New Look iGP

Nothing matters if we don't build a great game, so that remains our priority.

I have to say I cringe whenever there's talk of "the money" from the PC version though, because it's not profitable, as outlined in past blogs. If it was, maybe we could have just paid people and said "more tracks, better widgets etc.". But in reality, there was some really poor, undocumented, technology left behind by the original sim developer. It didn't scale (which meant the service broke down any time it got in-demand), the track builder didn't work (we couldn't make tracks, period) and it required Java on the front-end, which now is outright toxic to use. So, our priorty was fixing things and moving away from Java before doing anything, which we're almost finished on, and will be available on the web soon. I'm sure everyone has noticed how much more reliable the service has been for months, although that sort of thing gets quickly forgotten. But to go from break-even with a few hundred users online, to being in a position to re-invest in the game with thousands of users online, is going to take an entirely different approach.

Fixing things is not enough, if we aren't on the right devices. Trends dictate that we've got to target tablets and mobiles, for iGP's long-term future. Even in management games the tablet/mobile audience is much bigger, and will help create a thriving community. At least two companies that I know of have built a huge following on mobile now and brought that momentum to PC. We're sort of doing the reverse, and we're punching well above our weight to go take on these mobile guys. But I'm confident in the team we have now and things look very positive.

More screenshots and information will be coming in November, when we aim to release an early beta too. Also FYI, all facilities can be upgraded up to level 20 now - since people keep mentioning that.

The majority of suggestions and feedback even in this thread have been addressed in the updates. The balance of racing is more interesting, design upgrades have greater impact on various circuits, facilities scale up to level 20 and of course there will be no more browser plugins.

We chose to do a lot of work in the dark, because the landscape has changed since 2011 / 2012. There are probably half a dozen developers now (some huge companies) who have taken the concepts and ideas of iGP and made clone titles in various marketplaces who have done very well. We'll be entering these same marketplaces now with these updates, opening a world of possibilities for iGP. Being restricted to the website with plugins has really hindered the potential of this game we all love (and sometimes love to hate :P) up until now. In the end we all want iGP to be popular with a thriving community, and that's a big part of this.

It's important for me to highlight the factors being juggled in our decision making process, which aren't a factor looking from the outside. When people wonder why there have been delays turning the ship around, it's a legitimate concern, if we'd had all we needed at our disposal and didn't use it. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case and no matter how hard we tried to run with the old platform it was never going to work. Now we've done the right thing and re-engineered everything in the best way possible, so there will be a big difference in output once the new platform is out. We've addressed all the key concerns with the original platform one-by-one: service stability and latency, requiring obsolete plugins, gameplay balance improvements, gameplay longevity (upgrading beyond level 10), cross-platform / device support, ease-of-use for new players. All of these things and more have been addressed in the new iGP.

To respond to some concerns more directly, we will likely make the setup more complex. If it's numerical, this might be a range of 1-10 or 1-20, because the old 1-100 values are too steep for mobiles. We can also return fuel to liters with a bit of tweaking, but this could be a risky move for the mobile audience which is likely to want ease-of-use above all else.

We're going to do all we can to keep the desktop experience fresh and challenging, and hope to improve that as much as any other platform with these updates. It may be that some players want more of a challenge, and that's the sort of thing which will be suited to future updates. We can layer in more complexity over time, or potentially a hardcore mode to keep both camps happy.

I was leaning towards having liters entered manually, but underneath it the Technical Directors prediction is displayed in laps, updated in real-time, instead of a fuel per lap value.

E.g.
Fuel: 100 Litres
Estimate: 24.6 laps.

This way the desktop users who want to crunch numbers on a calculator can eek out an extra advantage, and fuel consumption has to be managed during the race still. Mobile users also get a simple lap value that doesn't require them to whip out a calculator every 5 seconds to figure out their fuel loads. The predictions will be more accurate than they are currently to avoid too many headaches.

As for the setup, I thought of this:
The first two values shown in the screenshots on the blog (Suspension and Gearing priority) could still have the simple values shown in the screenshots, but Aerodynamics could be changed to "Wing Level" and defined as a number with a big range of values. Since wings are primarily what change depending on the weather conditions etc. this would re-introduce complexity in to the car setups that could give those paying close attention during setup an advantage. Overall complexity in setups is still reduced sufficiently to make it fun on mobiles, but there remains a big challenge in getting that wing value spot on. IMO trying to get 5 or 6 values right like that is not really much fun on desktop or mobiles, the most fun is to be had in the race.

We're expecting people to manage fuel, tyre wear and tyre temperature in the races still, even on mobiles. We've just made it visually more easy to understand with a new GUI, along with all the other GUI updates. The race simulation itself remains exactly the same challenge as it was before, though.