NTG:IL Road Course Progress Report.

So I've been working on my road course setups for NASCAR The Game: Inside Line. There are only two of these right-and-left handers: Watkins Glen and Sears Point AKA Infineon AKA Sonoma. How hard can it be?

Let's take a quick look at how that's been working out:

Nailed it.

NASCAR The Game: Inside Line still has a bit of work to do when it comes to AI driving styles and crash physics. This is a wreck at Phoenix I had nothing to do with. I was trailing the field in a season race when this happened. Kinda makes it difficult to play for points with full damage on.

NTG:IL Crash Pictures - 02

One thing I've noticed is that actually flipping your car is relatively difficult compared to previous NASCAR games. I don't know if this is an intentional element of realism reflecting the effectiveness of all the modern safety features which you can see deploy or if it's just an attempt to limit glitches. Still, it can be done. And the roof can at least be superficially damaged.

 Notice the water coming out of the barrels. 

Either that, or I just ran over Alex Mack.

Side Note: The spoiler of the car often reverts to the body color of the car. While this Coors Light car is still incomplete, I had to make the whole body white and paint the front blue, a bigger hassle than just adding white to the back and lower sides. This is the only way to make the spoiler match for now. Hopefully this glitch will be fixed in a patch.
 

 

The smoke and spark effects remain a stand-out graphics improvement for this game.

 

Let us pause for a moment of reflection.

Still, if you know where to go, you can catch some great air.

 Even backwards.

NASCAR The Game: Inside Line - Crash Damage - 01

I decided to put NTG:IL through it's crash-damage paces. The easiest place to do this is at the road courses, where you're much more likely to clip walls, catch air, or go flipping. Excuse the incomplete paint schemes. I found that going on a quick wreckfest was a great way to blow off steam after wrestling with the frustratingly limited paint shop.

At first, the damage seems very realistic, notice how the front is crushed in as the car hits these tires.

 

Unfortunately, you quickly realize that the front-end damage is standardized. Rather than deform in relation to what you hit, it breaks in the same way every time.

Notice how this car has the same front end damage. Still, this is a lot better than the "cheese grater" damage the cars in NTG:2011 would somehow get. Even if the car will deform the same way every time, this is a good step forward. Check out the shower of sparks coming off the car here.

Yes, you can get stuck. In race conditions, this will bring out a caution even if they are turned off. In practice, it will eventually take you back to the Infied Garage menu screen automatically.

 This one is probably my favorite.