PC2 Project CARS 2 announced with crowdfunding options

[Alex Franchini]

Slightly Mad Studios has officially announced a sequel to Project Cars today as Project Cars 2 is now official, and the WMD crowdfunding campaign has gone live.

Apparently the first big difference with the first title is that PCars 2 will feature off-road racing, along with Touge and Hillclimb events.

The crowdfunding tool-packs, which you can see on the WMD page, start from 50 British pounds and go all the way to 10,000 pounds.

Here's the shortlist of the PCars 2 features:

• THE LARGEST TRACK ROSTER EVER – 50 unique locations and 200+ courses including ‘loose surface racing’ on dirt, gravel, mud, and snow. All will have dynamic time of day and weather allowing you to play anytime, anywhere

• THE WIDEST VARIETY OF MOTORSPORTS with 8 different disciplines now including Rallycross, Hillclimbs, and Touge. 200+ cars from over 40 different vehicle classes including never-before-seen Concepts and Banned Race Cars

• CO-OP CAREER – Play as the Teammate Driver, Spotter, Driver Swap, or Co-Pilot. More choices, more opportunities, more strategy, greater risks and greater rewards

• SEAMLESSLY CONNECTED – Socialize and compete via Online Track Days, have players from around the world take the place of AI-controlled drivers in your solo play, and get news updates on the Driver Network around you

• PRO ESPORTS RACING – Skill & Behavioural-based matchmaking, create your own Online Racing Leagues, and Live Broadcast and Spectator functionality

• YOUR HOME FOR RACING – Your own personal, customisable Test Track to tune and test your cars. Invite others to showcase your passion for racing and learn race craft and engineering with the Project CARS Academy

Update: First videos already out on YouTube
Update 2: Videos have been removed from YouTube

 

[Ville-Samuli Mutanen]

"Unfinished and broken" ... if you rate pCARS1 that way you will hardly find any modern racing title that isn't unfinished or broken in some way.

Can't find any other sim that sends you into the desktop if you're surfing on the options menu too long.. Or hit the track twice on single game launch..

 

[David Ignjatovic]

"Unfinished and broken" ... if you rate pCARS1 that way you will hardly find any modern racing title that isn't unfinished or broken in some way.

Define modern....?

 

[LTC_Mike]

Define modern....?

DX9 and above ... does this fit?

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

DX9 and above ... does this fit?

I honestly can't name a single recent Gmotor based game that had game breaking bugs at release. RACE 07 and expansions, rFactor 2, GSC, Turismo Carretera, Arca Sim Racing, Simraceway all worked fine for me.

 

[LTC_Mike]

Can't find any other sim that sends you into the desktop if you're surfing on the options menu too long.. Or hit the track twice on single game launch..

Oh wait .. after one of the last updates to AC it crashed or didn't launch at all when I wanted to go on track just because the Fmod engine was re-newed and all the older mods broke the game ... this could happen with every software on PCs these days because there are far more different systems out there then one developer could think about - and most of the times there is no single reason why this happens but its a series of issues that lead to it ... it's no excuse for not gathering informations why it crashes at a certain customer PC (or even on the consoles with their much closed environment) and provide a solution within a reasonable amount of time - but if I follow the forums over there they really try to help those people that have such problems and to provide solutions - but sometimes even the best developer is stuck in a problem that couldn't be solved at once or at all ... that's why rockets explode suddenly, planes crash from no obvious reason or cars break down one day and all this stuff was tested a lot, too... we have left the caves and entered modern times

 

[David Ignjatovic]

DX9 and above ... does this fit?

Fine, but most of the real sims are largely finished and certainly playable{no game breaking issues}, it's typically the bigger budget simcade jobs that are 95% gfx, and a few % substance that seem to have these issues, and it does strike me as planned obsolescence as no one seems to get it right.

The only game/s I plan to buy over the next few months is Fallout 4, but not until a few patches in, so it makes me wonder why anyone buys or pre-orders.....but it doesn't excuse the practice, and I've voted with my wallet.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

but sometimes even the best developer is stuck in a problem that couldn't be solved at once or at al

Everybody understands that bugs happen with games, but it becomes annoying or even offensive when at the first 30 minutes of online game play I fish out a few major bugs that should have raised massive red flags during development. That they are intentionally overlooked* makes it painful and at such moments I feel mislead as a customer and not taken seriously.

* tested by developers, internal beta testers and 80,000 a few thousand WMD'ers.

To avoid the above I am actually considering to chip in 50 bucks and have a look at the development and particularly the testing of the builds myself. But seeing how genuine questions by people with league admin experience such as Robert Gerke (@RGerke) and a few others are treated, bullied and ridiculed at WMD I don't think I will be able to sit out the coming years.

 

[LTC_Mike]

I honestly can't name a single recent Gmotor based game that had game breaking bugs at release. RACE 07 and expansions, rFactor 2, GSC, Turismo Carretera, Arca Sim Racing, Simraceway all worked fine for me.

If I am right all of those are DX9 titles? Maybe development post DX9 got much too complex and the risk is high that you get some problems within your game that you never thought about or you never found during your test phase no matter how vast or long it was? I could well remember how much problems came up when MS introduced the DX10 showcase with Flight Simulator X - much of them remained until today and most of the add-ons work best if FSX is run within DX9...

Maybe with DX12 everything gets much better

 

[Ville-Samuli Mutanen]

Oh wait .. after one of the last updates to AC it crashed or didn't launch at all when I wanted to go on track just because the Fmod engine was re-newed and all the older mods broke the game ... this could happen with every software on PCs these days because there are far more different systems out there then one developer could think about - and most of the times there is no single reason why this happens but its a series of issues that lead to it ... it's no excuse for not gathering informations why it crashes at a certain customer PC (or even on the consoles with their much closed environment) and provide a solution within a reasonable amount of time - but if I follow the forums over there they really try to help those people that have such problems and to provide solutions - but sometimes even the best developer is stuck in a problem that couldn't be solved at once or at all ... that's why rockets explode suddenly, planes crash from no obvious reason or cars break down one day and all this stuff was tested a lot, too... we have left the caves and entered modern times

Just search for "Unhandled exception" and you'll see these are not just an issues with single pc and its slightly different thing if some 3rd party mod is causing crashes. I either don't like the way Kunos keeps updating Fmod but I can't see those issues comparable in any way for the loong bug-list or really terribly unfinished functions you can spot within an hour from the first launch.

 

[LTC_Mike]

I don't think I will be able to sit out the coming years

Well as far as I learned from this and other forums it could be the best way to get refunded by SMS / Ian Bell

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Well as far as I learned from this and other forums it could be the best way to get refunded by SMS / Ian Bell

I probably get refunded the moment I sign up #instarefundprotocol

 

[LTC_Mike]

Just search for "Unhandled exception" and you'll see these are not just an issues with single pc and its slightly different thing if some 3rd party mod is causing crashes. I either don't like the way Kunos keeps updating Fmod but I can't see those issues comparable in any way for the loong bug-list or really terribly unfinished functions you can spot within an hour from the first launch.

I know this "Unhandled exception" thread very well and within my german racing community there are still some that have sudden break downs and we could'nt find any solution so far or even find out what causes this ... but again: I think there are to many different PC systems out there to plan for every issue. That's why pCARS has a debug protocol running as well as others like AC do this. And if you look a that mentioned thread in the pCARS forum you will see that they analyse those debug informations and try to find out what caused that trap... that's all a dev could do I think to find solutions to unexpected errors and I could not imagine that SMS released pCARS with well know errors in mind to break the game at a certain point and to think to sell to those guys some version 2 some day?!

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

I probably get refunded the moment I sign up #instarefundprotocol

Hmmm, how about we setup a RD fundraiser and ask 20,000 members to chip in GBP 0,50 and we buy one diamond account for GBP 10,000. Do a sweepstakes among those that participated to decide who can get the fancy diner with the boss. GoPro camera mounted and we have an entertaining live stream and plenty of room to ask real-time community questions over a romantic candlelight diner or a wild ride through the streets of London in a Ferrari (and do a stand-still burnout just because we can).

Edit: it was a diamond toolpack of course and not platinum.

 

[Ville-Samuli Mutanen]

Hmmm, how about we setup a RD fundraiser and ask 20,000 members to chip in GBP 0,50 and we buy one platinum account for GBP 10,000. Do a sweepstakes among those that participated to decide who can get the fancy diner with the boss. GoPro camera mounted and we have an entertaining live stream and plenty of room to ask real-time community questions over a romantic candlelight diner or a wild ride through the streets of London in a Ferrari (and do a stand-still burnout just because we can).

@Bram Hengeveld should have Platinum toolpack! I'll promise 10 bucks for that purpose!

 

[Dinca Andrei]

 

[Lorenzo Bonder]

I'd pay for this, you can have me money.

 

[Kevin Jay]

Looks like they aim for a even bigger team.
Slightly Mad Studios ‏@slightlymadteam 5h5 hours ago
We're hiring! We're looking for Physics, Tools, Server, and Gameplay Programmers as well as UI creators!

How many of the "know-it-alls" at RD will apply for these positions?

 

[Kimmo Kokkonen]

Can't find any other sim that sends you into the desktop if you're surfing on the options menu too long.. Or hit the track twice on single game launch..

Oh, it seems that you never tested AC after update packs LOL and LOL again, AC is the bad PC is the good. With all mentioned bugs so PC is still greatest sim ever, add more Turbo boost to Lotus F1 and enjoy...can't find much better mod, also C9 is good but this sim is great, hopelly V2 is more with less bugs...for MP and AI members this is nightmare and i'm so sorry, please be patient everything will be okay soon or later. Also I don't believe that SMS read this forum so much so they don't know about these bugs if you don't inform them, I can read your bug reports but I can't help you so sorry...PC forever...

 

[Andy_J]

Do a sweepstakes among those that participated to decide who can get the fancy diner with the boss.

I'm for the RD fund, but not if you include me in the sweepstake. I'd rather dress up as a crusader knight and have dinner with the Taliban than have dinner with Bell.

 

[Dinca Andrei]

Oh, it seems that you never tested AC after update packs LOL and LOL again, AC is the bad PC is the good. With all mentioned bugs so PC is still greatest sim ever, add more Turbo boost to Lotus F1 and enjoy...can't find much better mod, also C9 is good but this sim is great, hopelly V2 is more with less bugs...for MP and AI members this is nightmare and i'm so sorry, please be patient everything will be okay soon or later. Also I don't believe that SMS read this forum so much so they don't know about these bugs if you don't inform them, I can read your bug reports but I can't help you so sorry...PC forever...

I dont understand a word