Volume 1: Q&A
Welcome, to volume 1 edition of MAGIC Thursday. NSR Watches new weekly interview with an actual beta tester working on EA NASCAR SimRacing.
this is a Q & A with RTW Stringer and James Hawkins in his words
"Let me say this...If any part of this is altered in any way it will be known. I do plan on posting this to several different league admins. Also an origional will be posted into our members section. I have gone through a lot of work to get the support of EA on this venture and James and I have spent a lot of time discussing the best answer to each question."
enjoyNSR Watch: How often are you currently testing NSR, and what build number are you compared to the last patched version.
Although I was not a part of the Alpha-Beta Team I do know for fact that they tested nearly every evening into the wee hours of the night. 2am was pretty typical if not later. The people that made up this Team pretty much put their life on hold. I know that the last several weeks before the game went off to print that James spent many nights at the office trying to get as much accomplished as possible. I have heard from several sources of mine at EA that the guys developing a game often pull 16 hour days for the entire development and initial testing stage of a game.
Currently as Beta Testers, we are set up to test once a week officially. We are also encouraged to test in groups or privately at any time to further discover any potential issues that may not have come to light during an official Thursday testing session. At this time due to recoding of some of the more difficult rules..ie...the lucky dog rule. Personal feeling from me on this rules and coding issues is that it could be considered the NASCAR rule with the greatest possibility of variants. The current patch out to the public is 1025. Our last testing session we worked on build 1029. But please keep one thing in mind. A lot of times variables and coding have been changed but reissued under the same build number. One of the main reasons for this is because often times when we have a new build to test we have to uninstal our previous testing version and reinstal the game clean plus the public patch. At that time a new build is installed.
NSR Watch: What is the general feeling among the beta testers? Are they optomistic on the way EA is handling things?
I cannot speak for other testers. I personally hold high hopes for this game. I am not afraid to ask James questions, even on a daily basis. Although what I ask may not have an answer. He always tries to be as open and honest as EA allows him without him jeopardizing his position with EA. If I was to guess a general feeling among testers I would have to say hopeful but slightly frustrated. As harder issues are being recoded, it takes longer and longer to perform the initial run of the build in-house to ensure that what they have corrected has not affected something else. Along comes Wednesday, we all look for an email from James on whether or not we are testing a new build. As the day goes on I am sure that we all get a little antsy and start emailing James with testing questions.
NSR Watch: Has James Hawkins been showing up for the test sessions, and if so what is his attitude?
James has always to my knowledge shown up for the testing session of each build. He comes in with good spirits and participates in multiple different ways. He will get in a car and race with us and he will sit in spectator mode as to see the whole field and instruct us on what he wants us to do. He has even gone as far as to give each driver a specific instruction and it's up to us to make sure we do exactly as he says. When it gets to a point like that he is looking to perfectly recreate an issue and then work on variables that he instructs us to create.
NSR Watch:In your opinion do you believe that this game will be patched by the beginning of the 2006 NASCAR Season?
My understanding is that EA are looking at ways to best serve the NSR community for the longer term and are concerned that they do not compound the frustrations already being felt by prematurely releasing further updates to or about the game. I also understand that EA is working on a longer term plan for NASCAR simulations and that they intend to confirm that plan when all of the components are in place.
NSR Watch: What kind of bugs are you finding and has EA made
much progress since the last patch?
This is by no means a complete list!
We have added the ability to disable Disqualification. This has been widely requested and is now possible via the GDB. We have added this and the other new GDB abilities in regard to rules so as to allow leagues to customize the rules to their own liking. The GDB file is cross checked between the server and clients.
Disqualification will be disabled by default with the release of the next patch as per feedback.
In the event that a player loses connection, race order will remain in sync and remove players that lose connection from the order correctly.
If you have a stop/go to serve, in the event that you only have 1 lap left to serve the penalty and a caution period is triggered, you will be granted an extra lap to serve your penalty when the race resumes.
This resolves the issue where players may end up in a position that they could never serve a penalty.
Also another thing that I have seen is that if the car spins in front of you...you slow down to pace speed and it relocates you to the next car in front of you. No having to slam on brakes to get below a certain speed. I suspect the game recognizes that you are slowing down.
Well we tested again last night. Recreated several pit and caution situations. One of the things that a lot of people have been noticing was that if someone went into the pit under green and someone brought out the caution it would start creating havoc. The replays of the races are going to be examined by the programmers.
One situation was a car entering the pit...caution comes out but the car in the pit does not stop but just runs pit speed and comes back out. You all know as well as I do that a butt load of cars are coming back to the line real fast. Well in an attempt to safely slow yourself down you don't really notice that car coming on the track and BOOM. You're ahead of the car you should be following. The norm of the game today would result in a DQ almost certainly. We I was observing last night that the car would come off pit road and join the back...if the game told you that you were ahead of the car you are supposed to be following. Well if that car does not get the in the short amount of time it has it will start relocating him. It was pretty neat. We tested that situation several different times with different variables. Through different reaction times entered into the game I think that the programmers will have something solid to work with. They are already building a new beta build.
Oh and since I did not mention it before. We were running Bristol.
Several ideas were tosses into the works and some very good suggestions that James may be able to use.
The greatest and best things that I have seen so far are the ack of DQ's due to the better relocation ways it uses. Meaning the time it takes to readjust your position to say the next person is well below the time till DQ.
NSR Watch: Rumors are EA Tiburon is busy with other projects and has less resources on NSR, would make since as they have already made the bulk of the profit on this sim. Any insite on what you think about this?
Rumors are rumors. Take it as that. I don't work at Tiburon HQ so I really don't know who is working on what. I do know that NSR is the priority of James. I hope to one day have a more detailed answer to this question. When I do I will pass it along.
thank you RTW Stringer for taking the time to work with EA and get these questions answered. These questions were submitted by NSR Watch and answered by RTW Stinger with EA's approval .
