career mode

[customcreationav]

People give me some imput on what kind of career mode you would like to see so i know what all we want to work with do you want it to be a story type career mode or a race by race career mode

[joevenzon]

I was thinking a non-linear style mode similar to gran turismo but with more racing modes. For example, you'd have a main screen where you could go to your garage (for tuning or to get in a different car), go test drive, go do races, buy new cars, or buy new parts. Test driving would be free, and you could test drive on any of the tracks in addition to some simple tracks like parking lots. When you do races, you get a choice of autocross, grip, drift, and rally. You'd earn money based on how you place (no entry fee). At any time you can exit what you're doing and go do something else, so it's pretty free-form.

We could have "career realism" settings that would make the system more realistic (requiring fees for race entry, not allowing you to enter high profile events until you build up your rep, for example).

An expansion on this idea would be to also have some amount of stories that follow along as you progress.

[customcreationav]

A good way to do it would to be to do it like you said that is a great idea and like have different storylines for the different types of races not a super indept story line you know like for each type of race have where you like start as a rookie type driver with not much money parts and such and start progressing up to higher class racing and have like sponsorship oppertunitys and whatnot along with some specific racer challenges. so it makes it like you know if your at champion class in autocross you may have all the benefits and whatnot in autocross but if you go to drift it wont carry over youll have to work up there like make it where when you get sponsored that the sponsor sponsors your car for a specific type of racing. if the sponsor is for drift if you win a drift race with him sponsoring you you get additional money but if you do autocross you wont recieve that bonus money

[piotr]

People give me some imput on what kind of career mode you would like to see so i know what all we want to work with do you want it to be a story type career mode or a race by race career mode

First of all I would like to inform you, that I am preparing a fullscale review on the latest version of the game. I have to admit that the game is great. Much better than I expected (It's not as popular as Racer, and the screenshots published, are worse than the ones from Racer, or even T.O.R.C.S.). The game is definitly better than T.O.R.C.S., and competes with Racer easily.

The biggest disadvantage of the game is lack of a career mode. IMHO any career mode would be great!
Please implant a good AI oponnents. The good computer rivals are always fun to compete with. Please focus on the AI level of the computer oponnents and the realistic car crashes, instead of thinking of some "intelligent great buying/selling car add-ons Need For Speed Most wanted style system".

This game is really good, and I will let you know about the review when it's done, and published.

Best regards.
Piotr

[thelusiv]

I'm glad to hear you're doing a review! This project needs all the publicity it can get. I think both AI and car customization will be important parts of career mode. We have yet to really solidify our ideas about what career mode will be like though, so if you have suggestions on how things should work, etc., we're open to them. There are still some other features that need to be added before career mode will make much sense, for instance Player Profiles are important.

Thanks for your interest and I look forward to the review!

[joevenzon]

Starting to think about AI might be a good idea, also....

[customcreationav]

anyone give me an opinion on what you thought of the rough idea i came up with and yea ai would be great to innnovate into the game but what about how i said the different race types would be implemented

[thelusiv]

anyone give me an opinion on what you thought of the rough idea i came up with and yea ai would be great to innnovate into the game but what about how i said the different race types would be implemented

I think we'll definitely use a some of your ideas, as well as several others mentioned in this thread.

As we get closer to the point where we will have the framework ready to start implementing this (we are still at least one or two releases away from that point, btw...), I think the best idea will be to come up with a draft of the career mode specification. It will be posted here for review. Then people can see exactly what we've got in mind, and comment on it, giving input, suggesting changes, etc.

For now feel free to keep suggesting things. As I start writing the specification I'll certainly look here for ideas. Undoubtedly, we'll start with a pretty simple system, and grow from there. Keep that in mind.

[reece146]

Just to float a couple of things...

It would be good to have a simple, "dumbed down" career mode...

You "login" to vdrift and have access to whatever you want (cars, tracks, variants, whatever)

You're "history" of fastest lap times with which car stays with your career. A "history" of the car's evolution would be nice too - but not required.

I'm leary of the whole, "need to perform/do X to obtain Y". Some of us would like to just pick up a car and drive when we want - but still want the statistical part of a career mode that "free driving" is unlikely to provide.

I know that I don't have the time to sit in front of vdrift to travel the entire "career arc" and I'm sure other casual vdrift people out there would be frustrated by this as well. If I want a Ferrari I'll go "buy" a Ferarri independent of whether I've driven enough in a career mode (for example).

The other thing that I'm finding is that I'm using vdrift to tune/modify my virtual car with an eye on what it would affect on my real car (torque curve shape, diff ratios, corner weighting, etc., etc.). Sure, it's not an exact science but I think that vdrift/vamos is accurate enough to spot a trend.

I wouldn't want career mode to get in the way of this type of "tuning". A "simplified" career mode would be able to track this.

Just some ideas/comments.