rec.autos.simulators

I would not hope that they check ICR2 too much. After all, Papyrus sims
are notorious for lack of save games. Be lucky you can restore a race
at all. And be a man, go to the next race in the championship after screwing
up :-) I'll bet many would be fortunate to even finish one race in their
first
season if they played the game straight up. After I get familiar with all
the
tracks, I'll probably do a 25% race length Championship season. I figure
I will be fortunate to get any points at all my first season...

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Ok one extremely irratating item about F1 in an otherwise brilliant
simulator is the inability to immediatly start races over. On expert
realistic championship season its required that you exit the race and
reload the saved game...wha...??? I see that they are trying to make
the race much more important to force you to not***up...but sorry
this just isnt any fun. Again both Geoff and the Ubisoft Crew need to
buy and drive ICR2 around for a bit to see just what a brilliant menu
system consists of...cause neither of them get it.

Pierre
Pierre PAPA DOC Legrand
Infamous
Pink Flamingo Pilot...

Eh?  Besides N2's initial release (now fixed), what other Papy sims
do you mean?  =|

Cheers!

Marc

Grrrrrrrrrr...this damn menu/save ***is as stupid as it gets...Geoff
couldnt do this if he tried....its come to a head at Spa when I tried
to race....well of course the first turn is a mess...and since Im in
seventh spot Im in the middle of the mess. So then I get hit, stop,
decide whether I want to watch it on camera or see results...(wha...?
hey any of those Ubisoft geniuses ask themselves whether I might want
to immediatly start again...) then get to select abandon race...then
go to results page and watch those results roll in...THANK GOD IM IN A
25%length race or I might buy tickets to France to kill someone now
cause you cannot get out of the results screen UNTIL ITS OVER...WHAT
THE HELL maybe someone could design something dumber than that in a
game but I would be hardpressed to describe it.....then I get to
abandon race once more...then load up my game...and no its not a good
idea to change the game configuration yet since some genius thought it
might be a good idea to NOT have that global...had to go thru one of
these complete cycles to find that out when I saw that my selection of
no rearview mirrors had been forgotton because after changing game
configs I had loaded up my Spa race game...Then load up the
setup...because its forgotten my setup...wha..?? Then go back to the
starting line....get almost thru the first corner and have some Eddie
Ervine Wanna be run into me again do this COMPLETE GODDAMN CYCLE
AGAIN...WHA....!!!!!!! I did this complete cycle around 10 times
before saying to myself this isnt fun.

Now also part of the problem of the first corner was the
framerate...it absolutely was terrible. Fine I say...I have a 166 with
only 32 mb of Ram I shouldnt expect miracles. So I go to turn down the
graphics...(yes this is when I discovered the cute little trick of it
not being global...great idea someone...now go do something
else)...bad idea...first off the damn config screen forgets my
settings.. Then if you turn down the draw distance you get these
really cute BLUE TEXTURES....WHAT THE HELL IS THAT...geez the guy that
came up with the menu designed the graphics options. Talk about
MUCKING UP the suspension of disbelief...try staring at EAU ROUGE
thats blue....BRIGHT BLUE. Ok so turning down the draw distance was
obviously not an option..so I turned off the rearview mirrors...great
little white squares were substituted for my view....nice.

When I turn down the draw distance I refuse to believe that
substituting blue polygons was the only option to the designers. The
game configuration options ie Graphics, Sound, controllers should be
GLOBAL nother words when I change something it stays changed until I
unchange it....and it stays changed no matter what game I load up. I
should have a shortcut key for nearly everything substantial in the
game...nother words Im on the track in practice I wanna go to the
pits...press F7 poof....Im in the race wanna restart press F8
poof....and hey people wanna experience racing without those cheats
then DONT USE THEM...but GODDAMN IT DEVELOPERS GIVE US A CHOICE....LET
ME CONFIGURE THE GAME THE WAY I WANT IT ...for reference buy
Longbow/FPK, or Longbow2 and see how a great developer allows a person
to make choices about their game.

I happen to really think this game is brilliant on so much..but this
menu system and game system is dumber than dumb. CHOICES...games are
about CHOICES...give us CHOICES to have FUN the WAY each one of us
wants to have fun. I dont take anything away from someone who NEVER
restarts a race...why should I suffer for them in a game I PAID
FOR...GODDAMN IT CHOICES thats a great word in Flight sims and its a
great word in Car Sims...dammit developers LEARN THE WORD.

RANT MODE OFF....SORRY BOUT THAT....

Pierre PAPA DOC Legrand

Finished venting your spleen now? :-)

I found very early on that the fastest way to get out of a race and then
back into the game is:-

Hit Ctrl + Esc.
When Windows95 desktop appears hit Ctrl + Alt + Del and terminate F1RS.
Fire the game up again.
Hit esc as the two .AVIs are loading and, WHAMMO!.......you're at the
front Single Player/Multi Player screen.

Works every time!

Ande remember.....all these little ecentricities stem from the fact that
it's designed by the French..........they have ways of making you
frustrated!! :-)

--
Bruce.
(At home)

(snip)
Papyrus sims are notorious for lack of save games
(unsnip)

Notorius, Greg?!!
How so?
The only games that I know of that didn't offer any save was the
original Indianapolis 500 and the first edition of NASCAR 2.

Hardly something to be filed under "notorious"!!

--
Bruce.
(At home)

I don't recall savegame & races in ICR or ICR2. It seems quite impossible
to save a weekend in N2, in the same way that World Circuit & GP2
does. I haven't played ICR2 for quite osme time so perhaps I am wrong
here. But I don't think I am.

Are you telling me that there are now complete save game/race/weekend
in N2?

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I agree about global settings. What the heck is the design problem
with that anyway?

I think that they had no plans for reducing graphic detail on a 3dfx
board. So this is what you get.

When I am on the track practicing and want to go back to the
pits,  I hit Escape. Then I choose "Go to pits" or whatever
the obvious choice is. I agree, that re-starting a race should be
easier than it is. I guess I will have to try a race and qualify (instead
of starting from the last spot all the time) and see for myself how screwed
it is. I really thought the AI was better than you describe. I wonder if the
bad framerate could cause you to put your car where you don't want it?

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You can save an ICR/ICR2 race in the middle of a race and continue later?
In the middle of a weekend? I can qualify on Friday or Saturday and have
several days to work on my setup before I actually race?

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Oooh my, twas a bad day to quit crack.....

I guess Im not being clear about this..but to me when you go to the
configuration screen to set graphic options then it should naturally
assume that I want this for all of my playing and if I dont I can go
back and reset it.....the KISS principle, for the french its an
elegant acronym...KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID...I think it originally came
from the military.....odd eh.

Well either make plans and fix this or up the minimum requirements to
P-5 233 64mb Voodoo2....cause first turn at SPA is slow enough to
count frames...even with rear view mirrors off, second highest draw
distancs selected, No Replay, No detailed cars the framerate is chunka
chunka chunka...

Well its easy to see what they were trying to achieve. They were
trying to make it important to do well in the race...you know sort of
a motivation....cause I think this only happens if you race
championship/expert/realistic. If you are doing that it WILL NOT give
you the option to restart...stupid real stupid. You MUST exit the
championship (after watching the entire race run without you ooooh
thats so ***ing stupid its hard to type this and consider that Im
running the 25% race if I were forced to wait thru an entire 2 hours I
would buy a ticket and go shoot someone in France)  and reload your
championship then reload your setup.

Now truly I have no complaints with the AI to me its THE best AI in F1
simulations...by far, Indeed I think this sim is for the most part
Brilliant. To me its shifted my entire expectation of a Formula 1
sim...But the framerate into the first corner of SPA is so chunky as
to make getting thru an exercise in luck....possibly realistic and
indeed if I had an easy way to restart I probably wouldnt mind...so
the Restart MUST BE FIXED...

Pierre PAPA DOC Legrand

Now what's the number of that loan company...

You could think of it this way - When GP2 came out, no PC could run it
full detail.  My P200 hadn't been invented yet and is still a lame GP2
machine.
F1RS comes out and plays flawlessly on my mate's (existing) PII300.
Progress?

Cheers
Mark
Reading, UK

Well I ran a race at Buenos Airesto test starts. My opponants were ***
Amateur's.  I figured I could qualify near the front. As it turns out I got
the
pole by 3 seconds with the stock setup, so I tried again and got 5th
starting
place, right in the pack. Then I saved the game and did several re-starts.
At
least the starts are good at Buenos Aires. No problems. Maybe for the time
being it wouldn't be a bad idea to turn the damage off, until you get the
hang
of it :-) OTOH, maybe if I tried it on expert level I would get creamed like
you :-)

Actually I think if you are racing and hit ESCAPE, you will get the
pause screen which does indeed have the option to restart. The
only problem is that it is deactivated. I tried going to the EASY
racing mode to see if you could restart then. You can't. I will bet
this will be in a patch.

I guess I will try this and see what the deal is...

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Have you actually changed the sound settings for the other cars?? A number
of people have said that that makes a massive difference to smoothness
through the first corner. On my computer it is perfectly smooth in at least
"single race" mode through the first corner at Spa.

Ive turned off other sounds...also have reduced the two settings in the
snd.ini file to 1 and 5 respectively....much better but still
framey....at least now I can make it thru the first corner...by making
sure to go outside. Overall though the framerate at SPA is bad. Maybe
they can optimize it a bit more....or provide better ways of turning
down options. Currently the drawdistance option for Voodoo is not
usuable beyond the first click down because of the blue textures.

Pierre

This statement that anything below a P200 is useless is absolute
garbage.

I have a bog-standard (i.e., no overclocking or tweaks or magic wands
waved) P166, 32Mb RAM, 3Dfx video card.  By adjusting three items in the
.INI file that control the sound I have stuff-all dramas with any
starts/first corner slowdowns.  I am running the second-greatest depth
of field, sky 'on', pit messages 'on' and replays 'off'.  I could
improve the setup slightly by choosing to have the pit messages
'off'...which I may do as they are becoming annoying (now I know how a
real driver must feel at times!).

But the changes to the sound lines in the .INI file have the greatest
effect on the first corner slowdown improvement.

--
Bruce
(at work)

"Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get
tired."
(Jules Renard)