SCGT review : I just love it ! but....

>Details, details, but the way the cones get catapulted or bounce on your hood >for a while before finally falling off.. fantastic ! or the flexible ones at >pit entrances you can run over, yum ! Too bad no damage actually shows on the >car... My only nitpick here is the seeming random placement of braking markers. Some tracks have them. Some don't. Some corners have them. Some don't. Most real tracks today at least put out 3-2-1 cones if there aren't fixed signs. Except for one thing. The damn quicksand grass is still there. IT MUST GO! Yep. Some of the real tracks do seem a bit odd in places. Not too bad though. I never knew Sebring was such a fast track until I got this game. Overall I think they did a respectable job. One thing I applaud them for is that the fantasy tracks could pass for real race tracks instead of works of civil engineering fiction. My only comment here is that the mirror seems to really suck the frame rate down. Even with it in simple mode. Overall I like what I've experienced so far. My biggest beef is the way career mode is shoved down your throat. Having to use cheat codes for single races is just plain nuts. -- | "Instead of letting the moon be the Bill Mette | gateway to our future, we have let Enteract, Chicago | it become a brief chapter in our

Sounds like a "wait til it hits the bargain bin" UNLESS they come out with a patch that makes it a stellar internet play game. :) > >Details, details, but the way the cones get catapulted or bounce on your hood > >for a while before finally falling off.. fantastic ! or the flexible ones at > >pit entrances you can run over, yum ! Too bad no damage actually shows on the

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> >car... > My only nitpick here is the seeming random placement of braking markers. > Some tracks have them. Some don't. Some corners have them. Some don't. > Most real tracks today at least put out 3-2-1 cones if there aren't fixed > signs. > >The physics are decent, at least you can lift off in a corner with a 911

and > >tighten your turn if you catch it before it spins, lots of fun, agressive AI > Except for one thing. The damn quicksand grass is still there. IT MUST > GO! > >Track modeling, bahhh, I don't know... Laguna seca looked a bit weird in > >places but overall it's Ok because it does not take anything away from the

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> >game, IMO. I hate th etemporary tracks but that's just me ! > Yep. Some of the real tracks do seem a bit odd in places. Not too > bad though. I never knew Sebring was such a fast track until I got > this game. Overall I think they did a respectable job. One thing I > applaud them for is that the fantasy tracks could pass for real race > tracks instead of works of civil engineering fiction. > >Speed : Well, a bit of a hog with all the cars bunched in front of you,

the > >frame rate suffers then ! It's fine after the start generally, but I expected

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> >better on a P2 450 + Voodoo2+ 128 megs ram & full game install. > My only comment here is that the mirror seems to really suck the frame > rate down. Even with it in simple mode. > Overall I like what I've experienced so far. My biggest beef is the way > career mode is shoved down your throat. Having to use cheat codes for > single races is just plain nuts. > -- > | "Instead of letting the moon be the > Bill Mette | gateway to our future, we have let > Enteract, Chicago | it become a brief chapter in our

> Speed : Well, a bit of a hog with all the cars bunched in front of you, the > frame rate suffers then ! It's fine after the start generally, but I expected > better on a P2 450 + Voodoo2+ 128 megs ram & full game install. > Greg. This title still chugs with that kind of a system? I 'assumed' that with a higher end system with plenty of ram, that this game would run smooth, especially because the graphics arent extremely tight and detailed. My system will be here in roughly one week: Gateway - Celeron 433 128 sdram 19" monitor Voodoo3 3000 etc........ Currently I am using a P200,32megs Voodoo 2 and game play is not up to what I would call exceptable, thats why I am geting a newer system but are you telling me that there "still" will be slowdown in games? I know that SPGT was just released but do you guys think that EA will try and make a patch to fix the dip in framerates? By the way, do you think that with the same system described by Greg with a Voodoo3 instead of a Voodoo2 will fix the slowdown in framerates? Sorry for all the questions ;) Take care, -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tony Gaylord / Enclosure Concepts Custom made subwoofer enclosures for Car and Home audio at rock bottom pricing. Enclosure Concepts ~ http://www.enclosureconcepts.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The sandtraps are real parts of racing, their there to stop the cars from hitting the concreate walls. F1 and CART have them and they stop the cars fairly quickly. The sandtraps are modeled correctly. If you dont like it there is Andretti Racing, you might want to try that out. LOL Art Stealth Racing http://www.***sys.com/stealthracing.html

I don't get what all these people with 400 Mhz's and Voodoo 2's are talking about - I've run it on medium to high detail with 16 cars on a 266 with a Voodoo, and had no problem -

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> >The physics are decent, at least you can lift off in a corner with a 911 > and > > >tighten your turn if you catch it before it spins, lots of fun, agressive > AI > > Except for one thing. The damn quicksand grass is still there. IT MUST > > GO! > The sandtraps are real parts of racing, their there to stop the cars from > hitting the concreate walls. F1 and CART have them and they stop the cars > fairly quickly. The sandtraps are modeled correctly. If you dont like it > there is Andretti Racing, you might want to try that out. LOL > Art > Stealth Racing > http://www.***sys.com/stealthracing.html

The problem isn't the sand, it's the grass! As he said if you read it again ;) /Stefan -- ========================================================== Software Developer Phone(Work): +46-(0)243-886 01 Columna AB Phone(Cell): +46-(0)70- 665 75 67 "Computers are like airconditioners; they stop working if you open Windows" ==========================================================

Celeron 333a here, with single 8Mb Voodoo2 and 128Mb - it's fine. Clogs down at the start (what doesn't these days?!) but fine thereafter. At 416Mhz it's not that different, so I don't think it's a huge CPU hog. Looks just dandy at 640x480 as well, so no need to crank it up to 1024x768. Cheers! John

On Thu, 22 Apr 1999 22:38:04 -0400, "Arthur Axelrad" >The sandtraps are real parts of racing, their there to stop the cars from >hitting the concreate walls. F1 and CART have them and they stop the cars >fairly quickly. The sandtraps are modeled correctly. If you dont like it >there is Andretti Racing, you might want to try that out. LOL He was talking about grass, not sandtraps - "LOL" Cheers! John

says... Definitely a fun game. The physics seem semi-arcadey (ie, too forgiving of questionable inputs), compared to GPL and Viper. Of course, some of that could be attributed to the fact that these cars have downforce... Who knows - I'm sure that if I play enough with the settings, I can get a car that feels more realistic, meaning "harder to drive", but I haven't wanted to! For me, both GPL and Viper are about the fun of driving: the GPL cars are too fragile, too hard to control, and the damned AI's too good for me to really enjoy battling it out. In Viper, the car's so loose, and the AI is so clueless, that it's best to steer wide of any AI cars. I love both games - I just choose to drive in 'practice' mode, with none of those annoying other cars to contend with. SCGT's different - as stated above, the driving experience isn't really that realistic, and thus isn't all that much fun. This game is about the *racing* experience, and that's loads of fun! While I haven't seen TOCA, this game (at least at GTQ level) pretty much approximates the BTCC series. A bunch of semi-ordinary vehicles driving on tight little courses, nose-to-tail, duking it out. The game seems to reward 'physical' driving, as it's pretty easy to give the opposition a toot of the 'chrome horn' without taking yourself out as well. Just one well-placed tap on the rear quarter panel in a turn... The cone thing had me laughing out loud! Damn straight - my only *real* complaint about the game is the cruddy, almost-Ubisoft-bad user interface. Lots of weirdness in here: the replay system - like most folks (and like pretty much every racing game ever), I only want to view a replay immediately after a race. Or immediately after an incident even. The replays are annoying to get to, and what's with this "one per track" silliness? There should just be one replay period (the current one), which you could then save if it was really worth keeping. also, there seems to be plenty of room for 'vcr' controls in the replay playback. There should be separate 'forward a frame and/or forward slow motion' and 'fast forward' controls, rather than a single control that speeds up. There should also be an elapsed time counter, or something that indicates where you are in the race, and preferably other info (speed, position, etc.) GPL does this nearly perfectly. Enough has been said about the 'locked' tracks & cars - all the stuff should be available automatically for Quick Race, without having to win stuff in career mode. I bought the game specifically for Laguna Seca... Yes, its easy enough to enter a cheat code, but why have one? The practice->qualify->race thing is clumsily done. You should be able to escape out of a race (in career mode) and pretend the race never happened, rather than DNFing. Most games allow this sort of thing - yes, it's more 'realistic' this way, but given how long it takes to run a season (with the default settings in GTQ, it's still 75 minutes of racing), and given how you can't (apparently) do anything from within a race (such as muck with the video options, adjust the controller, etc, etc), it just seems a little rude in its current setup. At least give the player the option of *not* saving the race results... Control configuration - what's with the weird "enter a key, then enter a control input" thing? I don't want to enter keys, I'm using a wheel! And *everything* should be mappable to a control input (as in GPL and Viper). I have a Logitech WFF, and I've got three buttons left over that I'd like to map to 'a' 'u' and 'h'. Maybe I could do it with the Logitech launcher thing, but I'm religiously opposed to that sort of thing. The game should be able to handle it itself. Positional information: I like the cool number-line thing at the bottom, it's a novel idea, and it mostly works. However, a little more info would be appreciated. At minimum, a three-line display showing you, the car ahead of you (race position) and the car behind you (race position), and your times behind the leader. Hard to describe, but easy to see - just hit F1 (or F2?) in Nascar 2. A crew chief would be nice, to help with pit strategy. Since the pits 10% distance)) it'd be handy if you could know if the car in front of you has recently pitted, will be pitting soon, or what. A simple way to do it might be to color-code the numbers on the number- line thingy. Have them start green, and slowly turn red based on how many laps since the last pit stop. When a car pits, its number turns green again. The real drivers certainly have this info (via radio info from their crew), we should too! One good thing that I haven't seen mentioned: you get to race Alison! :) Weird bug, or something: Racing in GTQ, career mode, maximum opponents, some drivers wind up in the entry list more than once, putting me in the curious position of beating Steve Nowicki while simultaneously losing to Steve Nowicki... Finally, it's been a day already - where's the damned No-CD patch?!? Cheers, --jhb

Not really. What little time I have gets devoted to GPL, and thats no loss at all.

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>>The physics are decent, at least you can lift off in a corner with a 911 >and >> >tighten your turn if you catch it before it spins, lots of fun, agressive >AI >> Except for one thing. The damn quicksand grass is still there. IT MUST >> GO! >The sandtraps are real parts of racing, their there to stop the cars from >hitting the concreate walls. F1 and CART have them and they stop the cars >fairly quickly. The sandtraps are modeled correctly. If you dont like it >there is Andretti Racing, you might want to try that out. LOL

Yes, the sandtraps are modeled decently. But if you notice, my complaint was about the grass NOT the sandtraps. Grass in a real race car is damn near the equivelent of ice. You simply slide all over the place on it. You do not get sucked off the track and bogged down by it they way you do in SCGT. Go search DejaNews and you'll see many other people share my opinion. As for Andretti Racing, I'll leave that to people who make overly sarcastic remarks about things they don't read carefully. -- | "Instead of letting the moon be the Bill Mette | gateway to our future, we have let Enteract, Chicago | it become a brief chapter in our

I dont have the final but I understood that the grass fix would be in the final release. If its not in the final expect a patch soon. Art Stealth Racing http://www.***sys.com/stealthracing.html > >>The physics are decent, at least you can lift off in a corner with a 911 > >and > >> >tighten your turn if you catch it before it spins, lots of fun, agressive > >AI > >> Except for one thing. The damn quicksand grass is still there. IT MUST

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> >> GO! > >The sandtraps are real parts of racing, their there to stop the cars from > >hitting the concreate walls. F1 and CART have them and they stop the cars > >fairly quickly. The sandtraps are modeled correctly. If you dont like it > >there is Andretti Racing, you might want to try that out. LOL > Yes, the sandtraps are modeled decently. But if you notice, my complaint > was about the grass NOT the sandtraps. Grass in a real race car is damn > near the equivelent of ice. You simply slide all over the place on it. > You do not get sucked off the track and bogged down by it they way you do > in SCGT. Go search DejaNews and you'll see many other people share my > opinion. As for Andretti Racing, I'll leave that to people who make > overly sarcastic remarks about things they don't read carefully. > -- > | "Instead of letting the moon be the > Bill Mette | gateway to our future, we have let > Enteract, Chicago | it become a brief chapter in our

I do think it's better than the first demo, but what bothers me is not the grass so much as the little dirt patches at the edge of the track, usually coming out of a turn. You should be able to drop the outside edge of a tire off the track without your speed dropping so much. Other than that, I really have no complaints. This game will never replace GPL but it sure is fun. -don

I find the grass to be very realistic. Having been to Limerock many times I can tell you its not uncommon to see a car buried to the rocker panals in mud after an infield excursion. Fool Xtent

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>-- >========================================================== >Software Developer Phone(Work): (0)243-886 01 >Columna AB Phone(Cell): (0)70- 665 75 67 >"Computers are like airconditioners; they stop working >if you open Windows" >==========================================================

You can rename your replay files in the replay screen - this is the same as saving them, since they will then not get written over. As for saving one per track instead of just having one, I've been fortunate enough to play this game over LAN with a few buddys, and it's nice that it will save replays automatically for each track we race. That way, when we're done with a series of tracks, we can go back to the replays of each one, and save what's cool. (as opposed to having to hop out after each race and make everyone wait while you mess with replays) I don't know if that's why they did it or not, but it sure is nice. Also if you quit out of a race before the half-way point, the results don't count. If you have graphics problems or something, I don't know why you wouldn't just quit out right away.

>>Speed : Well, a bit of a hog with all the cars bunched in front of you, the >>frame rate suffers then ! It's fine after the start generally, but I expected

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>>better on a P2 450 Voodoo2 128 megs ram & full game install. >My only comment here is that the mirror seems to really suck the frame >rate down. Even with it in simple mode. >Overall I like what I've experienced so far. My biggest beef is the way >career mode is shoved down your throat. Having to use cheat codes for >single races is just plain nuts. >--

Just got the retail SCGT today, and after running a 35 minute GTQ race I REALLY like this game. My only big beef at this point is the mirrors - BIG framerate hit at the start of the race, qualified 3rd. Caused me to spin off trying to turn the mirror off, but I worked my way up and finished 2nd (right behind Allison hehe). Mirror seemed ok as long as the whole field wasn't right there - guess I'll have to get used to the reverse look at the start - nice to have that though at least with my NASCAR Pro I can have a wheel button to do that quick, and I seem to get better awareness than in Viper. Probably should work better at the start on a P2-400 Voodoo3, maybe a patch can fix that some. If they can put in a "cars and track" switch ala GPL for the mirrors I think that'd be a HUGE help. No GPL physics wise, but I didn't notice - the racing was FUN, the AI was mixing it up with me and themselves, and I didn't care at all that I moved up as high as I did after getting behind the whole field. Can't recall whether I changed the AI strength or not. While I was outrunning them, the AI drivers really felt like real, professional drivers. I rubbed guys several times, and neither of us spun out. When I got by a guy going into a corner, he wouldn't spin me like what happened a lot in Viper, but he'd usually be right on my bumper and waiting for me to make a mistake, unlike NASCAR where they tend to give up on you once you get by. It could use some more tweaking, and it may turn out that we need a boost to the AI, but I had a ton of FUN racing this tonight - and in the end that's what it's all about. -- Ken's Sig 2.01 "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony." Go #43 and #44! volksy (at) geocities (dot) com volksy (at) yahoo (dot) com

that's because you have a different standard than others. i've seen many friends say, "runs GREAT on my system" - and then when i see it (think to myself), "yeah, right. you call this SMOOTH?"