GpX Race Manager 6.2.00 with carset installer released

So, I spent some time to put a couple of features just to add some blatant role playing into the game.
Unfortunately Gp3 is a very generic game so there is no link between seasons nor managing sessions. You just install a carset and run. So it's up to the human player make the role playing work in a realistic way...
Anyway, here is a description of the main purpose.

Paddock Area
This tool allows to simulate some real-life facts during the season. In few words you can specify a little more the profile of each driver/team rather than trusting the simple ability range. The old combination GRIP/RANGE becomes now MIN_RANGE/BASE_GRIP/MAX_RANGE.
In example, if two drivers have the same grip value (intended as skill), the driver with an higher MIN and a lower MAX could be prone to make bad races more than often than the driver with a low MIN and an higher MAX, etc etc...
Also every race some drivers and/or team may receive some techincal updates (Performance, Engine, Chassis, Tyres, Aerodynamids, Compound) and some mood alteration that will reflect in the performance positively or negatively based on their season achievements. By the amount of the upgrades, a driver/team racing in the anonimate can turn into a good contender for the points if gets many upgrades. By my testing it looked very effective with the old seasons like 1988 with an entry list of 15 teams and 38 drivers. Has been funny to see the Rial and Coloni survive the draft after 4 huge upgrades.
What practically happens is that before every race the program calculates this process and returns a tweaked performance file to use for that race. Then is possible to import the race as usual.
The development of the season is shown by a chart to trace the upgrades and the current team strenght. If someone ever played BATRacer, probably will know how this feature/chart works

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Campaign mode (Contracts + Staff briefing)
In few words this allows to simulate the career of a driver. What you can do is to sign a contract for a team and deal with it during the season/s.
Also I introduced a group of agents that will work for you during the season and inform you about every aspect that should be cared in a driver's career, Team, Money, Sponsors, Press, Relations and of course the contractors will work to see if other teams are interested in you or proposed a contact or even a contract.
The style should be similar to a football manager, teams can show interest, reveal it but not necessarily offer a contract. Or eventually it must pass the team/staff validation. Also is not excluded that if you sux in your last year which is important to convince the boss to renew, at the end of the contract te team may decide to don't renew the contract or viceversa.
Here are some examples of the staff feedback:

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In the gallery of my site there are some other screenshots updated of the other features. The program should be ready in few days, but still open to some other addon in the future. Is it worth the upload?

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Edited 15 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2010 06:23PM by R_Scandura.

yes.

it's sure worth to upload it and i think it will be funny to play with it

sounds very nice!!

Yes it's worth the upload.

Thanks.

Definitely worth it Rob, looking forward to it already!

Hi, I finally released the new version.
As I totally screwed the original structure to add the new features, I consider this again a very very beta version. Some of the features are still at a basic stage because I would like to make a deep testing before to activate the rest. So please be patient if some weird crashes may happen. I tried to test all the events possible but eventually drop me a line and I'll care about the issue. I made a new tutorial explaining the working with images; it's in the package and online in the site. I hope it's clear enough to follow. For everything just ask.
There is still the same old matter of the ocx/dll so please check the 'Extras' folder in case of missing components errors.

I want to remind again that this is only an external tool not a full managing stuff that interacts with the game or so, just to don't disppoint anyone. As usually I hope it's of your taste.

Feel free to suggest and criticize...

PS: previous versions are no more compatible, so a fresh installation is required, sorry...

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2009 02:58PM by R_Scandura.

Thanks so much - I'll test and try it as soon as I have the time, so possibly next weekend, and give you feedback.

It works great, awesome job Rob.

I will ask a silly question! Where is the download button? lol!!! I want to try it from season 1980 and later!

Its the left one.

erm the big sphere with the green arrow? o_O

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Oh yes! Thank you guys! In one of my pcs, some buttons don't show at all.

About the Manager now...

Oh my goooooooooooood. Fantastic job Rob!!! Not only what I would like, but many many more fantastic things!
I started some tests, gp3 v1.13, f1 season 1980, 12 from the 14 races (I still miss 2 tracks ).
I updated the 5 system files, as you mentioned in your very helpful and detailed tutorial. Otherwise I was receiving error. I started with campaign mode but after completed and everything and the game was searching for a free sit, i had a crash with runtime error!
But I said no problem, i like to watch races more than racing myself. So I made a new '80 season just for importing results. I went to the teams' and drivers' page. I have my 1980 carset ready, so I tried to import the performances and names. GP3Edit has no ability for exporting performance file in *.txt mode. I used GP3 Master for the same carset, just to export the performance.txt. It was created but after importing it to manager, the data were absolutely a mess. Anything was places anywhere. Maybe this is partially my fault 'cos in the carset I have the team names like this, Williams-Ford V8, Ligier-Ford V8, Ferrari-B12, Alfa Romeo-V12, Renault-V6T etc. I noticed that in Engines, manager recognizes only the first letter block, i.e. all Ford V8 became Ford. This is something it has to be corrected imo. For example in '91 season there is Honda V12 for McLaren and Honda V10 for Tyrrell. Or in '96, there was Ford V10 for Sauber and Ford V8 for smaller teams! Anyway I continued my tests and manually entered the data for only the 11 best teams (now that the manager is here, i calculate the others too, for future use). Here I love the the ability to enter flags for drivers' and teams' nationality and tyres' sponsors! Really pretty mate!
After doing this, I made a season with 14 races. Another excellent point is that we can enter whatever number of races we want. So realistic and so nice!!! After that I choose the point system. It was a very nice surprise that I saw all these good presets for almost every kind of race championship in the world! So, I choose the old formula 1 point system which was active until '89. 9, 6, 5, 3, 2, 1. Now I have a question. Because my championship isn't over yet. Are the special rules of each season occur? For example these are the special rules for the 1980 formula 1 season: "Only the best five scores from the first six races and the best four scores from the remaining eight races counted towards the championship".
And now the time i was waiting was here. Race imports! Perfect designed table! Choose the Country of the first race (Argentina for 1980) and once more a flag appears! I imported race and qualify results, best laps and the records. And everything was so pretty placed in the tables. The only problem here was that again I had to import nationality flags and tyres' logos. But that was the last time because after that, and for the rest of races, they appear automatic. Another happy surprise here was that an "H" appears beside a driver when he races in his country "home race". So in Argentina, Reutemann and Zunino were with "H". Very smart! In '80 french gp, the half grid will be in Home! lol!!!
So after importing and saving each race in the season, we can go to stats page. Another big surprise was here. The tables for stats for everything were perfect. I have two proposals here. First, when the mouse is over a stat title, for example BQ, a balloon with "Best Qualify" could appear. Honestly I couldn't understand some of them especially in constructors' table! Second, we have drivers, constructors, tyres! What about Engines? I have a tip here! In someway, there could be a parameter in the code that says to the program, if the engine name is empty, then engine=constructor. That is useful for Renault, Alfa Romeo (in this case, even I write Alfa Romeo like engine, only Alfa is recognized!) and Ferrari.
The other very big and perfect surprise in the stats are all these graphs for everything I could Imagine! After the 5 first races (if i remember correctly), even the character of each driver appears! Fantastic. And the selection of the smilies is perfect too. I laughed so much when I saw Bruno Giacomelli with flames on his head. Reliability was the bad point of Alfa Romeo and not a single finish so far! Fittipaldi was crying, Jones was with a bright smile on his face etc.
Finally, because I haven't completed the season yet, (I miss 2 tracks, as I said), I don't know if the stats for each driver (wins, poles, etc.) are saved for use in the next season. For example, when '81 season starts, Alan Jones will have 1 championship in '80, x wins, x poles. And if there will be stats for him for all carrier and for current season! That would be great too i think.
That's all for now! I don't know if this is feedback or review, but I really like it! :D
Keep up the F A N T A S T I C job Rob!

huge post mate! let me answer little by litle. glad you like it

the grammar issue is carried anyway from gp3 where the game reads only the first block of the name. Indeed Ford V8 should be written Ford_V8 or Alfa_Romeo or Mugen_Honda or Heinz_Harald Frentzen. Of course it's importand that there must be an engine spicified. In the upgrades if you want a common update of all the Fords, just put Ford as engine, otherwise use Ford_V10 and Ford_V8 so they will upgrade separately.

for the old seasons there is the 'Classic F1' tool. At the end of the season it will activate the discarding method or whatever it was called. You can select what kind of result to count for the standing. in example best 12 of 14 results or best 5 of the first 7 races and best 5 of the last 7 races.

about the BQ there is the legend in the drivers report in the top-left of the table there is a '?' button you can toggle on off. If you click on a driver in the main standing it will tell you the gaps from the leader and the drivers around. but i'll check this addition too

yes every season you finish you can store the statistics in a database. in example all the f1 drivers collected in the same database. all written in the tutorial

what was the problem with the crash? have you created a database for the campaign and activated all the options?

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R_Scandura schrieb:

> what was the problem with the crash? have you
> created a database for the campaign and activated
> all the options?

I get it too - at the same point. Loaded a .per file and when I continue to investigate for free seats, the program shows a "run-time error" and crashes.

I checked it again and works. I think we did something wrong before! Be sure when you check the point system to hit both buttons needed. One just right of the point system and the big one in the right of this window.
I tested it, and this time it worked perfectly. There were 4 seats free for me to choose.
WARNING. Don't reject all avaiable contracts, otherwise the game hangs there and there is nothing to do, except Alt+F4!

Jackal, please send me you .per file by mail or rapidshare, maybe i missed an occurancy in the text reading. all the lists i created here load.

eheh John, it is a bug i didn't considered to be honest, nice catch!

anyway i found a bug that didn't happened in all my tested and reupoloaded the program in case it may affect other things. Remenber that if you select the staff there must be always a database selected in 'resume campaign'

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/2009 12:35PM by R_Scandura.

R_Scandura schrieb:
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> Jackal, please send me you .per file by mail or
> rapidshare, maybe i missed an occurancy in the
> text reading. all the lists i created here load.

I searched on your page but didn't find your mail-address, could you please post it here? Thank you!

Crucial question! I restarted my 1980 season 'cos I forgot a driver change! The first 3 races of the season are saved in the database. Now, at the 4th race Stephen South must replace injured Alain Prost in McLaren. Which is the bast way to make this change?
Should I first go to performance selector, change name and performances, and overwrite the current database? And after that import the race files as usual?

you can swap the drivers. If you are using the paddock area, before you apply the predictions and get the performance file, click on the bold team name (X) in the 'General' sheet, you'll see the team values and a button below with a blue arrow (1). Open it and enter there the new driver with all the values of the grip and min/max ranges for qualify and race. Then swap them (the button with the green/red arrow)(2)
when you need to set back again Prost, do the same operation as you'll find Prost and his old values saved in the list (a)

-pic-removed

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2010 04:37PM by R_Scandura.