Gavin,
Great news!!!
TOCA is very special - certainly my very favorite sim. Remember you can't
please all the people all the time - some people want complex sims where
half the work is done in setups and some people want arcade games that are
fun but bear little relation to reality. TOCA is special (almost unique)
because it fits in so nicely between these two. It is realistic without
being complex and you can race in realistic races without a degree in car
mecanics. So please don't kill off all the good things in TOCA and ignore
the very many of us who love TOCA in part because of the lovely balance it
strikes. Also BTCC is not like F1, Indy, Le Mans, Nascar or Rally and
certainly not Need For Speed or Grand Turismo. Please don't be influenced
by people who understand other formulas in great depth but not necessarily
Touring Cars.
What TOCA 2 should have is:
1) Race and time-trial replays from above, outside, inside etc.
2) Real damage (optional) and not just visual.
3) Record best splits so we can improve and review our times.
4) A non-crackable checksum algoritm.
5) Don't include the flexmobile in the best laps or your website hall of
fame. It's not realistic.
6) Don't make the AI drivers so foolishly aggressive or punish them with
warnings and spins.
7) Update to the 1998 season with the Nescafe Blend 37 Renault's etc.
8) Include pit-stops with option of changing side wheels or front wheels
and reflect the choice in the performance of the car.
9) Improve the graphics but don't lose the feel of speed.
10) Support for wheels that support independant brake/throttle.
11) Tyre changes as only setttings.
12) Variable weather to tempt us into the pits for a tyre change when it
turns inclement mid-race.
13) In race commentary (optional).
14) Option to turn off ghost car completely.
15) Make the AI drivers qualification times realistic (39.19 round Brands
Hatch Indy - the lap record is 44 something) and in line with their more
realistic drive times.
16) Don't force us to jettison all the skills we have learnt on TOCA 1 -
ie keep the basic driving and physics model broadly similar but fix the
problem where the front wheel drive cars sometimes behave like rear wheel
ones. And make the four drive Audis behave as such.
17) Save best laps achieved in qualification and not just time-trial ones.
18) Allow best lap to be loaded from a directory of choice. It's a pain
having to faff around backing up own best laps and copying downloaded ones
in directory.
19) Optionally give us more laps to qualify from.
20) Make all levels of championship hard level not easy ones easy and
later ones harder. Or let us select the degree of difficulty of the
championship.
21) Have the two races at a meet a sprint race and a feature race just
like the 1998 season.
22) Include the independants and perhaps change and improve the car
performance for the works models during the season but not for the
independants so that they fall off down the ranking during the season just
like the real thing.
23) Don't kick drivers out of the championship at least not out of new
only hard level one.
24) Telemetry so we can analyse are race performance (not out race setup).
25) Brake lights on ghost car so we can see where it's braking.
26) Flags yellow blue etc just like real race.
27) Have lapped cars let you pass and certainly not try and knock you off.
28) Road graphics that show the tyre marks of other drivers.
29) Real time rendered cars.
And what TOCA should not lose are:
1) The level of driving realism it has. People claim that once you begin
to lose the car there's no way back. I say pratice more. The tyres do
squeal and the car does jerk before you lose it but only fractionally so
and you CAN recover and if you start to spin - you just have to develop
the reactions and knowledge of what to do. Please don't make it too easy.
2) The simplicity of the interface. Please don't bury us with layers of
car setups. Some enjoy this - but there are plenty of sims to satisfy
them. In any case how can you model the setting when the car parts are
constantly changing through the season. I want a realistic sim without all
that. Please leave us TOCA and leave the complex setting to the
super-sims. Let us drive world rating laps without having to get under the
bonnet (hood).
3) Don't make it arcadey like Grand Turismo, Need-for-speed or NICE -
there are plenty of them as well. I hate the cartoon skies, lavaland and
and all that. Please leave them as optional extras and leave us models of
real tracks, real cars and real championships. By all means add extra
tracks. How about the Aussie Touring Car championship - that's really
close to the British one. But is you do include it setup the cars to match
it and keep the Aussie cars to the Aussie championship and the British
ones to the BTCC.
4) Preserve the same car handling in easy modes as ***es. Don't make
an easy handling mode and a difficult one.
5) Don't get drawn down silly paths like off-road racing. Make people buy
Colin McRae rally if they want that. Or some arcade game.
I'll probably think of more things immediately I hit the send button. I
would be more than willing to give you as much assistance as I can. If
you're looking for beta-testers....
Thanks very much for TOCA - you've given a lot of us a lot of pleasure.
PJ
> Official announcement from Codemasters:
> We are currently developing TOCA 2 for release this Christmas.
> Although the design brief has already been worked out, we would be
> interested to hear posts from you on the following two points:
> 1, What new features would you like to see in the game. I should point
> out that _every_ message posted in this news group has already been
> read and the points raised addressed, so there is no need to re-post
> old points/messages. i.e. we will have native graphics card versions
> of TOCA 2 including Glide, all the tracks unlocked from the beginning,
> car set-up, pits, mirrors, arcade/simulation modes etc...
> 2, What hardware problems did you have with TOCA 2 and what solutions,
> if any, did you find. (controllers, graphics cards, sound cards,
> general machine problems etc).
> Thanks,
> Gavin Raeburn
> TOCA 2 producer
