rec.autos.simulators

I've read that GPL-PAL will be released soon (about time...), but does
anybody have a release date, so I can know when to take a week off
work?

Neo

GPal wil be released shortly? Where did you read this? Jack promised
about 28473 times that it would be released shortly. One time he made
a post 'GPaL released tonight!'. I would beta-test it for him, but at
that evening he mailed me that GPal was complete but that there was a
little bug in the installer. He needed a couple of hours extra to fix
this.
After that, we didn't hear for months from him, he had a new job and
didn't have time for GPal Anymore. A couple of months ago he suddenly
appeared again, but he was too busy with his new job to fix the
installer problem.
It would be great if GPaL would be released after all the long
waiting, but I don't get my hopes too high for this one.

Jack?

Andre

On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 05:26:38 +0000, Neo

Wait a minute!  You can only do that stuff on 1 April!!!

--DK

I read that also, I believe it was at www.goofball.com

On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 10:22:43 -0600, "David Karr"

Nope. It wasn't an April fools joke, or in fact any joke at all.

I was quite serious.

There was even a screen-shot of what GPal looks like in its current
form.

Neo

... which hasn't changed for about 6 months. :-(

regards
--

http://ianhill.tripod.com
Please visit www.thehungersite.com today!

I know i'm asking really much here, but I'll ask it again:
where did you hear this, and where did you see that screenshot? The
GPaL site hasn't been updated since 1603 BC.

Andre

On Tue, 15 Feb 2000 09:31:13 +0000, Neo

Was that the 16-bit GPal for Windows 3.1 ?

Maybe now that Rambo's not doing the F1 film after all, he can devote more
time to this effort?  :)

--dk

1: What's GPL-PAL?

2: Was this a stupid question? *

* if the answer to question 2 is YES: press CTRL-ALT-DEL twice.

:p

Vaporware! It was supposed to be a program that let you adjust just about
everything in gpl from a GUI. It was hyped and promised to be released many
months ago. Like the post stated earlier the guy posted that it would be out
one night and then he disappeared for awhile showing back up saying he's
still working on it. I used to have the link to his site but I got rid of it
awhile ago.

It wouldn't have been so bad had he not hyped it so much then disappeared
when it came time for the release.

Keep your fingers crossed and maybe it will be out before GPL2 is ;-)

--
Jeff Murchison JR
Screamers League Admin
www.speakeasy.org/~jmurch

GPAL was to have been "the essential companion to GPL" and was being
developed by Jack Rambo.  It was going to include an interface with sliders
for adjusting various features of GPL, such as AI strength, number of laps
in race, damage model, etc.  There was much hope (and hype) here on the
newsgroup last spring but it never came to pass.  After posting that it was
to be released one evening (after installation problems were straightened
out), Mr. Rambo disappeared from the group without a word.  There was quite
a bit of talk about his whereabouts and even some concerns for his
well-being, mixed in with the usual flames and complaints about vaporware.
He recently emerged with an explanation that a combination of workload and
computer problems kept him from completing it.

A search on deja.com under GPAL for the last year would surely result in a
huge number of hits, if you're interested in more info.  But that's the
short of it.  Others might give a more impassioned or opinionated
explanation.  If you had read any of those threads at the time you'd know
what I mean. :-)

The History of GPaL

GPaL was supposed to be a utility for GPL, with which you could adjust
just about everything in GPL. AI strength, race distances, force
feedback, etc. Most of these things can allready be done ofcourse by
changing the ini files and using other utils, but GPaL would be an
all-in-one utility to do the job.

The programmer, Jack Rambo, posted a message on RAS, after a couple of
delayed release dates: GPaL tonight!
I got an email from him that there was a little bug in the installer
routine, and that he needed a couple of extra hours to fix this
problem before he could release it.

Then he disappeared. Vanished. Gone. Left us behind in the cold.
Well, you get the point, we didn't hear anything from him.
Some started to wonder if something happened to him, some started to
whine (I belonged to both groups) but Jack didn't respond to all the
threads.

A couple of months later there was a message from Jack on RAS.
He was still working on GPaL, but he got a new job which took a lot of
his spare time.
I mailed him, because I wondered if he encountered more bugs, or of he
couldn't fix the installer problem. No response.
A couple of days after that message I met him on VROC. He only wanted
to say that he was still working on GPaL, I couldn't get any more info
out of him.

That was the last time I heard something from him.
His site is still up, http://www.racelive.com/GPaL/, you can see what
it promised to be.

I still hope that Jack finds the time to put it all together, or that
he will release the source code so that other people can finish it.
Ofcourse he didn't and doesn't owe us anything, but the way things
happened was not nice. Much promises, a couple of release dates which
were postponed at the last minute, and then nothing.

And then, out of the blue, comes a message on RAS a couple of weeks
ago: GPL Replay Analyzer 1.0. A beautiful tool for comparing replays
in every imagineable way. 3 weeks later we allready have version 2.01
(http://home.bip.net/martin/gplra/) with much improvements.
These guys showed how it's supposed to be done. No fake promises, no
release dates which they can't make true, just a simple message 'here
it is!'.

If you read this Jack, maybe you can learn something from these guys.
You gave us all much hope with all the promises, then disappearing
without a word is not the way to do it.

Wow, you woke up a lot of hidden frustration from the past in me Neo!
:)

Andre

On Tue, 15 Feb 2000 11:18:59 -0500, "Gault"

Which I imagine would look a bit like the AI Tweak for GPL?

Neo

Supposedly much more to it than that.  But we'll never know now, will we?
:-(

I don't understand why he didn't just pass the program to some of us
on this NG so we could finish the dammed thing ourselves. It doesn't
really matter who gets the credit for it as long as we have a working
product at the end of it.
 A lot of us here (including myself, VB) have programming skills and I
am confident with all the work he's already done it shouldn't have
been too difficult to finish it up. And  I don't think we would be
short of testers.
The first time I looked at the GPal interface I thought I should have
thought of it first, but I never would have the time to do it anyway.
I will have a long holiday in next July and I am determined to come up
with some sort of a similar contribution to the GPL community,
although I would not be dumb enough to make promises I can't keep (I
might spend the whole time on a beach somewhere, completely away from
the computer world!).
But I am surprised that no one else has taken this up and finished it,
or perhaps produced something based on GPAL.
But no doubt I was very annoyed at all this GPal business, in fact
just the name alone bores  me already.
FORGET ABOUT IT GUYS!

Mauricio.