>Listen up.
>Just to quell any doubts...
>PD started from the ground up on this game.
Hmmm, sorry, but I still disagree with the comment that it is 'completely' different. Despite what you may have read from PD about how they have rewritten the Driving model (and this I except), I'd still be willing to bet there is a lot of common code. I think this will particullary apply to the graphics rendering engine. Granted, there will be incremental improvements, optimisations and areas of rewriting here - but there will still be common code. If you know about software development, you will know one of the jobs of a programmer when writing new software is to recognise where not to 'throw the baby out with the bath water' and reuse what cannot be improved, or where starting from scratch would bring no discernable benefits compared with refining existing code. For example, a few weeks ago I was asked to produce a prototype piece of software for a presentation to a prospective customer (Windows platform, C++)- I managed to reuse about 60% of the code from another project I worked on over the last year - even though the project was for a completely different system and had a different look-and-feel.
You only have to look at the way the AI 'behaves' in GT4P, the camera panning and even the fact that they use the same music in places to know that PD have a tendency to this sort of thing - and who can blame them? The visual improvements that you see in GT4P (over 3) come from optimisations they have made to allow things like bigger textures to be used on the tracks and more poloygons and effects to be used on the cars. I'm not saying they haven't rewritten things that will bring about improvements that the 'user' will percieve, I'm just saying that there WILL be significant common code.
Don't get me wrong I'm am looking forward to GT4, and I will buy it; i just won't 'buy' the 'completely different' & 'total re-write from the ground up' theory.