Le Mans 24 - why so few cars? (SOLVED)

[FMecha]

Sorry for the bump, but I've discovered a third skin for the McLaren, based on the West Competition livery:


I don't know if this is real or just a modification. If the thing I linked is real, how do I access the third livery?

[Shekel]

Hold Start and VR2 before pressing accelerator.

[PowerPC300]

why the Porsche 911 drives faster is simple, it is the selected "special" car, meaning it accelerates faster than the others. to change it, go to the test menu and change the special car to your preference.

[MrThunderwing]

Now that FFB is working in Le Mans I had a bit of an extended play on it last night. I'm not sure if I've got the Porsche set as the special car or not, but using it I managed to come fourth in the 24hr race, which is the best I've ever managed so far. Normally when I've played the 24 hour race, it's after I've just started the game up, so it was interesting to note that when you play the game again straight after, it starts at a different time of day and there were some BGMs I'd never heard play in the game before and that there are multiple different times of day the game starts at. This seems to also affect the behaviour of the CPUs a bit as well, there was one game I played where I was driving well, but didn't encounter another CPU car for almost the entirety of the first lap. I'd made a save state on the title screen before this (so if I cocked up I could just easily return to the title screen and start again), so I did, started the game in the same conditions and the same CPU behaviour occurred. On another try I manged to catch up to two of the CPU cars almost immediately after starting the race and they oddly both caught fire as I was approaching them. I'm not sure if the progress you make in catching up with the CPUs is also somehow linked with the (really fucking annoying) rubber bandy rival car that seem to harass you constantly, and whether you can break away from it.

[MrThunderwing]

Bart and Ian - I just randomly discovered a video by someone on YouTube who's playing Le Mans on 5he actual step 1.5 hardware and doing direct video capture. Could be a useful resource if you need any refrence videos to compare Supermodel to the real thing: https://youtu.be/4fxrQazRM7A

[Ian]

Yeah i know about his vids
His direct captures helped me a lot with emulation .. especially working out correct lighting

[doteater]

kinda pointless maybe after the direct capture video but the channel is sick and it is nice to see the actual cab
i didn't know there was an extra button for..lights ? apparently
not that i've played lemans much on supermodel,can't control the cars at all . a shame

LEMANS 24 (Arcade) - F40LM Tuned【1069.0km】
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAlmJ11XMbc

i will check out that place for sure next time i'm in the tokyo area
there are a few other model 3 games i've stumbled upon (always in the kanto area) : so far i encountered virtua 3tb , spikeout , la machineguns and fighting vipers 2

as a final note,compared to supermodel,there always seems to be a lot more texture shimmering / warping (i noticed the same thing when comparing system 22 games to mame)
[i'm using a crt monitor so at least it isn't a complete apples to oranges comparison]

[gm_matthew]

I've seen videos uploaded by icuk7 on YouTube that show him playing Le Mans 24 on real hardware, and he runs into the same problem of the game not spawning enough cars for him to win despite setting blisteringly fast lap times. I've noticed one thing in common between him playing the game on real hardware and the rest of us playing in Supermodel: we are running the game in non-linked mode.

My new hypothesis is that the game works just fine in linked mode, and that the game not spawning enough cars in non-linked mode is a game bug.

As far as I know Le Mans 24 was only released as a twin cabinet, where the two machines run together in linked mode by default; you'd only see a machine running in non-linked mode if the machine on the other side was broken. Even then, casual players likely wouldn't be familiar enough with the game to know that the game is being more stingy in generating computer cars to be overtaken than it should be. I myself only noticed something was wrong when playing in Supermodel because I had played the game years ago and was able to place 1st without too much difficulty and without a special car.

Unfortunately Supermodel can't run the game in linked mode just yet. Hopefully one day it will work and I'll be able to test my hypothesis.

[MrThunderwing]

Interesting... sounds like a hypothesis that makes sense.

[gm_matthew]

I have actually managed to get Le Mans 24 working in linked mode, and it turns out my hypothesis was correct!



Notice how even though my lap times are anything but spectacular (it's really hard to play this game well on a keyboard), I have made it up to 5th place after 20 hours. (I ended up finishing in 3rd, just behind the 2nd place car.) Also notice that I have just gained a time bonus of 4 seconds for overtaking a backmarker, something you never would have seen running the game in non-linked mode.

Far more exciting though is the means through which I was able to get this game running in linked mode, which probably deserves its own topic. I'll mention two words: SIMULATED NETBOARD.