F1GP/WC General Information
F1GP is MicroProse's first attempt at a car racing simulator and is based
around the high-speed world of Formula One races. You take the place of a
driver and compete at all 16 races in the 1991 series, with results counting
towards both the drivers and constructors championships. The game features
practice and qualifying at all events and you are pitted against 33 other
drivers. It is one of the few proper racing simulators to use polygon based
graphics, Indy 500, being the only other major one at the time of its
release.
More recently an IndyCar and a NASCAR game have been released by Papyrus and
they both feature more complex graphics and physical models, although they do
not seem to be as much fun to play. Also, they require some serious processing
power to run well.
There is a demonstration available,
ftp://ftp.microprose.com/pub/mps-online/demos/wcdemo.zip, which features
the Monaco circuit and has only keyboard (not joystick) support.
It's now becoming difficult to obtain, with F1GP2 looming closer. In Europe,
call MicroProse in the UK on +44-1454-329510 (or fax +44-1454-326499) to ask
for a local distributor or order the game directly. Digital Integration sell a
budget version on floppy and CD; call +44-1276-684959. In the US, call
800-879-PLAY (+1-619-693-1200 from ouside the US), or fax 800-PC1-GAME
(+1-619-530-0229 outside the US).
According to MicroProse the PC version of the game runs on a 286 or higher
with at least 1mb of RAM. Of this you require about 600k base memory (less for
the basic game; more if you use some of Trevor Kellaway's nice TSRs which are
available). The game should be installed on hard disc, and it takes up 6mb
with all animations, 3.2mb without intro animations, and 2mb without any
animations. This can be cut down further if you delete a few of the
.DAT files! [GB: I have managed to get the game onto a single 360k
disk, although with only one course.] The only other requirement for the game
is a VGA/MCGA graphics card. Mouse and joystick are both optional.
The Atari ST version comes on 4 double density disks, and the first can be skipped on start up.
The Amiga version comes on 4 DD disks, the first of which can be skipped. It
can also be installed to hard drive. There is also a version which comes on 3
DD disks, with some of the intro sequence removed.
Like most modern games there have been many support products released, mostly
as shareware or public domain software. It appears that no add-on
utilities are available for the ST version; one driver reports that the ST
version completely bypasses the operating system and uses a non-DOS filing
system, which explains why it's been so hard to "crack", but does not feature
any sort of checksums or compression, which may ultimately make the job
easier.
These two update disks were supplied by MicroProse, both being sent out by the
company. They were supposed to add the facility for modem play, plus a few
other features. 1.05 is the most recent update, and both are compressed to 1mb
and 1.05 is available via most FTP sites. Recently MicroProse have themselves
gotten on the Internet so you can download the patches from:This site can quite busy, however, so if you're looking for the European
or Italian patches, try FSP on port 21 or FTP to ftp.inf.tu-desden.de
in the directory /pub/ms-dos/games/patches/, and look for
f105ptci.zip (European) and f1gpit.zip (Italian). This site
is also available via FTP and is mirrored at
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/dresden/patches/, at
ftp://ftp.midnight.com.au/pub/patches/, and at
ftp://ftp.cis.nctu.edu.tw/Games/dresden/patches/.
1.05 also adds much better SoundBlaster support, proper support for wheel
units like the Thrustmaster T1 and the AutoRacing Cockpit (including both
pedal setup and wheel sensitivity when steering help is off), decreases the
amount of grip somewhat (the game oversteers more easily in 1.05 than 1.03 and
earlier), and allows you to load a saved game without affecting your control
selection.
Note that the 1.04 patch is applied by reinstalling the game using the 1.04 disk to replace the old disk 1. The 1.05 patch works by
being installed on top of an existing game.
There is also a difference in grip levels between version 1.03 and 1.05 (1.04
appears to be the same as 1.05). Christopher Jordan
explains:
The test that I did last night gave me an idea. If you don't make
a rule all times in the top 10 must be done on V1.05, I'll only use V1.03 from
now on. Why? Well the times I did last on V1.03 in Brazil were 6 tenths
faster than the ones I could do on V1.05 last night. V1.03: 1:11.469, V1.05:
1:12.011, (personal best) 1:11.839. Both times were done with same setup.
So I went to Mexico and found why V1.03 is faster than 1.05. Too cut a long
story short I could use the wing set-up 61/30 and still get around the Peralta
without any sign of oversteer. When I tryed this wing set-up on V1.05 I
ended up in the pit wall! I could only do a 1:12.053 though, however this was
in limited track time (homework had to be done!).
I then went to Portugal and, same story through turns one and two. V1.03,
wings 64/34 and car was stable, V1.05, wings 64/34 and massive amounts of
oversteer, undrivable! On the second lap on V1.03 I did a 1m09.488! I then had
to do my homework!
Therefore it would seem that the car is more ballanced on V1.03 thus allowing
more radical and faster set-ups while still allowing the car to be drivable
around the faster corners.
There are too many add-ons for the PC to go into detail here. You can get
virtually all of the PC tools via the PC home page,
http://www.mal.com/~dgymer/f1gp/.
To use the editors on the CD version of the game, you must install it onto
your hard drive.
The GPPatch program available as part of GPTools can remove the
password protection, altering the game so that the same word is required each
time. Soapbox: I'm not going to insult anyone by whining on about
piracy, but I will reiterate that the game has been rereleased on Digital
Integration's PowerPlus budget label (a mere 15 quid or less in the UK) so
there's really no excuse for not rushing out and buying it if you haven't
already. End soapbox.
There are a couple of editors for the Amiga and a patch program. Check them
out at
http://www.nanunanu.org/~oliver/AmigaF1.html or via FTP from most
AmiNet sites.
There are also a couple of neat add-ons for the Amiga, both available from the
places mentioned above. The first is
Grant Reeve's AGPPerf, a version of GPPerf for the Amiga (which sadly need
more than 1MB RAM). Anyone who's tried the PC GPPerf will no just how useful
these telemetry logging programs are. The second is René Smit's SplitTim, which
extends the concept opf the split timer found in the PC's GPLap. Again, PC
players will know how useful this is.
Details of the various online racing series and halls of fame can be found on
the Amiga and PC home pages.
The next major version of the game will be released under Spectrum
Holobyte's World Circuit Racing label, so it appears that they've as
good as dropped the MicroProse name. The game's official title will be
"Grand Prix II", not World Circuit 2 or F1GP2. They asked me to point
that out.
I'm preparing some web pages for the new game. The URL is
http://www.mal.com/~dgymer/gp2/. All the information about GP2 that used
to be in this FAQ has moved there.