rec.autos.simulators

, AI is such a complex element of a game

The AI isn't a little problem that just arose after the sim went to
market.  Its a MAJOR problem when the cars are crahsing into each
other all over pit road. I'm not talking about crashing into you at
the beginning of pit road either.  I'm talking about  the cars
crashing and bouncing off walls toward the middle of pit road. Not to
mention the caution laps getting screwed up big time.  You people make
it out as if  we're just ***ing for the hell of it.  Nascar2 has
Major problems and they refuse to fix it.  I can assure you I'm not
the only one that has had the pitroad cars crashing problem. I have
several friends that aren't online that have these same problems.
Matt Marsala told me if I wasn't happy with it to take it back and get
a refund.  Do you honestly think that Papyrus would take the same
stand on fixing it if they thought that everyone that purchased
Nascar2 would take it back.  If they honestly thought people would
take it back they wouldn't encourage you to get a refund and take the
I'm not going to fix it attitude.  If they believed even 40% of the
people would take it back well brother we'd have a fix by the end of
the month.

My point exactly. The NRO is more than likely why we're not going to
get a fix.  I'm going to take a guess here but I'm sure you'll be one
of the first to join up on Ten and the NRO.  So at least after they
get that going you wont have a problem with the AI.   Very clever
Marketing dont you think  Release a sim thats half-ass and tell the
people that purchased it in order to get the fix you'll need to buy
Nascar3 or of course you can sign up on Ten and the NRO and not have
to deal at all with AI problems.

***************************************************************
*   Scott Davis - Singer/Songwriter and a heck of a nice guy  *
*                                                             *

***************************************************************

Bart

Did I sneeze?

Bart

NASCAR 2 Racing s/w tester.<<

Another unbiased opinion...

Bart

No. I'm sorry that I actually have an education and have learned a few
things in life. Did you know that Mahatma Ghandi sold clothing before he
became the leader of India. Go read up on history, before you make fun of
me. Their is actually a famous quote that he made though I didn't put the
whole thing up here for sake of brevity. I am sorry that I'm not like some
of the rejects on this newssgroup that can only flame someone and not try
to understand where they are coming from. Please go read about Ghandi he
was a great leader and alot of people on this newsgroup could learn from
his teachings. He was a great listener, unlike some people on this
newsgroup who speak without listening.

No doubt, especially the 3d physics engine.  That's probably the most
important to me, probably just because I'm a Physics and CS major.
Besides, as multiplayer technology gets better, we won't even want to
race against the AI anymore.  Racing against humans will always be
better than AI because the unpredictability of a human could never
really be modelled completely accurately (in theory anyways).

Tom I'm going to explain it one more time to you since you seem to be
very slow.  Theres nothing you can do to stop the cars from crashing
into each other on pit road. This has happened even when I was on the
track and elected not to pit.  

  Where do you see this?  I have owned NASCAR 2 since it first came out.  
Never saw this...about the only REAL problem I ever saw was the Atlanta pit
thing, where the AI's would "fake" pit, turning toward pit road on the last
yellow lap, then turn back out to  the track.  
  After I installed the first patch, I never saw any green lines at C***te,
nor did I have the T2 problem with jerking to the right.

  Again, never saw any of this...

  Still not sure what "major problems" we're talking about here...

  The AI's I have race "fair", if ya wannna call it that...Sure, they may shut
the door on you goin' into turn one at Dover, or beat and bang on ya at
Bristol, but, hell, that's racin'.....Back off if ya have to !!!

                                                            Jimmy

***"My wife says if I go racin' one more time, she's gonna leave me...God, I'm
gonna miss her!"***  

Hi,
   I augree, Papyrus has made incredible contributions to sim racing.
I can still remember the day I first saw a magazine article about
NASCAR Racing I that my friend showed me back in 1994.  I remember
saying "everything looks so real!".  Back then I was using an old Mac
LC, I switched to a PC about 10 months ago.  On the Mac I had 3 racing
sims.  The Deul Test Drive II (in black and white!), Ferrari Grand
Prix and Bill Elliott's NASCAR Challenge (at least they were in 16
colors!).  In BENC on the Mac version, you couldn't even qualify at
Sears Point, there was a bug that made the program crash!  Ferrari
Grnad Prix was probably the best racing sim on my Mac, but none of
them even hold a candle to the Papyrus sims.  Keep raising the bar
Papy!

John

P.S.  Are there any Mac users that played Ferrari Grnad Prix 2.0 for
hours like I did? :)

"There will be a rain-dance on friday, weather permitting."
 -- George Carlin

FWIW, other packages have similar problems: EF2000 has planes that taxi
through each other, Grand Prix 2 has cars that repeatedly bounce off
each other, Flying Corp appears to have aircraft that artifically leap
vertically to narrow altitude difference, and Quake AI, well, hmmm,
enough said!  There are no perfect games, unless you believe the hype
surrounding the forthcoming Dungeon Keeper.

Unfortunately living in England makes any interaction with TEN and NRO
unviable and I'm not aware of any plans for UK dial-up servers required
for low latency connections for a full field of racers... so even though
I regularly link up machines with several of my friends around town, I
will require AI for the forseeable future.  And it's with this viewpoint
that I have tested Papyrus' products, because I understand that several
months after the player has forgotten all about the glossy stuff, it's
the AI that makes or breaks the racing.  But I am a realist and I know
what can be fixed and what else will have to wait for the next product
down the line.

--
Mike Laskey

I really don't get it man.  I think there's some sort of common
misconception that getting a computer to act exactly like a human is
possible.  AI is a technology that is still fairly new and is still
evolving.  IMO it's definitely the hardest part to code in any game.
3D math and physics is all formulas, trying to model an unpredictable
human is impossible to do accurately with the equipment that we're all
running.   They can only get by with so many calculations per frame,
Most of those go into the 3d and the physics engine.  So what do you
want to trade up?  You can't have it all.  When we're all running
500mhz Alpha workstations, then you'll get your realistic, evolving
AI.  Right now Programming AI is for games is mostly just finding a
good algorithm that doesn't eat up too much CPU and still appears
realistic.  Papyrus' algorithms could be better definitely, but it
takes a lot of time to work out things like that.  They can only patch
a program so many times.  They could squander all their resources
patching the AI (which isn't that bad in the first place), but they'll
go broke before they ever get it right.  How can you expect them to do
that?  They released the product saying it was realistic, and it is.
It's the most realistic sim out there IMO.  However I don't think any
of this will change your mind as it already seems made up.  I had to
speak my mind anyway.  Bottom line is if you don't like it, fine.  You
won't buy any more of their products.  

< A bunch of refreshingly intellegent <compared to alot of the more
recent BS threads in this newsgroup> comments by Steve snipped>

HERE HERE! Well put. Great post.
--
Mike Schreiner

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