Grand Prix 4 Manager - your feedback needed

Hi everyone,

I'd like to propose an idea to the Grand Prix 4 community to gauge everyone's response.

I've had the idea to create a good formula 1 manager game for a long time. I played the hell out of Grand Prix manager by EA Sports back in the day and despite it's many flaws it's still one of the better management games I've played. Picking it up again recently, I realised how simple the game is (and after spending 4 years studying computing at university) I realised I could recreate the game but the problem is I have no idea how to make a 3D graphics engine or models. But the solution was staring me in the face.

I can create a manager game with a GUI interface that would simply import and export performance data to GP4. It would be crude (at least to begin with) but I think it would work.

So yeah, I'd be very interested to hear back what people think about this and feel free to ask questions.

Thanks in advanced guys



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2016 12:18PM by Dave124.

Well, if anything like this ever happened, I'd consider it a "must buy". So yes, simply yes. It would be awesome.

I have actually been looking into doing something similar but my programming skills equal zero so I was looking into doing it via Excel. I had run a private league for friends using excel to work out the changes between races based on their instructions and then using GP4 to run the results. It is certainly very accurate in terms of cars being held up in traffic, weather, tyre wear etc which is hard to simulate elsewhere.

The only problems I see with the system is what carshapes to use and textures etc, i.e. controlling the mod looks, unless you just focus on using the system to calculate results and not worry about looks. Also controlling which tracks to use or simply sticking to the default ones. What were your thoughts on these issues?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2014 11:48AM by Bruce D.

Yeah this is sonething I've given some thoughts to.

It would be very very difficult to have changing car shapes/textures on a year by year basis. I mean it's possible using CSM but the mod file would be huge with all the different car shapes that cover 10+ years of f1.

So to start with at least I'm going to be building it using standard 2001 car shapes and textures that came with the game.

Get the fundamentals working first, then focus on how it looks. Right codemasters? :p

Yes I think that is the better way to do it, like you say otherwise it would become a huge file very quickly.

Great, looking forward to seeing what comes out of this, and shout if you need any help / bounce ideas off someone.

Codemasters do something fundamentally right first? Nah, never going to happen.

Cheers appreciate it. Well watch this space, word of warning, progress will be slow - real life doesn't give me much free time these days

I like the sound of this, sounds like it could be quite a good bit of fun.

I've always enjoyed the purely tactical aspect of F1, so something like this would be wonderful.

What language were you going to build it in if I can ask?
(And if you actually know yet.)

Best of luck.

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F1 Graphics Swapper --- Lensdump - Renders and Screenshots --- GP4 Performance Generator

Well at the moment I'm writing it using C# using XML to store the data (initial season data and saved games) also going to be importing text files (as this is the file format GP4 exports race results in).

What sort of features would people like to see included in the game? If you were building this what would you like to see in it?

Obviously I've got several ideas in my head. For example one basic idea is as a drivers age gets older their motivation level will drop and the further it drops the more likely they will retire from the sport. Things like that?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2014 11:37AM by Dave124.

Well obviously like I said I've been looking into doing this myself so I'll give you my ideas that I was thinking of how to implement into my version.

* As this is based on 2001 you have the advantage of knowning who is coming up in the future, but obviously depending on how far into the future you go does determine how the driver database is done. May I suggest making a database that can be edited by people in future?

* Drivers are set to only become available from the age of 18 to drive for you and retire randomly between the ages of 36 and 46.

* I have seen a GP2 Career excel program which adds up the positions gained over the race weekend to form a "score". Now according to that score and where the team is placed in the constructors championship rankings determines if a team is interested in you or not. I was going to manipulate that a little and have a chart on the main home screen which showed like the top 10 drivers who were interested in your team for the following season, basically been determined by the difference between your teams current season score and the driver's individual score and the closest 10 show on the chart. Obviously quicker drivers would want better team performances before they are interested.

* More available tyre and engine manufacturers and customer engines / works engines.

* General engine development over a season although research shows that manfacturers tended to only gain about 15bhp in a year and in stages, usually related to their home races.

* A good engineer could gain you more than a poor one, but the gain is randomly calculated, i.e. you may have Adrian Newey and the best wind tunnel but he might not have a very good gain for a while but he has more chance of doing so than a bad engineer.

* Top 10 constructors from previous season get prize money split between them per race based on position of previous season, but then also prize money per race based on top 10 results in qualifying and race. The total prize money increased by 5-10% every year.

* Testing would obviously have to be done in the program rather than GP4, maybe working on the ability of the test driver etc.

* Pay drivers.

When I think of more I'll let you know. By the way a great site to look up data is [www.statsf1.com] if you haven't seen it already.

Thanks for your thoughts Bruce, a lot of good ideas!

I' like the good/bad engineer idea. I was thinking of sonething similar with each driver too, so each driver has a 'consistency' rating so for example Michael Schumacher, will be fairly consistent with results but a driver like Coulthard will be more erratic. So could win a race one day, finish lower down on another day.

At time of writing, I have a initial GUI which allows the player to select which team they want to play as. Thinking I might start up a blog to document the development in more detail.

Check out my podcast at [datslife.podbean.com]

Well the nice thing about GP4 is the consistency of the driver is already built into the game. The variation factor in the performance file takes care of that, so you just need to decide how big the variety would be for each driver, then let GP4 deal with it after that.

A blog to show how it's going would be great to see, just to keep people happy.

Hi all,

Thought it was only fair I provide an update to this as many people seemed interested.

I haven't given up on this project, I've been quietly working away when I can on this over the last year.

The main GUI of the game is completed and the algorithm that generates the performance file is also completed, however I still need to build in core functionality to the game such as other team AI, driver/staff signings and finances.

This is a labour of love for me, I'm determined to finish this project, however long it takes. But finding the time/motivation to do it with a full time job and other commitments makes it hard.

So, as I said over a year ago. Watch this space. This will happen...eventually.

Great news there Dave. No real rush, not like you're trying to make a deadline or something.

Just came across this and it sounds very interesting, can't wait to see what develops next.

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Retro Liveries on the SMD-ZG02![www.grandprixgames.org]
Retro Renders 2.0 on the SMD-ZG02LN![www.grandprixgames.org]

I make a GP4 Managar, we are in Season 16. But its in German

Interesting one

Interesting one.

Fantastic to hear this is still on!

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F1 Graphics Swapper --- Lensdump - Renders and Screenshots --- GP4 Performance Generator

Jan88666 Wrote:
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> I make a GP4 Managar, we are in Season 16. But its
> in German

Is this a standalone program or an online league?

It´s the normal Gp4, no onlineleague, but we are 11 "Manager" i send everybody the result of the racing etc.
It all goes by e mail. There are driver change, component development, etc.