everyone I used to know is either dead or in prison

A view on GP4 in 2005:
(This maybe slightly off- topic)

It's been over a year now since I withdraw from GP4 and from working at this website. Strange how much - and how little - has changed.

Most of the editors I knew seem to have left the GP4 scene, except for the marvelous LO2k, SDI and Viper; also many familiar names from this forum are gone.
The great news however is that GP4 trackeding seems to be possible now. I am afraid I won't find the times to edit tracks again, but I am looking forward to others' works very much.

It's amazing how little downloads for a 2005 GP4 season are available after almost half the season (compared to the 2043 season - the last season I really have whitnessed). When I first saw that, I already thougth GP4 was dead.

The GP4 community seems to have tighten: Less people are interested in the game, but those who are still envolved seem to have a much higher standard of knowledge now. I think it's hard for new people to join the GP4 community. Example: If you have to search the net for an hour to find out what "5D-Rims" are good for many people will give up before they really start. OK, we all know that GP4's data structure is not very mod friendly, but a few words in the readme files would really help, especially when it comes to inserting files.

Enough of the melancolic stuff & cheers to grandprixgames.org:
Bruno

Nice to see you here Bruno and good speech too

:O whoa like your a legend here :O ure name hasnt been seen in ages :O

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

I agree. I'm releatively new to GP4, and finding detailed information on mods and/or installation of same is much like discovering a secret code or translating a new language.

You get a blurb here and a sentence there, but seldom find a detailed explanation of anything you seek. All to often a question here is brushed aside or responded to with a curt "use the search function"... which BTW I ALWAYS use before posting a question.

I have only been able to successfully install GP4 mods via CSM and those car sets designed for it. And all this after many years of flight sims and strategy sims where mod installation previously seemed complicated.

The biggest difference I noticed immediately between flight sims, the Grand Prix Legends community, and the GP4 one, was all the mods from the first two usually include extensive read me files and how to guides, but in GP4 its almost like folks don't want to be bothered, and if you have to ask they figure you don't need to know.

But be that as it may, I still love GP4 and right now it occupies 70% of my sim time. The community could stand to be a bit more open and inclusive of newcomers though...

well to be honest i think this is one of the few places left for gpx. Most sites i knew dont provide any new downloads anymore, and most forums are allmost dead. I think Rfactor is the thing that will prove top be the thing that finally kills gp4. When gp32 was out, there was more editting for longer, but dont forget, at the time there was NO alternative, f1-9x from EA was the first alternative f1 game that came to gpx in years. Now competition is rising and gpx just isn't a game thats updated every year as the EA series have been.

welcome back bruno,i always remember your 2001 gp3 tracks.

BTW-who won the WDC in 2043,and can you tell me the lottery numbers for next saturday

Cheers to you Bruno for keeping this site online!

What a come back !
Hope you're fine after all this time (and after reading your post ).

But you're sadly true and I think we are some of the last GP4 fidels here on gpgames (and on several other boards too but they don't have GP4 legends as Viper, Caelen or Zaz ).

GP4 is dying, that's true, even if new tracks are coming alive.
Anyway it's a slow death because no real successor exists or is announced so far in video games.
Some games as GTR, LFS S2 or rFactor have great qualities but none of them have been built for real F1 events (but what kind of real F1 event do we want to play face to latest Indianapolis race...).

And GP4 scene actors are not eternal neither, and I know when I or SDI or Zaz will leave the community one day, as did Emac, Marc Aarts, Paul Hoad and so more before us.

So let's everyone choose the game he likes to play right now and let's see what tomorrow will bring for F1 racing enthusiasts





Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2005 12:12AM by Lo2k.

BTW-who won the WDC in 2043...

Michael Schumacher's grand-son

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I'm against sigpics

no michael did,he still hasnt retired at 73 years old...

Hello Bruno,

I think GP4's death can be compared to someone being impaled upon a not too sharp stick and bleeding slowly, with the escaping blood representing the modders that leave the community.
I think that the inevitable death of GP4 was caused by Geoff Crammond himself and the fact that he made the game so unmoddable and so limited had made many people lose interest, it has even and still does frustrate me which accounts for why F1Challenge 99-02 is installed on my comuputer. If GP4 say had been as editable as F1C then mayb the community would be thriving like a beehive during the summer season.

With modders leaving so is the brains and the knowledge of how to mod and the problem is that many new people are unwilling to pick up this knowledge and to use it, many people take the attitude that "Oh i am not good at it so i shouldnt try so can you do it for me?!".
Now i am not blaming people as many people dont have time to understand the game or even solve its problems let alone mod it but that is simply the cause of the downfall. The modders are leaving and yet there are few to replace them and this is known in the animal kingdom as extinction and that is what is happening to GP4.

"It's amazing how little downloads for a 2005 GP4 season are available after almost half the season (compared to the 2043 season - the last season I really have whitnessed). When I first saw that, I already thougth GP4 was dead. "

I think the mere fact is lack of motivation and that people have grown up. People are unwilling to spend as much time at the computer or in other case just not willing to spend as much time modding but rather on MSN
Also leecher, those who have no respect for others work also have led to people leaving and as we know leecher take the blood of its host and these leecher have been taking GP4's blood and as seen in my first analogy taking away our modders.

GP4 is not dead...................YET! But slowly it will be, i daresay with the release of rFactor Q3/Q4 2005 it will lead to many people going away altogether there is just so much more on offer for a game built for you to mod rather than one which prefers to keep itself locked away and its secrets hidden behind the many viels of mystery.

Let us hope that the key people SDI, l02k, ZaZ, b-tone keep on chipping away at the GP4 rock and unlock another door in GP4's Brain which gives un more information on the game, easier parameters to manipulate.

Regards,
Mini Maestro..


...sorry for the lenght and numerous use of images/similes/metaphors/whatever



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2005 12:30AM by Mini Maestro.

well , what's rFactor ?

I can't believe the amount of people round here that havent heard of rFactor, have they all been under a rock for the past 6 months?

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well, what's a rock?

Mini Maestro Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> |< | R |< Y | "I'll make you travel-size!"
> says:
> I bought a office chair from my mate in Worth
> thats about it for today :P
>
> [[^^^// Michael \\^^^]] says:
> **shock** **horror** yet another exciting episode
> in THE LIFE OF CHRISTOPHER KIRK :P

tell this guy I pulled my seat out a skip Has air suspension thingy and everything :P

Keiran





vMax.Keiran
Velocity Maximum Simulation Racing
www.vMaxSR.com
www.liveforspeed.net LFS Status:



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2005 01:19AM by keiran.

nice to see you are still alive and well bruno

just give gp4 a chance it still has life!

------------------------------------

24 Heures Du Mans 18-19 June 2005

@enzojz

rfactor is some hyped-up new game by the f1c people... seriously though, i'll believe it when i see it and i don't mean any half-assed demos or videos...

lmao hyped by F1C people.....basically the whole sim racing and modding community is waiting for the game: since when could you play LMES and F1 in the same game. Formula 3 and Sportcars.
the game will rock and will embedd a few more nails in the gp4 coffin.
and start the crippling of F1C

and also, its absolutly no where near F1c.

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First of all: thank you for the warm welcome.



GP4 might have a future when - or better if - new tracks become available. I began to loose interest in the game when Bahrain was missing and the the old Hockenheim was redisgned. Many other tracks are massively modified in between, also. So there is not really a chance to have a decent 2005 season with GP4 today.

Let's face it: there is no new Formula 1 simulation available and due to FIA's/ FOM's marketing policy none to come. Perhaps some of EA's F1 titles are nicely modded to 2005 standards; I can not really judge that because EA's games (and the F1 mods for it) never had the same feel for me as the GPx series has. I am biased by prejudice, of course, as I have played every title of the series since the original F1GP. All the GPx games offer a certain driving feeling which I can't explain and don't want to miss. For expample, I have been playing GT Racing a lot and really enjoy it, but when it comes to F1 there is nothing like the GPx series in my eyes. RFactor or any other games to be released will most likely not satisfy my needs in this special point.

Coming back to GP4, I just hope that not all talented and enthusiastic editors will turn their backs on the game soon. I know from GP3 how horribly cryptic, disappointing and time consuming track editing is so my hope it not so strong. Perhaps one of todays great GP3 track builders will swap to GP4? Roberto may be the name of our hopes? As written before, I doubt that many really new names will join in.

If new additons to GP4 can be made, the game might as well have a longer time to live. I even think that it still looks quite well today from a graphical point of view although it doesn't support modern gfx cards opportunities, not even anti-aliasing. It will never look as good as the massively repainted screenshots which are posted in the other threat, but using hi-res textures keeps it in one league with much newer games in my opinion.

PS: I still don't know what "5D-Rims" are. I have given up and just don't wanna know anymore after I downloaded a corrupt package of them with a readme file that lists everything the author has made in recent years but not one word of file description.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2005 03:25AM by Bruno.