Widescreen Gaming Forum

GRID is far more than just about Flashbacks. Instead of a one size fits all rubber band AI, they have different skill levels of AI for each of the many difficulty levels. It's very apparent in some of the harder Le Mans races toward the end of the game.

This means you not only have more consistent realistic racing, you can tailor it to your skill level by what setting you choose and you can also by getting to know the tracks well pretty much avoid flashbacks altogether if you wish.

It's hard to tell, but I'm assuming I won't need flashbacks as much in DiRT 2 as in Grid, because the tracks are more wide open for the most part the speeds are lower. I'll likely need them most in the traditional rally type races, but DiRT 2 seems to have mostly multi vehicle racing.

I'm really glad they added some Baja racing. I was pondering what DiRT 1 would have been like with an end of season Baja race each tier like Grid had Le Mans races.

It's hard to tell, but I'm assuming I won't need flashbacks as much in DiRT 2 as in Grid, because the tracks are more wide open for the most part and speeds lower.

I'm really glad they added some Baja racing. I was pondering what DiRT 1 would have been like with an end of season Baja race each tier like Grid had Le Mans races.

Yeah, another note on not needing flashbacks as much: The tracks are more or less dirt for the most part, so going off them slightly doesnt instantly set you in last place.

And woohoo for Baja.

GRID is far more than just about Flashbacks. Instead of a one size fits all rubber band AI, they have different skill levels of AI for each of the many difficulty levels. It's very apparent in some of the harder Le Mans races toward the end of the game.

This means you not only have more consistent realistic racing, you can tailor it to your skill level by what setting you choose and you can also by getting to know the tracks well pretty much avoid flashbacks altogether if you wish.

you know I had a deep look at GRID files and I can tell you there's no "different skill level of AI" ...
it's just more or less catch-up AI + more or less catch-up on the player side

which why you can totally mess yourself at the beginning of a long race then get in 1st place and then the AI is just a few seconds behind you for the rest of the race and never moves despite the fact that a few moments earlier you gained several seconds/minutes over him when you were behind ...


even the AI crashes are just made of random scripted events ...


and the usefulness of flashbacks are deeply impaired in high speed difficult turns (with specific unstable vehicles) because you're thrown back too quickly into action and then unless you use your brakes to regain control of the vehicule you might get another crash ...
And finally flashbacks after some big crash are sometimes too long to be proposed and the flashback don't allow you to prevent the crash in question which means you just have to restart


Anyway, I don't really care about flashbacks themselves I just think that flashback means another shitty rubber-banding AI

I don't know exactly what scripts you looked at, but in game it doesn't translate like you described it at all. There is definitely some catch up effect, but it's not nearly as overdone as it is in full on arcade racers as it is in Grid.

The various difficulty levels DO result in a difference in the overall speed the AI drive and esp take turns, I don't see how anyone could not notice that. Whether the scripts clearly state that or not, it's definitely a real part of the game.

There are a few examples I can give but I'll only use the two following. The head to head Viper challenge, and the Le Mans race in the Mazda prototype near the end of the game, the latter being a one race endurance event vs a multi race series.

The guy in the Viper drives a consistent speed, he just takes the corners pretty well. If you draft him well and corner well at the start, you can slip by him on one of the turns and he does not retaliate with faster speed like in rubber band AI.

Same with the Le Mans endurance race. You need to draft and corner well but once you get the lead, it's how consistently you drive that determines your gap. If you start taking turns slower or spin a bit, they're going to catch you. You also need to factor in that if you're in the lead you are not drafting.

It's also very apparent in that Le Mans endurance race that the AI on lower difficulty levels don't drive and corner nearly as fast. In rubber band AI games, the challenge is all about how far you are ahead, not how well you drive. There's also usually not much realism in drafting. This is where Grid IMO is set apart from full on arcade racers that primarily use rubber band AI.

Quite frankly the only race I had a big problem with AI skill was that Le Mans endurance race. It's the only one I've not been able to beat on KB at Extreme difficulty level. In fact even on Savage it took numerous tries to beat it. Last time I played the game on an Extreme play through I dropped it down to Serious for that race after several times failing at Extreme.

AI WILL retaliate and use more than their norm speed if you hit them when passing though. The way the game is made however, that can cause them to spin out because there is not excessive grip like the over the top arcade specific games have, including for AI when you get ahead of them.

Another thing I like about Grid is you can bump an AI off the track into the grass and make it either very hard for him to catch you, or cause him to total. The latter is how I ended up winning the formula car head to head on my Extreme play through.

So even in races where the catch up is very annoying and unrealistic, as it is in that open wheel H2H race, you still have options and quite honestly I was not in a zone that day on my KB concerning open wheel races. I have come to find you are better off saving all open wheel events for when you can race them back to back, vs intermittently with other types of racing because the cars handle so differently.

The single most annoying thing about rubber band AI racers is the AI will not only drive at very unrealistic speeds once you get a good lead, they corner like on rails with no slip too. I don't see that happening in Grid. For a game that is part SIM, part arcade racer, I feel they got Grid for the most part just right, including the AI. The only two races I can think of that might need a bit of AI adjusting are the open wheel head to head and that Le Mans endurance race.

@Da Fox,
Totally agree, except in the cases where in DiRT you're racing on pavement and can slide off onto dirt, grass etc. Where it's all dirt though, it's way easier to keep your speed up vs a high speed road race with grass on the sides. Several times I cursed the Washington track in Grid for winding up on the grass and having to restart.

...

I didn't just look at the files ..
I played the game and played with the files ...

since you mention the Le Mans race
you see the longest straight line ?

well at some point I took the turn just before in a way that I had more speed when exiting from the turn, which allowed me to get past 2 AIs with same vehicle as me on the first couple of seconds of the straight line ...
then I continued and got farther and farther...

yet a bit before the end of that straight line (well before you need to brake) the AI caught up with me at full speed which is just outright impossible..

this is AI cheating and he got no less than a 20% boost...
I'm not against a bit of a draft and this is normal behavior but for real life draft to kick in, you need to be pretty close
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drafting_%28aerodynamics%29

end of story!

sidenote: the car used was GT1 or GT2 class, don't remember, again the AI had the same car, and the car I bought was not an "ebay" car (so, not influenced by "ebay modifiers")

Yeah I never said there was NO catch up effect, just not nearly as bad as in some full on arcade games where even in tight corners they can go full speed with turbo boost when catching up and dodge traffic as if flying the Firefox jet. Keep in mind the catch up spot you're referring to is a straight line as you mentioned too.

Also, there is such a thing as a pack of cars traveling at a greater rate of speed than one car off the front. It's apparent even in bicycle racing where the peloton creates somewhat of a vacuum effect, while conversely the breakaway group or solo rider off the front are completely exposed to the wind. I'm not saying they're attempting to create that effect, it's just an example of the need to draft and be careful about choosing when you go off the front.

However where I really differ from you is where you say there's no difference of AI skill level for each difficulty level. That Le Mans endurance race is perhaps one of the best examples of it. On the default level it's easy to win, but you step up to Serious or Savage and it's a handful because they all drive and corner faster.

No one including Codemasters ever said Grid was a full on SIM, that is rather apparent. It DOES however have a lot more SIM nature to it than the typical full on arcade racers like most of the NFS series are. It will be interesting to see how the AI in NFS Shift react to the player getting ahead.

I will add however to the last part of my prior post that I really feel they could tweak the end of season Le Mans race AI's ability to drive at night too. It's like they have night vision and one of the reasons other than boredom many skip the Le Mans end of season races.

To be honest, I found the AI in GRID a bit dodgy at times. Frequently if I got overtaken because I misjudged the exact line I should follow on a corner, if two cars got past, one would shoot off, the other would block me - even if they weren't teammates. Furthermore, the blocking car would try to send me into obstacles or just outright ram me by breaking hard directly in front of me on a straight.

That said, I don't play GRID that much any more as all it really did was make me want to play proper sims... to that end, I'm currently playing GTR2.

ok accorded there's more to it than just catchup

yet, one day try to fully disable catchup on "easy" modes
you'll see how dramatic the effect is (AI will be a lot more difficult)

sorry for the little bit of ranting, I got carried away because I so dearly wished GRID had an option for increasing the number of turns on the latest races and another one to enable qualifications instead of randomizing starting position

since getting the perfect score (you first + companion second)
is a bit difficult on the latest races unless you restart until your companion & yourself are well placed ...

also in some parts of the race, all the AIs can be blocked quite successfully even though there's a lot of space to get on the sides ...

Well first things first, you can NEVER count on a race game not having some element of AI quirks unless it is a true full on SIM, and again, Grid was never advertised or even received that way.

To what PS said, a lot of those types of scenarios depend on how cleanly you race. Most that rave about Grid have gotten really good at not smacking other cars, which can be hard in some races, yet still they mention having to restart occasionally due to their teammate.*

No offense taken btw whismerhill, I know you're just voicing your frustrations, and there definitely are some with Grid. I feel you've made some very valid points. I too would like to see a qualification system whereby you earn your spots in the grid. It doesn't make sense that most everything else in the game is structured toward player progress, only to ignore it completely with grid placement. It is not totally random though, if you notice they always place you farther back as you step up in difficulty level.

I feel a qualification system should be a career mode option vs forced though, because once you get to know the tracks well, you need to be placed at the back of the grid even on extreme to get adequate challenge out of some races. There would also be a problem of the AI not being smart enough to overcome blocking on a lot of the tracks. At that point blocking more or less becomes a cheat of sorts.

Another thing I really don't like about Grid is the contact physics between vehicles. You so much as lightly graze a car and you're stuck to it like glue, being unable to pull away from it. Only slamming on the brakes works to do so. The other car will invariably draw you into his straight into the wall line as if merely for touching sides you've both lost complete control of the car.

*If you really want to know a simple way to make racing easier and even more realistic in Grid, forget about team stats and don't hire a good driver. Instead hire the worst possible driver. A "good" driver will only smack into you all too often and increase your chance of smacking into others or spinning out. Using the worst driver will only present this scenario on the tracks of his native country, and only if you are not able to stay ahead of him, which isn't usually that hard. Using an unskilled teammate requires rethinking sponsor selections though of course, but you can still make pretty good money because such drivers also take a smaller cut.

If anyone can manage to come up with a "realism" mod for Grid that eliminates the above problems and catch-up, without the cars handling like a full on SIM, it would really be great. I dare say it may make much of the game too easy though.

As for AI in Shift that I was speculating about above, I've seen videos of gameplay that seem to indicate just the opposite of catch-up. Instead of the AI going super fast, the player seemed to be easily able to catch up to the AI. I don't see either scenario as good, but like I said, ALL racers that aren't true SIMs seem to have some AI quirks. It could however be that the videos I saw were on Easy mode.

As for AI in Shift that I was speculating about above, I've seen videos of gameplay that seem to indicate just the opposite of catch-up. Instead of the AI going super fast, the player seemed to be easily able to catch up to the AI. I don't see either scenario as good, but like I said, ALL racers that aren't true SIMs seem to have some AI quirks. It could however be that the videos I saw were on Easy mode.

That goes hand-n-hand with catch-up, if they get ahead they slow down, if they get behind they speed up.