TOCA Pro Race Driver Demo (long)

I Downloaded and tested the Codemasters demo of ToCA Pro Race Driver last night. All I can say is....What a joke! Graphically it looked nice enough, but the physics and frame rates... Holy schmoly! It's a total piece of you know what! I'm running a Falcon NW Mach V, P-III 933, with 384meg of 133RAM and a 64 meg GeForce 2 GTS video card, which by today's standards isn't cutting edge any longer, but ain't too shabby either. I can run other sims/games like N4, F1-2001, CMR2, and Rally Trophy just fine so I know my system isn't that far off the mark, but this demo/game must require a Cray supercomputer to get acceptable fps!!! I've seen posts on High Gear that say that Codemasters is aware of the FPS problem, and will have it resolved in the full release, but I have to ask WHY, if they knew this was going to be such a dog, did they release it to the public?!?!? Talk about shooting themselves in the foot! DOH!!! Even with the qualifying statement that it's only 60% complete, it's still an embarrassment. Hell they would have been better off just offering a move file to download and view, then to drop their pants in public like this!!! Apparently they must have felt a 60% demo was "good enough" to give to Computer Games magazine for their monthly samples disk, which doesn't say allot for codies marketing department. Ya gotta think that someone must have been asleep at the wheel to let it go out the door in this sort of condition. I've always had the opinion that a racing game should be "drivable" to be enjoyable. That all the eye candy in the world won't make up for a title that isn't fun and somewhat challenging to drive. This doesn't mean hard core true to life physics, but it also doesn't mean an arcade simple game either. Sims/games that require outlandish system requirements, or that require endless amounts of tweaking in order to control the car (without spinning out after less than one lap, etc) may be cutting edge in their realism and look but if I can't jump in and run some hotlaps right away then what's the point? I don't have the time any longer (7 month old Daughter to look after) to spend hours and hours tweaking and hacking a game to improve the framerate, or endless free time to master the twitchy controls of some "ultra-real" racer. I just want to be able to run a quick race or a few hotlaps once in awhile, and if I'm lucky and it's early enough in the morning or late enough at night, maybe run a full race distance. I don't have the time to reprogram a game just to make it "driveable" and enjoyable. If Codemasters can't get a demo right, then I will surly wait until it's fully released and reviewed by other members of RAS to determine if it's worth my while before I open my wallet and spend my hard earned cash on it. Your thoughts? Jay J

Well at least you got to see it and loathe it. I downloaded, installed and then got a Page Fault Error before the splash screen even came up. Nice job Codebastards. Simon "Jay J" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > I Downloaded and tested the Codemasters demo of ToCA Pro Race Driver > last night. > All I can say is....What a joke! > > Graphically it looked nice enough, but the physics and framerates... > > Holy schmoly! It's a total piece of you know what! > > I'm running a Falcon NW Mach V, P-III 933, with 384meg of 133RAM anda > 64 meg GeForce 2 GTS video card, which by today's standards isn't [snip]

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> I've seen posts on High Gear that say that Codemasters is aware of the > FPS problem, and will have it resolved in the full release, but I have > to ask WHY, if they knew this was going to be such a dog, did they > release it to the public?!?!? > > Talk about shooting themselves in the foot! DOH!!! > > Even with the qualifying statement that it's only 60% complete, it's > still an embarrassment. Hell they would have been better off just > offering a move file to download and view, then to drop their pants in > public like this!!! > > Apparently they must have felt a 60% demo was "good enough" to give to > Computer Games magazine for their monthly samples disk, which doesn't > say allot for codies marketing department. Ya gotta think that someone > must have been asleep at the wheel to let it go out the door in this > sort of condition.

I don't have any inside information, but I do work in the software business and sometimes you don't have any choice. They probably had a commitment with Computer Games to provide them with a demo on a set date. They also probably had a penalty clause for failure to live up to that commitment. So they released what they had, KNOWING it was gonna get negative reviews, but counting on short memories. They'll blitz us with ads telling us how great the game is, and 2 months from now when it's released, we'll all try it anyway. Because we all HOPE that the next one is IT, the game/sim we've all been waiting for.

I think it was released as it is the featured Download on the Computer Games magazine disk. I understand these things are done so far in advanced I would have to imagine that they thought it would get better. Brit btgoss "Simon Goodwin" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:xcYz8.52081$[email hidden]...

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> Well at least you got to see it and loathe it. I downloaded, installed > and then got a Page Fault Error before the splash screen even came up. > Nice job Codebastards. > > Simon > > > "Jay J" <[email hidden]> wrote in message > news:[email hidden]... > > I Downloaded and tested the Codemasters demo of ToCA Pro Race Driver > > last night. > > All I can say is....What a joke! > > > > Graphically it looked nice enough, but the physics and frame > rates... > > > > Holy schmoly! It's a total piece of you know what! > > > > I'm running a Falcon NW Mach V, P-III 933, with 384meg of 133RAM and > a > > 64 meg GeForce 2 GTS video card, which by today's standards isn't > > [snip] > >

Iam sorry no publisher would enter into a deal with a magazine that meant it had to compromise itself to the magazine. "> Computer Games to provide them with a demo on a set date. They also probably > had a penalty clause for failure to live up to that commitment.

Phoeey. If CG was paying Codemasters $50K for a demo, they'd jump at it. They are making ZERO money from Toca Race Driver until they sell this it - any revenue source is welcome. Any magazine would be crazy to allocate room in their pages without a guarantee that the content would be there in time for publication. "Compromise itself?" Come on. "Carol Bekker" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:yRZz8.654$[email hidden]... > Iam sorry no publisher would enter into a deal with a magazine that meantit

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> had to compromise itself to the magazine. > > "> Computer Games to provide them with a demo on a set date. They also > probably > > had a penalty clause for failure to live up to that commitment. > >

As I said in another thread, if you are not getting a decent frame rate you can't really tell anything about the physics. You are spending all of your time trying to correct for the control lag. Try turning details and resolution down until you get a decent frame rate, and then see what you think. You don't have to tweak the hell out of it, just turn the slider all the way to the "speed" setting and run at 800x600x16. Sure it should be able to run at higher detail, but if you want to experience what it's really like and you don't want to waste time tweaking it, that's the quickest way to find out. It is VERY driveable once you get the frame rate up. Oh, and avoid crashing, the FEM damage modelling code seems to be a real CPU hog. As for the shabby peformance, Codemasters has put out buggy, incomplete demos of other games in the past and they turned out fine in production, this is no different. I think they do it intentionally (the incompleteness, not the bugginess) to get some early feedback on what issues people are having (okay, today I'm an optimist). Personally I am glad that they do, and I know to not expect the demos to be issue-free. I am very much encouraged by what I see in the demo. As I said in the other thread, it drives as well as a certain mod that a lot of people around here are playing. And I think the other issues will get addressed. And I'm about ready to upgrade anyway (Celeron @ 950, 32 meg DDR Radeon, 256 meg RAM), so that is not a huge issue for me. You never really upgrade for one game anyway, you upgrade for one initially and then over the next year it turns out that it was a damn good thing you upgraded when you did because all the other games you get after that point seem to need the increased power also. I have just gotten used to the fact that if I want to play the latest games, I am going to have to upgrade something at least once a year, and pretty much do a total rebuild at least every two years. Of course if you don't like that there is always the Xbox version.... ;o) "Jay J" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> I Downloaded and tested the Codemasters demo of ToCA Pro Race Driver > last night. > All I can say is....What a joke! > > Graphically it looked nice enough, but the physics and frame rates... > Holy schmoly! It's a total piece of you know what! > > I'm running a Falcon NW Mach V, P-III 933, with 384meg of 133RAM and a > 64 meg GeForce 2 GTS video card, which by today's standards isn't > cutting edge any longer, but ain't too shabby either. I can run other > sims/games like N4, F1-2001, CMR2, and Rally Trophy just fine so I > know my system isn't that far off the mark, but this demo/game must > require a Cray supercomputer to get acceptable fps!!! > > I've seen posts on High Gear that say that Codemasters is aware of the > FPS problem, and will have it resolved in the full release, but I have > to ask WHY, if they knew this was going to be such a dog, did they > release it to the public?!?!? > > Talk about shooting themselves in the foot! DOH!!! > > Even with the qualifying statement that it's only 60% complete, it's > still an embarrassment. Hell they would have been better off just > offering a move file to download and view, then to drop their pants in > public like this!!! > > Apparently they must have felt a 60% demo was "good enough" to give to > Computer Games magazine for their monthly samples disk, which doesn't > say allot for codies marketing department. Ya gotta think that someone > must have been asleep at the wheel to let it go out the door in this > sort of condition. > > I've always had the opinion that a racing game should be "drivable" to > be enjoyable. That all the eye candy in the world won't make up for a > title that isn't fun and somewhat challenging to drive. This doesn't > mean hard core true to life physics, but it also doesn't mean an > arcade simple game either. > > Sims/games that require outlandish system requirements, or that > require endless amounts of tweaking in order to control the car > (without spinning out after less than one lap, etc) may be cutting > edge in their realism and look but if I can't jump in and run some > hotlaps right away then what's the point? > > I don't have the time any longer (7 month old Daughter to look after) > to spend hours and hours tweaking and hacking a game to improve the > framerate, or endless free time to master the twitchy controls of some > "ultra-real" racer. > I just want to be able to run a quick race or a few hotlaps once in > awhile, and if I'm lucky and it's early enough in the morning or late > enough at night, maybe run a full race distance. > > I don't have the time to reprogram a game just to make it "driveable" > and enjoyable. > > If Codemasters can't get a demo right, then I will surly wait until > it's fully released and reviewed by other members of RAS to determine > if it's worth my while before I open my wallet and spend my hard > earned cash on it. > > Your thoughts? > Jay J

I agree with the "rushed" deal to get it printed on a CD and distributed with a magazine... I also agree there are some framerate problems, but it seems as though everyone is going nuts about the framerates! I mean, it's a game that isn't going to come out for a while, the graphics have to be amazing to compete with the level of detail the next generation of games coming out will have. So, shouldn't we expect it to run a bit slower? I'm not justifying the performance I saw in the demo though.... It's just that a few of the complaints were "I had it on full detail 1024x 32bit resolution and it ran slow". Maybe putting the detail down will help... It works about 50% of the time when I try to use my wheel (FerarriFF), the other half of the time it crashes completely. The force feedback seems a little weird, it's pulling me into the corners sometimes... And the car powerslides really good.... Is a toyota supra supposed to powerslide that well around a tarmac corner?? But, I thought I remembered reading a thread on here a while ago saying that codemasters weren't making this game any type of Simulation. It looks like it's meant to compete with Gotham Racing or whatever anyways. So, I'm not really angry about the physics being arcade-ish, since that's what I expected when I loaded it up. The car models look awesome though :) Either way, I'll probably still end up at least trying the full-retail :) Mike http://mikebeauchamp.com "Jay J" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> I Downloaded and tested the Codemasters demo of ToCA Pro Race Driver > last night. > All I can say is....What a joke! > > Graphically it looked nice enough, but the physics and frame rates... > > Holy schmoly! It's a total piece of you know what! > > I'm running a Falcon NW Mach V, P-III 933, with 384meg of 133RAM and a > 64 meg GeForce 2 GTS video card, which by today's standards isn't > cutting edge any longer, but ain't too shabby either. I can run other > sims/games like N4, F1-2001, CMR2, and Rally Trophy just fine so I > know my system isn't that far off the mark, but this demo/game must > require a Cray supercomputer to get acceptable fps!!! > > I've seen posts on High Gear that say that Codemasters is aware of the > FPS problem, and will have it resolved in the full release, but I have > to ask WHY, if they knew this was going to be such a dog, did they > release it to the public?!?!? > > Talk about shooting themselves in the foot! DOH!!! > > Even with the qualifying statement that it's only 60% complete, it's > still an embarrassment. Hell they would have been better off just > offering a move file to download and view, then to drop their pants in > public like this!!! > > Apparently they must have felt a 60% demo was "good enough" to give to > Computer Games magazine for their monthly samples disk, which doesn't > say allot for codies marketing department. Ya gotta think that someone > must have been asleep at the wheel to let it go out the door in this > sort of condition. > > I've always had the opinion that a racing game should be "drivable" to > be enjoyable. That all the eye candy in the world won't make up for a > title that isn't fun and somewhat challenging to drive. This doesn't > mean hard core true to life physics, but it also doesn't mean an > arcade simple game either. > > Sims/games that require outlandish system requirements, or that > require endless amounts of tweaking in order to control the car > (without spinning out after less than one lap, etc) may be cutting > edge in their realism and look but if I can't jump in and run some > hotlaps right away then what's the point? > > I don't have the time any longer (7 month old Daughter to look after) > to spend hours and hours tweaking and hacking a game to improve the > framerate, or endless free time to master the twitchy controls of some > "ultra-real" racer. > I just want to be able to run a quick race or a few hotlaps once in > awhile, and if I'm lucky and it's early enough in the morning or late > enough at night, maybe run a full race distance. > > I don't have the time to reprogram a game just to make it "driveable" > and enjoyable. > > If Codemasters can't get a demo right, then I will surly wait until > it's fully released and reviewed by other members of RAS to determine > if it's worth my while before I open my wallet and spend my hard > earned cash on it. > > Your thoughts? > Jay J

Have you tried running the demo in 640X480 16 bit? The default seting is 1600X1200 32 bit, even N2002 doesn't run well with those settings on most computers. Jay J wrote:

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> > I Downloaded and tested the Codemasters demo of ToCA Pro Race Driver > last night. > All I can say is....What a joke! > > Graphically it looked nice enough, but the physics and frame rates... > > Holy schmoly! It's a total piece of you know what! > > I'm running a Falcon NW Mach V, P-III 933, with 384meg of 133RAM and a > 64 meg GeForce 2 GTS video card, which by today's standards isn't > cutting edge any longer, but ain't too shabby either. I can run other > sims/games like N4, F1-2001, CMR2, and Rally Trophy just fine so I > know my system isn't that far off the mark, but this demo/game must > require a Cray supercomputer to get acceptable fps!!! > > I've seen posts on High Gear that say that Codemasters is aware of the > FPS problem, and will have it resolved in the full release, but I have > to ask WHY, if they knew this was going to be such a dog, did they > release it to the public?!?!? > > Talk about shooting themselves in the foot! DOH!!! > > Even with the qualifying statement that it's only 60% complete, it's > still an embarrassment. Hell they would have been better off just > offering a move file to download and view, then to drop their pants in > public like this!!! > > Apparently they must have felt a 60% demo was "good enough" to give to > Computer Games magazine for their monthly samples disk, which doesn't > say allot for codies marketing department. Ya gotta think that someone > must have been asleep at the wheel to let it go out the door in this > sort of condition. > > I've always had the opinion that a racing game should be "drivable" to > be enjoyable. That all the eye candy in the world won't make up for a > title that isn't fun and somewhat challenging to drive. This doesn't > mean hard core true to life physics, but it also doesn't mean an > arcade simple game either. > > Sims/games that require outlandish system requirements, or that > require endless amounts of tweaking in order to control the car > (without spinning out after less than one lap, etc) may be cutting > edge in their realism and look but if I can't jump in and run some > hotlaps right away then what's the point? > > I don't have the time any longer (7 month old Daughter to look after) > to spend hours and hours tweaking and hacking a game to improve the > framerate, or endless free time to master the twitchy controls of some > "ultra-real" racer. > I just want to be able to run a quick race or a few hotlaps once in > awhile, and if I'm lucky and it's early enough in the morning or late > enough at night, maybe run a full race distance. > > I don't have the time to reprogram a game just to make it "driveable" > and enjoyable. > > If Codemasters can't get a demo right, then I will surly wait until > it's fully released and reviewed by other members of RAS to determine > if it's worth my while before I open my wallet and spend my hard > earned cash on it. > > Your thoughts? > Jay J

-- Philippe "Philster" Sergerie

I too work for a software company (call/contact center workforce management software) and I've NEVER herd of such BS! I have however seen full releases/upgrades of our product go out the door, supposedly QA'ed yet end up so full of bugs that we had to contact our clients to advise them not to upgrade/install it, but that's another story for another time. A demo is basically a marketing tool to try to drum up interest for potential buyers of the software, and when you put out crap like this, your basically shooting yourselves in the foot! JJ "Rob Adams" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:fYZz8.4346$[email hidden]...

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> Phoeey. If CG was paying Codemasters $50K for a demo, they'd jump at it. > They are making ZERO money from Toca Race Driver until they sell this it - > any revenue source is welcome. > > Any magazine would be crazy to allocate room in their pages without a > guarantee that the content would be there in time for publication. > > "Compromise itself?" Come on. > > "Carol Bekker" <[email hidden]> wrote in message > news:yRZz8.654$[email hidden]... > > Iam sorry no publisher would enter into a deal with a magazine that

meant

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> it > > had to compromise itself to the magazine. > > > > "> Computer Games to provide them with a demo on a set date. They also > > probably > > > had a penalty clause for failure to live up to that commitment. > > > > > >

I agree that Codemasters have put out excellent games in the past, I own CMR and CMR2, TOCA and TOCA2. Each of these games were/are some of the best offerings for their genre when they hit the shelves, and CMR2 is still arguably the 2nd best Rally game on the market (behind Rally Trophy) so I hope this one turns out for the best. I also understand that demos will / may have bugs, and they are not the complete game, fair enough. But... When you only get like 3 FPS in a demo, that's totally unacceptable. Let's hope they get things ironed out, and let's hope they troll the forums for feedback because there is no better source for honest input/opinions of what we the RAS community wants to see in a racing sim. Jay J "Haqsau" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:aapqol$ch82l$[email hidden]...

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> As I said in another thread, if you are not getting a decent frame rate > you can't really tell anything about the physics. You are spending all > of your time trying to correct for the control lag. Try turning details > and resolution down until you get a decent frame rate, and then see what > you think. You don't have to tweak the hell out of it, just turn the > slider all the way to the "speed" setting and run at 800x600x16. Sure > it should be able to run at higher detail, but if you want to experience > what it's really like and you don't want to waste time tweaking it, > that's the quickest way to find out. It is VERY driveable once you get > the frame rate up. Oh, and avoid crashing, the FEM damage modelling > code seems to be a real CPU hog. > > As for the shabby peformance, Codemasters has put out buggy, incomplete > demos of other games in the past and they turned out fine in production, > this is no different. I think they do it intentionally (the > incompleteness, not the bugginess) to get some early feedback on what > issues people are having (okay, today I'm an optimist). Personally I am > glad that they do, and I know to not expect the demos to be issue-free. > I am very much encouraged by what I see in the demo. As I said in the > other thread, it drives as well as a certain mod that a lot of people > around here are playing. And I think the other issues will get > addressed. And I'm about ready to upgrade anyway (Celeron @ 950, 32 meg > DDR Radeon, 256 meg RAM), so that is not a huge issue for me. You never > really upgrade for one game anyway, you upgrade for one initially and > then over the next year it turns out that it was a damn good thing you > upgraded when you did because all the other games you get after that > point seem to need the increased power also. I have just gotten used to > the fact that if I want to play the latest games, I am going to have to > upgrade something at least once a year, and pretty much do a total > rebuild at least every two years. Of course if you don't like that > there is always the Xbox version.... ;o) > > "Jay J" <[email hidden]> wrote in message > news:[email hidden]... > > I Downloaded and tested the Codemasters demo of ToCA Pro Race Driver > > last night. > > All I can say is....What a joke! > > > > Graphically it looked nice enough, but the physics and frame rates... > > Holy schmoly! It's a total piece of you know what! > > > > I'm running a Falcon NW Mach V, P-III 933, with 384meg of 133RAM and a > > 64 meg GeForce 2 GTS video card, which by today's standards isn't > > cutting edge any longer, but ain't too shabby either. I can run other > > sims/games like N4, F1-2001, CMR2, and Rally Trophy just fine so I > > know my system isn't that far off the mark, but this demo/game must > > require a Cray supercomputer to get acceptable fps!!! > > > > I've seen posts on High Gear that say that Codemasters is aware of the > > FPS problem, and will have it resolved in the full release, but I have > > to ask WHY, if they knew this was going to be such a dog, did they > > release it to the public?!?!? > > > > Talk about shooting themselves in the foot! DOH!!! > > > > Even with the qualifying statement that it's only 60% complete, it's > > still an embarrassment. Hell they would have been better off just > > offering a move file to download and view, then to drop their pants in > > public like this!!! > > > > Apparently they must have felt a 60% demo was "good enough" to give to > > Computer Games magazine for their monthly samples disk, which doesn't > > say allot for codies marketing department. Ya gotta think that someone > > must have been asleep at the wheel to let it go out the door in this > > sort of condition. > > > > I've always had the opinion that a racing game should be "drivable" to > > be enjoyable. That all the eye candy in the world won't make up for a > > title that isn't fun and somewhat challenging to drive. This doesn't > > mean hard core true to life physics, but it also doesn't mean an > > arcade simple game either. > > > > Sims/games that require outlandish system requirements, or that > > require endless amounts of tweaking in order to control the car > > (without spinning out after less than one lap, etc) may be cutting > > edge in their realism and look but if I can't jump in and run some > > hotlaps right away then what's the point? > > > > I don't have the time any longer (7 month old Daughter to look after) > > to spend hours and hours tweaking and hacking a game to improve the > > framerate, or endless free time to master the twitchy controls of some > > "ultra-real" racer. > > I just want to be able to run a quick race or a few hotlaps once in > > awhile, and if I'm lucky and it's early enough in the morning or late > > enough at night, maybe run a full race distance. > > > > I don't have the time to reprogram a game just to make it "driveable" > > and enjoyable. > > > > If Codemasters can't get a demo right, then I will surly wait until > > it's fully released and reviewed by other members of RAS to determine > > if it's worth my while before I open my wallet and spend my hard > > earned cash on it. > > > > Your thoughts? > > Jay J >

Let me take a different tack - I think scalability is really good in a game, as long as it goes in both directions. Yes, you and I with our older hardware should be able to turn the details down and get it to run. And I expect that we will in the final version. But somebody who has spent the bucks on a 2 ghz CPU and a GeForce 4 should be able to turn the detail way up to a level appropriate for that hardware, and that level of detail would certainly strangle older machines like ours. So I'm still encouraged by the what I see in this demo - I think I will be able to get it to run (especially if they let me tone down the damage modelling), I think it plays well once you get the performance up, and I think somebody with a GF4 will be able to get such gorgeous graphics that they will find themselves just staring at the screen in awe instead of playing. ;o) "Jay J" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:dy0A8.23352$D%5.3595@sccrnsc01... > I agree that Codemasters have put out excellent games in the past, Iown CMR > and CMR2, TOCA and TOCA2. > > Each of these games were/are some of the best offerings for theirgenre when > they hit the shelves, and CMR2 is still arguably the 2nd best Rallygame on > the market (behind Rally Trophy) so I hope this one turns out for thebest. > > I also understand that demos will / may have bugs, and they are notthe > complete game, fair enough. > But... When you only get like 3 FPS in a demo, that's totallyunacceptable. > > Let's hope they get things ironed out, and let's hope they troll theforums > for feedback because there is no better source for honestinput/opinions of > what we the RAS community wants to see in a racing sim. > > Jay J

Yes, the world is only righteous! Money doesn't corrupt, contaminate or alter the course of peoples lives. ;0) A publisher wouldn't enter into a deal "compromising" itself by releasing a horrendous demo? Publishers enter into deals that result in them releasing horribly buggy "final" games! C'mon, what planet are you from? :0) -- Joe Marques "Carol Bekker" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:yRZz8.654$[email hidden]... > Iam sorry no publisher would enter into a deal with a magazine that meant it > had to compromise itself to the magazine. > > "> Computer Games to provide them with a demo on a set date. They also > probably > > had a penalty clause for failure to live up to that commitment. > > >

Ok, first people complain that they dont get a demo (like the WSC-demo), then they complain about when they get a demo :D stop confusing the gamedevelopers :) Second complaint, XBOX-games look much better, when they almost run the same hardware as a PC. Now, we get a game that supports the pixel and vertex shader we got, realtime enviroment mapping etc, which IS a frameratekiller, then we start complaining about that. The fact that the game isnt optimised yet either doesnt make it really better. What do we want?, a buggy demo, that makes the developers aware of what problems they have to fix, or to get a buggy software that we actually had to pay for?. Bad framerate was a problem of F1 2001 RETAIL, and we didnt get any forcefeedback either. We had to wait for the patch to get a optimised version with better framerate and forcefeedback. I rather have seen EA Sports released a demo, where they could have spotten the bad framerate, and that people wanted ff right away. I get acceptable framerates on my computer and its even slower then yours. Today, Nvidia releases or leaks drivers like there is no tomorrow. Its like 3000 different nvidia drivers out there for our geforce-cards. Some work great for games, while ohters make us almost throw the computer out the window. This is another problem for gamedevelopers, since most seem to like to have the newest drivers, even if they are leaked betas with known problems. Another fact that Codemasters where pretty silent about the demo, and havent released a demo on their webpage only shows more that this demo wasnt probably going to be released, if it wasnt for that magazine Come on, we havent paid $40 for this demo. Its incomplete, just look in the files of the game, and you see marshalls etc, which we havent seen in the demo. No penaltys for cutting corners etc. This demo isnt even complete as a demo. I guess we will wait for another demo to get released. Now Codemasters know about FPS-problems, Soundproblems, Bad physic (or bad data of the car into the physic-engine), too sensitive damage, wierd AI, etc. If they release a game with this bugs still left in it, with no plans on fixing them, then well, we dont have to buy it. "Jay J" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> I Downloaded and tested the Codemasters demo of ToCA Pro Race Driver > last night. > All I can say is....What a joke! > > Graphically it looked nice enough, but the physics and frame rates... > > Holy schmoly! It's a total piece of you know what! > > I'm running a Falcon NW Mach V, P-III 933, with 384meg of 133RAM and a > 64 meg GeForce 2 GTS video card, which by today's standards isn't > cutting edge any longer, but ain't too shabby either. I can run other > sims/games like N4, F1-2001, CMR2, and Rally Trophy just fine so I > know my system isn't that far off the mark, but this demo/game must > require a Cray supercomputer to get acceptable fps!!! > > I've seen posts on High Gear that say that Codemasters is aware of the > FPS problem, and will have it resolved in the full release, but I have > to ask WHY, if they knew this was going to be such a dog, did they > release it to the public?!?!? >

J

> And the car powerslides really good.... Is a toyota supra supposed to > powerslide that well around a tarmac corner?? Search for the mpeg of a 900HP Supra drifting around corners on tarmac!. Its a superb video :) It should be availble on the net. The funny thing is that this car looks like the one in the game. Orange and everything :) > But, I thought I remembered reading a thread on here a while ago sayingthat > codemasters weren't making this game any type of Simulation. It looks like > it's meant to compete with Gotham Racing or whatever anyways. So, I'm not > really angry about the physics being arcade-ish, since that's what I > expected when I loaded it up. I've never expeceted this to be a simulator either. Why do everyone expect the new games to be simulators?. One big part of the costumers are little kids, that dont want realistic car-games, they want "floor the pedal"-games. > The car models look awesome though :) Yeah =) Just wait for hires textures too :)

"Andreas Nystrom" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:Kn5A8.35420$[email hidden]... > > And the car powerslides really good.... Is a toyota supra supposed to > > powerslide that well around a tarmac corner?? > > Search for the mpeg of a 900HP Supra A 900 bhp Supra wouldnt max out at 130-140 mph I quite like the demo though - it runs VERY smooth here ( 1800+, GF3) Doug

One Word: Demo when will you people learn this?! "Jay J" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> I Downloaded and tested the Codemasters demo of ToCA Pro Race Driver > last night. > All I can say is....What a joke! > > Graphically it looked nice enough, but the physics and frame rates... > > Holy schmoly! It's a total piece of you know what! > > I'm running a Falcon NW Mach V, P-III 933, with 384meg of 133RAM and a > 64 meg GeForce 2 GTS video card, which by today's standards isn't > cutting edge any longer, but ain't too shabby either. I can run other > sims/games like N4, F1-2001, CMR2, and Rally Trophy just fine so I > know my system isn't that far off the mark, but this demo/game must > require a Cray supercomputer to get acceptable fps!!! > > I've seen posts on High Gear that say that Codemasters is aware of the > FPS problem, and will have it resolved in the full release, but I have > to ask WHY, if they knew this was going to be such a dog, did they > release it to the public?!?!? > > Talk about shooting themselves in the foot! DOH!!! > > Even with the qualifying statement that it's only 60% complete, it's > still an embarrassment. Hell they would have been better off just > offering a move file to download and view, then to drop their pants in > public like this!!! > > Apparently they must have felt a 60% demo was "good enough" to give to > Computer Games magazine for their monthly samples disk, which doesn't > say allot for codies marketing department. Ya gotta think that someone > must have been asleep at the wheel to let it go out the door in this > sort of condition. > > I've always had the opinion that a racing game should be "drivable" to > be enjoyable. That all the eye candy in the world won't make up for a > title that isn't fun and somewhat challenging to drive. This doesn't > mean hard core true to life physics, but it also doesn't mean an > arcade simple game either. > > Sims/games that require outlandish system requirements, or that > require endless amounts of tweaking in order to control the car > (without spinning out after less than one lap, etc) may be cutting > edge in their realism and look but if I can't jump in and run some > hotlaps right away then what's the point? > > I don't have the time any longer (7 month old Daughter to look after) > to spend hours and hours tweaking and hacking a game to improve the > framerate, or endless free time to master the twitchy controls of some > "ultra-real" racer. > I just want to be able to run a quick race or a few hotlaps once in > awhile, and if I'm lucky and it's early enough in the morning or late > enough at night, maybe run a full race distance. > > I don't have the time to reprogram a game just to make it "driveable" > and enjoyable. > > If Codemasters can't get a demo right, then I will surly wait until > it's fully released and reviewed by other members of RAS to determine > if it's worth my while before I open my wallet and spend my hard > earned cash on it. > > Your thoughts? > Jay J

On Thu, 2 May 2002 07:55:08 -0400, "M. Main" <[email hidden]> wrote: >One Word: Demo > > >when will you people learn this?! Shouldn't a demo be a good representation of the final product?! my apologies for not knowing everything, im dutch, forgive me. Andre

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Andre Warringa) wrote: > my apologies for not knowing everything, im dutch, forgive me. Oh come on, that's the least Dutch thing I've ever seen anyone type! They say "excuse me while I put my finger in this dyke" or "why can't I get flood insurance, and what's this global warming thing anyway?" or "the coffee in this coffee house burns really well in this pipe, man" or "surely she's not going to put that in ther... wow, I was wrong!" U R an imposter :op Andrew "insult at least three nationalities before bedtime" McP

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Andrew MacPherson) wrote: > U R an imposter :op Oh, and you're right about demos IMO. Release something representative of the final product or don't release it at all. The TOCA stuff is all aimed at the Playstation anyway... which is a shame because TOCA1 showed promise (but only promise IMO, though I know a lot of people enjoy/ed it).

this is a little off topic, but I'll go ahead anyway. in the menu screen in this demo, the guy's pants are missing a few polygons on my computer. I initially figured they'd just got some normals wrong, but then we tried it on a buddy's computer (we both have the same model GF3, btw), and on that rig, the holes werent there. being a curious bastard; can anyone think of an explenation? -- Gunnar #31 SUCKS#015 Tupperware MC#002 DoD#0x1B DoDRT#003 DoD:CT#4,8 Kibo�: 2 silence is FOO!

"Gunnar Horrigmo" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> > this is a little off topic, but I'll go ahead anyway. in the menu > screen in this demo, the guy's pants are missing a few polygons on my > computer. I initially figured they'd just got some normals wrong, but > then we tried it on a buddy's computer (we both have the same model > GF3, btw), and on that rig, the holes werent there. > > being a curious bastard; can anyone think of an explenation? > > -- > Gunnar

Even if you think everything is similar, the likely-hood of something not matching up 100% is probably the answer. For my part, the office screen had a ghost image of a pair of pants filling most of the center of the screen. (very faint but drawn with feminine lines) I'm assuming it was another screen that, while used in the full game, was not part of this pre-realease demo of the full demo due later on. dave henrie