rec.autos.simulators

by **David G Fishe** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 05:56:53

> On Sat, 16 Feb 2002 00:09:37 +1100, Byron Forbes

> >And then
> >I remind myself that even if I get this pile of ***going that I wont
> >be racing it on the net! Are they kidding???????? Have they heard about
> >GPL or even Nascar 3?????? Or how about even Nascar 2 ?????
> Some people believe the FIA forbids a good working multiplayer.
> Some people believe in Santa too.

So you think Schumi and Ian Bell are full of shit?

David G Fisher

by **Rob Adam** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 06:07:55

> > On Sat, 16 Feb 2002 00:09:37 +1100, Byron Forbes

> > >And then
> > >I remind myself that even if I get this pile of ***going that I wont
> > >be racing it on the net! Are they kidding???????? Have they heard about
> > >GPL or even Nascar 3?????? Or how about even Nascar 2 ?????
> > Some people believe the FIA forbids a good working multiplayer.
> > Some people believe in Santa too.

> So you think Schumi and Ian Bell are full of shit?

> David G Fisher

Not full of shit, but not full of proof either.

I DO believe there is some constraint somewhere preventing full IP
multiplayer in modern F1 games, but I'd love to see an explanation. "A
friend of a friend heard that Bernie said so" is not proof.

If they were allowed to, they'd do it (it's not rocket science). But WHY
aren't they allowed? Show me the contract.

by **Andre Warring** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 06:35:34

On Fri, 15 Feb 2002 20:56:53 GMT, "David G Fisher"

>> Some people believe the FIA forbids a good working multiplayer.
>> Some people believe in Santa too.

>So you think Schumi and Ian Bell are full of shit?

>David G Fisher

I can imagine FIA forbidding multiplayer in an F1 sim.
I cannot imagine FIA allowing multiplayer in an F1 sim as long as it
is ***as hell.

Andre

by **Andre Warring** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 06:38:02

On Fri, 15 Feb 2002 21:07:55 GMT, "Rob Adams"

>If they were allowed to, they'd do it (it's not rocket science).

I think it must be very difficult to make a good multiplayer Rob.
Can you name me any other racing sim with a good (full field)
multiplayer besides Papy sims?

I read in different reviews that even in multiplayer-only Motor City
the multiplayer is ***:-/

Andre

by **Rob Adam** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 06:45:07

> On Fri, 15 Feb 2002 21:07:55 GMT, "Rob Adams"

> >If they were allowed to, they'd do it (it's not rocket science).

> I think it must be very difficult to make a good multiplayer Rob.
> Can you name me any other racing sim with a good (full field)
> multiplayer besides Papy sims?

> I read in different reviews that even in multiplayer-only Motor City
> the multiplayer is ***:-/

> Andre

Nascar Heat, Viper, and SCGT are supposed to be good also (I haven't tried
them). But in general on-line racing shouldn't require any different code
than other on-line games like first person shooters and role-playing games.
The bandwidth and latency requirements might be stricter (no idea), but not
by orders of magnitude.

I'm not privy to any inside details, but GPL as first produced was NOT
intended as an on-line game. They provided LAN and modem support but did not
develop multiplayer specifically for the Internet. Only when everybody
started playing on the Net did they patch it to improve that feature.

To me that implies that the majority of the development time was spent on
the physics model, the graphics, and track modeling, etc. I'm not
downplaying their achievement, but I'm sticking by my "rocket science"
statement. If Papy could develop such a good on-line component without it
being their #1 priority, so can the other developers. And those developers
can steal ideas from the existing games. They haven't done this for a
reason. Many have claimed it was because the FIA forbids it, but other
reasons exist too: maybe their market analysis told them it wasn't
profitable. Maybe their deadlines were too tight and multiplayer got
scrapped. There are lots of reasons, but it's interesting that NO F1 games
have decent multiplayer.

Ruud, and others, what's your take on this? Is the multiplayer stuff that
hard?

by **Andre Warring** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 07:04:42

On Fri, 15 Feb 2002 21:45:07 GMT, "Rob Adams"

>Nascar Heat, Viper, and SCGT are supposed to be good also (I haven't tried
>them). But in general on-line racing shouldn't require any different code
>than other on-line games like first person shooters and role-playing games.
>The bandwidth and latency requirements might be stricter (no idea), but not
>by orders of magnitude.

I never tried those online either, but Viper is made by some ex-papy
employees, that explains a lot :) and I just asked on VROC if the SCGT
multiplayer was any good and everybody started laughing.

And they did a good job.. a shame there was no server support build in
gpl, thankfully very soon some people made that, but bottom line is
that if the game has crappy multiplayer support, no single user addon
can be really usefull then.
Or does Relay support full-field multiplayer races in F1 2001 now?

I am convinced the deadline reason is the correct one. I think
multiplayer needs a LOT of time and even more a LOT of testing before
it's really good. And since most people buy racing games even if it
has no multiplayer, I can see the reason why developers don't put too
much time in it. F1 2001 was allready released in beta-stage, no way
they had time to spend on multiplayer.
The FIA explanation is such a nice excuse.

Andre

by **David G Fishe** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 07:16:12

> > On Fri, 15 Feb 2002 21:07:55 GMT, "Rob Adams"

> > >If they were allowed to, they'd do it (it's not rocket science).

> > I think it must be very difficult to make a good multiplayer Rob.
> > Can you name me any other racing sim with a good (full field)
> > multiplayer besides Papy sims?

> > I read in different reviews that even in multiplayer-only Motor City
> > the multiplayer is ***:-/

> > Andre

> Nascar Heat, Viper, and SCGT are supposed to be good also (I haven't tried
> them). But in general on-line racing shouldn't require any different code
> than other on-line games like first person shooters and role-playing
games.
> The bandwidth and latency requirements might be stricter (no idea), but
not
> by orders of magnitude.

> I'm not privy to any inside details, but GPL as first produced was NOT
> intended as an on-line game. They provided LAN and modem support but did
not
> develop multiplayer specifically for the Internet. Only when everybody
> started playing on the Net did they patch it to improve that feature.

> To me that implies that the majority of the development time was spent on
> the physics model, the graphics, and track modeling, etc. I'm not
> downplaying their achievement, but I'm sticking by my "rocket science"
> statement. If Papy could develop such a good on-line component without it
> being their #1 priority, so can the other developers. And those developers
> can steal ideas from the existing games. They haven't done this for a
> reason. Many have claimed it was because the FIA forbids it, but other
> reasons exist too: maybe their market analysis told them it wasn't
> profitable. Maybe their deadlines were too tight and multiplayer got
> scrapped. There are lots of reasons, but it's interesting that NO F1 games
> have decent multiplayer.

> Ruud, and others, what's your take on this? Is the multiplayer stuff that
> hard?

Ubi could just hire some of the coders from one of their games here
http://www.racesimcentral.net/***Zone/ and have them do the multiplay for F1RC2.
Right? Money talks. There's obviously restrictions by the FIA. If it's true
that it costs 10 million for a non-exclusive F1 license and another 5
million for a non-exclusive multiplay license, then it's hardly surprising
we don't see full field multiplay in F1 sims. Papy does it in their sims
because the costs have to be so much lower for the licensing.

David G Fisher

by **Andre Warring** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 07:21:32

On Fri, 15 Feb 2002 22:16:12 GMT, "David G Fisher"

>Ubi could just hire some of the coders from one of their games here
>http://www.racesimcentral.net/***Zone/ and have them do the multiplay for F1RC2.
>Right? Money talks. There's obviously restrictions by the FIA. If it's true
>that it costs 10 million for a non-exclusive F1 license and another 5
>million for a non-exclusive multiplay license, then it's hardly surprising
>we don't see full field multiplay in F1 sims. Papy does it in their sims
>because the costs have to be so much lower for the licensing.

>David G Fisher

Ok but why is the multiplayer in F1 2001 so crappy and unstable then?
Why not a 6-player maximum multiplayer that works good and stable?

Andre

by **David G Fishe** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 10:51:58

> On Fri, 15 Feb 2002 22:16:12 GMT, "David G Fisher"

> Ok but why is the multiplayer in F1 2001 so crappy and unstable then?
> Why not a 6-player maximum multiplayer that works good and stable?

> Andre

Well I haven't found it to be crappy and unstable. Up to six works decently.
Maybe what it is now is all that ISI thought they could get away with under
their agreement with the FIA.

David G Fisher

by **Eldre** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 13:23:20

>If they were allowed to, they'd do it (it's not rocket science). But WHY
>aren't they allowed? Show me the contract.

I'd like to see MP in the games, and I'm curious about the restrictions too.
But, they really don't have to show us a DAMN thing, and we can't make them.
It sucks, but I think it's realistic.

Eldred
--
Dale Earnhardt, Sr. R.I.P. 1951-2001
Homepage - http://www.umich.edu/~epickett
GPLRank - under construction...

Never argue with an idiot. He brings you down to his level, then beats you
with experience...
Remove SPAM-OFF to reply.

by **Byron Forbe** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 14:50:19

> Ubi could just hire some of the coders from one of their games here
> http://www.racesimcentral.net/***Zone/ and have them do the multiplay for F1RC2.
> Right? Money talks. There's obviously restrictions by the FIA. If it's true
> that it costs 10 million for a non-exclusive F1 license and another 5
> million for a non-exclusive multiplay license, then it's hardly surprising
> we don't see full field multiplay in F1 sims. Papy does it in their sims
> because the costs have to be so much lower for the licensing.

> David G Fisher

One thing's for sure. Whatever the reason is it's idiotic!

by **Byron Forbe** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 15:18:11

> On Sat, 16 Feb 2002 00:09:37 +1100, Byron Forbes

> > Then my experience with GP 3. Hmmmm. Didn't work out of the box
> >with V2. Are they kidding?????
> Err.. the v2 was allready prehistoric when GP3 was released :)
> Same as F1 2001 not supporting v3 cards. We want our games to be
> better, so we need to buy better hardware too.

Are you kidding? I'll bet there were more V2 cards in computers when
GP3 was released than anything else. For about 12 months after it's
release the V2 was THE card to have. Anything else was a joke! D3D was a
joke even. Even when the first TNT came on the scene, about half of all
games had native 3dfx coding. Some had nothing else! This only started
to change at about the time GP3 was released!
Whether a V2 was good enough to run gp3 optimally is irrelevant
anyway. They would probably have been better off from a sales point of
view if the game never supported AMD cpu"s!

by **na_bike** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 17:34:34

On Sat, 16 Feb 2002 17:18:11 +1100, Byron Forbes

>> > Then my experience with GP 3. Hmmmm. Didn't work out of the box
>> >with V2. Are they kidding?????
>> Err.. the v2 was allready prehistoric when GP3 was released :)
>> Same as F1 2001 not supporting v3 cards. We want our games to be
>> better, so we need to buy better hardware too.

> Are you kidding? I'll bet there were more V2 cards in computers when
>GP3 was released than anything else. For about 12 months after it's
>release the V2 was THE card to have. Anything else was a joke! D3D was a
>joke even. Even when the first TNT came on the scene, about half of all
>games had native 3dfx coding. Some had nothing else! This only started
>to change at about the time GP3 was released!

Huh? GP3 was released in late July 2000. The same month I bought a
GF1DDR on discount for $140, because the GF2 had been out for three
months or so, the GF1DDR since oct '99.

The V2 was released almost 30 months earlier, in feb 1998. The V2
*really* started sagging by the turn of the millenium, even by
simplaying standards, nevermind anything else(like Q3, released late
'99).

Funny how I'm feeling like quoting ancient history when it was just a
mere year and a half ago... :)

??

by **Andre Warring** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 21:10:18

On Sat, 16 Feb 2002 17:18:11 +1100, Byron Forbes

> Are you kidding? I'll bet there were more V2 cards in computers when

<snip>

I'm not kidding.. when GP3 was released I allready had a V3, and I
bought a V3 card because it had dropped so much in price, because GF
cards were allready on the market and V3 cards were getting 'old'
('old' is very relative in the computer industry :)
I allways buy my hardware when something new is on the market and the
prices of the 'old' hardware start to drop.
Going to buy a GF3 soon :)

Andre

by **Woodie** » Sun, 17 Feb 2002 21:35:40

>>If they were allowed to, they'd do it (it's not rocket science).

>I think it must be very difficult to make a good multiplayer Rob.
>Can you name me any other racing sim with a good (full field)
>multiplayer besides Papy sims?

Maybe Bernie isn't as dumb as we thought. Could be he reads RAS and he's
denying multiplayer until Papyrus asks him for it.

Don McCorkle

rec.autos.simulators

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