| What are the system
requirements? How can I improve framerate? How do I take screenshots? Why is the car so hard to drive? I've qualified well but when the race starts my car is just impossible to drive, what's wrong? I'm blowing the engine very often, what am I doing wrong? Can I put my own car in the game? Can I change the names and cars of the computer cars? What are the system requirements?
Minimum:
Recommended: GPL has just plain amazing graphic quality. The best bet to improve performance is to upgrade your computer, (see Requirements above), however, for many people a computer upgrade might not be an option right now. GPL does have a good variety of graphics options, allowing different levels of detail which can help with framerate. Again, the manual and Strategy Guide do a great job providing information on getting the best framerate within the game. What I'll do here is list the options available to you and briefly explain what they do. One bit of advice, start with minimal graphics level that produces a good framerate, then try to add textures or objects from there. Similar to car setups, try each option one at a time. If you add a bunch of different graphics at once and your framerate slows down you can't be sure which is making the framerate slow. Features: Turning each of the features on displays texture on each object to increase the realism. When turned off the object will be displayed with one solid color. The features option gives you two choices for displaying the textures, ahead (A column) and in the mirror (M column). The A column let's you choose which textures you'll view out the front and sides of the car while driving while the M column let's you choose what textures we'll be displayed in the mirrors. Quality: Quality is simply what it says. Three image enhancing effects are available here, Anti-Aliasing, Dynamic Lighting and Specular Highlights. If you have a low end computer you're probably better off leaving these off. Effects: The effects are graphics created by the cars. Engines can catch fire or smoke, tires will smoke when grip is lost and leave skid marks on the track, cars will kick up dirt and dust when leaving the track surface. Great detail here, but all take up a significant amount of system resources. Detail Bias: Detail bias is the distance ahead which you can see graphic details. With the indicator moved to the right (+) you can see details farther away, moving it towards the left (-) decreases the distance you see detail. 3D Accelerator: If you have a Rendition or 3Dfx card this option tells the game to use that card. The third option, Software, is for those without a graphics accelerator card. If you don't, it's strongly suggested you look into purchasing one. Resolution: Seven different screen resolutions are available with the v1.2 patch, from lowest to highest they are 512X384, 640X480, 800X600, 960X720, 1024X768, 1280X1024 and 1600X1200. If you have 3Dfx' Voodoo2 equipment, the best you can hope for is 1024X768 with two 12MB boards SLIed, but Voodoo3 and TNT Ultra cards support resolutions up to 1200X1600 or higher. Mirror Detail: This option lets you choose how much is displayed in the mirrors while driving. Full will display all objects and uses the most resources. From there you can choose Cars and Track or just Cars. One tip, if you choose the latter two take this precaution first. Change the mirrors to full, then uncheck all the M column items in the Features section. Then go ahead and choose Cars and Track or just Cars. If you don't, while you won't see the textures in your mirror the game is still writing them, just not displaying them. This can have quite an effect on your system's performance! A few notes on sound... One more item that can improve the framerate is the sound which has two options to play with. One is in the options menu. You can increase or decrease the maximum number of sounds heard. The more you hear, the more resources are used. Second is outside the game. In your GPL directory there is a file called app.ini and within it you'll find a line for sound quality. The default value is 2 but you can try both 1 and 0. You'll lose sound quality, but at the same time improve the game's performance. To take a screenshot in GPL hit the printscreen button while the image you wish to capture is displayed. When you return to windows you'll find a gplss01.pbf file in the GPL directory. This file needs to be converted to .tga format for viewing and the game includes a utility to do that. At the ms dos prompt in your GPL directory (C:\SIERRA\GPL) type the following line. "pbf2tga gplss01" When you return to your GPL directory you'll now find a gplss01.tga file which is ready for viewing in paint programs such as Paint Shop Pro. Happy picture taking! Why is the car so hard to drive? GPL uses Papyrus' new advanced physics model which is more realistic than any other game before it. You might ask, "Gee, if this is so real, would it be this hard to drive Jeff Gordon's Dupont Monte Carlo?" The answer is no, it wouldn't. You have to remember that you've got a powerful 3 litre engine behind you, very thin tires underneath the car and no downforce aids like wings. It's tough to control! The best advice is to read, read more, and then read some more. The game comes with some excellent documentation, including a detailed strategy guide written by a few very hotshoe sim racers. They provide some great insight on how to drive the car, and get you well on your way in your training sessions. So, don't expect pole positions right away, this game takes a bit of dedication and a lot of practice. One important note. The game comes with 2 training cars, a novice and advanced. These cars have reduced horsepower and as a result are easier to drive. As you move to each new track it's advised that you begin with one of these training cars. Being able to control the car easier will help you learn the track faster, rather than spending half your session spinning off every corner. Train often, train hard, and it will pay off! I've qualified well but when the race starts my car is just impossible to drive, what's wrong? This is easy to get confused by. In the car setup menu there's an option for Current Session and right above it another option for Race Setup. For the race, make sure you've chosen your setup in the Race Setup option otherwise it will always load the default. I'm blowing the engine very often, what am I doing wrong? You're probably doing something called speedshifting. Unlike previous games you can't just keep the pedal to the metal and fly through the gears. You either need to use the clutch, or briefly lift off the throttle as you shift gears. These techniques take a bit of getting used to, but are absolutely neccessary. Otherwise you'll continue to find your engine spread around the track in tiny metal bits. Can I put my own car in the game? Technically no, the game does not come with a paintkit and import/export utility. However, if you're comfortable using utilities such as Winmip and GPLSeason (both found here at The Pits), you can open up the game's dat files and import/export your car design.
Can I change
the names and cars of the computer cars? Not within the game itself, but Nigel Pattinson has created GPLSeason and many other GPL enthusiasts have created patches for this express purpose. You can find some of these here at The Pits, including one which will change the fantasy teams, Coventry and Murasama, to the real 1967 season names of Cooper and Honda. |