Dissapointed ...

[Ralph_B]

Dissapointed - about what? Yes, dissapointed about lack of support for GTL from official side! Note quite one year has gone by, since GTL was released in Europe, but even the game is in public interest and the gameengine is state of arts (as the almost complete compatility to GTR2 shows), the publishers seem to have forgotten about it. :(
First time when GTL was out, the people of the developer-crew have been arround in the wellknown forums and asked about feedback, bugs and possible improvements and it seemed, they would give us real support and that they are eagerly interested in making GTL the best racesim of the world. And indeed, only a few weeks after the first release we got a patch, curing some of the worse faults and introducing some options in the .plr (for example to stop that idiotic autiopitting) - even inofficial, but working. Very good and giving people hope, that this time at least one publisher doesn't neglect their consumers after they have received their hard earned money.
Annother month or two , and suddenly the cheat, templates and decrypted carfiles have been published, opening the possibility of making thirdparty standalone-cars and skins. And it was published by an official member of the crew, so not a hack but legal. But only a few hours later everything was withdrawn without a comment. First after massive rants a hesitating statement: The files have been published to early and not with legitimation of the whole crew, because they are not developed completely and still buggy in some parts. But at the same time they promised, to release them officially as soon as possible in an improved form.
And that was was it!:down: No templates, no carfiles, no cheat - and in some other big forums it was something like a sin of death to publish standalones or even to discuss about it!
But what's the biggest joke, nearly at the same time there was running a skin-contest - prices for the winners officially sponsored by SimBin - where not only skins, but also standalones had been allowed. :chair: I really ask myself, what's the deal?

About half an year later there was running a request - supposed from official side - for possible bugs. People posted and hope came up, that the fans of GPL haven't still been forgotten. But after this - silence again ... until today! No feedback, no announcement, nothing! Instead only news about GTR2.
I really understand, that the guys are earning their money with producing new stuff - that's their job. But I'm a bit dissapointed about first making big promises, speaking about great support and the intention, to improve the product as good as ever possible and then to withdraw secretly like a thief in the night and without any statement. And if you are looking into the most related forums, no one of the crewmembers in sight anymore. Where are the promised bugfixes, the templates, the carfiles and other missing stuff? If it goes after the officials, we still wouldn't have other tracks, standalonecars, sounds or a complete new car like the Gordini. To be eager, how many of you would have quitted GTL since a long time, if not some talented addonmakers had produced some new stuff and enhancements - even it's not quite legal and still not supported from official side?

It's really a shame! GTL is such a great sim and would have the attitudes to become an everlasting classical like GPL. That is proved by the flood of addons - cars as tracks and the many posts in related forums. The big rush on the game is over and the folks are waiting for GTR2, but GTL has it's fans (and not only a few). I don't expect new tracks from the Simbin-crew, new cars or whatelse (how it was spoken inofficially behind the scenes) but a minimum of support and the attempt, to keep old promises! Is that demanded really to much? It really would be a nice gesture, if there would be a statement from the officials, if there is still support and if we ever can make us hope for fixing some of the remained bugs, the official re-relelase of the withdrawn files or whatelse is planned.

Guys - don't take this as a bad rant and a legitimation for harrassing or bad behavior. This wouldn't be my intention - and not in the sense of my moderatorship here. All what I want, is to show up, that we still haven't forgotten, what was said in the past and we still have interest in improvements of the game. And I hope, that perhaps one or more of the officials will read this and remenber, what they promised once.
So please beware coolness and keep Gentlemen when posting here an answer or your own thoughts!;)

Regards
Ralph.B

[racingfan1]

From what I can tell, between GTR2 and Race, SimBin doesn't seem to care about much else as of the time being. Maybe when these two games are released we'll see more of the support that was promised, then again, those two games could get all the support and GTL left high and dry. I guess only time will tell if we get the support that was promised, or we have to support ourselves.

[David Wright]

Its important to realise the difference between the role of the developer (Simbin) and the role of the publisher (10Tacle). The publisher pays the developer to produce the game. The game is then owned by the publisher who decides whether and how many times the game should be patched.

I think 10Tacle are operating in the classic way for publishers of this type of sim. Publish the complete product, patch the major bugs (sweeping up as many minor bugs as you can at the same time), then move on to the next product.

This is the way Sierra did things, as did EA (though often without the patch) and also Microprose with the GP series. Its also the way Jowood did things with Rally Trophy. I seem to remember it was very uncertain whether there would be a patch for RT.

GTL "only" got one patch but in my view is in better shape than GTR after five patches.

I agree 10Tacle handled the car files/templates thing very badly, and did not keep their promises, but we do have them so getting the 10Tacle files isn't critical to GTLs future.

The thread at RSC concerning a second patch was not official. Some US members (who got GTL months after the rest of us) found they got crashes when playing on-line and e-mailed 10Tacle asking for a patch. I don't think they explained the problem they had and 10Tacle's reply e-mail asked what bugs needed fixing. The RSC member then started started the thread, not 10Tacle. 10Tacle did not promise another patch, just that they hadn't ruled out another patch. The crashing on-line didn't prove to be a game bug. My guess is a publisher will patch to fix serious issues such as CTDs but won't patch just to fix minor issues.

Its hard to see another game achieving GPL's status, though I agree GTL for me is a very special sim. While Papy's later patches (often unsupported by Sierra) such as the D3D option and the CPU speed fix definitely enabled GPL to live its long life, most of GPLs development has been done by the community. Sierra and Papy moved on to the NASCAR series.

[hydrophonic]

You have reason!!!

Maybe GT Legends...

[Ralph_B]

Its important to realise the difference between the role of the developer (Simbin) and the role of the publisher (10Tacle). The publisher pays the developer to produce the game. The game is then owned by the publisher who decides whether and how many times the game should be patched.

Yes, you are right - maybe I've adressed my complain to the wrong people while naming developers and publishers in one breath. The guys of simbin may have had the best intentions (as their origin is in modding games, as many of us do as well), but if the publisher isn't interested any further in his product and has turned to a new project, it is understandable, that the developers aren't interested any longer in support as well (maybe as privateers, but publishing anything may conflict with the interests of their sponsors).:rolleyes::
Also agree in term, that GTL after one patch works better than other games after about half a dozend bugfixes. But some bugs have still remained, that are shurely not a minor thing. So still the storing of laprecords in on wrong tracks is unsolved. This makes it nearly impossible to create a propper GTL-rank without endless efforts, to eliminate bogus records. Still we expire partly invisible cars in the grid online, which isn't such funny for shure. And still sometimes cars are set randomly on the track or into the landscape at racestart in onlineraces (and I'm not speaking about addontracks) - which wasn't a issue before the patch. That are only the worse - not calling all those small faults, that are really from minor importance. But those bugs are really annoying and partly a reason, why people quit GTL, specially online. I don't think, those are neglectable. And it should be worth to be corrected. Last not least lack of support is a shot backwards throwing a bad light on the publisher, when it comes to buy a new product of this company.

However, I think, it's a really sad symptom of our fastliving time, that everyone's only hunting for profit and doesn't care for the consumers after they got their money. But that's the way it is. :(

[David Wright]

I don't think anyone will get rich making historic racing sims for the PC, but I agree that one extra patch would have been good customer relations and would hopefully help future sales.

I've not experienced the on-line problems you describe, though as I race the TC and GTC 65 cars, these are usually servers limited to 16. If the problems mainly occur when there are large numbers in the race, then to be fair to Simbin, the readme for v1.1 does state

IMPORTANT NOTE: the quality of the MP experience is very much determined by the connection quality of the clients and server - running high numbers of clients greatly exaggerates any such problems. It is therefore recommended to limit servers to a maximum of 16 clients, unless the connection quality of all players is known to be good (both in terms of bandwidth and stability).

I have seen replays of and read league reports of races with quite a lot more than 16 players which have run without problems, so the 1.1 patch was useful in allowing this, but perhaps the risks of running more than 16 were not widely understood.

It is also interesting that the GTR2 site says its limited to 28 players online. So even though the online code has been worked on for a year, it has a lower (theoretical) maximum than GTL.

[Ralph_B]

To be eager, I myself am also one of the guys, who don't have much problems online exept some invisible cars in our last league-race (and the grid was limited to 15!).
However, I agree, it would be a nice gesture to the consumers, to release a second patch solving those remained bugs since the first patch. Nice for the fans of GTL and shurely a good advertisement for future products of 10Tacle. It would make our deceision much easier to buy other sims with the knowledge, it will be supported until it runs without annoying faults than to know, you're left alone with a half-finished thing after you have spent your hard earned money, as I've expired it with other games so often.
Well, as said, GTL is much better after 1 patch than other products after 5 or more bugfixes, and I can live with it. Still - a bit dissapointed, that this great sim seems to be forgotten from developers side even it's not quite one year ago, since it was published. So as only hope remains, that the community will be as busy as we know it from GPL, keeps it alive and developes it further.;)

[model59]

Is it possible they are working on GTL 2 ? Developers/publishers often neglect existing games in favour of the next one .
I have`nt bothered to get GTR2 as yet because I`m still really enjoying this so much but it would be great to have more realistic damage ala GTR2.
I`ve only had problems with online play very occasionally but it doesn`t surprise when it does happen given the number of ppl in the game and the fact we have players from all over the world competing at the same time!
Am I right in thinking all servers are routed through Germany/10Tacle ?