I am trying to get hold of the list of bugs in GP Manager that was
floating around on this newsgroup for a while. I would appreciate it
if the person who originated the list, or anyone who has a copy
(however incomplete), would *email* me a copy.
regards,
Joe
I'm not particularly encouraged by the list of fixes in the readme,
although I should point out that I haven't tried it yet. In
particular, they say they have not and will not address the 256-color
mode bug, something which I'm sure will annoy the hell out of a lot of
folks. It's beginning to become clear that the developers (Edcom, I
beliieve) really are as incompetent as they appear.
Grand Prix Manager: Bugs and Misfeatures
========================================
Last revised: 05 February 1995
Grand Prix Manager is not an inherently bad game. It's reasonably well thought
out and well presented, but sadly it suffers from a lack of testing, both for
bugs, and in terms of the details of the user interface, which conspire to
make the game extremely frustrating. Below, I present a fairly complete list
of the bugs and misfreatures, mostly found by myself, although some were sent
in by readers of the USENET newsgroup rec.autos.simulators (which are usually
presented as quoted passages of text).
-- Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer
-- dgy...@gdcarc.co.uk
-- http://www.mal.com/~dgymer/
1. Bugs
1.1. Bogus fastest laps at start of race
At the start of a race, after the formation lap is complete, as the cars cross
the line for the first time during the proper race, the game reports a series
of fastest laps, which is clearly both meaningless and impossible. This does
not happen every race, and does not appear to follow any pattern, but is
frequent, perhaps occuring every other race.
1.2. Altering wing settings prone to bogus lack of time message
After a season or two, one begins to find that during test sessions (and
possibly the race also), when trying to change the front and rear wing
settings, the game complains that there is not enough time left. Despite this,
you can change the wings settings by pressing the space bar, and only pressing
the mouse button when the desired wing setting is reached. The "time bar"
displayed on the screen shows that no time remains, despite not having done
anything.
1.3. The wind tunnel does not work
The top speeds reported in wind-tunnel testing are completely meaningless.
1.4. Car weight has little effect
It appears that the weight of the car has little or no impact on any of top
speed, lap times, or race performance. Car weight only seems to come into
play at 700kg, at which point one suddenly finds ones drivers qualifying last
(or not at all). The engineers and mechanics should also suggest which parts
could be changed to reduce weight.
1.5. Contract details forgotten or misremembered
The game repeatedly and randomly forgets about driver contracts; I've had to
renogotiate some contracts up to 5 times during a season when the game
appears to have simply forgotten who I've lined up as a replacement driver.
More annoying is that if the end of a season coincides with the end of a
contract for which a replacement driver has been lined up, the game sometimes
not only forgets about the replacement, but lines up a temporary driver for
an extortionate price without any opportunity to negotiate.
1.6. Parts not always flagged as illegal
Most of the time, when a part is illegal, it will be displayed with a black
flag so one doesn't accidently select it. Very occaisionally, and especially
with in-house parts, the black flag is not display and a DQ and ban results.
[See also 2.14.]
1.7. Pit stops can go badly wrong
"Playing Ferrari, I qualified 1 & 2 for the first race, and selected a 1-stop
strategy. Ran 1 & 2 up to half distance, and then Gerhard comes into the pits
for a 12 second stop; he rejoins more than *2 minutes* behind the leader! Not
only that but he's still on the lead lap, even though the leader is lapping in
under 1:20! Pit stops seem to be seriously screwed :-("
1.8. Pit screen fails to appear during stop
Sometimes, when a car pits, the pit screen fails to appear and the car either
just sits there or disappears, depending on whether it's during a race or
during some other session. Happens about 1 time in 15-20 stops; only really
annoying during a race.
1.9. Test sessions mis-report advancements
If you go to a test session and immediately hit the chequered flag, the game
reports that you have improved both selected objectives. It is lying (I
suspect that it's an improvement of 0 internal units, which would indicate
sloppy internal design). [See also 2.1.]
1.10. Windows errors
Occaisionally, Windows reports an application error, and prompts to cancel
the program or ignore the error. Hitting "ignore" seems to work (but this
doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the game).
1.11. Driver contracts bug
Signing up a driver by breaking his contract to another team falsely reports
that a replacement has also been signed up (carried over from the other
team). This is a major problem because one cannot then sign up a real
replacement.
1.12. Cars fall off bridge at Suzuka
When driving across the bridge at Suzuka, where the track crosses over
itself, cars sometimes "fall off" and have to drive round the previous part
of the loop again. Once again, this indicates a severe lack of game testing.
1.13. Wet tyres magically replenished
On one occaision, a driver pitted with wet weather tyres. I clicked the wet
tyre button again, after having mistakenly selected another compound; the
tyres magically returned to 100% wear rating (ie. perfect).
1.14. Possible to fool car weight calculation
"Changing vanes (car externals) off and back on reduces car weight about 15kg.
Can done only once though."
1.15. Fastest lap not scored
"I found something interesting when I set up the points scoring, I added a 1
point for fastest lap but I have never seen it scored."
1.16. I'm always the 9th best team
One I've seen is that upon winning both the constructors & drivers
chamionships, I still get voted 9th best team in F1.
1.17. Scoring wraps round at 255
Each driver and team score is obviously packed into a single byte, because on
reaching 256 it wraps around to 0.
1.18. Benetton cheating?
"Another interesting and at the same time sad thing. I finished first season
with Williams. Almost all season long Benetton led the costructor's
championship, but I finally caught up with them and won the title in the last
race by 3 points. In the points standings it showed that my team was first,
but in the news it said "First title for Benetton" and a pretty happy guy that
doesn't look anything like me or Frank Williams :) Is that somehow related to
the real end of the season and no matter what team wins in 1995, the game will
say that Benetton won?"
1.19. Cars miss or take extra pit stops
When mixed in traffic whilst passing the pit entrance, a car which is due to
pit may forget to, and a car which should stay out may pit with another car
(which was due to). This happens often enough that it would seem to be a bug
rather than an intened feature.
1.20. One race contracts for engines are rubbish
If you arrive at the start of a new season without having signed a deal with
an engine manufacturer, the game claims that it has done a one race deal with
a private supplier. In fact, it has resigned the existing contract. In fact,
this is the only to get a deal with a small supplier like Nissan.
1.21. Computer cars never change?
"Have you noticed that the computer teams use the same car all the time. The
cars are always the 0001 model."
2. Mis-features
2.1. A non-interactive test session should be available
When testing between races, it should be possible to select a non-interactive
mode, as can be done be deselecting all the phases of a race. Many players,
including myself, prefer to concentrate on the management aspects of the game.
One can simply exit the test session without sending any cars out, and the
game reports that both selected objectives have been achieved; however, I
have seen no improvement from such sessions. (Also a bug?) In addition, the
times reported at the end of a test session appear to be meaningless.
2.2. Use of meaningless superlatives
The game is littered with meaningless superlatives. For example, the amount
of interest shown by sponsors is variously described as "fair", "great",
"brilliant", "outstanding", and so on. Not only are these lacking in
quantitative value, but there is also no consistency between different uses
of these superlatives. A better system would use either fractions (eg. 5/6,
1/6), or percentages.
2.3. The game is not sufficiently configurable
It's nice to be able to configure things like drivers' names, but there are
some significant things which remain unconfigurable. For example, whilst one
can change the engine names, one cannot change their power, weight, or
country of origin. This can make customizing the game rather painful.
2.4. Mixed Windows/non-Windows interface
The game looks like it was originally designed to run under DOS, and was
moved Windows as an afterthought. It's extremely annoying having a "custom"
interface when standard Windows features would have been at least as good,
not least because sometimes a standard Windows feature, such as the message
boxes, pops up; it just makes the game look cheap.
2.5. Over-eagerness to reuse driver names
The game appears to have a fixed list of ficticious drivers to replace the
aging ones as the years go by. Unfortunately, it sometimes reuses one name
before the previous one has retired, and
...
read more »
Thanks for this info. I agree with you that according to the readme, this
patch doesn't really fix any problems with the game. Only two of the fixes
seemed to have any real significance: increased top team *** and added
wet race AI. The 256-color problem really isn't that simple to fix, it will
probably need the rewrite of many routines in the game (though I think they
should do it).
This happens also the other way, so the cars jump on the bridge, and make
it really fast around the track.
This is not a bug. In real Formula One, teams are allowed to use as many wet
tyres as they will during a weekend.
I installed it in C:\GAMES\GPM with no troubles using the install program.
Samppa
--
Samuli Takala, Pajamaentie 14 C 38, 00360 Helsinki | "Ron Dennis smiled like
URL: http://www.racesimcentral.net/~tax/ (soon) | -- Matti Kyllonen
