Trial leader boards to ensure that all future Time Trial data is correct and free from inaccuracies following the release of patch 2.

Thanks again for your patience whilst we finalise work on the patch.
__________________

 

[Richard Knight]

Fantastic! when is patch 2 released?

 

[Lewis Travis]

Sounds good!

 

[F1-JEP7]

Great news.

 

[Aarqiel]

Great stuff, assuming all this works the only issue unmentioned is the fast-forwarding of sessions, either manually or through damage repairs, producing lap times out of sync with what the cars were previously doing on-track. Whether this is possible to fix IDK, since it might be an inherent issue with skipping time preventing cars from dong full simulated laps, but if so I'd prefer an option to sit out the damage repair in real-time, since I don't fast-forward sessions anyway. This assuming that they can't simply tweak the way the lap times are generated when fast-forwarding to make them fall in line with actual performance.

 

[Diego Lopez]

"Korea tyre compounds have been changed to those used in the 2011 race."
"Fixed issue where AI cars would be too fast in the wet."
"Fixed 11/11 car setup bug."

Those are the only ones I care about
AI cars in the wets were setting Dry lap times, it was ridiculous.

 

[Nick Karshev]

Cool

 

[Alberto Casado]

Great stuff, assuming all this works the only issue unmentioned is the fast-forwarding of sessions, either manually or through damage repairs, producing lap times out of sync with what the cars were previously doing on-track. Whether this is possible to fix IDK, since it might be an inherent issue with skipping time preventing cars from dong full simulated laps, but if so I'd prefer an option to sit out the damage repair in real-time, since I don't fast-forward sessions anyway. This assuming that they can't simply tweak the way the lap times are generated when fast-forwarding to make them fall in line with actual performance.

They could just simulate laps while fast forwarding at normal speed and just fake the number of laps done, while keeping the time real.

 

[Engage]

Nice work, keep it up,
thank you
Engage

 

[Peter Hooper]

Fantastic! when is patch 2 released?

Well as Step 3 is not due to start until next week my guess is that we are looking at another two to three weeks at the very least before we see the patch go live.

 

[Ben Eastman]

Don't see anything about the r&d bug, but really happy with these fixes

 

[taz1004]

Did they mention if the patch is gonna require career restart?

 

[LFCsmithy]

didnt see anything about the save game probs that some are having including myself. I worked my way up to a rank of 21 only to have the problem hit me, and when i done the fix that someone mentioned in the forum....it worked but it sets your rank back to 1 again. Its when the game is loading and it suddenly throws you out of the game saying " F1 exe has stopped working" Its now happened to me 3 times!!! And each time im back to a rank of 1. Very annoying......Maybe its on the list of things to do by codies....i hope !!!

 

[Markus Neumann]

Fixed 11/11 car setup bug.
Fixed issue where AI cars would be too fast in the wet.
The AI has been tuned on several circuits to provide smoother and faster driving.
Quick Race countdown timer is now set to 60 Seconds and no longer resets when a player joins the session.

Praise the lord/CM!
It's about time for F1 2011 multiplayer to kick off

 

[Leonardo Chaves]

Sounds good indeed.

But i still wonder how the 11/11 fix will affect things, afterall the whole springs were bugged not just the 11/11 setting.

 

[ENDR]

So how will the "11/11" setup work now? Is it going to stay very responsive, but murderous to the tyres? I guess it should also make the car hard to control over bumps/kerbs.
And the "wet" AI fix makes me go

 

[TGApples]

I imagine it'll make the car a pain to control over bumps. With 11/11 springs things like the Nurburgring first corner braking zone should be a complete pain, and most kerbs should send you flying. Just adding tyre wear does nothing in, for example, TT.

 

[Markus Neumann]

Various Penalty system improvements have been made.

I hope this also includes corner cutting, because it just trivializes tracks like Singapore :frown:

 

[Jayc72]

"We have yet to verify several other fixes at the moment, and we are still working hard on fixing a few more issues before we move into Step 3 next week. "

Good job CM , if they can come through with the fixes mentioned.
But, I really hope that one of the fixes yet to be mentioned by CM is the "Invisible wall" fix. Where your car would explode into a millions pieces if you accidentally went off track slightly.

I also noticed one of the online fixes is "Various Penalty system improvements have been made".
Are they going to do anything to offline Penalty system?

 

[John Robertson]

This is a very promising update, but don't get your hopes too high guys, it's going to take a while still, there's more fixes being worked on then they'll have to test the patch, and who knows how long microsoft will keep it before they decide to release it.

If you remember they held the 1st patch a couple of weeks while sony released it to ps3 at launch