Hehe Ginsters. I have to admire you for your continued love of nKPro.
I'm also slightly jealous of that too - I would love to see past Pro's foibles to the game beneath - see the diamond in the rough, but I'm afraid it ain't happening.
We'll have to disagree on many points I'm afraid. I understand why you like the game so much, and I hope you'll understand my 'disappointment' - I think that's the correct word. It's not that I don't like it, but I don't love it either, it currently holds no interest for me. I'm obviously not going to change your opinion of it, and that's not what I'm trying to do - I guess I'm just trying to express in words why I feel the way I feel.
I'm a patient man, so I cannot be accused of not trying, or giving in too easily. As I said in an earlier post, I was one of the pioneers of the Namie 2200 club. Back then, the nk lobby was permanently broken, the server was a DOS app, all the settings were guesswork as there was very little documentation (actually that's still the case), and you had to manually open ports on your router, even if you were just playing, not hosting. Those were the days of perseverence! But we felt it was well worth it, as the game, and the online experience were second to none. Once you were connected to a server, barring a few minor glitches, the net code was pretty good. Somewhere buried on RSC are a few old replays and videos of Namie in action, and viewing them today makes me remember all the good times we had.
So surely, 3 years later Hikki should be a much better experience? It isn't for me.
Just from my own experiences with the new patch and looking at RSC, there are still terrible multiplayer bugs. Join lag, warping, spinning on the grid, and going into orbit with random suspension failures after light contact. The last one noticably has been around since Namie - the person doing the hitting *always* came off much worse, and that's why the racing was so good, as people did everything in their power to avoid hitting someone else.
For me, the will to persevere with these problems and play on is waning. Again, perhaps it's the cars and tracks. I never got on with the spindly single seaters in Namie, and I don't get on with them in Pro. I don't know how to set them up, I can't drive them properly, and they don't "speak" to me. I'm a tin topper, not a spindle-driver
Perhaps also it's the feeling that it's been *OVER 6 MONTHS* since Hikki was released, and still multiplayer, the very bedrock of the game, still has some serious issues, and runs worse than Namie..
I'm going to add to what I said earlier about the UI. It's terrible. Once your in a server there's no way of loading / saving setups, which is a real problem in multi. You can't go back to the main program screen either, or you'll be basically quitting - and if the server's disabled joining during qualifying, you're screwed.. Things like seat adjustment and FOV are part of the car's 'misc' setup which is just plain wierd, as they're loaded and saved (and lost) with the setups. The in-game menus look like an afterthought. The control set up screen is a nightmare! "paddle up" / "stick up"? Huh? Only stick up seems to shift gears. Sometimes keys bind, sometimes they don't. Sometimes you get functions mapped to more than one key/button.. Alt-tab doesn't work.
That sort of thing was ok when Namie was a privateer project and new, 3 years ago. Nowadays, it's bordering on criminal. A lot of the UI problems stem back to the very early days of nk in 2002. They still haven't been fixed. Some have been made worse.
Little things like that I could live with, if there weren't so many of them, and I had confidence that they would be fixed soon, but as I say, many been with the project since birth. Perhaps that would be fine too, if I hadn't paid money for the damn thing.
This was the 'fix' list for the new 1.0.2 patch:
- Multiplayer sync improvements
- Physics updates on tires, drivetrain and aerodynamics
- Interface polishing
- Added support links
Ok, so 4 is basically flim-flam. Doesn't add anything.
Number 3 - "Interface polishing" - where? You mean the new BRD logos?
Number 1 - multiplayer sync improvements. Ok, well it does seem to sync better now, but really - 6 months, and a whole load of beta testers - why are there still multiplayer bugs? Why was the Namie multi-code better?
Number 2 - Physics updates on tires. Again, this is supposely a 'fix', but they've actually broken it! The FF1800's tyres are way too forgiving now, even more so than GTR2. Check out the video at
http://www.deathnet.org/temp/lol.avi - I've never seen such ridiculous angles from a FFord.
By comparison, this was the fix list for netKar PRO v1.0.1 - which was released about two weeks after the main 1.00 was released:
- New licencing scheme
- Performance tuning in multiplayer
- CrossFaded sound engine option added
- Fixed slow race server list
- Fixed crash when watching a remote car that is out of range for every track's camera.
- Fixed "remove" in Host, Sessions
- Added "move up" and "move down" buttons in Host, Sessions
- Fixed server getting confused after long uptime in Windows.
- Fixed heavy CPU load with car at zero speed
- Fixed skin support in multiplayer
- Fixed crash when hitting "Load" in setup screen without any setup selected
- Removed "save as" button in setup screen
- Fixed connection problems for users behind a router and multiport servers
- Fixed TimeMonitor during Qualify and Practice showing remaining time
- Fixed TimeMonitor during Race showing "lap completed/race laps"
- "Go To Grid" button is now visible with TimeMonitor up
- "Go To Grid" button blinks in green to catch more attention
- "Go To Grid" button is not visible once the race is started
- Interfaces forced to "single car" multiplayer races
- Added "server contacted/received" readout in Multiplayer
- Added colour codes to server list
- Added sort option to server list
- "Join" button is not available for servers "closed" to new clients
- Added flags and nationality for Slovenia, Slovakia, Thailand, Vietnam, Ucraina, Estonia, Croatia, Belarus and Latvia
- Fixed car "exploding" when trying to change setup with a broken suspension.
- Fixed ForceFeedback and Exponential Factor in controllers setting
- Fixed "Norway" spelling
- Changes in nationality are now immediatly reflected in the main driver bar
- Fixed shutdown for some ForceFeeback wheels (Momo Black)
- Fixed track flickering with shaders off
- Fixed "blue" tires with shaders off
- Fixed 6th gears not following ingame setup changes
- Fixed white and checked flags appearing in qualify
- Added "escape" to unassign button and axis in controllers
- Fixed sound option window not remembering "invert" settings
- Fixed pitboard during Qualify showing position
- Key controls are now using CTRL for downshifts and SPACE for upshifts
- Added "pitboard view" using TAB key
- Fixed FTarget autoclutch settings in 1st gear
- Fixed "holes" in Newbury and Crema
- Fixed crash with nVidia MX cards
- Fixed hand and steer movement for remote cars
- Fixed servers randomly disappearing from server list
Bit of a bigger list huh? That was 2 week's work. And yet the latest patch fixes very very little, and yet we've waited 6 months for it. Ok, I know Kunos has had some personal problems, and I have some sympathy for that, but it doesn't inspire me with much confidence for future improvements.
Phew - I went off on one again. Sorry..
Again, Ginsters I hope you'll understand that although it looks like this was directed at you, it isn't. I'm just trying to convey my feelings about all this. Not trying to convert people into anti-Nk or whatever. I'd dearly like for nkPro to be better than Namie - a step up. At the moment it's a step down. And that frustrates me far more than clicking something with a mouse to start the car
Incidentally, it's not the pressing of those buttons that's annoying - it's the fact that you have to do it with the mouse. That's not any more realistic than pressing buttons on a keyboard, but it is more cumbersome. It's certainly not immersive either - quite the opposite, as I have to consciously grab the mouse. I don't do that in my real car!
And finally, the stuff about the guff I have to go through to get my real car to a real track - the purpose of me posting that was just to demonstrate that putting obstacles in the way of driving in the guise of "realism" doesn't make the sim-experience more rewarding or enjoyable. Locating 3 buttons in a virtual environment (where one may be hidden), pointing the mouse, and then clicking and holding the mouse button down - that's no more 'realistic' than pressing 3 buttons on a keyboard, but it is certainly more annoying when you just want to get out there.