This thread was thought about when the other two wish lists were all about cars, performance issues, and other sundry items...
Here is a brief list of what I would like to see and why, and please feel free to post your thoughts...
Crash Dynamics... the creators do not need to add polygon counts to the cars, but if you hit the wall at 125mph, you should have to spend money repairing things. Stiffening the chassis doesnt really count. I have worked in the sprint car world for a couple few years now, and I know that if a car is salvagable, it costs $$$ to get it straightened out, to have the damage cut off and new stuff put in, and have the new aluminum panels remade. Crashing the GT-One for example in turn 1 of the Tokyo R race while doing 150+ should do more to the performance of the car instead of bouncing off. alignment should be affected, downforce tweaked, something to lessen the desire to use cars infront of you as brakes, and to help turn tighter, and teach you how to be a better driver. Speaking of using other cars to help brake and turn... perhaps add some AI where if you slam into a car or what not in order to pass, that car makes it tough to pass the next time. kind of like a revenge thing.. and lets talk about how hard it is to even nudge the other cars out of thier line, yet its pretty easy for them to get you sideways in a turn.
Day to Night to Day transitions....
Nurburgring is a sweet track, but persistant daylight for 24hours is unreal...
Anyway. those are my two non-car pieces of this wish list... I would like to see what other non-car wishes you have.
Here is a consolidation of things everyone had some input on. I wish to thank everyone who responded to this thread. Everyone had some really good ideas.
Time of Day changes: Day to Night to Day. this with temperature changes will make racing a little more realistic. If a race is a morning race, the track will be cold, as the day progresses the track will warm up can change how the car responds.
Weather Transitions: Clear skys, partly cloudy, cloudy, rain, fog, snow. Things that would help with the world dynamics and how track performance affects a cars handling.
Track Condition changes: Track Temperature changes during the day or night racing.
Tuning: Better descriptions for what settings do and how they affect other settings. Computer controlled tuning, many cars have a computer chip upgrade, I know racers that use thier street cars to race and they adjust the performance of the car thru the chip itself. Good for racers on a budget. Dyno testing of drivetrains, this would allow you to get ideas on what works and what doesnt work as far as performance. maybe help you learn how to squeeze a few more miles/kilometers per hour out of the car. On track testing, while there is an analyzer ingame, there could be more options to what it shows. I have seen a crew chief use a computer to tell exactly when the driver turned, how many degrees the driver had to turn the wheel, how much load was on the suspension at the time of the turn, and it gave the crew chief an idea how to adjust the suspension of the car in order to make it perform at this peak potential.
Cars: I dont think there is enough that can be said about the cars. Paint schemes, customizable sponsor decals, crash dynamics, open-wheel cars (Formula series), more than 1 or two cars from manufacturers outside of Japan.. I am sorry, Pontiac had more than 2 cars that were popular. the 65 GTO was a popular muscle car, the 1970's Firebirds were popular too, dont forget the 1979 Trans Am that was popularized in "Smokey and the Bandit" movies. Car specific tuning, while the developers did good not to allow a player to build a 1000hp car from a stock Honda Civic, I know that there are tuners out there that will pull whole drivetrains from one car and put them into another just for the increase in performance. This may not be the 'scene' thing, but it does happen. Opponent cars should not be 'tanks' when driving down the road. It is bad when you cant nudge an opponent car out of its line, but it can surely bump you into the sandtraps. This needs to be enabled if damage is enabled. Cockpit view. Dials, guages, lights, windshields that get dirty with bugs and grime, and things of that nature. Car History, bring it back like in gt2 and 3.
Races: More cars on the track. A full field should consist of more than 6 cars. And on certain other tracks like Nurburgring, or sarthe have different classes of cars on the road as well. The LeMans race would take weeks if they raced only one class of car on the track at a time. More tracks that allow you to qualify, restrictions on horsepower, pitstops should be planned before you enter the pits, allowing for minor changes in suspension to compensate for track conditions, etc. Rally race champion ships, on tracks other than circular tracks (bring Pikes Peak back) "Race the Clock" instead of another car on the track.
Tracks: More tracks, more tracks that are for specific classes only. Rally races, get licenses for tracks like Nascar tracks. Daytona hosts several types of racing, not just Nascar. Indianapolis does as well.
AI: More dynamic AI, AI drivers should be able to 'sense' what is in front and behind them when driving and be able to adjust the line they are driving to manuever(sp) around these obstacles, or at least get out of the way to prevent themselves from becoming obstacles.
UI: Short cuts at main menu for important locations. like what was in GT2. Tuning progress needs to be faster. Photomode should allow you to adjust items on the car, hood, doors, lights, etc. Replay theater should have more than play and fast forward. Pause, frame advance, frame back, rewind slow and fast, and more options for camera angles and locations during the replay.
If I have missed anything please feel free to post more of your thoughts. As I get more ideas, I'll consolidate them into this list. Again Thanks to all who have added to this thread.
More on Damage, and why it should be in the game. As a race fan, I have watched everything from my friends kid running micro-sprint cars to traveling to Texas Motor Speedway to watch a weekend of Craftsman Truck, Busch, and Nascar, to watching Sprint cars reach speeds in excess of 190mph on a 1/2 mile dirt oval. And in almost all cases there have been some instances where a car got loose and hit the wall, was bumping other cars down the straights, or had some sort of mechanical failure that caused the car to become damaged in some way. Now the most logical reason I have heard to why damage has not been a part of the GT series has been mostly due to Car count, and having to individually model each car with a super-high polygon count framework to remotely resemble showing damage, you'd only get a game with at most 100 to 200 cars. Also part of that same reason is many car manufacturers do not want you to see what thier car would look like if it were trashed after hitting a wall at a buck and a quarter.
It would probably look something like the viper in the photo. Trashed Viper (Caution, link might take you away from this site, please use your BACK button to return)
Now a simple solution would be forego the modeling, and keep the polygon count as it is, and add a mathmatical equasions that keeps track of things like how hard you hit the wall to careen off and get around a corner, or if you rear-ended that R92CP to bump him into the sandtrap just to take first away from him, and calculated it, and charged the player repair services at the end of the race, that would teach drivers to be more respectful of their car, and of other cars during the race. I talked to a friend of mine that has owned each and every one of the GT games cept 4 and its pre-release varients, and he didnt like the idea of damage or having damage cost money, then I found out why, on his GT2 game, he had completed the max you could complete, had more money than he knew what to do with, and had the cars he wanted, and his racing style was 100% throttle, adjust steering after bouncing off the wall and other cars. That my friends isnt racing. I am sure that he would have gotten discouraged if he was spending tons of money fixing his mercedes after each race, but it might have taught him not to run into stuff.
Right now I am trying to think which of the nfs games had the damage engine in it, might have been hot pursuit 1, but it taught me not to run into stuff. then again it taught me how to look for and use money exploits. But that is another thing. Well I have taken up more than enough space today. Enjoy racing everyone.
Inkil.
gt1... never played
gt2... 98%
gt3... got bored with it.
gt4... 45% and growing.
Here is a brief list of what I would like to see and why, and please feel free to post your thoughts...
Crash Dynamics... the creators do not need to add polygon counts to the cars, but if you hit the wall at 125mph, you should have to spend money repairing things. Stiffening the chassis doesnt really count. I have worked in the sprint car world for a couple few years now, and I know that if a car is salvagable, it costs $$$ to get it straightened out, to have the damage cut off and new stuff put in, and have the new aluminum panels remade. Crashing the GT-One for example in turn 1 of the Tokyo R race while doing 150+ should do more to the performance of the car instead of bouncing off. alignment should be affected, downforce tweaked, something to lessen the desire to use cars infront of you as brakes, and to help turn tighter, and teach you how to be a better driver. Speaking of using other cars to help brake and turn... perhaps add some AI where if you slam into a car or what not in order to pass, that car makes it tough to pass the next time. kind of like a revenge thing.. and lets talk about how hard it is to even nudge the other cars out of thier line, yet its pretty easy for them to get you sideways in a turn.
Day to Night to Day transitions....
Nurburgring is a sweet track, but persistant daylight for 24hours is unreal...
Anyway. those are my two non-car pieces of this wish list... I would like to see what other non-car wishes you have.
Here is a consolidation of things everyone had some input on. I wish to thank everyone who responded to this thread. Everyone had some really good ideas.
Time of Day changes: Day to Night to Day. this with temperature changes will make racing a little more realistic. If a race is a morning race, the track will be cold, as the day progresses the track will warm up can change how the car responds.
Weather Transitions: Clear skys, partly cloudy, cloudy, rain, fog, snow. Things that would help with the world dynamics and how track performance affects a cars handling.
Track Condition changes: Track Temperature changes during the day or night racing.
Tuning: Better descriptions for what settings do and how they affect other settings. Computer controlled tuning, many cars have a computer chip upgrade, I know racers that use thier street cars to race and they adjust the performance of the car thru the chip itself. Good for racers on a budget. Dyno testing of drivetrains, this would allow you to get ideas on what works and what doesnt work as far as performance. maybe help you learn how to squeeze a few more miles/kilometers per hour out of the car. On track testing, while there is an analyzer ingame, there could be more options to what it shows. I have seen a crew chief use a computer to tell exactly when the driver turned, how many degrees the driver had to turn the wheel, how much load was on the suspension at the time of the turn, and it gave the crew chief an idea how to adjust the suspension of the car in order to make it perform at this peak potential.
Cars: I dont think there is enough that can be said about the cars. Paint schemes, customizable sponsor decals, crash dynamics, open-wheel cars (Formula series), more than 1 or two cars from manufacturers outside of Japan.. I am sorry, Pontiac had more than 2 cars that were popular. the 65 GTO was a popular muscle car, the 1970's Firebirds were popular too, dont forget the 1979 Trans Am that was popularized in "Smokey and the Bandit" movies. Car specific tuning, while the developers did good not to allow a player to build a 1000hp car from a stock Honda Civic, I know that there are tuners out there that will pull whole drivetrains from one car and put them into another just for the increase in performance. This may not be the 'scene' thing, but it does happen. Opponent cars should not be 'tanks' when driving down the road. It is bad when you cant nudge an opponent car out of its line, but it can surely bump you into the sandtraps. This needs to be enabled if damage is enabled. Cockpit view. Dials, guages, lights, windshields that get dirty with bugs and grime, and things of that nature. Car History, bring it back like in gt2 and 3.
Races: More cars on the track. A full field should consist of more than 6 cars. And on certain other tracks like Nurburgring, or sarthe have different classes of cars on the road as well. The LeMans race would take weeks if they raced only one class of car on the track at a time. More tracks that allow you to qualify, restrictions on horsepower, pitstops should be planned before you enter the pits, allowing for minor changes in suspension to compensate for track conditions, etc. Rally race champion ships, on tracks other than circular tracks (bring Pikes Peak back) "Race the Clock" instead of another car on the track.
Tracks: More tracks, more tracks that are for specific classes only. Rally races, get licenses for tracks like Nascar tracks. Daytona hosts several types of racing, not just Nascar. Indianapolis does as well.
AI: More dynamic AI, AI drivers should be able to 'sense' what is in front and behind them when driving and be able to adjust the line they are driving to manuever(sp) around these obstacles, or at least get out of the way to prevent themselves from becoming obstacles.
UI: Short cuts at main menu for important locations. like what was in GT2. Tuning progress needs to be faster. Photomode should allow you to adjust items on the car, hood, doors, lights, etc. Replay theater should have more than play and fast forward. Pause, frame advance, frame back, rewind slow and fast, and more options for camera angles and locations during the replay.
If I have missed anything please feel free to post more of your thoughts. As I get more ideas, I'll consolidate them into this list. Again Thanks to all who have added to this thread.
More on Damage, and why it should be in the game. As a race fan, I have watched everything from my friends kid running micro-sprint cars to traveling to Texas Motor Speedway to watch a weekend of Craftsman Truck, Busch, and Nascar, to watching Sprint cars reach speeds in excess of 190mph on a 1/2 mile dirt oval. And in almost all cases there have been some instances where a car got loose and hit the wall, was bumping other cars down the straights, or had some sort of mechanical failure that caused the car to become damaged in some way. Now the most logical reason I have heard to why damage has not been a part of the GT series has been mostly due to Car count, and having to individually model each car with a super-high polygon count framework to remotely resemble showing damage, you'd only get a game with at most 100 to 200 cars. Also part of that same reason is many car manufacturers do not want you to see what thier car would look like if it were trashed after hitting a wall at a buck and a quarter.
It would probably look something like the viper in the photo. Trashed Viper (Caution, link might take you away from this site, please use your BACK button to return)
Now a simple solution would be forego the modeling, and keep the polygon count as it is, and add a mathmatical equasions that keeps track of things like how hard you hit the wall to careen off and get around a corner, or if you rear-ended that R92CP to bump him into the sandtrap just to take first away from him, and calculated it, and charged the player repair services at the end of the race, that would teach drivers to be more respectful of their car, and of other cars during the race. I talked to a friend of mine that has owned each and every one of the GT games cept 4 and its pre-release varients, and he didnt like the idea of damage or having damage cost money, then I found out why, on his GT2 game, he had completed the max you could complete, had more money than he knew what to do with, and had the cars he wanted, and his racing style was 100% throttle, adjust steering after bouncing off the wall and other cars. That my friends isnt racing. I am sure that he would have gotten discouraged if he was spending tons of money fixing his mercedes after each race, but it might have taught him not to run into stuff.
Right now I am trying to think which of the nfs games had the damage engine in it, might have been hot pursuit 1, but it taught me not to run into stuff. then again it taught me how to look for and use money exploits. But that is another thing. Well I have taken up more than enough space today. Enjoy racing everyone.
Inkil.
gt1... never played
gt2... 98%
gt3... got bored with it.
gt4... 45% and growing.
