Anyone else had this problem?

On most occasions from the main driver menu i will choose more then 1 driver because it is more interesting being in different scenario's through the race. Anyway when i get to the final screen, before the progress bar goes across signifying the start of the race, i like to load my own car setups. if i have selected 4 drivers then i go to the first one, click his name and select car setup and load the setup. When i go back though the drivers names dissappear and it list the car setups. What im trying to say is that i can change the first drivers setup but not the other 3 in this case. What could be the problem for this? And also why do gamers so readily accept that a game will have a bug in it? If you bought a washing machine and a part was missing, would you say oh well, thats to be expected?

I cannot answer the main part of your question, but it might be worth ask at the SDI forum, if GpxPatch could take care of this problem. I know they are currently discussing a similar issue about selcting several drivers and custom BHP selection. Click forum on the left side of this page:

[www.xs4all.nl]


Quote: "And also why do gamers so readily accept that a game will have a bug in it?

Trust me on this. We didn't.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

Just to make a point on the software having ERRORS(not bugs)

If you wish to have error free code are you prepared to pay for it????


Each and every piece of software that is developed has to be formally verified using a strict formal specification language for it to be 100% Error free. This takes an incredible amount of time and effort to achieve. To put it in perspective the largest(to the best of my knowledge) piece of software that is 100% bug free is somewhere around 100,000 lines of code. This software is used on the Paris Underground Meteor line. It took a team of software engineers 5 years to verify that this application was going to work correctly. This was a safety critical device(driverless train) so it code justify the financial cost but other software???
Think about the level of effort that is required for this. Were you to apply it every piece of software that was going to be developed then we would probably still be using command line only OS's and as for games..... well I'd imagine that the PC at home wouldn't be a fraction as popular today. Software would simply cost too much to afford. The best balance between cost of developement and stability is what a developer strives for. It gets exponentially harder to find and fix faults in code, so they simply stop fixing them after a time. The latest release of Windows which has all the financial muscle of Microsoft behind it was released with 63,000 known Errors, 11,000 of which lead to fatal crashes or lost data. It stops making sense trying to fix errors after a time. Once an acceptable level of performance and stability is reached they release it. Almost every piece of software created has errors so not only is your game at fault your OS is likely a cause of problems too.



Remember that you are unique, just like everyone else.

Windows doesn't have bugs, it just has "unexpected consequences"...!

you describe a known problem ("bug" is such a nasty word), i think it's mentioned in the famous gp4-bug-list (oops, there's the word again).

it happened because infogrames didnt give the developers the time they needed and left the testing to some french people (in lyon or something) who had never seen a f1-sim before and didnt now what to do with it or that there was a hotseat-mode to test. in fact i believe they didnt drive more than 100 metres without a spin and i seriously doubt they tried things like setups or graphic options. now, forget these last statement, thats off-topic.

back to our problem: patch 9.6 fixes this, but unfortunately not properly. it got better, but after change of the second setup or so the driver names disappear like in the unpatched version.
the only workaround, which works pretty well once you get used to it, is to load your setup with the right pit stops and everything in one of the pre-race-sessions and not to touch setups in the pre-race screen. your car will keep this setup for the race. (rain is a different story).

greetings, jp

When i go back though the drivers names dissappear and it list the car setups.

Yup, i got that problem. It doesnt actaully show the setups but it shows the dir structure that the setups are in. you can actaully navigate your way about from there!

It gets exponentially harder to find and fix faults in code, so they simply stop fixing them after a time.

It seems the GP4 team didnt even start to fix them. The bug list was almost as large as the Hidden And dangerous* game

*Hidden And Dangerous....probably the worlds most buggy game. Doors would disappear most of the time rather than opening, enemies would appear and disappear on the screen. Once i saw an enemy fall from the sky, go through the ground and caryy on falling, altho i could still see him, he was just getting smaller and smaller. The bugs in this game were the kind of bugs that youwould be wandering along, minding your own buisness and suddenly you drop dead for no reason!

To think that GP4 was almost of par with the ammount of bugs this game had




Racing Is Life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting
Jesus may be able to heal the sick and bring the dead back to life, but he can't do shît for low fps

"The bugs in this game were the kind of bugs that youwould be wandering along,
minding your own buisness and suddenly you drop dead for no reason!"

reminds me of yesterday evening: we were driving an action-packed hotseat race, concentrating very hard on our own business:racing in melbourne, fighting for position, not leaving the track and so on... and suddenly, for no reason, its back 2 win. one second its racing an adrenaline, next is windows, looking perfectly innocent waiting for a click on the word icon, as if you never played gp4.

that s u c k s big time ! i mean, sometimes its not so easy to get along with gp4.

greetings, jp

GP4 CTD twice for me yesterday. Thats the first time it has CTD for me since i reinstalled it. even with GPxPatch in debug mode it done it the second time (i normally run in debug mode - makes it a bit more stable)

Both times i was running the jordan. Once i was just coming out of the pits for the qualifying in monaco, another time i was winning in imola.

I changed from Jordan to renault and i no longer had the problem :S download another jordan me thinks




Racing Is Life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting
Jesus may be able to heal the sick and bring the dead back to life, but he can't do shît for low fps

... i know these different ctd's in gp4:

1. ctd when clicking around with the mouse too fast. happens mainly in setup- or savegame-menus. easy to avoid, just take it easy with the mouse.

2. ctd right after the loading screen.

3. ctd while driving on track. mainly in cpu-hungry situations like going through corners wheeel to wheel or sliding with all 4 tyres.

1,2,3 happen occaisonally and are not-so annoying, because you just have to restart gp4, reload and you can at least continue racing.

4. ctd during a race in the first corner of the second lap, when gp4 tries to display the gap to the other cars the first time. this happens only on my comp when having edited too much. could be related to driver names, but i am not sure. no workaround, always backup everything before editing.

5. the worst of all ctd's: in hotseat-mode, sometimes for no reason the saved game-file gets corrupted and cant be continued: you save, continue driving and then crash to desktop while driving. restart gp4 and reload the game but then it is ctd again, exactly at the same part of the track as before. you have to accept that you cant reload but have to restart the whole race-weekend again.

problem is to find out if its ctd 3 or 5. for example, if the ctd took place 5 laps after the last save, you have to reload and drive these 5 laps again. if you are unlucky, only to find out that its ctd 5. race ruined PLUS 5 extra laps for nothing. neighbours dont understand while you shout and swear at your pc like a madman in the middle of the night.

just my two pennies... solutions very much appreciated. greetings, jp

could be related to driver names

All GP4 names must be lower case


Mine actaully rebooted when playing GP4 once. Duno why, possibly overheating?




Racing Is Life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting
Jesus may be able to heal the sick and bring the dead back to life, but he can't do shît for low fps

i CTD o less than 5 times yesterday :'

i know what's causing it tho



Sim

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All Hail The New York Giants - Winners of Superbowl XXI, XXV and XLII!

"I'd love to know what goes on in that crazy head of yours sometimes, Sim..." - Locke Cole

could be related to driver names
All GP4 names must be lower case

i know, i know.... could be overheating, could be a driver issue, could be anything. i believe it's just lousy coding, because it's so unpredictable and most of the time not reproducable (numbers 1,2,3,5). hopeless.

greetings, jp

It is really odd with these CTD's. I have had so few, that I cannot remember them. But of course, I have not really modded or tweaked anything. Could that be part of the problem for you guys?

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

yeah, i know that's the problem, i was trying something and couldn't get it to work



Sim

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All Hail The New York Giants - Winners of Superbowl XXI, XXV and XLII!

"I'd love to know what goes on in that crazy head of yours sometimes, Sim..." - Locke Cole

nope. ctd's 1,2,3,5 happen with a clean out of the box gp4. i've had weeks of gp4ing, even hotseat, without one single ctd. without warning it all started again...

greetings, jp