Volume 55 -- July 20, 2007
By: Che Chou
Forza Motorsport 2 Community Update
It suddenly dawned on me this morning that summer -- the season that has so far brought much welcomed sunlight to the Seattle Puget Sound area -- already has one foot out the door. And as far as Turn 10 Studios is concerned, folks are trying to take advantage of the fleeting concepts of "leisure" and "vacation" before fall brings down the iron curtain of work and self-imposed deadlines once again. Developers, designers, and artists alike are rotating in and out of the office for a week at a time with regularity; big boss Alan Hartman came back today with a healthy reddish hue while camping in thunderstorms, and Turn 10's game director Dan Greenawalt is fresh back after a well-deserved break spent mostly with in-laws. Next week, Colin Kawakami, one of our key car modelers, is gone all of next week -- and so on and so forth.
FM.net forum user The Person takes the cover image this week with this amazing Lambo battle on Laguna Seca. Sibling rivalry indeed.
Although we seem to be kicking back for the summer, there's actually quite a lot afoot here at Turn 10 in terms of projects and work on individual plates. I've gotten my inbox stuffed with questions and requests for Forza 2 downloadable content -- are we going to have more cars or tracks? When is it coming? The general answer to that question has always been "yes," we definitely have DLC up our sleeves and will release a series of car packs and new tracks starting in August and running probably through a good chunk of fall. Forza Motorsport 2 is definitely here to stay. We're also going to continually keep an eye on community and its successes and problems, patching and tweaking where we need to and rewarding those who are especially helpful or give back to the community.
So speaking of patches, the Forza 2 auto-update I discussed in last week's WPR has finally passed Xbox certification and will hit the wire sometime Monday (7/23). If you want to play Forza 2 on Xbox Live, you're gonna have to take this patch. Those of you who missed what we covered last week in regards to the auto-update, below is a detailed walkthrough of the changes. Keep in mind that this is the first of two updates we'll be rolling out to deal with a variety of exploits in the game that cheaters unfairly take advantage of and otherwise ruin a decent eco-system. To summarize, the patch going out on Monday takes us halfway there. Then after patch number two gets tested and put through cert, we remedy the more grevious glitches like car and money duping or auto-locking liveries when they go on the Auction House to stop the viral spread of inappropriate paintjobs.
Fixes going into Monday's auto-update are as follows:
- Deny gifting and reselling of cars with locked paintjobs. Why? Because this will help alleviate the problem where an artist's precious limited edition car gets duplicated and sold on the Auction House. The only way you can sell or gift a car with a locked livery is by being the original owner/artist of the car.
- A temporary ban on the Lotus Elan use on scoreboards and in multiplayer. Why? There is an error with the Lotus Elan's performance index calculation that puts the car at a lower class despite its capabilities, resulting in the Elan mass dominating the scoreboards in D and C class. This temporary ban will not allow you to upload lap times to the scoreboards when you use the car in career mode, and prohibits you from using the car at all in online races. When we roll out our permanent PI fix for the Elan in a future patch, we're going to lift the ban. Sorry for the draconian measure -- we really didn't like imposing this sort of restriction on the community but this is necessary.
- Allow cars to be fully rotated while being viewed in the Auction House. Why? Because so many of you asked for the camera to be unlocked in Auction House so you can look at the paintjob on the roof of the car we thought we should do good by the community.
- A number of scoreboard problems have been fixed. These range from the glitch where if the AI did not relinquish control of your car after the rolling start, you would inadvertently post a corrupt superhuman lap time in the micro-seconds, to several "extreme" physics bugs folks have been exploiting to get crazy fast lap times (lag crash boosting and the shifting glitch).
- Removed host's ability to boot players during a race. Why? Because this feature, although handy at times, was getting abused by hosts who kicked folks who were in the lead of a race where the stakes were high (i.e., credits were on the table). Don't worry, you can still kick people to your heart's content in the lobby.
- Miscellaneous fixes aplenty. Like what? Various discovered Auction House bugs that could potentially cause players to lose credits or cars. At least one triple-screen bug fix for sync'ing issues, as well as an undiscovered quickmatch bug that always connected you to the same game upon attempt.
Then there's the controversy from last week's hint that we may need to do a reset of all scoreboards because the various Elan/corrupt/exploit times posted were deep and widespread. Well, regardless of which side of the fence you stood in last week's debate, you may (or may not) be happy to hear that we've decided not to do a scoreboard wipe. Instead, we're working on a way to surgically remove invalid scoreboard times, which means that if you've posted times with an Elan, we're going to have to remove your entry all the same, but you won't have all of your times wiped -- just those you posted with the Elan.
Another Lambo photo wins this week's photo competition from mormor. We love that you can look right through the back window to the Ferrari up ahead.
Same with those who have posted corrupted micro-second laps, and even amnesty for those who cheated their way to the top of the boards via physics glitches. The question right now is "when" and to be honest we don't know yet. What we do know is that the tool won't be ready when the auto-update rolls out Monday. I'll have more detail about scoreboard deletions when we have a better understanding of the schedule. Also, another big decision we've arrived at thus far is that we're not going to introduce a money cap to your purse in auto-update #2, but will instead work on fixing the root of the problem (which is money duping).
Alright, hopefully that clears up some of the confusion and angst out there. Before we move onto other happenings, I just want to mention that we've been monitoring tournaments on Xbox Live and on the forums. First of all, we are aware that some of you may have run into the occasional issue where you aren't advanced into the next round even though you were one of the winners in the room. We're looking into what's causing this to see if we can prevent this from happening since we understand it can be extremely frustrating. Secondly, we're looking at ways to mix up tournaments. It's been nearly two months since Forza 2's release and it's about time we introduced new tournaments into the system.
Also, I'm seriously considering the idea of doing weekly custom tournaments, much like the photo-mode and livery design contests we have regularly on FM.net. The tournament would run the span of the entire week (until Thursday night, at any rate) and we can declare winners and award prize cars on Friday. Then there's the debate about whether or not we should have a hardcore tournament with all assists turned off, or a series of tournaments with collisions turned off, etc. There are two sides to the argument and both make good points. Then there's the issue of how do we get the guy/gal who isn't that great at the game to participate in a tournament if they can't even qualify? Anyway, look for developments in tournaments soon as I get together with Turn 10's designers to tackle these issues.
Speaking of contests, Paul Curthoys, executive editor over at Official Xbox Magazine, got in touch with me earlier this afternoon to share a few pictures (see one of them above) from the winners of their livery competition they had a few weeks ago. If winners met OXM's criteria, their masterpieces were chosen to appear in the September issue of OXM (in the We Heart Xbox section) which goes on sale 7/31 on newstands. I haven't seen the issue myself, but Paul tells me they chose over 20 cars and ran them all across a big two-page spread in the magazine. Totally awesome. Well guess what? These contests are monthly affairs and OXM is holding another one right here in FM.net's world-famous forums. To participate in the October OXM livery competition, submit your entries in this thread here. Oh, and be sure to read the rules. Please and thanks.
Then there's our own weekly photo-mode competition. The submissions were especially strong this week. To check out all the winners and their sweet photos, head over to the winner's circle here. I want to remind everyone that first of all, the photos you submit should not be tampered with any graphics programs (e.g., Photoshop) other than to rotate the canvas or to resize the image. If you resize your photos, note that the minimum size your photo can be is 800x450 horizontally or 432x768 when rotated vertically. To enter into this week's photo-mode competition (week 8 already!) simply post your pictures to this thread. Again, please read the rules. For all you livery designers, be sure to also get in on Turn 10's official livery design competition. I've extended the deadline to next Friday since good paintjobs tend to take longer to create than good photos. The theme for the current livery contest is Shadowrun. We're looking for the best Shadowrun cars out there so show us what you've got!
A late in the week entry by dazz0l made us look at the CRX in a whole new light. Simply gorgeous.
And lastly, the Forza 2 community held its first formal drift competition last weekend. The Forza Motorsport Drift Alliance (FMDA) is an organization created to provide a competitive environment for Forza Motorsport 2 drifters. In order to successfully operate a drifting tournament the FMDA has established a set of rules and regulations along with official judging criteria. The first tournament, “Round One” has recently been completed, and a video has been produced to document the runs of the top 8 drivers. Over 200 competitors signed up for the qualification round, and 70 of them made it to the competition room.
Here's FMDA's organizer Landin Williams take on how the event unfolded...
"Out of these 70 drivers, only 32 were selected to compete in the Round One Tournament. Drivers were seeded based on there qualification score, and added to two, 16 person brackets. These brackets were run down in an elimination style competition, where drifters went head to head in a best out of 3 tandem battle. The runs were judged on the following criteria: the drivers ability to maintain the ideal racing line, the speed of the drift throughout the course, the angle that the driver could maintain during a drift, the length of the drift, and a special section we like to call “style”. The style section applies to many aspects, like how close a driver can get to another car without making contact, or how close they can get to the final wall. With drivers hoping to gain an advantage in the “style” category, they pushed there driving to the limits, while attempting to avoid disqualification.
"Over two day's of intense racing, the field was narrowed down to 2 drivers, Camaro727 and jdm slacker who would face off in the final battle, in search of victory! This action packed match-up was filled with excitement and controversy, as multiple runs were thrown out in favor of a rematch. In the end jdm slacker won by a slim margin, and was crowned the champion of the first ever FMDA tournament.
"The FMDA would like to thank all drivers who participated, as well as the many judges who volunteered their time. Make sure to check out the “Best of Forza Drift” video for all the tournament highlights!"
Be sure to watch the FMDA highlight video. The skills exhibited here are simply amazing. Congratulations to all!
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