Slashdot Mirror
Gran Turismo 4 Preview
ãã¾ããããsã®ãS writes "FiringSquad has published a preview of Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo 4, the upcoming flagship online racing title for PlayStation 2." Acccording to the preview, where the last Gran Turismo made us all adopt a Playstation 2, this one will have us adopting network adapters for online racing. The preview's also got some notes about the lengths Polyphony Digital has gone to in order to make GT4 as realistic as possible.
yamauchikazunori in romanji. Awesome. I'll have to try this out.
Am I the only one who finds the GT games deadly boring? Polypholy dont actually add anything to the games, other than to try and make it that little bit more realistic.
How about adding some AI to the CPU racers, or just make the game enjoyable to play. When PS2 owners were raving about GT3, I was playing the likes of Le Mans, Daytona and MSR on the Dreamcast.
Le Mans (which on the DC is a different game to the average PSX version) had you racing up to 22 cars with PROPER AI, Daytona was a classic arcade game, and MSR was doing new things with the Kudos system.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
I'd love to see some of the blatant physics mistakes fixed from GT3. Two examples:
1) The axis restriction. No car can rotate more than 90 degrees in any direction from normal on any axis. It's to prevent the car from ending up upside down, something that wouldn't fly in GT, as there's no "abort" button a la "RUSH."
2) The wheelie 700 Mph trick. It's fun, and it's cool to do, but it's probably indicative of a larger shortcut in the physics engine.
Either way, I'm already drooling for GT4. Online play is enough to make me want it, but man, I really wanted hard drive features. Importing my own music is something I've wanted to to with GT4. Oh well, there's always 5...
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
What Network games are available for the PS2?
I guess my real question might be - are there any network games for the PS2 that make buying the network adapter worthwhile?
BlackNova Traders
It appears they are doing distance color washing with blur, and generally toning down the image to mimmoc a television broadcast. Whereas Ridge Racer's ilk went for hypercolor, the artists on GT4 appear to have chosen realistically muted shades of grey and dirty brown. Texturing seems to be pretty spot-on too, without delving too much into the extremely textured look of many games. Thankfully GTA3's much abused car-top reflections appear to be muted too. In fact, between the muted colors and muted textures, the game is definitely not a visual feast for the eyes, which is perfect for a realistic racer.
The ______ Agenda
This isn't that exciting for me...don't get me wrong GT3 was a great game and I enjoyed it thoroughly. But what is Sony really adding here? A few new cars and tracks?
GT really needs an engine overhaul:
- better collision physics - I get tired of racing against other 'bricks'
- car damage - now pieces falling off etc., would be very exciting and cool, but even something as simple as a damage bar to represent what is going on and reduce performance. There's just no way in a game as realistic as GT3 (in other areas) that the fastest route on some tracks should involve setting up a nice billard ball bounce. That should totally screw up your car. The best would be individual parts breaking, and affecting handling, as well as cosmetic damage that may even affect aerodynamics.
Without some major changes, we're still just playing GT1.
I'd gladly wait a couple of more years for GT4 if it had actual new features!
If you want real collision damage, I suggest Auto Crossing for the real thing.
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
I'm really not sure about damage now. A couple of years ago while playing GT2 I'd have probably agreed, but not after GT3.
Yes, lack of damage is a problem with the realistic look they have going on. Hell, before we even get to damage I'd like to start by having rally cars that don't look shiny and clean after 10 laps of dirt racing. But its what comes with it thats the problem.
Far more than with GT2, progress in GT3 is boringly slow. Without the second-hand market, you spend ages doing the same tracks over and over again at first earning a few pennies to pay for meagre upgrades to the car. Cash is really boringly tight.
So if you could write off the $100,000 worth of Lotus Elise on the first corner and have to start saving all over again, you'd be going straight for the "revert to saved" option the moment you recieved any damage in any case.
If you want to see spectacular crashes, buy Burnout 2 (its a more fun game all round, too, but you didn't hear me say that). If you want to play Gran Tourismo's career mode, you're better off without damage that you'll never see again after the first time.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Why do magazines insist on doing previews but showing screen shots of outside views which are basically just replays. You never see those fews when you play the actual game because you are too busy behind the wheel. You don't see the pretty scenary fly by and you rarely have time to see the other cars. Show screen shots behind the wheel, not majestic shots showing courses.
You have to blame the car makers for this one. They won't license the car models if the cars can take damage in game. That means that to have in-game damage, you'd have to have a bunch of cars that sorta look like real cars but aren't and are distunguisable from the real things (so that they don't get sued). It's not PD's fault.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Yamauchi Kazunori is the poster's name. My vocab is nonexistent but I know "Yama" means mountain. And Yamauchi is the family name, Kazunori the personal name. I assume his friends shorten it to Kazu-kun (or san, or whatever honorific applies.
And in incompatible browsers, it'll just show the individual parts of the Unicode character (usually some accented vowels and stuff like that.) IE's pretty good about it.
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steve Wright