More Opponents in GT: Possible?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JohnBM01
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That was a caption under a pic of the 350Z roadster, but it wasn't backed up, and it wasn't hinted at even in the main text. It was just he journalist trying to start a big rumour to generate more hype.
 
I thought Polyphony had quite clearly stated that there would be a maximum of six cars on track in both single player and on-line for GT4?
 
Erm... You can't just have 'clone' cars on a circuit and expect to save processing power. Think about it logically: each car is still going to be unique, at a unique location on the circuit, at a unique stage in gears, speed, RPMs, time, tyre wear and the myriad of other variables that GT keeps track of for each and every car on the circuit. At best, you're not going to save any processing whatsoever, at worst, you'll compromise the framerate and the game experience.

That's where the problem lies - it's in keeping track of all the variables related to the cars. Just not rendering cars that are on the other side of the circuit is probably a technique employed atm, that's what shadowing engines on graphics chips are all about, but the game still has to keep track of all the variables related to that car - the AI still has to control it and drive it, make pitstops, crash it, pass other cars, whilst the game itself tracks all the laptime and statistical data relevant to the machine. That's why replays are actually real and gaps to other racers accurate. To shift to a field of 12 cars means keeping track of 120% more data - you have to find somewhere to get that memory from.
 
Eagle, alot of members here don't take that into consideration. They have this idea that the ps2 can do like 20 cars on screen, at 1200 res, with 4X AA ;)
 
haha. Yeah that's what I was trying to explain in a fairly logical manner. It's not a PC! If we could put more RAM and a video card with 16X FSAA and all the other wonderful refinements in it that'd be nice, but for the moment, this is all we have to work with.
 
6 will do me fine as long as

1 they can actually race,
2 there is no cruddy catch up mode
3 they can keep up the pace
4 they can make different mistakes (not just the same ones as seen in gt3)
5 id like to see the appearence finally of personality as was muted at pre gt3, ie some are agressive, some smooth etc. etc
6 they drive according toothers on the track not just the fixed line ala gt3

theres probably loads more id like them to do but its been a long time since gt graced my ps2
 
Originally posted by LaBounti
The Renderware engine takes advantage of stream loading. GT3/4 does not use this techniuqe and it would not be worth cutting the car detail. GTa and Midnight Club does not load the whole track into memory and it does not keep track of non AI drivers.
Test Drive Lemans has 24 AI cars and Race driver in europe has 14 cars. But those games are farless atractive and neither has a consistant frame frate.

I bring your attention to this video to show that 6 cars is more than enough.

http://auto.joins.com/upboard/pds/pdst/m3_lancer_modena_track.mpeg

Its all a matter of game design.
Click to expand...

Watch that race and you'll see that 6 cars really is good enough! Plus its a really good race....
 
I think the games that really stress multiple car fields are F1 and NASCAR games. And as I said, that is the "cloning" deal in racing games. The more you are able to have different cars of the same model go at it in most games, the more they are able to have bigger fields and maybe even tight racing from all of them. Now, an example of a game with a lot of cars racing at once is F-Zero GX for the GameCube. Now, the machines raced in the game aren't really totally different or highly customized, but up to 30 can compete in this ultra-high speed racing game (in terms of futuristic racers, my favorite is still the WipeOut series of games).

I can recall "NASCAR RACING 1999" and all the different car kits I've used. These models included NASCAR Trucks, Ford GT40-like car bodies, Mini Cooper bodies, Australian V8 car bodies, to even the indominatable McLaren F1 bodies (one of my favorites, but the game crashed often when going to your in-car view). But as you know, you can't just take one car body and milk a set of 12 or 14 cars. I mean, you can't make a Porsche 911 GT2 with a McLaren F1 body. A Toyota GT-One body can't make a Corvette C5, or even the Corvette GTP car of the early-mid 1990s. So what is a game company to do? I don't know. You tell me.
 
What Id like to see If we cant have more than six cars,
Is that we can get six different types of cars in races that allow it, unlike GT3 which although i Havent played in over a year from my recollection usually consisted of 2 cars of the same type in the field.
 
You're still missing the memory point - it doesn't matter if you just clone the cars by loading the exact same car and maybe changing the paint scheme, if even that.

Now, let's say that for these cars, you create a generic setup. All the things we can normally tune, suspension settings, gear ratios, downforce, ASM, TCS, stability related settings, turbos or N/A tunes, weight reductions, tyres, ride height, and so on. We store these in a file that is used to setup every car on the circuit. This means we need to generate this sort of file for every single competition in the game. We also need to generate one for every single car in the game, and sometimes double up on these and have car/track specific combos.

During the race we're still going to need to keep track of speed, time, revs, gear, circuit location, acceleration, braking, steering, suspension compression, turbo boost pressure, tyre wear, oil levels, there's a gigantic range of variables to consider. The AI controller has to control more vehicles, demanding more memory.

Look at F-Zero GX. What variables are in that? Speed, time, circuit location? Anything else?

There just isn't available memory to add more cars. It'll hurt the frame rate, the responsiveness of the game, the visual quality, everything.
 
So this is kind of a useless thread then if I understand you right isn't it Eagle?

Well I do agree on this, framerate etc. can't be allowed to drop for more cars, then just hope a PS3 can handle more cars so they put more on the circuit, right?
 
I guess where some people are going with this thread is "if they can do it, why not GT4?" But yeah, it is a memory issue. Some people said on here say that memory doesn't mean anything. If GT3 had the same resolution levels as a Game Boy Advance, there would probably be 12 or 15 cars. I guess I'm saying that if you want to get one facet of racing to improve, you'll have to sacrifice. And in the case of a future GT game, that would probably be a heartbreaker for that GT game. I mean, look at Ridge Racer classic. With the Ridge Racer Type 4 package, you get a special edition of Ridge Racer classic, done up in 60 FPS. What was sacrificed was the other 10 drivers and that day-to-night-to-day thing. The CD still provided a nice game experience apart from classic RR.

But still, sacrifice can hurt.
 
If the PlayStation3 makes use of the distributed computing model that's beind hyped at the moment, there would be no finite limit on processing power and hence the potential to not just boost opponents by 2 or 6 but almost infinitely.

In reality, we'll see a machine with just as much memory and processing power as an absolute state of the art PC, which should by more than enough to add more cars should they so desire.

As it stands, there is no way I can see anything getting better on the PS2, so we'll have to make do with one if the most immersive, expansive and entertaining racing games the world has ever seen. Damn shame that.
 

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