Super Car Challenge

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For those who wernt there (most of you) vincent is called cooldawn on PSN and during the race he had no coms........after owning us for yet another race wane was saying how impressed he was with him when eddie chirps up "hang on, maybe he's a cool girl called dawn"........I'll leave the rest of the conversation to your imagination LOL
 
Thats 1 week lost........that means supercar challenge is released 2 weeks before NFS Shift. And whats the betting the Shift demo hits on the Thursday, ie the day before SCC is released? I think SCC has just publicly made the biggest fattest mistake of gaming history with this slip up!
As some of you know I'm on the beta and I love the game, loved FC as well. But this release date has been sliping and sliping for months now. They must realise they've just landed there title right in the middle of Dirt 2, NFS Shift and GT5s global hype machines! They could have just got away with it if the release date had stuck.....
Now this pains me to say this but I'm holding of buying the game till I see the NFS demo. 2 reasons, the first is If NFS is as good as it's reported I'll only really have 2 weeks time to give SCC and secondly and most importantly I can see the userbase of SCC being hugely reduced now, my main joy of SCC is the multiplayer and FC was sparse in it's players online at the best of times, I can see SCC being no better on this front or even worse.
Now don't get me wrong, The game is "my cup of tea" but I think NFS Shift might come in a bigger mug.
 
Hereward
Thats 1 week lost........that means supercar challenge is released 2 weeks before NFS Shift. And whats the betting the Shift demo hits on the Thursday, ie the day before SCC is released? I think SCC has just publicly made the biggest fattest mistake of gaming history with this slip up!
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Quite.

Hereward
As some of you know I'm on the beta and I love the game, loved FC as well. But this release date has been sliping and sliping for months now. They must realise they've just landed there title right in the middle of Dirt 2, NFS Shift and GT5s global hype machines! They could have just got away with it if the release date had stuck.....

Now this pains me to say this but I'm holding of buying the game till I see the NFS demo. 2 reasons, the first is If NFS is as good as it's reported I'll only really have 2 weeks time to give SCC and secondly and most importantly I can see the userbase of SCC being hugely reduced now, my main joy of SCC is the multiplayer and FC was sparse in it's players online at the best of times, I can see SCC being no better on this front or even worse.

Now don't get me wrong, The game is "my cup of tea" but I think NFS Shift might come in a bigger mug.
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I would agree with you but, as far as I am concerned, Supercar Challenge is a game I'll play for months regardless of what else is out there...including GT5 and Forza 3. Plus, at the moment, I'm still not sure what NfS:Shift is supposed to be...arcade/sim...but, to the masses, if the demo ends up being something tangible/special then it may certainly dent Supercar Challenges ability to sell through well.

That sucks to be fair. The Challenge series of games deserves to get some recognition. I doubt it would be stuck in a rut if Sony or a big publishing company were backing it.
 
Hey I'm not saying SCC is bad, quite the oposite. I just think it's going to severly have a dent put in it's sales due to it's release slipping into NFS Shifts hype machine. That for me spells trouble, the trouble that FC had, which is a lack of people to race online with!
IF NFS has hyped the sim aspects it'll be obvious very quickly with the demo, in which case I'll not bother and stick with SCC, but I have a feeling that Shift is jumping on the GT5/Forza3 bandwagon and has gone sim rather than trying in vain yet again to go Arcade and go up against the Beamoth which is Burnout.
Whatever happens however this latest slip in release dates is going to lose them a lot of customers and money, not because there'll be upset that the game is delayed a week just simply because people will be more aware of the iminent release of NFS Shift.....
What is interesting is if SCC slips again. Might be worth them jumping on NFS and Dirts hype and a publics re-intrest in racing games and release the game 3 weeks AFTER NFS Shift but before GT5.......probubley not a popular thing to say but it could possibley get them out of the hole they just dug for themselves!
 
My problem with SCC, and maybe it's just me being overly picky, is I have a serious issue with typos and errors on professional websites and I've come across a few on System 3's site. On this page, for example, if you scroll down a bit to ALL OF A CHATTER!, they have a quote from a user: "I know this will upset a lot of people but this owns GT5p (Grand Theft Auto 5 Prologue)." Seriously? They've had entire paragraphs doubled, etc. To completely pull me away from GT5, they need to step up their game. That and give us in the US a release date. I've like beta testing the game itself, but everything around it needs a bit more polish.
 
FC and SCC could have been great games, only if they managed to remove deadzone from g25. It's disappointing to buy a game and not to be able to play it properly.
 
dzidza
FC and SCC could have been great games, only if they managed to remove deadzone from g25. It's disappointing to buy a game and not to be able to play it properly.
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Its not just the G25,I use a DFGT and after I got the beta trial I was VERY letdown when I found the game to be nearly impossible to play due to the steering response. And before anyone says it yes I downloaded the "patch" for the logitech steering improvements,and yes I used the same wheel on FC.Seems that all the steering issues with FC just became worse with SCC,unless this is resolved I see no enjoyment in this game for me.
 
Well, I don't want to say too much in an open forum considering this game is still technically in Beta and not yet released, but I was rather exasperated with the steering response in SCC and how Eutechnyx approached it throughout it's early development process. In the first and I think even second patch, it was almost unplayable with a wheel. It was unwieldy to drive, erratic, unpredictable, uneven, twitchy. Statistically, I bet >90% of console players never touch a wheel and I can understand any developer putting emphasis on the controller. But if a racing game wants to be taking seriously than it has to offer good playability with a variety of wheels.

With the next patch, I think they almost completely eliminated the deadzone. But as a result the steering became flat and the response was not linear. It felt like the more you turned the wheel the greater the degree of input. By eliminating the dead zone and fixing one of the most often critized issues with Ferrari Challenge, I felt they also ruined the steering feel. And the feeling of understeer and oversteer became masked. I felt at that point the steering felt closer to GT5P than it did to FC. With the latest patch, I think the game now feels much closer to the steering we have in Ferrari Challenge. Some like it, some hate it, it's certainly not perfect (and it does have a small deadzone again) but it does a great job in communicating the level of grip and in this I think it's still unparalleled with any other racing game I've played on the PS3. You can tell from your hands when the car is beginning to understeer and you get a good sense of front grip vs rear grip.

But either way, the beta was very limited and only gave access to a few select cars and there's no way to know what the final product will be like until we play it and do so back to back with FC. And of course, as the gaming community at large starts to give feedback, the boxed game may also be updated and tweaked with patches as we saw with FC.

Personally, I think Eutechnyx tried to improve upon the FC model in regards to steering input. They knew it had flaws and wasn't perfect. But to me, every change they made was one step forward and two steps back. They had a big benefit with Ferrari Challenge in that they had Bruno Senna on board as a consultant and offering his feedback on how the cars handled and behaved. And I think it took them a while to realize they had something pretty good to begin with.

SCC, like Ferrari Challenge before it, has the potential to be a great game. I consider GT5P the better driving game. But FC was the better racing game. I had many memorable bumper to bumper runs for 10-20 even 30 minutes at a time on tracks like Spa or Mont Tremblant and with cars like the 250 Testa Rosa or 355 Challenge or 512S and in both dry and wet conditions. There's much to love with this driving model and I'm sure SCC will offer more of the same. I think it's going to be great fun.

But I also agree with others here. I think System 3 really shot themselves in the foot. It should have been released two months ago. With Shift out in a few weeks and GT5 knocking on the door, I'm afraid SCC might be forgotten just like Superstars of V8 Racing. (Does anybody remember it?). And the fact that it's not being sufficiently promoted doesn't help matters. Now we're being told that they have no idea of a time frame for it's North American release, leaving another 10,000,000 potential customers out in the lurch. And many of those potential customers WILL be buying Shift or GT5 instead. Myself included.

I ordered a PAL version of SCC. If NOTHING else it will be nice to race some of the old cars from Ferrari Challenge in full 16 player lobbies without them collapsing. And being able to watch and save the replays. But I'm also expecting much more.
 
DaddyVDUB
Its not just the G25,I use a DFGT and after I got the beta trial I was VERY letdown when I found the game to be nearly impossible to play due to the steering response. And before anyone says it yes I downloaded the "patch" for the logitech steering improvements,and yes I used the same wheel on FC.Seems that all the steering issues with FC just became worse with SCC,unless this is resolved I see no enjoyment in this game for me.
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If you have a UK version you probably don't have the newer patch for ffb. Europe was supposed to get it with the DLC but I don't think it happened. Only the NA version has it, I believe. It still not GT5P quality but it is much improved.
 
I don't use a wheel...I used a DualShock3 with X as accelerate, Square is brake, D-Pad to steer, L1 and R1 to shift gears.

Hmmm...this explains a lot for me, since I don't have the wheel issues.
 
I don't use a wheel...I used a DualShock3 with X as accelerate, Square is brake, D-Pad to steer, L1 and R1 to shift gears.

Hmmm...this explains a lot for me, since I don't have the wheel issues.
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It explains why you're so fast! ;)

It seems like most of the fastest drivers in FC are pad drivers - not to say that there aren't some fast wheel drivers, but I get the feeling it's easier to be really (consistently) fast with a pad. Having said that, I love the feeling of FC with my G25 - I don't even mind the dead-zone that much, it adds an extra element of "danger", because you really have to watch that it doesn't induce snap-oversteer when you're cornering. My observation is that pad users seem to have an advantage at chicanes:

Monza! :ouch:
Redwood Park! :ouch::ouch:

while wheel users do better at tracks with a lot of sweeping turns like Mugello or hairpins like Vallelunga.

I agree with everything said by jjaisli. It's a bit hard to tell about the handling of SCC vs FC, because the cars in the SCC beta are so "super". I am, however, very disappointed by the graphics which to my eye (although admittedly more realistic in colour) don't seem to be a significant improvement over FC.

At the beginning of the year I said I very much doubted that SCC would be ready in the 1st quarter of 2009 :rolleyes: & that if it was delayed for too long it would end up being crushed by SHIFT &/or GT5. That now seems likely to happen - I'm not sure even I will be buying SCC. IMO it would have been better for System 3 to have focussed on building a reputation for FC, by continuing to support the game, improve it & add to it through DLC as originally planned.
 
The difference in times between controller and wheel users in SCC (in beta stage) was so epic that it made me stop playing beta.

Spa times were more than laughable. Pad drivers were 5 seconds ahead of me before backstraight, while in the end it was even 10 seconds per lap.

That problem was adressed many times on Eutechnyx forums and I really have strong hopes somebody took that seriously. Without that, "hard-core" players will be heavily penalised in both online portions of the game as well as Time Trial.

Not to mention that it could also lead to serios problems in offline Carrer mode due to the fact it was (maybe) balanced to average pad-times, not wheel-times.

I play driving games with the wheel only and only two games so far that made wheel competitive to controller are Gran Turismo series and original Yu Suzuki's F355 Ferrari Challenge. All other console games so far failed - from Forza, Race Pro, original TOCA, Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pireli included - to arcades such as Gotham or Test Drive Unlimited.

In the end, such ignorance to "hard-core" in balancing the imput devices can just do harm to some franchises in long term because they just irritate the most loyal base. It is not commercial base, but I can safely say that only "hard-core" persist in playing good games after usual "two months on market" period.

Of course, playing and driving online in Private Rooms is the only solution, and I have no problems with that.

However, since no game mentioned does not have option to find/create a Lobby due to input method used, playing for wheel users is often limited to Private races only without suffering from heavy disadvantages in all fields.

And that single fact is shame.
 
amar212
The difference in times between controller and wheel users in SCC (in beta stage) was so epic that it made me stop playing beta.

Spa times were more than laughable. Pad drivers were 5 seconds ahead of me before backstraight, while in the end it was even 10 seconds per lap.

That problem was adressed many times on Eutechnyx forums and I really have strong hopes somebody took that seriously. Without that, "hard-core" players will be heavily penalised in both online portions of the game as well as Time Trial.

Not to mention that it could also lead to serios problems in offline Carrer mode due to the fact it was (maybe) balanced to average pad-times, not wheel-times.

I play driving games with the wheel only and only two games so far that made wheel competitive to controller are Gran Turismo series and original Yu Suzuki's F355 Ferrari Challenge. All other console games so far failed - from Forza, Race Pro, original TOCA, Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pireli included - to arcades such as Gotham or Test Drive Unlimited.

In the end, such ignorance to "hard-core" in balancing the imput devices can just do harm to some franchises in long term because they just irritate the most loyal base. It is not commercial base, but I can safely say that only "hard-core" persist in playing good games after usual "two months on market" period.

Of course, playing and driving online in Private Rooms is the only solution, and I have no problems with that.

However, since no game mentioned does not have option to find/create a Lobby due to input method used, playing for wheel users is often limited to Private races only without suffering from heavy disadvantages in all fields.

And that single fact is shame.
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Hmmm...I don't agree with you fella. I'm a hardcore racing fan and enjoy all racers...GT, Forza, Race Pro, Ferrari Challenge, Supercar Challenge BETA...using a pad. Maybe I'm getting this wrong but it seems that you're post indicates players like me are not at all hardcore.

The joypad/wheel debate could rage on forever. Indeed different ways of playing racing games using a pad has raged on forever...triggers/analogue stick vs. D-Pad/face buttons...but I always play with how I feel most comfortable and my DFP just didn't cut it for me.
 
Vincent Viceroy
Maybe I'm getting this wrong but it seems that you're post indicates players like me are not at all hardcore.
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No, I was using quotes because of that in "hard core" and I do not imply anyone is more hardcore than other.

But balance between input methods is very epic in all titles mentioned and it is a problem for all wheel users outhere.
 
I did notice the other night as a wheel user it wasn't till the rain was introduced that I could keep up with the pad drivers. But if a good ranking system is in place racing random people online shouldn't be an issue regarding pad and wheel users if all racers in the loby are there due to there "lap times"
 
Zathra5_
If you have a UK version you probably don't have the newer patch for ffb. Europe was supposed to get it with the DLC but I don't think it happened. Only the NA version has it, I believe. It still not GT5P quality but it is much improved.
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Yes it's a UK version,after install it updated the steering patch. When I got the beta, UK was all to be had. Its not just the steering,the car goes really wild under any attempt at braking,I have done all the adjustment with pedal sensitivity and FF to be done. With FF on max its really un drivibale and on min it will hardly steer at all. My wheel is just fine on GT5P & FC. The only car I can do a decent run in is the Astin Martin, The Enzo and McClaren are just too uncontrolable as is. Like I said I am a fan of FC and quite used to its physics 100% offline so I'm no newcomer to system 3 games,SCC really let me down I really wanted it to be good,hopefully they can fix this problem.
 
I think you're overstating it a bit amar. My experience in FC tells me that most skilled wheel users & pad users are pretty well matched. Some tracks, with serious chicanes, like Monza, definitely seem to favour pad users, but on the "best" tracks, like Spa, Mugello, VR, Silverstone, Vallelunga & Mont Tremblant, I think it's pretty well balanced. Lap records on the leader boards seem to reflect the amount of time devoted to the individual cars/tracks, more than anything else.

However, the most skilled pad users, like sarrinen69 (MHAILWOOD) & SEGEL seem to be able to set a pace which is impossible to match with a wheel. I've tried to encourage some of the fastest GT5P wheel users (Div 1 drivers) to get into FC, but it doesn't seem like any of them have really devoted enough time to become really competitive.

I do think that it's a shame not to use a good FFB wheel on FC regardless of how fast you are, as it is a great experience.👍
 
DaddyVDUB are you using a 180 degree wheel? If so thats your problem, Games fine with 900 degree wheels but I have tried the 180 and gave it up as a joke LOL
 
According to a source from the developer System 3 has no distributor for North America for Supercar Challenge.
It could be 6 months or more if it ever comes out in NA.
I just placed a pre order from a UK based game store myself, if you live in NA & want Supercar Challenge you might consider doing the same.
 
TheMoose
According to a source from the developer System 3 has no distributor for North America for Supercar Challenge.
It could be 6 months or more if it ever comes out in NA.
I just placed a pre order from a UK based game store myself, if you live in NA & want Supercar Challenge you might consider doing the same.
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I feel an odd sense of relief that this information has now been stated in a public forum by Eutechnyx themselves. I was made aware of this by the publisher a few weeks ago but it was done by private email exchange and I didn't want to betray this information.

But I can't even begin to tell you how angry it made me. It's the ultimate conclusion to everything else System 3 has done. I firmly believe they're just not capable of properly marketing a mainstream title. At least not anymore.

I understand the reasons that they give:
- The title is a PS3 exclusive.
- The PS3 is moving less (in NA) than the Xbox360 or Wii.
- Distributors are simply unwilling to pick it up at this point because it has limited sales appeal to them vs. the enormous marketing and distribution costs.
- If they can show decent sales figures from PAL sales they may have some leverage in a few months time.
- They still have big problems with Activision (who distributed Ferrari Challenge and claim they are the reason there is no N.A. DLC)

But I have to say, from the outside looking in, here is what I see when I think of System 3:
- Ferrari Challenge - 50 cars - every Ferrari ever made - Monaco, hill climb events--all coming soon.... (we all know what didn't happen)
- New title coming out in Quarter 1 2009
- Now coming out in Feb
- New title is Supercar Challenge but it's coming out beg. 2nd quarter 2009
- Now coming out in beg April
- Now coming out end of April
- Now coming beg May
- Announcing the NEW and IMPROVED Ferrari Challenge Supercar Challenge (with a few more tracks and cars thrown in for good measure...<crickets chirp>...
- Now coming June
- Now coming July
- Now coming beg. of August
- Now coming end of August
- Now coming beg of Sept
- No wait, actually coming end of August
- Well, maybe coming either end of Aug or beg of Sept but we don't know because so many people have ordered we have to produce more copies to sell (and likely have to get another bank loan to finance it). And to be honest, I would not be surprised if next week they announced END of September. And no, I'm not kidding.
- In the meantime, SCC has generated so little exposure, so little press, it's presence is BARELY known.
- No booth at E3?
- No booth at Gamecon?

There's a lot more I could say but I think I've said enough. But my point is, if you were an Account rep with say, Atari or Activision, would YOU be willing to work with these guys?

I love Ferrari Challenge. It had flaws. I'm hopeful SCC has addressed and fixed all or most of them. I would have preferred if they had simply continued to update and patch Ferrari Challenge but perhaps that's not being realistic. I have already ordered SCC (from the UK) and will be happy to play it despite some other great titles on the way. But I think I'm in the minority. And I would be surprised to ever see it for sale in NA.
 
amar212
I am not, unfortunatelly.

But nevermind.
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I drove/played FC only with my Driving Force Pro. Maybe the fastest Driver in FC was "Segel". Some of you may know him from his fantastic Positions in the laptime-boards.

I loved and still love Mugello and desperately tried to get a few fastest lap times with some cars on that track. I was able to do so with the 333 SP, the 348 Challenge, the F 355 Challenge and the 360 GT.

Segel and me were fighting for position one over many months and it was always a fight for tenths or even hundreds of a second. Segel drove with pad!

But on the other hand we drove/organized many 30-Minutes-Races and the winners were always the pad-drivers!?!? We even organized little Championships and the winners were always.......pad-drivers.

I think that there is a great advantage for pad-gamers in FC but i don´t think that it´s that huge!
 
Well, I'd hate to have yet another thread generate into a wheel vs pad debate, but Amar does have a point. It was pretty clear that in the beginning, Sixaxis users had a huge advantage over wheel users in the SCC beta. I think it was a much greater difference than Ferrari Challenge simply because in the early days of the beta, the car was very difficult (read impossible) to drive with a wheel and it made it seem much worse than it otherwise was.

I really can't judge this accurately for myself because I just don't use the Sixaxis. And outside of racing titles, the only thing I use my PS3 for is movies. I'm probably going to embarrass myself but when I started using controllers, they looked like this:

The-Atari-2600-Video-Computer-System-controller.aspx


And I just never developed the physical dexterity in my thumbs and fingers. But more importantly, I have no desire to try. I recently returned to gaming after a hiatus of nearly 20 years because games and simulations today are growing realistic enough and close enough to real life that it's becoming interesting. And I just couldn't imagine racing without a proper wheel and a good FFB system.

I remember playing this around the same time I started driving a real car:
1059011967-00.gif


...and thinking, "playing this with the joystick is just crap! I wish I had a wheel".

But I digress. What really brought the pad/wheel debate to light for me was a guy named PiotrB (a member of this forum). He's a wheel user and a genuine Alien. But I noticed an interesting correlation in his lap times and mine, depending on what car we drove. He's always faster. But I noticed he and I are generally much closer (or further away) from pad users on the same track depending on the cars we drive. And I began to suspect that with certain cars in Ferrari Challenge, pad users don't have the same advantage that they enjoy with others.

I don't know if this can ever be proven as fact. But I'm willing to bet that the fastest times on the leaderboards in FC and in SCC Beta are ALL with the pad. The statistic would be skewed either way because there are simply more pad users.

For a developer, trying to level the playing field between wheel and pad must be a sizable task I'm sure. There are so many variable to consider and you will always have one group or the other claiming an advantage because of different techniques and skill sets. But in order to run a truly fair race, wheel and pad users should be on a relatively level playing field and I don't think it is at the moment. At least in the current SCC beta.
 
:)

I can still feel my hands hurting and bleeding after 4 Hours of Decathlon on the VCS 2600. It must have been some kind of a "genius" that designed the VCS Controller with these sharp edges on the top of the stick.

Someone should have forced him to run these 1500 meters at the end of the game at least 20 times a day!

After that we all praised the wonderful "Competition Pro" 👍

But on the VCS i also owned these two "Non-Force-Feedback-Wheels" you can see on the left of the picture.

Great Equipment for "night racer" :dopey:

20081209-Atari-VCS2600.jpg


But back to topic:

It must be pretty hard for a developer to level wheel- and pad-control! Maybe almost impossible. I can still remember that GT5P-Challenge / Competition with the Nissan on Eiger Nordwand. I used my DFP and when it came to gear shifting the ghosts of the guys with the G25 (and with the clutch) simply shifted much faster than me and just drove away.

Maybe this was justified because these guys had to "work" much more during that one lap!?!?

Maybe pad-drivers earn their time-advantage because they will never have the fun and race-experience that we (the wheel drivers) can enjoy :)
 

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