Automobilista

Discussion in 'Off Topic' started by Thug-Life, Feb 28, 2016.

  1. Thug-Life

    Thug-Life Well-Known Member

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    Next week Automobilista arrives on Steam for anyone. AMS is an evolution of SCE by Reiza Studios.

    I have the pleasure to play the Beta, and believe me this is huge improvement respect to SCE... Track dynamic conditions, blueprints and dirt on the tires, Rallycross, Supertrucks and more...



     
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    Last edited: Feb 28, 2016
  2. Sean Kenney

    Sean Kenney Well-Known Member

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    I will be curious how it is.
     
  3. Thug-Life

    Thug-Life Well-Known Member

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    For me the best of the best and I have all sims. ;)
     
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  4. Sean Kenney

    Sean Kenney Well-Known Member

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    Cool...I thought the graphics were going to be a bit better....but that is from screenshots.
     
  5. Thug-Life

    Thug-Life Well-Known Member

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    Only 2 months ago, Reiza are still working on SCE. People think is a new game, and it's not. Like a said before, is a huge improvement of SCE with a new name, features, cars and tracks.
     
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  6. James Cook

    James Cook Well-Known Member

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    I'm enjoying the beta too. It's a solid improvement on SCE but really this is a streamlining and re-branding exercise by Reiza. A neat way to consolidate and draw a line under all of their titles to date. Nobody should expect huge changes but there are plenty of subtle improvements, worthwhile new features and some interesting additional content...and all for free to the vast majority of SCE owners. Other studios should take note.

    AMS now must surely offer the most diverse range of content of any sim with rally cross, stadium trucks, a range of touring cars and open-wheelers (new and old) plus karts.

    I think AMS will be the most solid, reliable, feature complete platform for online and offline racing. Sure, it looks bit dated, but otherwise it does almost everything well. The best all-rounder on the racing sim market right now.

    Can't wait for Reiza's 2017 project!
     
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  7. tpw

    tpw Well-Known Member

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    AMS is fantastic even in this beta stage. And it's the best kind of beta - a short one where the developers actively solicit input from the users and incorporate the feedback with regular (daily) updates, and where the phrases "small dev team" and "engine limitations" are not constantly bandied about as impediments to progress.
     
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  8. Thug-Life

    Thug-Life Well-Known Member

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    First modded track for AMS, by Patrick Giranthon...

     
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  9. Stefan Mizzi

    Stefan Mizzi Well-Known Member

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    I have all Reiza games and have enjoyed all of them, though to me they still feel like a very good rFactor 1 mod, which is OK but I cannot say they are at par, for example with raceroom.

    Maybe this one will be slightly better then the predecessors :) So I should have this one automatically free in my steam as far as I know which is cool. Nevertheless, it should be fun :)

    Is there a way I can try the beta to see if it still works with my dash app?

    Thanks!
     
  10. Christian G

    Christian G Topological Agitator Beta tester

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    Maybe because it's merely an update of a game that's in development for at least 6 years now and has been that team's only project in all those years?
    Just a thought...
     
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  11. rad

    rad Well-Known Member

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    Beta was available to backers on Indiegogo. If you have registered SCE on Steam before January 5th, you will get AMS for free (actually it should be already in library).

    And according to devs, it should have same system requirements as SCE
     
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  12. James Cook

    James Cook Well-Known Member

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    Looks really good - could pass for stock content. Patrick's work is getting better all the time. His Catalunya conversion was also very impressive.
     
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  13. tpw

    tpw Well-Known Member

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    Yep, just a thought, and not one that I necessarily agree with. You can chose to take my comments as a backhander at S3S but in reality they're just an expression of my frustration with the wider evolution of "beta" in the gaming community. Beta seems to be a paradigm to charge full price for feature incomplete software, and a convenient way to dismiss complaints about the said incompleteness over a several year period.

    Wikipedia:
    In computing, the term "beta" is used as (usually) the last testing release(or the preview release) in the software release life cycle before the "release" version. Beta versions often have a version number of the form "0.n", (or "build number"). Typically it is the last version before a version of a software is fully released to all its actual customers.
     
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  14. Christian G

    Christian G Topological Agitator Beta tester

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    Well, in hindsight, once AMS is released, one could argue that all those previous versions were mere beta versions of a now complete(?) product, marketed as a finished product, which they clearly weren't.
    Or they were at the time of their release, but then every game, no matter if marketed as beta or not, is, as they all are always sold "as is".

    Not trying to slag them off, they've done many things right. One of those things was offering a, at its time, "complete" and pretty stable game at a reasonable price. Not great games from my pov, because they look outdated and weren't as feature-complete as people like to claim they were. The original content isn't anything that's interesting to me and they basically relied on "modding" (dare I say depending on private persons to rip off other developers work?) to make their games worthwhile.

    What they certainly haven't done now: Create a new game, and the fact that they try to raise this impression by releasing the same game with some updates under a new name is dubious to me.

    Most are satisfied with what they get for their money and that's ok, but when I look at the past years, what Reiza have really done is sell several beta versions of their game and running a several year long public beta phase without calling it a beta phase, nothing else.
    That they have done pretty well, no arguing that. They've managed to release several stable, working versions of their game and I also wish other developers, incl. S3S, could claim having done that.
     
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    Last edited: Feb 29, 2016
  15. Insaneozzy

    Insaneozzy Well-Known Member

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    Lets face facts here ladies & gents, there's not a game out there at the moment that can make the claim it's a final release, if anything Dirt Rally is about the only one.
    It's disappointing that Beta has become the norm for race Devs IMO, as it allows them the luxury of selling an unfinished product under the guise of ongoing development with community input being a big part of the build, and some have done that very well.

    I hope Automobilista is as good as it's been touted, I'm certainly looking forward to jumping into it as soon as it's on my SSD, and if it's as good as they say, then I feel RRE & AC could potentially lose users as racers migrate to Reiza's latest, purely for the new features. But this is just my opinion, lets hope I'm wrong for RRE's sake.
     
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    Last edited: Feb 29, 2016
  16. tpw

    tpw Well-Known Member

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    Thanks Christian, it's nice to be able to discuss this sort of stuff in a civilised fashion on a civilised forum!

    The way I see it, most games nowadays are enormously complicated, and generally released with missing features and bugs. If the game is deemed by the devs good enough to release and charge full price for, then it's really not a beta any more. Most customers are used to post release patches and updates as part of the gaming landscape.

    No one will argue that Reiza and S3S have taken fundamentally different approaches to to developing their ISImotor based games. S3S stripped theirs down and concentrated on great presentation and content, and have been catching up adding essential features since. Reiza basically modded rF1 (which was largely feature complete) and have spent the intervening time building a brand with largely unique Brazilian content, using code injection and integrated mods to refine the experience. So for a number of years SCE was basically an rF1 mod, with many of the same graphical and presentation limitations that entailed. The whole point of AMS though, is that they secured source level access to the code, and have been able to introduce engine level changes to begin to transform the game away from its roots: eg high res UI; high res physics and FFB; greatly improved shaders and lighting etc. As well as a slew of other content and tweaks as detailed in their crowdfunding. It already looks and feels significantly better than SCE, it's not all just subtle under the bonnet changes. AMS is not just lipstick on a pig. It's a distillation of all their titles (SCE, Marcas, Ftruck) into a refined single title with a new branding. They have never claimed it as a new game, that is reserved for the title to be released in 2017. The other thing Reiza have done is manage to build a pretty loyal following with their brand of community interaction. In a niche market that's a pretty important thing.

    The thing is, I want all the driving sim titles to succeed and deliver the full potential they hint at. Each one has a different take on presentation, driving and racing and different priorities for these things. I've walked away from AC and pCARS because their priorities are too different than mine, but that doesn't mean I want them to fail. What I would like is for sim software released in unfinished state to be labelled and charged for appropriately.

    Sorry about the essay, I think I will go and have a lie down now :)
     
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  17. James Cook

    James Cook Well-Known Member

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    Graphically the difference between AMS and R3E isn't as big as you might think. I will accept that it looks a little dated but many people make that exact claim about R3E too.

    ....and sure, Game Stock Car wasn't feature complete as such (what sim is these days?) but the benefit of using rFactor as a base is all the basic, 'core' features were there in a tried-and-tested platform. Other, newer titles are missing some of these basics.

    Reiza has been pretty transparent about this - it's not a new game. As I mentioned earlier, the new name is simply a re-branding exercise because the 'stock car' tag is no longer apt and was possibly giving the wrong impression of the product. It's also a consolidation exercise so they can focus on supporting one product rather than three.

    They're giving AMS away for free - including enticing content such as stadium trucks which they could have easily sold as DLC - so there's nothing cynical here, more like Reiza getting their house in order in preparation for their 2017 project.

    I've been enjoying Game Stock Car for 4 years now and I don't feel that's been the case at all. The game has received updates like any other, adding new stock car seasons and other content (often free), but in the end Reiza didn't have access to source code until recently so there was nothing for them to actually develop other than content and graphical tweaks. As many people like to say, often dismissively, GSC is nothing more than a mod for rFactor at a base level, so by this token there was never a need to call it a beta product or treat it as one.
     
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  18. Christian G

    Christian G Topological Agitator Beta tester

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    I certainly agree that they're one if not the only developer in the last years to release a game people would happily call finished and be content with what they got for their money. And you're right that that is a leaf others should take out of Reiza's book cause ultimately that's what should be the focus of development.

    All the above is just my pov and I know it might come across as hostile. I recognize their achievements, just don't agree with some of the very exuberant rejoicing as for me there are still certain aspects about their work that don't buzz me at all.

    But like you I hope they will continue on their path and if they are really coming out with something completely unique in the coming years (also contentwise) then they certainly deserve all the praise they are now receiving (a little prematurely from my pov).
     
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  19. Christian G

    Christian G Topological Agitator Beta tester

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    I admit I haven't spend much time in GSC, nor did I watch all the AMS vids/previews that are out by now so Idk, maybe there's stuff I haven't seen yet. But what I've seen so far is lacking, and not just by an inch. Car models are ok now, but everything else, tracks and particles and such? I can't believe anybody would say those look good by todays standards (again, unless there's stuff I haven't seen yet).

    Not saying that Raceroom is the best looking game out there, it is also limited by its aged engine. But in comparison to GSC/AMS there's a clear winner here for me, cause S3S' track artists are really making the most of what they are working with and the results look better than most of the competition, even better than at least one of the >DX9 games.
     
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    Last edited: Feb 29, 2016
  20. tpw

    tpw Well-Known Member

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    I actually reckon R3E is the best looking game out there. Certainly the best ISImotor based game by a long shot. The cars, cockpits, living track environments, textures and shaders are phenomenal.

    My main complaint with SCE was that it looked like I was driving in a cartoon with its garish oversaturated visuals. AMS is a really significant change in that regard. It'll probably never match R3E in audiovisual presentation, but then R3E will probably never match it for features. That's why I'll always keep both on my SSD!
     
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