rec.autos.simulators

I purchased the ABC Sports Indy Racing today, primarily for the midget and
sprint racing.This is the worst game that I have ever seen, nothing but a toy,
no sim to it.

The Mario Andretti racing of years ago was 100 times better than this piece of
trash. If you buy it, you're getting screwed just as I did. You got me once
ABC but never again

*sigh*...well, go back and get your refund then.  

By the way, anyone that listens to a person like this without
requiring a little more in the way of details to prove that the person
has actually spent time with the game or knows what their talking
about is just plain silly.

Randy

Randy Magruder whined:

Obviously you MUST work for ABC.  You are the only one I've seen that
has anything good to say about it.  Yes, I've spent time with it.  It's
trash, plain & simple.  Tell me there is any comparison between the AI
in this *sim*<bfg> and the AI in, say, ICR2 & I'll do nothing but laugh
dead in your face.  I'm sure plenty others will join in.

Cheers,

Chuck Kandler  #70
Budget Racing/K&S Racing

Again, why don't you substantiate your arguments?  I challenge your
facts.  The AI in Indy Racing is not stellar.  Its average at best,
but its not trash.   Both the AI in CPR and in Indy Racing suffers
from the "ramming" problem where the cars ram you more than they avoid
you, but when you're actually dicing with them at speed, Indy Racing's
AI is more competent at going around you than it is in CPR, and unlike
ICR2, it doesn't make as many kamikaze dives inside of you.

Anyway, if you want to say its trash go right ahead.  But be prepared
to back up the statement with facts.

I welcome anyone who wants to join in as long as they have data on
their side.

Randy

Okay Randy, here we go. Now I will agree that posts like "this game sux",
or "back to the store" with no facts or reasons to back it up, are not
informative or helpful to users of r.a.s, however, neither are positive
posts with no facts to back it up. Please give us some reasons why you like
ABC's Indy Racing.

Yes the AI in ABC's Indy Racing, and MS CART Precision Racing are both bad,
and Indy Racing may be a little better than CPR, but that does not make a
bad game good, just because it is better than another bad game. AI is more
competent than CPR? CPR's AI is absolutely incompetent, so I don't think
that is a good argument. I have spent probably thousands of hours with
Indycar 2 in the last 2 years, and there are some AI problems(Surfers
Paradise, Phoenix) with that sim, but after about 10 hours with ABC's Indy
Racing, I had seen enough ramming by the AI(the cars seem to be on a
track), to decide to take it back.

Again, I agree that I like to see why someone does or does not like a game.
So to put it simply here are the reasons I did not like ABC Indy Racing and
took it back to the store:

- Poor frame rate. I have a P166 32MB RAM, Canopus Pure 3D(3DFX card with
6MB ram) and Intergraph Intense 3D(Rendition Verite). Now I realize my
setup is getting outdated, but I did not buy a 3DFX card to have the poor
graphics performance shown in Indy Racing, especially when I get such good
results from Ubisoft's F1 Racing and POD, as well as EA's Need for Speed
2SE, and MotoRacer. The year old Rendition version of Indycar 2 is still
the most beautiful and smooth running "sim", I have ever played. I can run
full details with a full field of cars and achieve consistent frame rates
between 25-30. I was unable to show the frame rate on Indy Racing, but my
experience tells me it was not close to 25-30, and just like CART Precision
Racing, makes huge drops depending on number of cars and where you are on a
given track. For me, a racing sim is all about the ability to achieve
smooth, consistent frame rates with the detail necessary to give you that
sense of "being there". Indy Racing just did not do that for me. Could you
tell me your  PC setup, and what type of graphic options you were able to
run the game at and achieve good performance?

-Poor AI. Again, maybe not trash as stated in an earlier post, but not
acceptable for me. The AI is inconsistent and runs on rails, many times
acting as if you are not there. Even on straights I had them ramming into
me, not just going into a turn. Not as frustrating as CART Precision
Racing's non-existant AI, but frustrating nonetheless.

-No crash model. Now I may have been doing something wrong here, but I was
never able to crash my car at any difficulty setting. It did not matter if
I was running Indy cars or Sprint cars, full speed into the wall would not
produce a crash in any way. Again, I expect more than this in a sim or
arcade racing game. It was just too forgiving.

-Poor Control. I have both a TSW and Thrustmaster Nascar Pro steering
wheel, and I was never able to get either of them setup to run to my
satisfaction. Very loose and unstable. Again, this could have been my
fault, but I have been using steering wheels with racing sims since the
original Papyrus Indycar and Microprose Grand Prix sims, and it should not
be this difficult to get a wheel working properly.

-Unstable Multiplayer. I though that it was pretty cool that the game comes
with a 2nd CD to use for multiplayer, and in fact, I have 2 PC's with null
modem cable and ethernet network connections. However, I was never able to
run a multiplayer game without getting locked up on one of the machines, or
getting crashed out of the program altogether. Again, could have been my
fault, but I am becoming tired of having to spend so much time tweaking a
game to get it up and running correctly. Windows 95 and Direct X so far
have only added problems to the *** community as far as graphics, sound,
joystick control, etc.

Anyway, these were the main reasons I did not like the game. I did like the
Sprint cars, and would have probably kept it for that feature IF I could
have had better multiplayer performance. Have we gotten to the point to
where we so easily accept games with major problems or shortcomings. Your
review of Microsoft's CART Precision
Racing(http://www.racesimcentral.net/)
was far too forgiving for such an incomplete package.
You did point out that games major faults, however, in your final summary
you state:

"On a bright note, the development team at Microsoft and Terminal Reality
have made a point of maintaining a                             presence
online, have insisted that they are working on fixing CART's problems, and
are committed to the                             product, long-term. This
is great news for the future, and I personally am so impressed with what
they've done thus                               far, that I'm willing to be
patient a little while longer! This is great news for the future, and I
personally am so impressed with what they've done thus far, that I'm
willing to be patient a little while longer!"

This reeks of corporate ***kissing, especially given the fact that
Microsoft provided you with a 3DFX card to do that review.
At least it was not as ridiculously positive as the review at The
Adrenaline Vault(http://www.racesimcentral.net/).
I think it is this kind of journalism on the major *** sites that has
jaded many gamers in the newsgroups, especially r.a.s, where  the majority
of its members are very discriminating. Don't get me wrong, I think that
Digital Sports is much better than most of the *** sites out there, and
I have personally enjoyed and agreed with many of your reviews. However,
when the majority of the r.a.s community that has been around longer than
the past month are in such agreement regarding games like ABC's Indy Racing
and Microsoft's CART Precision Racing, and the press(*** sites and mags)
seems to be so positive, it makes you wonder if they are on the ***
companies payroll. Or at the very least, sucking up to receive more ad
revenue and free games.

I am looking forward to your review of both ABC's Indy Racing and EA's
Andretti Racing 98, as these are both games that I purchased and took back
after spending about 10 hours with Indy Racing and 3 hours with Andretti. I
had already returned CART Precision Racing after spending about 10 hours
with the demo and 10 hours with the finished product. My question is, what
if I was unable to purchase games from a store that allows me to return it
in 10 days if I do not like it? I would be stuck with 3 lackluster games,
that do not have many of the promised features stated on their packaging.
Many people do not have this luxury. Because of this, it is even more
important for me to view the posts from the newsgroups before I purchase a
product. I usually weed out the "this game rules", "this game sux" posts,
and trust those that backup their opinions with facts. However, if I find
overly negative posts about a game(as I did with ABC Indy Racing), and
nothing good, I am very suspicious. The only exception to this recently has
been CART Precision Racing, as the Microsoft marketing juggernaut has
seemed to fool many people into thinking that it is ok to release an
incomplete, buggy, product that does not deliver on many of its features
stated on the box, on the basis of a promised patch and on-line presence.
How long are you actually willing to wait for this patch? It has been about
a month now, and if I had not taken the game back I would be stuck with it
at this point. Also, do you actually purchase these games, or are you given
free copies for evaluation? I think this would probably make a difference
on whether I would be willing to wait for a patch or be forgiving in my
reviews as well.

Thanks for listening.

Don Chapman

Dave

I cant comment on the IRL part except for the terrible graphics of the
Disney circuit, trees painted on square green billboards which extend
through the armco onto the track surface for one thing!

Back to the dirt, first and foremost where is the dust, dirt clods, ruts
and holes? The only thing I found dirt about the tracks were the color!
Like you I found no damage model whatsoever even when set to maximum
reality, I could plow into the wall or anything else with no damage
other than being told I had some (the graphics showed nothing).

It didnt seem to matter if one hits the wall at 5 mph or 100 the
resultant canned semi-flip routine takes over and the flip? is identical
every single time.

The cars seem to be floating on a magic carpet of some kind when viewed
from outside, thats the only way to describe what I guess is supposed to
represent a shadow? When the car leaves the ground this square stays
with it so that it appears they are mounted on a piece of cardboard or
something.

Where is the instrument panel? When one watches sprints on TV it is
obvious that they do have such a thing.

As for AI, there is none that I could see, the CCs seem to be cruising
around blissfully unaware that they are not alone on the track and I saw
absolute none of the exitement of watching sprints on TV. The famous
"slide job" and other tricks that sprints are famous for are totally
absent in this "sim".

IMO, this is one to leave at the store or return as fast as possible,
hopefully someday we'll see a real WOW sim and maybe Papy has the idea
in the works, at least we can hope!

Trev

Except for a fool, who would be happy with a game that has choppy video,
poor AI & no damage model?  Getting 2 cd's should have been a warning
sign............

Chuck Kandler
Budget Racing/K&S Racing

Okay, the main reason I like Indy Racing is because of the driving model.
Here's a quick report card:

Driving Model : A
AI cars:  B-
Damage:  D

The effect of this should be to tell you that if your biggest criteria of what
you like, or whether you call a game a "sim" or an "arcade" game is based upon
Damage, then okay, its an arcade game.  If its the driving model, then its a
sim.  I think a lot of the problem here that I've seen is that the vast
majority of posts attacking this title have concentrated on Damage, with some
attacking the AI and very little saying much at all about the driving model.

I really like the driving model and the courses, mainly because there is a
really good 'bumpiness' profile and each circuit has characteristics  which
will force you to learn the 'terrain' and figure out what the most stable and
fastest line through the corner is.  Also, you can't just jump out of the
throttle while you're turning.  TTO is nicely modelled in this game as well.
You learn to balance the throttle around the corners.  The setup options also
work pretty well.  There's a long list of things I'd like to see improved on
this game, but when you ask me whether I feel this game simulates driving an
IRL car around Indy, I'm going to say yes.  If the damage model or sometimes
questionable AI is a deal-killer for you, then by all means avoid the game.

The main reason I bring up CPR is that very few of its critics have gone so far
to say its not a sim, but that its just an arcade game, in spite of the fact
that its AI is worse on the whole than Indy Racing's.  Yet I see post after
post of person saying "the AI sucks so this isn't a sim".  If you're going to
use that criteria to slam a game with not being a sim then you should apply it
evenly across the board, and not pick and choose the titles you're going to
trash.

May I ask what the difficultly slider was set to?  I have been rammed a few
times by the AI cars, but by far most of the incidents were a result of me
moving over into an AI car I didn't know was there.  Sometimes my immediate
reaction was profanities at the AI.  Then I started looking at the replay
through helicopter view and saw that the problem really is that the Papy-style
mirrors aren't there to show me he's alongside, and the crew chief's messages
about the locations of cars are not always accurate or timely.  If I had either
Papy-style mirrors or NASCAR 2 style spotters, those incidents wouldn't have
occurred.  Again, this is just something I spent time analyzing, rather than
getting a hit and then screaming that the AI sucked.

That's pretty subjective, don't you think?  A friend of mine used to run on
Hawaii with me and he turned EVERYTHING off to get as close to consistent 30fps
as possible.  The guy was racing polys in mid-air!  I didn't have that level of
tolerance. I had to have at least wall texture and grandstands, even if they
weren't textures.  Other people will have different preferences.  If you
couldn't find a satisfying trade-off that's perfectly legitimate for you, but
its very much a personal preference rather than an objective benchmark.

Well, heck just getting someone to admit its not trash is a major step for this
newsgroup!  If I seem like I'm on a crusade, its simply because I don't like to
see ANY software get unfairly abused just because someone wants to exaggerate.
I found the AI to be more competent than some others but I still got rammed
from behind a couple of times, and thats a couple of times too much.  The AI
definitely needs tweaking, but it doesn't need the kind of of overhaul that CPR
does in this department. I think part of the problem that we're seeing today is
that since GP2, new sims seem to be getting released where the vast majority of
development time is going into the physics, graphics and options, and the AI is
looking more like an afterthought.  One of the things I always liked about
Papyrus was how AI was factored in from the very beginning.  You'll get no
argument from me there.  However, saying the AI has some problems and saying
its trash are two very different things, don't you agree?

I was.  The only visible damage you're going to see is the suspension arms
pointing out into space instead of being attached to the tires.  On the rear
you'll see them pointing out and down towards the pavement.  On the front they
stick up in the air like antennae.  I noticed that the car either developed a
push or became more loose in the turns afterwards.  However, I do agree that
the damage is WAYYYYYY too toned down.  You might say its closer to the
"arcade" damage in the Papy sims than anything else, but even then Papy showed
more damage than this one does.  You can obviously see I agree with most of the
criticism about the damage since I give it a D.  But since I base my
"simulation" grade mostly on the driving model, I'd still have to say this is a
sim.  And since I do my utmost to avoid crashing, usually its not something
that bothers me the way it bothers others in the group.  I'll just state the
facts on this one and let people decide where their priorities are.

Yeah they LOANED me a 3DFX board so that I would actually be able to run the
game and see more than 100 feet ahead of the car. Big deal.  I really resent
this remark, even if to some degree I can see why you make it.  If you knew me
you'd know that I don't play that game.  I'm not a paid reviewer, and the board
was simply something to help me get the review done since the Stealth II
drivers were making the graphics in the game pop-up too much for the game to be
reviewable.  I actually took heat from TR who felt I was too hard on them!   I
stand by my comments in the review. As far as my 'bright note' in the closing
part of the review, this is more a counter-reaction to Microprose's hanging us
out to dry with GP2 than anything else.  Few racing sims are "fully cooked"
when they are released as a 1.0. That's just the reality of it.  What
determines the long term success of these sims is the vendor's willingness to
respond to customers and update the software to placate the thundering hordes
of sim-maniacs.  The fact that Microsoft is doing a good job at addressing
these things compared to its competition is a positive note and should be
responded to.  Few would disagree that its a major downer that we never got any
network, video or weather ...

read more »

Trevor,

You have a right to your opinion, but I will point out that not one iota of
your post addressed the physics model of actually driving the cars.  AI, damage
and graphics were the thrusts of your posts.  Is no one else out there even
TRYING to look at the car handling?

Randy
Randy Magruder
Staff Writer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com/

Uh, is that the best you can do?  I don't see the trees going onto the
track surface. From a high behind-car view you can see that they are
2D boards, but from within the car they look fine.  Where is it that
you drive from?  All in all, this paragraph looks pretty petty,
Trevor.

If you're referring to the sprint cars, there is indeed no damage
model there.  This was deliberate as far as I can tell.  I think they
meant for it to be a more arcade experience.  But in the IRL cars you
can get damage and it does show.  However, its still way toned down
from where it should be.

I disagree with you completely here.  I really enjoyed racing the AI
cars.  They took all kinds of different lines around the track and
trying to get through a pack of 'em all tightly bunched together
dicing and crossing back and forth in front of each other was really
cool.

I'm kind of disappointed in you, Trevor...

Randy

Is that what you tell your colleagues? Come on Trev, we all know you
just want to race them! :)

Cheers!
John

You are right on the mark here, Trevor, in your accessment of this "game".

                                              Ken
The Game Pad
http://gamepad.org/

Bernie,

Just wondering if there will be an AI patch for this game and if Mplayer
will be supported as advertised?

Thanks,  Ken
The Game Pad
http://gamepad.org/

I respect your right to your opinion of TRI, and apreciate the fact that
you didnt flame me for mine :) it is possible to have a reasonable
discussion here in RAS once in awhile<g>!

As for your comment that I didnt address the car handling, actually I
didnt find it too bad, at least in the sprint portion which is all I'm
interested in anyhow.

I rather had fun at IRP and the dirt tracks, the car seemed to handle
pretty much as what you see on TV. If the AI cars werent dead it might
be fun to race with them.

With a major overhaul, this game could be fun but from what I gather
there are no such plans and so it will remain bargain bin bait AFAIC :(!

Trev