MrThunderwing wrote:Ahhh, Y'know I hadn't realised on my first network playthrough, that the attract mode on the Player 2 machine was acting as live cam of my race. The attract mode says about the race always being on, I used to think that just meant if you were playing in multiplayer another player could jump in anytime, but I think what it actually means is that the race starts once the machine is turned on and is constantly going the whole time the machine is on, regardless of whether an actual player is actually playing it. Which would make sense as, when I've played two more games in a row, the starting weather and night/day conditions vary themselves each time. So, if I'm right, the attract mode in the game is actually live footage of the ongoing race that never stops. Man, that's so clever.
It's too bad the original developers of this and other Model 3 titles aren't aware of how much time we've spent exploring these games. Whenever I'm working on a particularly obscure but challenging project at work, knowing that no one outside our team will ever see it, I can't help but think about how many countless man-years have been spent on now-forgotten software, most of which has never even seen the light of day. A game like Le Mans 24 would have been the sole focus of months of several people's lives -- maybe longer if you include code that was developed over years and re-used in multiple games. There would have been frustrating challenges that took weeks to crack, along with the accompanying joy and satisfaction, and lots of thought and pride put into aspects that might go casually unnoticed to 99.9% of players (like this "live" attract mode).
I know I feel pretty good when I hear about my software still running in production years after I left my old job. Although in that case, it's not because they want to, it's because they can't extricate themselves from its tendrils
Even cooler would be having an iOS port to really show off how far computing has come since those days. Who would have imagined that within less than a couple of decades you could *simulate* top-of-the-line arcade boards on single-chip battery-powered devices in the palm of your hand.
