rec.autos.simulators

You guys just don't understand the bottom line. Although Nascar 2 is
easily the most buggy piece of commercial software at this level ever
released, Papyrus has explained over and over there was just not enough
time to fix all the bugs and get in all the missing features before
Christmas.

As much as 40% of annual sales come during Christmas so missing
Christmas was just never an option. Try and explain to the suits
upstairs that Nascar 2 was going to be a few days late so you could get
the in 'save race' feature. Yea, sure. Who was going to sign that memo.

Lets examine the options here.
1) Nascar 2 ships on time and everyone still has a job.
2) Nascar 2 misses Christmas and no more milk in the baby's bottle.
Duh...

The good news is that NASCAR will require that any bugs affecting the
NRO be corrected before the NRO goes on line. As for the others, well,
thats whats Nascar 3 is for.

So come on guys, try to see this from Papyrus's view. It was your $40.00
bucks against their twenty million. Be realistic.

--
Chuck Stuart - Mesquite TX USA  
RaceTime utility program for Nascar1/Indycar2.  
http://www.racesimcentral.net/~cstuart/

Papyrus had the option of holding the game until after Christmas to fix
the bugs, but they chose to release it as is (a bad move IMHO).  They
should have taken a look at one of the most anticipated games of the
year, Diablo.   Blizzard was trying as hard as they can to get this
game out (including employees canceling holiday trips and sleeping in
the office), but it's very unlikely that the game will make it out by
Christmas.  They are doing us a favor by not releasing a game that they
know has bugs.  Instead they are sacrificing the added sales that come
with the Christmas season, in favor of releasing a quality product.
This is the kind of dedication to the consumer that more companies
should have.  Papyrus is starting to fit right in with Sierra, caring
only about the bottom line and not the consumer.

--

Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
The IWCCCARS Project: Q & A Representative
Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

While I'm unaware at what goes on over at Blizzard, I can assure you that
N2 wasn't released just for the sake of Christmas...True, as Chuck points
out that nearly 40% of Papy's sales are during the holiday season, and
without these sales, N2 would either die a slow and painful death (due to
a slow release), or bug-fixes would continuously be delayed (due to lack
of
funds), but Papy's boys have also given-up their time and weekends - these
are the realities of the computer industry, and not exclusive to one or
two
companies.

Whatever you (or others) may think, NASCAR-2 is a solid product IMO...
The bugs are annoying, yet trivial, and easily fixed.  The released
product
has never crashed on my system, and I can assure you that I've put N2
through its paces.  I've also never enjoyed anything as much as N2, and
most of this comes from modem-play...I might have had a pretty good
time at GP2 had MPS put more effort into this feature.  Sure, you can save
a race, but you can't easily race your buddy...unless you use null-modem.

Also, you won't see too many companies sticking their collective necks
out here on the various newsgroups - Jim, Ed, Adam, Mike, and several
others are always around to answer questions, lend a hand, and
occasionally
shoot the bull...However, if people continue to bad-mouth them (or even
tell
them how to run their business), you can bet that they'll just get tired
of
trying and not return here.

My main point is that quite a few of these threads concerning N2's bugs
are a waste of bandwidth - and I'm as guilty as the next - so it's
probably
time to give it a rest.  Let's give the guys at Papyrus a break so they
can
do what they do best - their job.  :)

We now return you to our regularly scheduled program now in progress...

Best Regards,

Marc

Marc J. Nelson
Sim Racing News - USA
http://members.aol.com/simracing/index.htm

--
Chuck Stuart - Mesquite TX USA  
RaceTime utility program for Nascar1/Indycar2.  
http://www.metronet.com/~cstuart/

Well, I would like to give the Papyrus guys the benefit of the doubt,
but this is exactly the same song-and-dance that we got with Indycar2.

ICR2 shipped with known bugs in order to meet the XMas deadline, and
they said would soon be patching the problems, however, we didn't get
a patch until 9 months later. Even after the patches there were some
serious and obvious bugs that haven't been fixed (yellow flag bugs) and
it now appears that ICR2 is an orphan product now that they have gone on
to other projects.

I really hope that Papyrus doesn't do the same thing with Nascar2.
I still bought it after hearing about the improved AI and fixed
tracks, but I am no longer a blind loyal buyer of their software.
Their support of Nascar 2 will show whether they are committed
to putting out a decent product or not, and since I think Nascar
has a bigger widespread fanbase than the more cult-following of ICR2
the Papyrus folks will have much more to lose if they make the same
mistakes supporting and patching Nascar 2 in the same manner that they
abandoned the people who bought ICR2.

I really hope they learned their lesson with ICR2. Although I am having
fun with Nascar2 as it is, I am counting on the bugs being fixed and to
one day enjoying a polished product.

Cheers.

--John
--
 Note: my real e-mail address is below. Delete the asterisks.
------------------------------+--------------------------

  Seattle, Washington USA.    |    http://www.cool.com/~jsilva

easily the most buggy piece of commercial software at this level ever
released, Papyrus has explained over and over there was just not enough
time to fix all the bugs and get in all the missing features before
Christmas.<<

Well what kind of lame excuse is that? that's like buying a car and the
dealer says to you, SORRY Sir but we didn't have time to put in the engine,
it's Christmas you know and we must sell to keep our jobs. BS!!!!!!!. The
question is when are you people going to QUIT defending these software
companies for these lame excuse's about producing half programmed programs.
GEES!!!. Just with everything else we buy we want it RIGHT and not some
excuse about someone's job on the line. Each company and there employees
must be help responsible for their products and it IS NOT up to us to take
the FALL.

days late so you could get the in 'save race' feature. Yea, sure. Who was
going to sign that memo.<<

If you can't keep up with the BIG DOGS, stay on the porch.

bucks against their twenty million. Be realistic.<<

Yeah let's be realistic, how did YOU come up with this 20 million dollar
figure?. Also don't YOU care as a consumer about the products you buy? the
cost is not the issue here. It doesn't matter if N-2 was $40.00 or $400.00,
it should be right  the first time and BUG FREE. I've been in racing for
years and I like this game as good as the next man, but I'm NOT going to
stand by and have this SUPER BUG software just thrown at me.

SG

Marc has a good point here. I am presently working as a Quality Software
Engineer. The project I am working on I cna say we have bugs like every
other project has. You have to weight the bug priorty (does it crash the
game or is it a minor nuisance) against the cost of not shipping. For
example: If the bugs are a minor nuisance and the user can get around
them real easy than the product should be shipped. Fix it during the
maintenence cycle and release a upgrade or patch. Now if there are 100
minor nuisance bugs and it hurts the users confidence in the software
than yes hold up the shipping for that product until the number of
nuisance bugs are reduced.

I am a N2 user and looking at the product as a Software Quality Engineer
I can say I believe papyrus did make the right decision. This is only My
Humble Opinion.

Remember you can never make perfect software but you can try to make it
as robust as possible with a limited cyle time and development money.

I think it is totaly unfair to call N2 SUPER BUG software. The game has
never crashed on me once. How about you? While N2 does have it's troubles
it is easily playable & fun. The same cannot be said for a real SUPER BUG
piece of garbage called BattleCruiser 3000 AD.

  With all this talks about N2 being 'super buggy', I tend to disagree.
Virtually all of the bugs I've read about or seen are quite minor. To me,
a major bug would be the computer bombing out, scrambled graphics, etc..
(I don't really count the IE mangling, as that was more to do with the TEN
install, not N2.)

  So far, I haven't seen a full list of 'bugs' or 'quirks'. And I mean
things that don't work right, not items promised but missing. This is what
I can think of off the top of my head:
1) You cannot load custom car setups unless you do a full install.
2) You are sometimes towed through walls or other cars.
3) The spotter sometimes get's stuck on 'Go High, Go Low'
4) The AI cars sometimes dart toward the pits, then change their mind and
pop back out to the track.

  Mabe someone could keep track of these, and make an 'official' list.

Personally, I think N2 is a great improvement over N1 or even ICR2. The
release version is also much easier on the computer than the Beta was. On
my P133 w/ 4M Millenium, I rarely have any graphics turning off.
(Everything is Auto except skid marks.)

I agree.  The content is really good but I took it off my machine because
of having to spend (waste) my time trying to get it to work with "off the
shelf" hardware.  I would rate the underlying parts as a piece of "hack,
early eighties" software.  The MechWarrior2 run great on the Win
95......Sierra mis-read the market and now the finger pointing begins.

Chuck, I would disagree with you on one point! The most buggy
piece of software I have seen of late is NHL97! Great game play, great
graphics but flawed extensively in support for modems, game pads, player AI
etc. They released a patch that was almost totally worthless and there
support is non-existant and I can't remember the last time I saw Electronic
Arts on one of the news groups. I realize this isn't the right news group
for this but I think Papyrus beats this record quite easily!

Pete

Eric, I would disagree on a couple of points. First, I do
know for a fact that employees from Papyrus work 24 hours a day if
it is required to get the work done. I can atest to this from first
hand experience! I also know there are many dedicated and caring
employees working there. Most if not all of the employees actually
extensively use and race their products and have league races going
on after hours in which most seem to partcipate. I have seen posts
in this group claiming that they aren't serious racers and don't
listen to our needs. I know this is not the case! But I also know
that financial constraints and decrees from Head Office play a
large role in what does and doesn't get done. I'm sure if they
could say and do all the things they would like we would have a
different looking game. But lets face it, smaller companies that
may be owned by employees might have some greater latitude to the
end product but eventually the bottom line still comes into being.
It is an unfortunate fact of life!

Pete

P.S. Haven't seen you in awhile! Are you coming back for second season
of Night Owl?

Marc, a well thought piece with which I'm in total agreement with
you on. I also know for a fact that Papyrus will look at others software
and if somebody comes up with a better way of creating a good sim, will
certainly consider what they have done. I don't think anyone or any group
pretends to exclusively be the only ones to produce good ideas or good
software and can't learn from what others are doing. That's why I
would suggest to all those that want a good end product take up Jim's
offer of forwarding to him ideas and suggestions for the upcoming Nascar 3.
If Papyrus has enough lead time, I'm sure there can be no excuse other
than financial constraints for excluding a good idea. I was very fortunate
a few months ago to get to Boston and visit Papyrus and it changed my
perspective on many things. And even though I won't always agree with
the way somethings are done I do have a better understanding of why!

Pete

What???  I did NOT install the TEN software,  and my IE was totally
trashed.  Scrambled Graphics?  That's what I got when I retried to run the
auto-update program,  along with Windows 95 losing track of my IDE CD-ROM,
and dropping to DOS mode rather than 32 bit disk access on my Western
Digital drives.  The program was rushed through beta and should not have
come out this Christmas.

You won't see a full list of 'quirks' on this program for a wile,  as new
ones pop up every day.  Have you tried racing with a modem with N2 yet?
Try running a modem race,  run through the qualifying, and qualify in first
or second place.  If you were the caller,  you start the race at the back
of the pack.  Sounds like a bug to me,  but who am,  just another Sierra
post-production beta tester.

The closest I have seen to a list of things wrong with N2 is located at:

http://www.sequoia-dev.com/Hawaii/Features/N2FAQ.txt

But this still leaves some items out.

Yes,  the program is nicer looking,  but they rushed it to market,  and we
are the ones that have to re-install other software (for me IE 3.01, and
Windows 95 again),  luckily the Win95 install only had to be installed over
the old one,  and not a total "from scratch" installation.  Why couldn't
they take the lead from other companies,  for instance Hewlett Packard's
"Tape Access Software" that was supposed to be mailed out in the beginning
of November.  They stopped shipment as soon as they discovered bugs with it
that had not been detected in beta.  Sierra, on the other hand is stamping
out CD-ROMs as fast as they can,  hoping they can come up with a patch
'someday'.

Well,  maybe we'll just get tired of post production beta testing their
software for them and quit buying anything from Sierra.  Nascar Racing 2
had a chance to be everything N1 was, but no matter what anyone says,  it
was a Christmas rush job.  Beta testers have even said that when it comes
down from corporate that the program is shipped on such and such day,
that's the day it goes out, whether it is ready or not.

You also say that you race it by modem.  Do you qualify during a modem
race?  If you do,  does the calling party get shoved to the back?  If not,
how are you accomplishing this, as everyone else has a problem with this if
they qualify for a race?