Volume 71 -- Nov. 16, 2007
A Turn 10 Introduction...
By: Che Chou, Community Manager
If you haven't already seen or heard by now, we're in the midst of a celebration. Xbox Live has turned 5 years old and parties are raging throughout Xbox Land. To commemorate the occasion, the Xbox Live team has put together a nice little itinerary of activity for the masses of Live denizens out there. For starters, they wrangled a bunch of us Turn 10 folk into their "Play with Developers" online event where Xbox 360 game devs went head-to-head against the biggest fans of their games. Representing Turn 10 were program manager Brian Lockhart, test jockey Adam Wilson, community sharpshooter Landin Williams, and innocuous little me, who hosted my own room for 2 hours filled with white-knuckle, pedal-to-the-metal, wheel-to-wheel, tough-as-nails, edge-of-your-seat, and other-motorsport-literary-cliches racing. Don't let my snark here suggest that the session wasn't some of the most fun I've had with Forza 2 since its release, because it was pretty awesome.
2002 Mugen Integra Type R by: ShaunEvoIII
I've snapped a handful of photos below from those saved replays yesterday and have commented on each of them accordingly. Since I wanted to up the ante a bit on the proceedings, I spontaneously told everyone that the top 3 people in the lobby for each race would each win a gift car of their choice (no paid DLC cars of course but unicorns included). So yeah, good times. Extra props to Bimmerlovere39, Chewbacca IV, Joates, AMRI Camaroman, and others for some clean, competitive racing. A big pie in the face to Skate Zilla for causing the most accidents, and running me off the road 3 times in a row, to the point where I finally had to turn off sim damage just so we could all finish a race. But overall, this whole experience was so worthwhile, Landin and I are currently in the midst of brainstorming a way to do this on a regular basis, and in the process, gift out a bunch of cars to those who come and join us (the Turn 10 dev team) for a race or six. So look for details on that soon.
In one of the more memorable sessions during the Play With Devs race, AMRI Camaroman tries to maintain his lead from Joates who got ever closer with each corner.
Speaking of Xbox Live, let's touch on something a little more sobering for a second. As Xbox Live prepares for a fall dashboard update of some sort (sorry, I don't have any details on that), it seems the system is undergoing some behind-the-scenes maintenance here, and as such, those of you who play often on Live will have noticed some pretty wonky online experiences characterized by disconnects, lag, console lock-ups, and other unpleasantries. Although the hiccups with Live appear to be behind us now, some of you have sent in emails (forzafb@microsoft.com) telling us that you've received a pop-up message when trying to access the Auction House that says "Either the service is unavailable or you have been banned from Xbox Live."
If you know for a fact that you have not violated Xbox Live terms of service, either by selling a car with a naughty livery or a big fat swastika on it, or by engaging in profiteering activities (i.e., selling a crappy car for 10 million credits a pop 20 times in a row to someone who has sold you credits over eBay or some other shady dealing), then definitely get in touch with us if you continue to get a message saying you've been banned from the Auction House. When Live starts acting inconsistent, it's possible a handful of you out there may have lost communication with our authentication servers, which resulted in the game believing you were banned. If you log out of Xbox Live, log back in and reset your game, you should be back to normal.
Another strange occurrence we've seen reported is folks telling us that they get a pop-up message telling them that their profiles have been tampered with when they try to access the Auction House. Although we're still looking into why this is happening, or more importantly, how to avoid this problem, we think we know what the issue might be. It's likely those who are getting this message have corrupted their profiles by powering off their Xbox 360s (or quitting out to the dashboard) when the game is in the middle of writing/saving to your profile.
The most obvious case of this is when players get frustrated with the inability to bid on a car ("Transaction Failed") due to Xbox Live issues, and decide to power down their system or quit the game. The end result is that your profile gets irreparably damaged and you're subsequently locked out of the Auction House or gifting -- permanently. A pretty safe way to avoid having this happen to you is by simply quitting the Auction House via a series of B-button presses and traverse all the way back to the starting menu and let it sit there for 30 seconds or a minute after you leave the Auction House before you quit or power off your Xbox 360. For most people, this won't really be a problem -- but should you ever encounter network issues in Auction House, please quit to the title-screen and give the game some time to access your profile before you quit. That is all.
Chewbacca IV looks on as the car he was just chasing loses composure and spins out into a wall.
Alright, so who's ready for the weekend? Me. Why? Because on Sunday, Landin and I will be flying down to Los Angeles for the Nissan Sentra Tournament finals at the LA Auto Show. We'll be hanging out, chillin' with our finalists (Blademeister, I'm lookin' at you!) and otherwise having a good time. We're also equipped with video cameras, so if all goes well, you'll be able to see the whole event for yourself after we put together Turn 10's first community video. But hey, if you're going to the LA Auto Show next Monday or Tuesday, be sure to shoot us an email (forzafb@microsoft.com) and pop on by to say hello.
One last thing -- no pitpass report next week. It's Thanksgiving break time and we're all going our separate ways and spending time with families and such. So see you in the next pitpass in two weeks. Over to you, Landin!
Hey Chewbacca IV, look to your right - look to your right! Here I am, decimating the poor guy on the back straight on Mugello.
The Forza Motorsport 2 Community Update
By: Landin Williams, Community Moderator
Well only a few days left until Che and I jump on a plane and head south to check out the LA Auto Show, where four of the fastest Forza 2 racers will battle it out in the final race of the Nissan Sentra SE-R tournament. Armed with an HD camera and a tripod we intend to document the auto show along with extensive coverage of the Grand Final Race that will determine who drives away in a brand new Nissan Sentra SE-R. With such a big prize on the line we are anticipating a very close and competitive race. Good luck to all of the finalists and we look forward to meeting you all in LA!
2005 Lotus Exige by: Moldy jocks
So I know there will be many of you who are unable to attend the show but that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to catch Turn 10 playing Forza 2 on Xbox Live, just like many of our community members experienced yesterday as game developers jumped on Xbox Live to celebrate its five year anniversary. As Che has already mentioned we spent a good 2 hours racing and joking around with community members who joined one of our multiplayer rooms, and it was a lot of fun to say the least. After a few close races we began thinking; why don’t we do this more often as a way to interact with the community? Well we have decided that it is something we want to do more often, as it gives us a chance to hear from you, and also give you a chance to get to know some of the developers from Turn 10. We have yet to iron out all the details, but if you are interested in the idea make sure to let us know on the forums, and we can set something up in the near future!
So along with playing Forza 2 online, I have also spent some time this week working on a few new video projects at the incredible editing suite located just a few buildings away from our office. This suite allows us to capture very high quality HD footage with some of the nicest video equipment I have ever seen. This footage is such high quality that every second of uncompressed video creates a file around the range of 100 Megabytes. As you can imagine the file sizes add up very quickly and as a result require the use of an extremely powerful computer in order to edit the shots together. Up until yesterday the possibility of editing these files was non-existent, until around 3:30PM when Che unleashed what is now known as “The Beast”.
2003 Nissan Fairlady Z by: Mugen CRU
"The Beast" stands four feet tall and is stuffed with four dual core processors (yep eight processors in total) making it the fastest computer out of all the machines found at Turn 10. This computer is any editor’s dream as it can process information faster than you could ever imagine, and my jaw literally dropped when I was told that I could use it to edit some of our upcoming video projects. These projects include the Drifting Guide (soon to be released), the Nissan Tournament video, and another special project. So stay tuned and look out for some interesting video projects in the near future, as we work towards establishing a full out multimedia production environment!
Hotlap Challenge Week 9: The Points Race Has Begun!
This week’s challenge marks the second stop in our 5 week Hotlap Series that was recently announced, and let me say the level of competition has never been higher. Just to put things into perspective a little bit, prior to this week’s challenge the number one time on Silverstone International in B class was 1:24.35. The top time in our Hotlap challenge was set by IPR BackONE AbS and is almost a full second faster than the previous top time. Now one second may not seem like a lot to many of you, however when racing get’s competitive players will be separated by less than a hundredth of a second, so this margin is an extraordinary accomplishment. It is apparent that team drivers and tuners are working together to put down times that are slightly if not totally impossible. This is exactly what we were anticipating and are glad that we have stirred up some serious competition between some of the top teams in Forza 2.
2000 Silvia - Top Secret D1 Spec by: SD Kami Sama
I also wanted to quickly mention that we had a few miscalculations in last week’s standings and have updated them throughout the week in order to account for all the team racers. We apologize for these errors, however in the future please review your team’s points thoroughly and report any problems as soon as possible so that the points can be adjusted. When taking on the task of adding up points for this many people you can expect a few miscalculations, so if you see one let us know and it will be fixed! I also want to mention that after this week we will no longer be accepting any changes to your team roster. If there are any players that you need to add to your team do it this week, as we will not be accepting any changes to registered teams after Thursday November 22nd. So without further ado here are the top 10 racers this week, along with the overall series standings!
Hotlap Challenge Week 9 Top 10
1 IPR BackONE AbS
2 R2P KimiMatt
3 R2P ChemicaL
4 R2P BlackBird
5 TRC x42x
6 TRC Smokinu
7 IPR Ermy
8 TRC Skywalker
9 R2P Greeksniper
10 xx THE JED xx
Hotlap Series: Team Point Totals
IPR - 1292
TRC - 1201
R2P - 1112
SqR - 1056
JUNK - 757
PLOP - 719
SPDN - 687
TDR - 477
MTR - 427
SBR - 372
XFNL - 346
EXOR - 222
CD - 107
ACC - 35
Hotlap Series: Individual Point Totals
IPR BackONE AbS - 370
R2P KimiMatt - 312
R2P ChemicaL - 283
IPR Ermy - 258
PoTzyPLOP - 251
TRC Skywalker - 251
TRC x42x - 249
IPR StevenX - 236
eAxis Patohm - 224
Click Here to see if you have been selected as one of the “Random 30” from Week 9!
One of the first races of the Play With Devs session had GT class cars out on Sebring. Here's turn 1, with surprisingly little casualties.
Congratulations to everyone who was able to secure points in this week’s challenge. As always the top 10 along with the “Random 30” will receive a free gift car of choice. Send an e-mail to forzafb@microsoft.com along with the following information: your gamertag, forum username, the competition you won, and your car request. Cars are gifted out on Monday’s so get your requests in as soon as possible!
Hotlap Challenge week 10: R2 Suzuka Time Attack
This week’s challenge is set on the Suzuka Circuit and is restricted to cars from the R2 class. Once again the challenge will end at the time that is displayed in-game, so feel free to keep your set-ups and car selections a secret until the end of the week. Good luck and we hope to see a great battle between IPR, TRC, R2P and SqR!
One car is facing the wrong way in this picture, and it belongs to Skate Zilla. Bimmerlovere39 scrapes by unharmed but AMRI Camaroman is not so lucky.
Weekly Competition Update
Well since last week’s announcement regarding our weekly competitions we have already seen some user created competitions take flight on our community forums. We have begun the process of supporting these competitions with gift cars, and will continue to do so as a way to spread the limited edition Cars around the community. Here is a quick breakdown of some competitions that have received official support.
Forza Central Photomode Competition
Congratulations to “Moldy jocks”, “SD Kami sama” and “NCD1 DG187” for finishing in 1st, 2nd and 3rd in Forza Central's weekly Photomode competition! Have a picture you want to enter for a shot at a free gift car? Check out this week’s competition thread HERE.
The New Official Race Livery Competition
Congratulations to “Antiyou”, “Shaun Evo III”, and “Mugen CRU” for winning the first week of the new race livery competition hosted by “Jizzy Shizno”. Check out the winning liveries HERE.
1987 Porsche 911 Turbo by: sphilli22
Questtt Photomode Competition
Congratulations to “sphilli22”, “still missingpieces” and “Apex omega” for submitting the winning pictures in the Questtt Photomode Competition. Submit your pictures this week HERE.
There are many other competitions that have received some support, so make sure to browse through all the forums sections and find the competition that interests you! Remember some competitions will reward the winners with a free gift car of choice, so they are a great way to get one of the Limited Edition or Unicorn cars. Speaking of Unicorn cars Che and I have also decided to change up the auction format for Unicorn cars. They will now be uploaded randomly throughout the day; some might have a buyout, others might not. This random system will help distribute these cars to the less wealthy members in our community!
Alright that’s it for this week’s update! If you live in LA check out the Nissan booth at the Auto Show on Monday to have a quick chat with the Turn 10 Community Team! Enjoy the weekend and see you on the forums!
Peace
Landin
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