Post by jayott on Jun 13, 2021 12:42:37 GMT 2
You may remember me as the guy who did a long Minardi playthrough back in 2016-2017, left it on a cliffhanger, but finally finished it in late 2019. Some may have wondered why they could no longer find it from March 2020 onwards, especially since the downfall of GP Race Games left me no other way to communicate with this fanbase.
The truth is, I deleted the channel myself and started anew. I went through a rough week where I became the target of a small but impactful hate mob, and saw no other way out but to nuke everything and try to continue my playthrough of an unrelated game elsewhere. Here is the story (pastebin explains what happened although I don't necessarily stand by everything I said, video targets the cause using a burner channel and I do stand by that);
Unfortunately, this meant that my GPW work was gone. And my overall opinion of motorsport and it's fanbase was greatly soured by the ordeal, so I haven't had the motivation to reupload, even on a burner account. Especially since audio quality was inconsistent in the playthrough and I would consider re-recording certain voice tracks to patch it up. I may yet go to the trouble of bringing the videos back one day. Don't count on me actually playing GPW again though; Motorsport Manager exists, and I haven't been an F1 fan since 2017.
Despite all that, I do want to preserve the knowledge of this game, and I still have a lot that I remember. Let me go through everything that isn't otherwise obvious.
Major bug List:
- Pit lane bug
- Yellow flag bug
- 2 hour race bug
- AI first stint bug
The pit lane bug means that, if two or more cars are in their pit stall simultaneously, the team who has priority will always exit first, regardless of how long their pitstop took. Priority is fixed based on the results of the 1997 championship; Williams always benefits, Minardi is always hindered. However the bug doesn't trigger if the higher priority car is merely in the pit lane and not at their stall yet.
The yellow flag bug (fixed in 1.03 fan patch), where drivers are penalized for pushing after the yellow has been withdrawn, has an interesting behavior that you may or may not have noticed. Better drivers are far less likely to be affected by it. I can't remember ever having problems with penalties on Hakkinen once I signed him. The key stat seems to be Concentration, and if so, this stat also affects the likelihood of penalties in general.
And the 2 hour bug happens because the game tries to replicate the real life rule, but uses the exact order that the cars get back to the finish line (minus anyone who finished inside 2 hours), regardless of how many laps down everyone is. The at risk tracks are Argentina, Monaco and Hungary; one can try to avoid it by making sure these races start dry.
Due to tyre wear being based primarily on lap count, pit strategy should generally be decided on that same metric. But this is not an exact science; Australia (58 laps) is probably better run as a 1-stop hard, but Japan (51 laps) favours the 2-stop soft if it actually stays dry. I would avoid 3 stops regardless of lap count however. The AI randomly assigns 1, 2 and 3 stop strategies to the rest of the grid each race. 1 stoppers usually end up being the main contenders for the win, due to the first stint bug. This entails the AI behaving as if they started with a fuel load of 20 for speed purposes, regardless of when they're scripted to actually pit.
Chassis Handling + Engine Power makes up such an overwhelming portion of your overall pace that there's no point in trying to sneak illegal driving aids, you're better off boosting reliability on your technology, and you can even make do with a low speed driver as long as they have high wet weather and usable overtaking/concentration. This holds true in both vanilla and the 1.03 fan patch (unless a newer version exists that tries to rebalance secondary pace factors).
100 combined testing miles per race is often plenty, even for a works team. Only reason I bring this up is that I remember Definitely Zero throwing a ton of money at extra testing miles for little benefit. Got to spend smarter, not harder. I'll respond to this thread later if something comes to mind that I missed, but for now I wanted to touch base with any former GP Race Games members who might have been wondering where I went.
