F1 2011

[GB_Simo]

Any of you fine gentlemen considering giving F1 2011 a test drive?  (Shoot me.)

I, entirely predictably, have been playing it for a couple of days and while it's not without flaws, bugs and things which are downright broken and have been since TOCA RACE DRIVER 3, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL, CODEMASTERS, I'm having a lot of fun so far.  Let me know if you've got any questions about it - I know there was some interest in F1 2010 here so I'll be glad to answer any queries you might have.

[Ted]

I enjoyed my time with 2010 and will pick up 11 when it goes on sale 20 or less on Steam (hopefully). 

[Jason]

Was disappointed that there's no demo for 2011...or 2010 on Xbox Live.

[Jason]

Just watched the video review at Game Trailers and became more interested in this game:

Review - F1 2011

[GB_Simo]

A tip, gentlemen: do not touch this game until it's patched.  You'd think it was impossible to release a game with more major bugs at launch than F1 2010, but with their 2011 effort, Codemasters have pulled it off.

There are invisible walls, AI cars that refuse to make a pit stop, the return of "please Mr Lollipop Man, let me out of the bloody pits now", AI cars that stay on slick tyres when it rains and don't slow down at all, an engineer who tells you it'll rain in 5 minutes when it's already sodding raining (I imagine those two are inter-connected), AI that seems completely incapable of overtaking either you or the other AI runners, the 'Go To Race' button in China that actually skips China altogether and takes you to practice for the Turkish race instead and I haven't even got started yet.

All of which is a shame, because the driving, the bit where you're in the car and tooling around with only your engine note for company, is really, really good fun.  More annoying, a patch has been in development since the game went gold.  I cannot stand developers who knowingly release a fundamentally broken product.

[Jason]

Apparently a patch was released for this today. Looking for the patch notes and will post when I find them.

[GB_Simo]

Apparently a patch was released for this today. Looking for the patch notes and will post when I find them.

I'm not absolutely sure there are any.  The patch is one that was available to PS3 owners very shortly after release and it's just taken some time to be certified for other platforms.  Just some optimisation tweaks and things like that rather than major bug fixes, for which there's another patch due at some point in the future.

If you do come across any notes for this patch, though, I'd love to see them and find out what was tweaked.

[Jason]

As promised last week, here is some more information on the specific issues we’ve been investigating for the upcoming patch and the progress made to date.

For those of you who have read the Patch Process thread , Step 1 has now been completed; many thanks to all of you who provided as much information as possible on the issues you have encountered. We are now nearing the end of Step 2, with multiple issues (detailed below) having now been fixed and verified in our test environment.

Please note that there are technical restrictions on what we can and can’t patch, due to things such as size limits on patches, knock-on effects to other areas of the game and issues that were non-reproducible in our test environment, etc. Issues which currently fall into this category are updated DRS Zones and updated drivers.

Game Improvements:

   
•     A connectivity rating display has now been implemented for each player in an online session lobby. This appears as coloured bars (red, amber, green) to indicate the expected online performance of the player in the game session.
•     More network bandwidth is now reserved for game-critical systems in online sessions. This may result in low-bandwidth users having their voice chat restricted to fewer players, but should result in a smoother online experience.

Strategy & Setup:

   
•     Fixed 11/11 car setup bug.
•     Fixed issue where your race strategy uses the same tyre compound three times in a row & the final set are worn.
•     Fixed issue where wear-based punctures would occur too often.
•     Fixed various issues with the race engineer speech logic.

AI:

   
•     Fixed an issue where the AI run on Intermediates for too long.
•     Fixed issue where AI cars would be too fast in the wet.
•     Fixed an issue where AI vehicles pitted too often during dry, online races .
•     The AI has been tuned on several circuits to provide smoother and faster driving.

Co â€"op Championship:

   
•     Fixed an issue with the save becoming corrupt / not able to invite the other player when playing long race weekends.
•     Fixed an issue where AI difficulty was reset to “Amateur” level when resuming a Coop game.
•     Fixed an issue with tyre wear in Practice/Qualifying not being carried over to Race.
•     Fixed an issue with the penalties accrued in Practice/Qualifying not being applied to the Race.
•     Fixed an issue with the Race Results where lapped AI are causing player to drop positions.

Online:

   
•     Vote to Skip in Qualifying now requires 100% vote.
•     Various Penalty system improvements have been made.
•     Quick Race countdown timer is now set to 60 Seconds and no longer resets when a player joins the session.

Graphics & Performance:

   
•     PS3 â€" Improved frame rate & performance.
•     Xbox360 & PC - Numerous performance improvements have been made to increase frame rate and reduce stuttering.
•     All Platforms â€" Numerous graphical improvements have been made.
•     All Platforms â€" Fixed various issues to improve general game stability.

PC-specific:

   
•     Fixed several functionality issues experienced when using DX11 cards.
•     Fixed issue where users could hack specific files to increase car grip.

Other:

   
•     Fixed a very infrequent issue where some sessions would be skipped over when progressing to the next session during a Long Race Weekend.
•     Korea tyre compounds have been changed to those used in the 2011 race.
•     Fixed an issue where in career where the "on the bounce" achievement was awarded after 11 race wins instead of 9.
•     Fixed an issue where all users would be awarded the fastest lap XP and stat during some online races.
•     Fixed an issue where driver's hands & head popped in a few frames late when switching cameras.

We have yet to verify several other fixes at the moment, and we are still working hard on fixing a few more issues before we move into Step 3 next week. We will keep you informed on the specifics over the course of the next week or so.

As a final note, we are also working with Sony and Microsoft to wipe the Time Trial leader boards to ensure that all future Time Trial data is correct and free from inaccuracies following the release of patch 2.

Source: Codemasters Forum

[Ted]

Steam is selling Dirt 3 and F1 2011 together for $34 this weekend.

[webdanzer]

Steam is selling Dirt 3 and F1 2011 together for $34 this weekend.

Have many of the initial issues been addressed by patches at this point, or are most of Adam's listed issues still there?

[Ted]

I honestly have no idea since I haven't purchased yet, but the price is tempting.  Hopefully Adam chimes in this weekend.

[GB_Simo]

No fixes yet.  The first patch had nothing to do with the issues listed here and was only some immediate post-release optimisation tweaks.  The next patch has been submitted but I don't know of a release date just yet.  All I know, in fact, is the information contained in Jason's most recent addition to this thread.

In its present condition, F1 2011 is still a perfectly fine hotlapping game.  It will be a very, very good racing game too once they get the incredible number of bugs sorted.  My concern is that in the pre-release bumph, all involved promised that their focus this year had been on reducing the number of bugs from 2010 levels.

An example for you of how unbalanced this game can feel in its present state.  I qualified 5th for a career race in Malaysia and, with the help of some elbows-out driving and some very cautious AI braking, took the lead coming off the first corner.  I held that lead for the first 8 laps, in spite of the queue of 12 cars parked directly behind me.  Several things mystified me about this queue:

- Why there should be 12 of them when I'd qualified 5th, comfortably ahead of most of them even having made something of a mess of my best qualifying lap
- Why I was invariably much better than the cars behind me under braking, but much worse on acceleration off the turns
- Why they couldn't pass me.  In F1 this year there's something called DRS, a moveable rear wing which helps drivers to gain straightline speed at a designated part of the track, aiding overtaking.  The driver behind me was within 1 second of me, so under the rules he was allowed to use DRS.  He did use it, combined with his faster corner exit speed, to pull right up under my rear wing.  He then just sat there, slightly offset from the centre of my car but matching my speed, having apparently made a conscious decision to stay behind me

Eventually, Mark Webber got by me through simply accelerating out of turn 2 about a second before I could even think about using the throttle.  At the end of that lap, I led a freight train into the pit lane, entering the pits at the head of the queue and leaving it at the back (the super-cautious lollipop man is less of an issue this year, but he's still an irritant sometimes).

Running in clear air now, Lewis Hamilton turned a 1:33.2 to set fastest lap of the race on lap 11, with over half a tank of fuel on board and on old tyres.  This made absolutely no sense to me.  I qualified in the 1:33s, two places ahead of Hamilton, on a new set of soft, grippy tyres and with minimal fuel aboard.  My race pace was in the 35s and 36s at that stage and there was nothing I could do to respond.  Shortly afterwards, I was penalised for an illegal overtake - I had all four wheels on the track and there were no yellow flags waving, so I can only imagine the game had placed that area under yellows without bothering to tell me - and turned my 360 off in frustration.

It's frustrating to see how many backwards steps Codemasters have taken through nothing but their own carelessness and inattention.  If they can sort all of that out, along with the countless other things I haven't mentioned which render attempting a career completely pointless, there's a mighty fine game waiting to get out.  If...

[GB_Simo]

Patch notes for anyone I haven't scared off yet:

Hi all,

I'm pleased to inform you all that the patch has now been approved by both Sony and Microsoft and is slated for release on all platforms on Monday 21st November.

As a result I've now updated the below patch notes with the finalised list of fixes.

Please note that there are technical restrictions on what we can and can’t patch, due to things such as size limits on patches, knock-on effects to other areas of the game and issues that were non-reproducible in our test environment, etc. Issues which currently fall into this category are updated DRS Zones and updated drivers.


   Game Improvements:
o   A connectivity rating display has now been implemented for each player in an online session lobby. This appears as coloured bars (red, amber, green) to indicate the expected online performance of the player in the game session.
o   More network bandwidth is now reserved for game-critical systems in online sessions. This may result in low-bandwidth users having their voice chat restricted to fewer players, but should result in a smoother online experience.

   Strategy & Setup:
o   Fixed 11/11 car setup bug.
o   Fixed issue where your race strategy uses the same tyre compound three times in a row & the final set are worn.
o   Fixed issue where wear-based punctures would occur too often.
o   Fixed various issues with the race engineer speech logic.

   AI:
o   Fixed an issue where the AI run on Intermediates for too long.
o   Fixed issue where AI cars would be too fast in the wet.
o   Fixed an issue where AI vehicles pitted too often during dry, online races .
o   The AI has been tuned on several circuits to provide smoother and faster driving.
o   Fixed issue where the AI’s sector 1 times in Malaysia were too slow

   Co â€"op Championship:
o   Fixed an issue with the save becoming corrupt / not able to invite the other player when playing long race weekends.
o   Fixed an issue where AI difficulty was reset to “Amateur” level when resuming a Coop game.
o   Fixed an issue with tyre wear in Practice/Qualifying not being carried over to Race.
o   Fixed an issue with the penalties accrued in Practice/Qualifying not being applied to the Race.
o   Fixed an issue with the Race Results where lapped AI are causing player to drop positions.

   Online:
o   Vote to Skip in Qualifying now requires 100% vote.
o   Various Penalty system improvements have been made.
o   Quick Race countdown timer is now set to 60 Seconds and no longer resets when a player joins the session.
o   Fixed issue where host and client machines would report different qualification results during online games
o   Fixed an issue where online players would sometimes see other players or AI cars using the wrong tyres.

   Graphics & Performance:
o   PS3 â€" Improved frame rate & performance.
o   Xbox360 & PC - Numerous performance improvements have been made to increase frame rate and reduce stuttering.
o   All Platforms â€" Numerous graphical improvements have been made.
o   All Platforms â€" Fixed various issues to improve general game stability.

   PC-specific:
o   Fixed several functionality issues experienced when using DX11 cards.
o   Fixed issue where users could hack specific files to increase car grip.

   Other:
o   Fixed a very infrequent issue where some sessions would be skipped over when progressing to the next session during a Long Race Weekend.
o   Korea tyre compounds have been changed to those used in the 2011 race.
o   Fixed an issue where in career where the "on the bounce" achievement was awarded after 11 race wins instead of 9.
o   Fixed an issue where all users would be awarded the fastest lap XP and stat during some online races.
o   Fixed an issue where driver's hands & head popped in a few frames late when switching cameras.
o   Fixed issue where players were able to post extremely quick Time Trial times


To coincide with the release of the 2nd patch and the fixing of the 'setup bug', we are also going to be wiping the online leaderboards for both the time trial and time attack online game modes. These leaderboard wipes are currently scheduled for next week, and once we have a firm date for these we'll let you know straight away.

Once again our thanks for your patience whilst we worked on the 2nd patch and also for your valuable feedback.