Poll: Questions for Mr. Geoff Crammond

Grandprixgames.org has been contacted by Infogrames's Q&A to get more info about how the game works on your system. We have already checked that firm and it does seem real.

"My name is (name deleted) and I'm working with Electric Artists on the release of Grand Prix 4. We're going to be doing a Q&A with Geoff Crammond, for starters, and we thought you might like to get your readers involved. If you post an announcement on your site allowing your readers to submit their questions and you get them to me by September 27th, Geoff will answer them and we'll get them back to you to post on your site."

Mail your SENSIBLE remarks AT THIS TOPIC.

The answers will be posted on this forum only. You will most likely not get any reponse from him.



--------------------------------------
Staff of grandprixgames.org 2000 - 2003

We have already checked that firm and it does seem real.

Their involvment with GP4 is real at least:

Thursday, September 05, 2002
ElectricArtists begins work with video game publisher Infogrames on grassroots marketing campaing to support the release of Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix 4.

from <www.electricartists.com>

Ask him if he is happy with the final product.

"Are you going to continue working on gp5 despite the closing of UK's Microprose?"

"What new features, aspects can we expect in GP5?"

"Are you pleased with the final product of GP4? Was there any thing u wanted to implement that u couldn't? Was time running out to fix bugs:p?"

"I can test GP5 for you during its creation.. can we get in touch?" :p hehe



Chris C
--------------------------------------
GPTC &amp; GPVWC Manager o' CVRT
HawkEyE '01WC' Driver o' CVRT
http://cvrt.tk

Hey, good idea, I volunteer as a tester also!!

dear geoff,

i spent £400 upgrading my system so i could play GP4, AMD Athlon XP 1700, 64mb GeForce 2 Ti etc etc and GP4 wont even start on my PC. i even downloaded 'official patch 4' and it STILL don't work. GP3 2000 runs perfectly on my PC so why couldn't you make GP4 in the same way?

best wishes,

steve higgins.

ask him if he realises that the hardcore fans and supporters of his products are begining to get the impression that he does'nt give a toss about them.






LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat

ask him if he realises that the hardcore fans and supporters of his products are begining to get the impression that he does'nt give a toss about them.






LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat

"Will there be any season updates to GP4 like GP3 2000?"

ask him if he's ever one a race on ace mode.

and which driving aids he uses

Assuming there will be a real patch out soon, as seems very likely now, how deep it will go in fixing the game or can we expect more than one patch?

and

Since so far the hallmark of this series was it was easy to edit, which enticed gamers to stay focused on his titles, does he feel that being GP4 so hard to edit will really help its success?

How many " real " questions are you ready to give a non-indefinite answer?

Boomer

(1) Are you aware that many users are unable to run this simulation on some platforms whereas ea sport's f1_2002 will run on all platforms?
(2) Is it fair to say that GP4 was rush released due to the release of ea's F1_2002?
(3) Are we likely to see any future development of the series, ie: will there be a GP5 and if so will you be returning to microprose or are you negotiating with a new publisher?
(4) Have you seen the buglist collated by the members of this forum and how do you respond to it?
(6) Can you give us your opinion please on the farcical release of the GP4 patch by Infogrames in Germany? Do you feel that this patch has damaged GP4's reputation as in some cases the patch has actually made some problems worse and even introduced new problems for a lot of users?
(7) Are you happy with the way you have been treated by Infogrames in general, given that it now appears that they were only in it for the money and not for the long term development of what is an excellent series?
(8) Do you take note of what users post on forums?
(9) How do you feel about users editing GP4, given that you actually managed to make it harder to do so than it was with GP3, although early press releases stated that user editing was not considered a problem by you.
(10) Can you say what system specs you have and does GP4 run well on it, do you actually use your own creation?
Lastly, I would like to thank you for giving me and I'm sure many others countless hours of enjoyment and also for providing us with this opportunity to ask you about GP4, it is not often fans get to quiz the creator of their favourite sim. Regards MW Grandprix3/4.com forum

This is how Geoff 'should' answer these... Warning this is tongue in cheek (sometimes). Although the dig at bloomy is very real!

mortalwombat wrote:
>
> (1) Are you aware that many users are unable to run this
> simulation on some platforms whereas ea sport's f1_2002 will
> run on all platforms?

I don't have time to keep up with how other games are running. I am just concerned with GP4 at the moment.

> (2) Is it fair to say that GP4 was rush released due to the
> release of ea's F1_2002?

Yes

> (3) Are we likely to see any future development of the
> series, ie: will there be a GP5 and if so will you be
> returning to microprose or are you negotiating with a new
> publisher?

If you recall correctly, Microprose was actually bought out by Hasbro a while ago it has been inevitable that the Microprose office would eventually close. It's unfortunate that the last game to come for the office is GP4, but it had to close eventually. Remember they were just a publisher.

> (4) Have you seen the buglist collated by the members of this
> forum and how do you respond to it?

No. Too busy trying to fix all the bugs we are still yet to fix that our testing team has raised.

> (6) Can you give us your opinion please on the farcical
> release of the GP4 patch by Infogrames in Germany? Do you
> feel that this patch has damaged GP4's reputation as in some
> cases the patch has actually made some problems worse and
> even introduced new problems for a lot of users?

Hopefully some people will lose there jobs over that incident, it has definately damaged the GP4 brand but we will be doing our best to rectify this.

> (7) Are you happy with the way you have been treated by
> Infogrames in general, given that it now appears that they
> were only in it for the money and not for the long term
> development of what is an excellent series?

Publishers are always in it for the money! That's what they do. They give you money up front to work and then hope you do a good job so they make lots of money - it's call business.

> (8) Do you take note of what users post on forums?

Especially the vial that comes from Bloomy. Perhaps I should start a law suit against him for wasting everyones bandwidth and time with his meaningless dribble. It's obvious that he doesn't have anything to do with the number of meaningless posts he makes these forums. For someone that doesn't have one positive thing to say about the game, I am surprised he hasn't asked for a refund.

> (9) How do you feel about users editing GP4, given that you
> actually managed to make it harder to do so than it was with
> GP3, although early press releases stated that user editing
> was not considered a problem by you.

Our editors work fine. Perhaps the creators of your editors are not skilled enough. We should probably release either a) some documentation on formats or b) our editors for you guys. Editing is very important to us as it adds to the user experience.

> (10) Can you say what system specs you have and does GP4 run
> well on it, do you actually use your own creation?

I have a pentium 60 with 16 meg or ram and I get 45 fps.

> Lastly, I would like to thank you for giving me and I'm sure
> many others countless hours of enjoyment and also for
> providing us with this opportunity to ask you about GP4, it
> is not often fans get to quiz the creator of their favourite
> sim. Regards MW Grandprix3/4.com forum

At last some decent questions... cheers.

Hmm yeah we wish.

Geoff isn't going to be honest - he isnt going to say yeah we're fixing bugs, and yeah hopefully people will get fired - he's a professional (wow, really?) businessman and isnt going to release that kinda stuff, he will play the incident down and give text-book answers.



Visit my website [www.mrears.com]

1) Will the next major release of the Grand Prix <i>x</i> brand have a public beta test? If a public test is not possible (even without it leeches were warez'ng it anyway) would an onsite public test be a possibility?
2) Do you think that in hindsight that the product was released too early?
3) Was the new graphic's engine too great an evolutionary step to be done all at once? Were too many features included, that perhaps could have been held off until maybe an update?
4) The development of games for PC's has never been easy (compare to consoles), do you believe with the current abundance of operating systems (95, 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP) that perhaps it is getting a bit much and limiting the system requirements would shorten the QA period required for the product?
5) Hardware advancement is continuing at a great pace, particularly with Graphics Cards. Do you see a point in time where trying to support every bit of hardware will not be possible and soon we will see games limited to perhaps hardware and software (OS) that is perhaps only 2 years old?
6) You have the licence from F1 to do another game. I am assuming this will be GP5. Is that enough then? Time to do something else?
7) Is there a temptation to get a patch out as fast as possible to help relieve the growing masses of unhappy customers, or will it be released along with the scheduled 2002 or 2003 season update.
8) Would it have been a lot more helpful if the bug list sent by the forum included more specific information that would generally be gathered by actually company beta testers. Such as hardware, software - System information dumps and retraceable steps. Have you considered perhaps including a debug type version to various uses to help recreate some of the problems that are occurring. Reproducing a bug helps exponentially to fixing that bug.
9) The control setup screens are horrid. They need to be updated to make it easier to modify settings. Plus I should be able to reassign any keys to work on my steering wheel control if I chose. Reaching down to select a keyboard key is not very practical.
Thanks for a great game, unfortunately a lot of people don't share my sentiments (I wouldn't either if it crashed all the time), hopefully something can be done about this as soon as possible and the result is a stable game for all to enjoy.

well that's enough...

Since so many users are so profoundly disapointed with this game:

1) When can we expect a patch to GP4 which will adress the games total inability to run on many XP systems?

2) Do you feel that requesting users to disable their read/write capability on their systems CD drive (as Infogrames does on it's FAQ page) is even remotely reasonable as a way to try to get a game to run on a 'modern' machine?



twgavin

I would be honored if Geoff gave me the opportunity to chat with him,but obviously not in court but with Nick Court

Anyway I would say him to dedicate me 1 hour:

2 minutes to thanks him about last 10 years releases that gave me lot of unique amazing times,but

58 minutes to check Morbid's list and choose 20 major points to fix,and give a bit of Multiplayer to GP4.

Boomer

I haven't read the post before and i think most questions where made.

For me it's important to know if Simergy is searching for new partners to save developing of further releases of grand prix games?

Also it's important to know if a new final patch will be available for grand prix 4?


Is it possible to release some plugins (3D or grafical) that makes it easier to edit gp4? It's a hard way for most designers to get gp4 actual. For example plugins for carshapes or objects (files like *.gp4).

Thanks for responce.




Join the biggest german speaking rpg community for Battlefield 1942 Modifikation "Forgotten Hope".

Visit www.fh-warzone.de for more informations.