Grand Prix 3 and Geoff Crammond - first impressions.....

To the critics, Oh yea of little faith !! Has Geoff Crammond ever let anyone down? Remember: Revs Stunt Car Racer F1Gp F1Gp2 The man's track record speaks for itself. Remember the time when you went into your local Software store and GP2 was on the shelf and the anticipation of taking it home and installing it? Remember when you first saw the telemetry screen and went "Holy shit" and spent HOURs fiddling with your set-ups going back and forward trying to figure out how you could gain a 10th of a sec here or there at certain point of the track ? Remember the first time you blasted around Monaco - where your processor occupancy rate hit over 200% and you promised yourself that the next thing you were gonna do is upgrade your damn computer to a Pentium ? My first impressions of the screenshots are overwhelmingly positive - especially in software mode, graphics look fine but surely the most important thing is HOW it plays and from all accounts "like GP2" is no bad thing. Have faith and by the way Mr Hoad I hope you fancy cracking this nut :) idav ps. Geoff, take your time and get it right before you release the damn thing but don't take too long there are a lot of people out here who have been waiting years for what you have created.

I remember going to my local store the day it got released, standing in line for half an hour, driving home like a madman on my bicycle, installing it, choosing SVGA with all details on (I had a brand new 133 which could run all games perfectly in svga at that time), driving my first round, and then being completely disappointed by the unbelievable bad framerate. The game was completely unplayable because of this. Ok, back to vga. Looked like crap, but it worked. Driving felt strange. At certain moments, quite often, everything would slow down. This made me lose all sense of speed. Very hard to keep a constant feeling of the car with all this slow-motion. I found the slomo problem so bad that I stopped playing it. It was such a shame, I loved GP1, played it to death, became world champion on the highest level, complete races, after a lot of practice. And now this. A couple of months ago I upgraded to a PII 450. One of the first things I did was to install GPII again. Works perfectly in svga, no slomo problems anymore. This game was released too early, the hardware at that time simply was not up to it. But the game looks so outdated compared to todays standards, and the physics were so disappointing compared to GPL, that I gave up after a couple of hours driving. GP1 gave me months of pleasure at the time, but I never could understand why people liked and still like GP2. The physics are the best for any GP sim, even compared to F1RS or that Ubisoft thingy, but now that we have GPL, why would you still want to drive such an outdated game? Oh well, as you can see, I'm still frustrated with my experiences of GP2, maybe I rambled a little bit too much about this. Sorry. Can't wait for GP3 by the way, we REALLY need a '90s F1 sim with the same physics as GPL! Oh, Geoff, when you have finished GP3, could you start working on a new version of Stunt Car Racer? Thanks! :) Andre

>A couple of months ago I upgraded to a PII 450. One of the first >things I did was to install GPII again. Works perfectly in svga, no >slomo problems anymore. This game was released too early, the hardware >at that time simply was not up to it. But the game looks so outdated >compared to todays standards, and the physics were so disappointing >compared to GPL, that I gave up after a couple of hours driving. This raises an interesting point. A lot of titles come out that have graphics that one can "grow into" as processors become faster. GP2 is one such title. I think US Navy Fighters is another (the 800x600 and higher modes were dogs on all machines current to its release). But what usually happens with these is that even om the relatively short time it takes the hardware to catch up, other titles are so advanced that it renders the old titles obsolete anyway. This certainly happened to USNF, for one by sequels like ATF, nevermind F18 Hornet etc. I guess a lot here don't think it happened to GP2 (with the exception of GPL). But certainly it couldn't predict the advent of 3d cards, and it suffers from not supporting them. Nor supporting other technologies it couldn't anticipate like FF. Now, I'm not advocating that titles not reach a little in terms of CPU scalability. In fact, I think it makes sense to have many detail levels supporting recent past, present, and near future hardware. And I found GP2 playable at SVGA (albeit with very limited detail) on contemporary machines. But to me too, now when I can play it at full detail, it is a little too antiquated to interest me much. .. Amen!

With allmost all detail of I could play GPII quite reasonable on my P133, but then I prefered vga with full detail above svga with all details off. Besides, if things got busy on the track I got the slomo in svga even with all details off. You must have quite some machine to run GPII full detail in svga without the slomo effect. I don't know for sure, but a year ago I had a pII 300, and I believe that even on that machine I still had the slomo problem. I forgot to mention that I do like the driving model of GPII. Especially for it's time it was very good! But as I said, in it's time there was no way I could run it with reasonable detail and without the slomo, and now that I can, it's too outdated. GPL spoiled me! Andre

Is Papyrus planning an modern F1 sim based on the GPL engine ? What about Indycar ? (Old questions probably, but I've missed the answeres) TF

>You must have quite some machine to run GPII full detail in svga >without the slomo effect. I don't know for sure, but a year ago I had >a pII 300, and I believe that even on that machine I still had the >slomo problem. Yep, all it takes is a bit of smoke on the track: instant slide show. Cheers, Uwe -- Uwe Schuerkamp http://www.schuerkamp.de/ Herford, Germany (52.0N/8h30mE) Ever wondered what's wrong with the world? http://bnetwork.com/ PGP Fingerprint: 2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F 67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

GP2 wasn't even really playable with all graphics on, 2 years after it was released.. and that is bullocks. Anyone can just go out and make a game wirth unbelievable graphics, if they just simply ignore the hardware being available, and whether or not it will be playable. All Geoff did was create a game that would produce stunning SCREENSHOTS, so everyone would go out and buy the game after seeing the screenshots in the co?perative magazines. I hardly read a review that was HONEST about the game being virtual unplayable in SVGA. I felt betrayed like most of you. Just face it, Microprose just couldn't cope with PAPYRUS being ahead. And Microprose never even bothered making a patch for their million seller. By the way, did you see the new GP3 screenshots? They look a lot like GP2 screenshots with one of the custom made***pits. Once again the money machine has started creating a hype, to ensure big sales.. I promise you this: IF GP3 is really good... I will have it copied! Karl

title. Bullshit! GP2 doesnt even work properly on a Pentium 2 266 Just face it: the GP2 graphics engine is pure crap, a total failure. Good programming is about taking the available hardware to the limit, not beyond. Karl

Look kiddie, you have no idea what the hell your talking about. Will you take your BS elsewhere. Good programming is about making things idiot proof. Unfortunately, there's no Technology that will make something MORON proof MORON!

I just installed GP2 on a p3-450 128mb ram top of the line other stuff. Everyhting was smooth untill I installed new updated tracks. The my OR jumped from 70 to 130-140 anyone know where I can get better adon tracks I got mine from grandprix2.com

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> Bullshit! > GP2 doesnt even work properly on a Pentium 2 266 > Just face it: the GP2 graphics engine is pure crap, a total failure. > Good programming is about taking the available hardware to the limit, not > beyond. > Karl

Pardon me? Either I smell a troll, or you can't configure a machine for Jack. With all the hoopla over GP3 the past couple days, I reinstalled GP2 on my backup machine. Its a 300a Celeron, 64MB RAM, Voodoo3. Anyway, just running it in a W95 DOS box I wasn't getting any of the slomo at all! This was with SVGA mode, all options ON, undercutting the program-suggested frame rate of 23 down to 17. Smooth as a baby's butt!! At 6th on the grid at Monza, on the start, the OR was between 97-103%. Except for a very short spike to about 130% when the cars in front of me put out tire smoke on takeoff. This thing runs fine on today's hardware. Now, I remember running it on my old P133! SVGA, 2/3's of the graphics off, framerate set at 12. More than about 2 or 3 cars near me, and BOY the slomo would kick in. It wasn't even much fun, except to hotlap in. Its really cool now. Here's waiting on GP3. -- Chuck Kandler #70 K&S Racing http://www.fortunecity.com/silverstone/thepits/195 The box said "Windows 95 or better", so I installed LINUX!

> I just installed GP2 on a p3-450 128mb ram top of the line other stuff. > Everyhting was smooth untill I installed new updated tracks. The my OR jumped > from 70 to 130-140 > anyone know where I can get better adon tracks > I got mine from grandprix2.com I don't know, what I just did was a fresh reinstall. Instinct tells me that these addons are much more highly detailed, thats probably the difference. May have to search around the net & experiment some. -- Chuck Kandler #70 K&S Racing http://www.fortunecity.com/silverstone/thepits/195 The box said "Windows 95 or better", so I installed LINUX!

This pretty much sums you up eh?

Hey man, smells like a TROLL or what? I used to run GP2 for a long time on a 486DX4-100 with 16MB RAM an a 2 MB Video-Card an it worked fine (just disabled some of the grafic-options...). So it seems to be you who's about to tell us bullshit... so long, mani. -- Manfred Mitreiter http://www.mitreiter.de

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> > This raises an interesting point. A lot of titles come out that have > graphics > > that one can "grow into" as processors become faster. GP2 is one such > title. > Bullshit! > GP2 doesnt even work properly on a Pentium 2 266

Well, that's true if you put all the details at max. But who care to have a sky like there is on GP2 ? Disable sky multiply by 2 the frame rate, and u don't need a P2 266 anymore! I ran it on full detail and high res ( except sky ) on a Cyrix 166. GP2 graphics engine is good but not enough configurable. What take a lot of CPU is the shining on the car. And it's not a function we can diseable. And its an effect we can only see on big zoom during replay. On PC u have to programs behond the hardware limits, because the time that u develop a game, the CPU power grow the twice that what you have at start. And it's difficul to anticipate that! -- ==================================== Sebastien Tixier - Game Developer

What it means is that he doesn't agree with you - that doesn't make him a moron. As for good programming, it's about fulfilling the requirements of your final product - that may or may not include being idiot proof, it just depends if you're execting it to be used by a lot of idiots. None of which relates to the graphics speed of GP2! :-) Cheers! John

Is that the 'show nothing' option? The game was endlessly slow back then- the only half decent card for it was an S3 PCI card or a Tseng ET6000, due to the 'raw' 2d speed

Strangely enough i still have my old DX4 100 with 3 meg virge and i can get a good 12 - 15 fps out of it. i put in on this pc a k62 400 and it runs at 80-90 ocpupancy it peaks at 110 in last place on the grid. but its amazing that a good game is still a good game after all these years! > >Look kiddie, you have no idea what the hell your talking about. Will you > >take your BS elsewhere. Good programming is about making things idiot > >proof. Unfortunately, there's no Technology that will make something MORON

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> >proof MORON! > What it means is that he doesn't agree with you - that doesn't make > him a moron. As for good programming, it's about fulfilling the > requirements of your final product - that may or may not include being > idiot proof, it just depends if you're execting it to be used by a lot > of idiots. > None of which relates to the graphics speed of GP2! :-) > Cheers! > John