F1 Fanatic

Hi

Rushed out yesterday morning and picked up F1 2010 for my Xbox and first impressions were very good – its visually sublime and from a driving perspective its that great balance between arcade and simulation that Codemasters have always excelled at.

However, anybody thinking about buying the game should perhaps take a look at the Codie’s F1 2010 forums, where there is a sizeable backlash of anger from people who have bought the game.

There are numerous bugs which we all hope will be patched very soon, but the real bone of contention is the faked AI. Its come to light that the AI is not really happening.

What I mean by that is that your opponents lap times bear no relation to the cars you see on track. If you have the game, try holding somebody up in qualifying and see if their lap time is affected. It appears only cars around you are generated to act as something to race against, but everything they achieve is scripted. Results and laptimes are simply generated.

Of course for some this will make no difference and if thats the case for you, then there is a lot of fun to be had here. But over at the Codie’s forums, fans are already considering refunds.

http://community.codemasters.com/forum/f1-2010-game-1316

I don’t think this really matters at all to be honest. It isn’t as if you want to purposely hold people up in quali anyway because you would (well, I would) feel like I was cheating. It is a good game.

“I don’t think this really matters at all to be honest. It isn’t as if you want to purposely hold people up in quali anyway because you would (well, I would) feel like I was cheating. It is a good game. “

Aside from the slightly empty sensation of racing against placeholders, it also puts you at a competitive disadvantage – you will sometimes get held up by traffic but your opponents never will.

For some it won’t matter but its just a shame that there are so many titles from the past that have genuine AI and Codemasters have taken this route. The Ego engine might look nice, but its clearly not suited for an F1 game.

Quoting @T4RG4 (lead designer) on Twitter:
“For those asking – times are not faked in-race. Hope that clarifies a couple of things :)”

I haven’t tested the bug yet myself as I’ve stuck to mostly racing online. It’ll be very disappointing if it’s true though.

gpcampbell that annoys me so much. I find in practice and quali the other cars even on an outlap try to race you into the corner. It bugs the hell out of me and should of been looked at before release.

@ cyanide:

It is now widely believed that it is not the lap times that are faked, but actually it is a bug with the timing system on the first lap. It even happens with ‘real’ players on multiplayer mode.

The fake race lap times is just nonsense… people don’t usually realise that it would be much harder to manage the fake times on multiplayer games where there are AI cars filling the vacant grid slots than making the cars actually lap the circuit and measure their times. Most people believed in this theory based on the fakes lap times for qualifying, but then again, it was a misunderstanding, as every F1 game ever (even the so hallowed rFactor and GP4) has fakes qualifying times for the AI…

T4RG4 is a Codemasters employee. Don’t expect him to speak the truth.

Yes, Steve is a Codemasters employee, but when he says something on Twitter, he is well aware that it is not on the behalf of Steve Hood, but actually of his employers, Codemasters – he can’t tell us lies there. If that was a lie, his statement could be used against Codemasters, because he would be misleading (? sorry, I don’t know if that’s the right word…) the costumers.

Codemasters said through its official forums that they will release a patch for the game. So it’s better you to report your problems to codemasters through its forums.

Just received Codemasters’ full statement:

Codematers respond to “F1 2010? complaints