This is awesome mod! I cannot wait for it to become stable. Too bad the grandprix2.de forum does not accept new members for I have been reading it for the whole of 2024 and I would love to contribute. My account has been waiting to be accepted since may 2024. That is sad since I feel that this is the tribe where I belong. But fortunately there is YouTube where I can drive races for others to watch! Ever since I started driving my own GP2 season and career on YouTube I have been studying the game for countless hours by reading the forum and testing all tools, mods and tracks.
So here are my thoughts for this mod. Now I know that most of these are impossible to implement, but they are meant as a food for thought.
1. Full dynamic weather.
2. Full dynamic tyre temperature system.
3. Safety car.
4. Ability to jump start like in GP4.
5. Tyre pressure system, this would affect the grip and wearing level of tyres per lap.
6. Ability to decide how much to take out from engine. If you want to, you can use little less HP to improve reliability. This would need an engine wear out level system and logging for it: you would be able to test it in practice sessions.
7. Red Flag conditions. Drive to the pits and wait until race is resumed.
8. Exceeding the Plank Wear level does not result in car slowing down but in disqualification of the race result.
9. Fully dynamic track condition evolvement system: the track has lowest grip in Free Practice 1 and best grip in the last lap of the race.
10. Session clock tics down even when you are in car setup. Now going to car setup session time stops.
11. Warm-up lap. The tyre warm-up is now simulated by having lower grip level in the first lap with a new tyre set. You can check that in GP2Lap extended logging.
12. Ability to not qualify for the race. If you are 27th in qualifying, then that's it.
13. Much more traffic in practice sessions, now only few cars are driving.
14. Variable fuel loads in practice sessions, now the all have 12.0 Fuel Laps. Also hide the fuel load from player.
15. Increase track size limit even further from what the tweaked value now is. For example there is very beautiful Canada Montreal made by Michael82 but I cannot use it in race. Only works in practice sessions, probably due to memory restrictions, I am using GP2Lap.
16. Ability to use different tyre compounds to counter future season mods, just like in GP3.
17. Team dependent performance system (besides HP level that now exists). All cars are different to drive but for different reasons, some car has more downforce but less grip and so on. At bare minimum give each team a car which has certain grip level and separate that from driver grip level. For example 1994 Benetton has grip level of 16384 and Schumacher can use it completely (0 points of grip taken away from him). But Verstappen has roughly 1000 points of grip level taken away. Player would also get the full 16384 of grip in that car.
18. Dynamic car failure system: engine has temperature, failures are also dependent on the driving style of the player. For example if the engine constantly is hitting the rev limiter in the 6th gear, the engine wears out more rapidly, and driving aggressively over kerbs wears out suspension, and so on.
19. Dynamic car damage repair system: when you crash the car badly in practice session, the session is over, it just takes too much time to fix the car. Small damages can be fixed but it will take time. Also when for example engine blows up or transmission fails in any session, the session is over, takes too much time to fix it.
20. Spare car system: when player car brakes during a session, player can use spare car. If that brakes down as well, no more cars for player in that session.
21. Disable: teleportation to the pits by pressing Q.
22. Make CC cars to DNF in race when they get unrepairable car failure, instead of just driving to the pits and fix broken transmission.
23. Make player car to not be able to be fixed in pits during the race when failure is unrepairable. For example puncture can be fixed in pits, but suspension failure cannot.
24. Show all teams and all drivers in Championship Tables. Now only those are shown which have points.
25. Testing sessions where there are other teams driving as well with variable fuel loads and fuel loads not showing to the player.
26. Randomize team performance to simulate setup struggle more realistically. Example: sometimes a car performs well (both cars fast, up to their preset grip level) and sometimes they cannot find the right setup. Sometimes team is lost with car setup on friday but find the pace just in time for saturday qualifying or maybe even just before the race. This would need a system where the car has separate grip level from driver. On some weekends and in some sessions the car grip just is not there and it would effect also the player not just team mate.
27. Fix few bugs:
27.a) Championship table for Drivers and Constructors show "???" in points column when you print it to the text file and when the amount of points equals or exceeds 100.
27.b.) Drivers Championship layout is broken when you print it to the text file. You can try this by printing all the results in text files after a race -> change all files suffix from .txt to .nfo -> open them with notepad++.
28.As much telemetry from all sessions as possible, for example:
28.a) Telemetry logging for each lap of the session: normal performance file extended with GP2Lap features.
28.b) Data logging to file just like in GP2Lap from each session.
28.c) Tyre degredation level logging by per tyre from each session. Like in game "Inspect Vehicle" (0.0 - 4.0) and also by grip level as in GP2Lap log system. At the moment GP2Lap v1.15 only shows overall grip level of the tyres.
28.d) Tyre grip minimum level should be lower. Now it is 17920, after that value tyres do not degrade (=lose performance) except in game setup "Inspect Vehicle" (degreding scale from 0.0 to 4.0)
28.e) Oil pressure and temperature logging.
28.f) Engine water temperature logging.
-Zak
Yeah, many things are possible with x86GP2, some of those features are in Hatcher's mind, some others I have discussed with him but he is not sure he wants to do them. We have to keep in mind that he is still working with disassembled code, not with a normal source code that's easier to make sense (even in assembly, if it was the actual source code, it would be much easier to work with) so some features that sound relatively simple are actually not. And his first aim, which I think he has already almost accomplished, is to make the original game fully playable with a few tweaks.
That said, I can tell about a few things I've already discussed with him and some others I've been researching over the years:
1. Full dynamic weather
I have a draft of how to make the physics part work and Hatcher also has ideas including the necessary changes to the graphics, but I think it is more likely he implements static weather first if he ever implements weather related features.
6. Ability to decide how much to take out from engine. If you want to, you can use little less HP to improve reliability. This would need an engine wear out level system and logging for it: you would be able to test it in practice sessions.
I was also working on something like that, I don't think it is something that is on Hatcher's plans at the moment
15. Increase track size limit even further from what the tweaked value now is. For example there is very beautiful Canada Montreal made by Michael82 but I cannot use it in race. Only works in practice sessions, probably due to memory restrictions, I am using GP2Lap.
if it works in practice than the problem is a jam size limitation, not the track size limitation. That said, increasing both sizes (and also track length) is something I've been talking with him. The track length limitation was extended for GP3 with GPxPatch so I plan to ask Rene Smith for help when the time comes. I have a theory about the jam size limitation but it is probably complicated to test. Extending the track size for now would be useless since the Track Editor won't save bigger files. I've been trying to understand the Track Editor code and working on it a little bit, but I'm still far away of making such a change.
16. Ability to use different tyre compounds to counter future season mods, just like in GP3.
That's something I want very much so I've been researching it and trying to implement it for GP2Lap so Hatcher doesn't need to figure it all out by himself.
17. Team dependent performance system (besides HP level that now exists). All cars are different to drive but for different reasons, some car has more downforce but less grip and so on. At bare minimum give each team a car which has certain grip level and separate that from driver grip level. For example 1994 Benetton has grip level of 16384 and Schumacher can use it completely (0 points of grip taken away from him). But Verstappen has roughly 1000 points of grip level taken away. Player would also get the full 16384 of grip in that car.
You can kinds simulate that with the slot and tyre editor. If my tire type thing for GP2Lap works, the same could be made for the human grip. The Belini patch made it possible for GP3 and then it was added to GPxPatch too.
28.d) Tyre grip minimum level should be lower. Now it is 17920, after that value tyres do not degrade (=lose performance) except in game setup "Inspect Vehicle" (degreding scale from 0.0 to 4.0)
That's actually defined by a hardcoded value in the exe. I change it with my monitor program and it works very well. I'm thinking about adding to the update to the slot and tyre editor I'm about to finish
All the above are my own ramblings, I haven't asked Hatcher about this before writing my response, so this is not about what will or will not end up in the game
