rec.autos.simulators

I haven't had that many people respond to the poll, but as you can tell, so
far the results show a definite pull for Force-feedback and the ability to
race the GP2 and GP3 cars.

I know most of us would like to see ALL of the above worked on.. but if you
had to tell Papy what they should work on first, which ONE would you really
want the most?.. who knows.. I may even send the results off to Papyrus!

Vote on my page (it keeps a tally), and leave your comments here.I'd
personally go for a Nurburgring Warmup loop ENABLED patch (so that you
wouldn't have to do an entire lap to warm up.. just do the pit loop as they
DID during the 1967 season.)

doktorB
http://www.racesimcentral.net/~drbryan/gpl
-- PDPI L4 * exclusive * deal: L4 Digital Gamecard
   for $80.95 with passwords from my site.

Just though of another thing, in multiplayer mode, show how far the person
inforont/behind is.... kind of like in Viper Racing (a very nice feature with
which you can tell how for the opponent is even though you can't see him, as
well as you can tell when they spin.) Again this could be displayed in the
"black area" and toggled with a hotkey.

Regards,
David Mocnay

Does anyone know if at the Nurburgring they had a midpoint timing/pitboard
position, a bit like at Le Mans' signalling pits?

It would be very useful to get a midpoint position, say, at the Karussel
during a race!

- Michael

I'm sure some would welcome that addition but my response would be a
very strong "Bleuch!" :-)  I even prefer the "one lap delayed"
information of the gap.

The idea of knowing, real time, how far back your opponent is lies in
the domain of the arcade IMO, which is fine if that's your cup of tea.
Part of the demand of racing though is the accumulation, processing
and analysis of the information presented to you - did you really see
a glimpse of a Lotus in your mirrors as you exited La Source? How fast
does that mean he is closing in on your lead? It will be another 3:30
before you find out for sure, and by then he/she will have closed
further on you. With three laps to go can you afford to drive easily
for the win, do you have to push harder and maybe risk an off when you
really weren't being caught? Should you let them through and not risk
an accident?

Collecting and weighing up the options is a big part of the racing
experience, and I personally feel it would detract if the correct
information was just presented to you.

Cheers!
John

First, a utility that allows you to keep a saved race after you've
completed it.  I can not for the life of me figure out why Papy chose to
delete them.  I would think that this would be pretty easy impliment.

Second, the ability should exist to run any damage model in any race
length.

  Perhaps Papy made things the way they are with offline leagues in mind.
If that's the case, what they should have done is gone the same route that
EASports has.  A "commissioner" creates a season and sets all of the
options.  The players then download the season file from the commisioner's
pc, run the event and upload the results back.  I know that's a whole lot
more code than Papyrus probably had time to write, but if that was their
motivation for damage & saved races, then they should have left the
settings like N2/ICR2.

-Bill
--
Bill Mette      | "A person is smart.  People are dumb."
MCSNet, Chicago |                        - K MiB

You can export the race results so that you have a permanent record of the
race results, and if you have enough RAM (I don't), you can quite easily
save a (short) race in its entirety.

What exactly was it that you were asking?
Just curious!

I like the "commisioner" idea... hadn't heard of it before, but you're
right - that would be a great little utility.

doktorB

Eric

"Races cannot be saved, but practice times can be, so you can race any number
of times with the same starting grid without having to re-qualify. Once
you complete that race, however, the saved grid is deleted."
                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

  Is Randy confused?  Am I confused?  I'm probably just wasting bandwidth
here as I have yet to actually attempt re-running a saved race that I
completed.  So far none of my qulifying efforts have been anything worth
saving. :-(  I apologize if I've been wasting your time with this.

% "Races cannot be saved, but practice times can be, so you can race any number
% of times with the same starting grid without having to re-qualify. Once
% you complete that race, however, the saved grid is deleted."
%                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

%   Is Randy confused?  Am I confused?  I'm probably just wasting bandwidth
% here as I have yet to actually attempt re-running a saved race that I
% completed.  So far none of my qulifying efforts have been anything worth
% saving. :-(  I apologize if I've been wasting your time with this.

Well, at least you can do it the old fashioned way ("earn it" <G>).
Save your practice session, exit GPL, copy the track.SVG in your
players' folder.  This way you can keep numerous grids and re-run them
whenever, just copy the copied file back to track.SVG.

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Not at all, Bill! I just didn't understand what you were asking, but your
follow-up made things clear. I see your point now - that would be a handly
little addition to GPL, especially for those of us with not enough time in
the day to play GPL as much as we would like.

Whilst it would be very useful, I can see some people saying "NO!!.. it's
not real!" - and I see their point. If you mess up the first corner, and end
up in the dirt upside down, and have no shift-R available, too bad... same
thing would have happened to Clark back in '67.

How about this for a compromise? If a patch were made for the above, then
just limit it to "Novice" mode. I say Novice mode, anything should go, but
as you progress the difficulty, it should simulate "real" life.

Just my 2.. we'll add it to the list of "wanted" patches!

doktorB

together at any given track and one person leads while the other person tries
to catch and pass. When that happens racing carries on until the fastest
person gets too far or someone spins, in which case we wait again. We call
this having fun :-) and that is what we do until we become so proffecient that

we can all lap within roughly the same time lap after lap... then we race
properly (racing with uneven players is no fun...it's like hotlaping to me).
I'll give you another one... similar to the above "game" but at Nurbugring...
Here no one really knows the full track and there are so many up/downs and
turns that a lot of the time the other person can be only a few seconds behind

but you don't know that but they can catch up at the next section that they
know better... or they spun and you don't know. See, we want to be resonably
close and have some fun racing/passing each other (I'm sure a lot of people do

this) and this "distance" information would come in very handy for that. That
is why I would like it only as a simple fix and toggle... nothing flash that
interferes with the game 'cos I love GPL as it is. Another place this wouod
help you is to know when the other person is next to you... we're still having

hard with this time.

You probably noticed... this doesn't need to be "time" difference, "distance"
difference would even be better.
Best regards,
David Mocnay