Topics

This topic has been moved to Need For Speed Forums » Editing Projects .

http://www.nfsaddons.com/forums//index.php?topic=1901.0

This topic has been moved to NFS:HS Workshop.

http://www.nfsaddons.com/forums//index.php?topic=1844.0

Disclaimer: I am not an NFS Car editor, so I don't know if these video tutorials are outdated, or if they can still be helpful when learnig to model cars for NFS games in Zmodeler.

Some of you may remember that Javier from JP Racing created a few ZM tutorial videos back in 2002-03-04 that were exclusively available on his site.
Last year, the company that hosted all the Racerplanet network sites went out of business, so that meant the end for JP Racing as well. (You can still see his download page at http://web.archive.org/web/20090110200809/http://jpracing.racerplanet.com/modules/mydownloads/viewcat.php?op=&cid=132 though.

But since someone asked about these earlier this week on NFSCars, I looked in my backups and managed to find all of these instruction videos.
All Five of them are bundled in this one Zip archive for anyone interested:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/69qmu931wz7yck4/JPRacing_Zmodeler_Videos.zip
the file is 74 mb, mainly thanks to video nr. 1 being 55 mb alone. Let me know if you want one of these separately.

(and I don't know if it's still necessary in this day and age, but if you have problems running those videos, you may need to download a DiVX codec)

edit: dropbox link updated

Let me say this in advance: I can't promise direct answers to any questions you may have about the upcoming Need For Speed Rivals, but the community manager over at EA asked the representatives of most NFS fancommunities, what the fans want to know the most about the new game.

Be it the locations, the car roster, the physics, tuning, the gameplay design, etc.etc. what are people the most curious about? I can think of a few things of my own, but I'm not everyone, so that's why I wanted to ask. 
My guess is that EA's PR department wants to know for future publicity, interviews, maybe Q & A sessions in the following months leading up to the release of NFS Rivals in November.

For some info on the game:

http://www.needforspeed.com/rivals

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/05/23/need-for-speed-rivals-speeds-to-xbox-one-ps4-and-current-gen-this-november/

Also an interview with Marcus Nilsson, head of the NFS Rivals Development Studio, Ghost Games:
http://www.needforspeed.com/news/message-ghost-games

Feel free to reply with any questions you may have about the game. 

[Hit the Road, Jack]

From October 13 to 15 of this year, EA organized another Community day event in their studios in Vancouver, Canada, and, together with leaders from many other international Need For Speed communities, I was invited again to come over and get a chance to play the soon-to-be released NFS: The Run, and to meet with developers for both The Run and NFS World. This being the first time for me in Vancouver, it was certainly exciting to walk around in the actual building where many of the previous chapters from the Need For Speed chapters have been created (together with many of EA’s sports titles).
Once again we got the opportunity to play pretty much the whole game on both PC and console platforms, although the build we got to play was a little earlier in development than the Shift 2 Unleashed version we were allowed to try back in March of this year. This is one reason why I don’t have any photographs to illustrate my article this time, as the information on the screen was often different from the one the retail version would have (the other being that photos taken from a TV screen or pc monitor don’t really do justice to the game anyway).
Instead, I’ll refer to many of the screenshots and gameplay movies that have been revealed in recent weeks to give you an idea of what The Run has to offer, which, in my opinion, is more than I initially thought.

That last line says something about my perception of NFS:The Run, I suppose. Up until a few weeks ago, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the game. The first gameplay trailer that was shown at E3 put a lot of emphasis on the “out-of-car” sequences, complete with Quick-Time Events, both novelties for the NFS series. After this trailer was met with a generally mixed reception, EA were quick to point out that these events would only make up 10 percent of the game at most, and that The Run would still be a racing game through and through. Another thing done differently from previous games is that the game follows a linear storyline, instead of a traditional Career Mode where you start at the bottom with a slow vehicle and winning races earns you money and unlocks faster rides. With the limited information available on the game for the first few months, I found it difficult to judge if this game was going to appeal to me or not.

The Frostbite 2 engine helps to blend the more cinematic moments seamlessly into the gameplay. The Chicago trailer from E3 had people wondering if The Run was still going to be a racing game, but the balance between driving and story is nicely maintained.

Hit the Road, Jack
It’s been mentioned before in various trailers and previews, but anyway: You control Jack Rourke, who has to race from San Francisco to New York in an illegal “Canonball”-style race across the USA, defeat 200 opponents on the way, and at the same time avoid both the police and the Mob, the latter being slightly more ruthless in their attempts to stop you. This story is told through cutscenes that sometimes require you to interact by pushing the right button on time (Quick-Time Events) in order to progress the story. As game director Justin Wiebe (who was present at the community event to explain about the game and answer questions) pointed out, the QTE’s were included to keep the player involved with the storyline: “We didn’t want the to lose the players’ attention, have them drop their controller and just sit out a non-interactive cutscene each time”. Those who feared that this game was going to have too much story and not enough racing, can stop worrying. The non-racing moments take up significantly less than the before mentioned 10%, and in my opinion, the story doesn’t dominate the game more than in previous BlackBox titles like Carbon and Undercover.

The career mode (simply called “The Run” in the game) is a strictly linear affair. Almost like an old-school platform game, completing a race will progress you to the next one, and there are no branching options. The whole trip is divided into 10 stages, each of which consists of a number of sub-events, which can be regular races, where you have to overtake a certain number of opponents, checkpoint races, the new Battle Mode, where you have a limited amount of time to catch up with one particular opponent, and have to stay ahead for a certain amount of seconds, and sometimes the environments play a big part, such as the avalanches that we’ve seen in the “Buried Alive” trailer. At times, you will have the police on your tail, which is part of the story too (rather than being random). These gameplay variations do a good job of keeping the racing from getting repetitive.



The sights you see on the way are probably one of The Run’s strongest points, you could almost call the game an ode to the American landscape. The Photo Mode, much like the one in HP (but not 100% similar) thankfully makes its return, giving you the possibility to create your own postcards. And post them on your Autolog Gallery.

All the World’s a Stage
Another factor that provides the game’s variation is the different locations that you pass through on your way from SF to NY. The Run takes you though cities, highways, snowy mountains, deserts, country backroads, and so on. This is something the game has in common with last year’s Hot Pursuit, and you can’t really avoid comparing the Frostbite 2-powered graphics to Criterions already impressive virtual race world. HP’s graphics seem to have more vibrant colours compared to TR’s more muted palette, but in return, The Run offers an environment of a much bigger scale, something you really notice once you enter the Yellowstone Park stage. It’s here that you notice something else too: the fact that you can actually drop off cliffs if you don’t keep your car under control. It’s where the game gets a little more challenging than the first few races would have you think. The majority of the tracks are of the high speed variety, but there are some really technical tracks that offer a lot less margin for error.
While some areas look more impressive than others, overall the quality of the locations and the variation are probably one of the game’s strongest points. Fog effects really help with atmosphere, whether it’s in the snow-covered mountains, the hazy early morning setting in the farmlands of Pennsylvania, or the polluted air of the nightly industrial zones. There are no rain showers like in Hot Pursuit, but there’s snow and dust storms in their respective environments. The locations flow naturally into each other, meaning that you sometimes race on mundane highways or backroads, but this only helps the more spectacular highlights of the trip to stand out.
Music helps to create the atmosphere, many of the licensed songs (see the playlist put together by NFSUnlimited). Everyone will have to decide for himself if the choice of songs appeals to him or not, but I found the inclusion of lots of bluesy rock tunes (including some genuine golden oldies like Canned Heat’s One The Road Again) adding to the open-road character of the game, and this is coming from someone who usually turns the music off while racing. The game also features dramatic movie-style music for the pursuit moments and other dramatic sequences, but you can change in the options which kind of background music you prefer. 

Some multiplayer footage, showing off different areas with different types of tracks, though most of them are still about high speed. Straight tracks can still provide a challenge thanks to the sometimes dense traffic.

Horses for Courses
If you’ve followed the weekly revealing of The Run’s cars on the official website, you probably know already what the carlist looks like. For a BlackBox game, the roster is remarkably diverse, ranging from true 1960’s classics cars like The Lamborghini Miura (a first in a Need for Speed game) or the Shelby Daytona coupe, all the way up to modern hypercars like the Pagani Huayra or the Lamborghini Aventador, and something from every decade in between. Cars are divided among performance tiers as well as genre: muscle, exotic or tuner (or ‘sports cars’, as the game calls them). Many cars have a pre-tuned ‘NFS edition’, and on top of that, there are the even more awesomely tuned Signature versions of a few cars, which act as true collectibles to be unlocked by earning XP.
XP are the only ‘currency’ the game uses, because you never really need to buy a car or parts, money plays no part this year. Jack has to keep going forward, so the usual NFS approach of building a garage with ever-faster cars is dropped: at certain points in the story, you will have to switch to a different car, and you even have the opportunity to trade your current car for a different one in the middle of a race, by stopping at one of the several gas stations along the route. No traditionally slow ‘starters cars’ here, from the very beginning you’ll get to pick from rides like the BMW M3 GTS or Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. The true top tier cars are saved for later in the game, though. For the same reason, customization is limited; you get to choose paint colour and one of a few bodykits (much like in NFS world) but that’s pretty much it (at least in the version we played) for personalizing your ride. This might disappoint players a little who were hoping for a level of customization comparable that in the older Underground and Most Wanted games. Personally, I was glad to see that classic cars like the Lamborghini Miura or Audi Quattro received body mods that looked historically accurate. 

The driving physics in the Run were officially described as ‘somewhere between Shift and Hot Pursuit’, which is, to put it mildly, a bit of a wide definition. But there’s some truth to it. It honestly isn’t a simulation, but the cars aren’t nearly as glued to the road as they were in NFS Hot Pursuit, and they don’t drift through the turns at the tap of the handbrake, either. If I had to compare it to any older NFS game, it would probably be Underground 2, with the way it’s possible to lose the backend of the cars in tight corners or even spin out completely. There’s quite a difference between the cars too, with supercars like the Aventador or the Aston Martin One-77 making driving really fast, really easy, and the classic muscle cars at the other end of the spectrum feeling nose-heavy and soft on their springs. The game recommends using different classes of cars for the different types of tracks, and this was illustrated when I took the SLS AMG to the twisting mountain roads, where it suddenly felt very big and unwieldy. Switching to the more nimble BMW E30 made cornering a lot easier, and the Audi Quattro felt even more planted through the turns (at the sacrifice of top speed, obviously).
I found the way the camera bounces back and forward with the chase cam view a bit distracting, maybe this is something you get used to, but I quickly changed to my preferred hood/bumper cam. In this view, driving one of the mountain passes with lots of hairpins, I noticed the camera tilting upwards a little when accelerating, and dropping a little while braking, which I thought was a decent suggestion of the car’s body roll.

Choose your car wisely: the old muscle cars can be a handful in the twistier tracks (if you’re not particularly good, like this driver), but cars with a more challenging handling can still be rewarding to get to grips with.

Fancy a Challenge
The career mode, story mode, how you want to call it, is fun, but it’s also finite. Though you can go back to previously cleared stages or even play The Run from the beginning on Extreme Difficulty mode (not easy!), the game, sadly, doesn’t have a Quick Race mode. What the game offers though, is the Challenge Mode. This is a series of over 70 offline events, spread evenly across the ten stages of the game. This adds some nice variation, as it gives you the chance to re-visit the areas that you’ve been through, yet often you’ll find yourself on completely new tracks and in new circumstances. For example, one event has you choose one of the 4wd tuner cars (Impreza, Evo, etc.) and places you on the offroad sections of Yosemite Park, at night, as if you’re racing a Rally stage. Another one lets you drive any of the vintage muscle cars across San Francisco for that Bullitt feeling. Of course Autolog records all your times and compares them with those on your friends list (just as it does with the sections in the careermode, by the way). The challenges are unlocked as you progress through the career mode, and the XP you earn in them will help you unlock cars and other rewards in return. On top of last years bronze, silver and gold, there’s now a platinum medal to strive for in each race.
Multiplayer wasn’t finished enough for us to try it out with the build we were playing, so I honestly say anything from experience. But a lot about that has been revealed in the weeks since, so for more information on online play, I’ll gladly refer to this video as well as the multiplayer trailer I posted earlier on the front page.

Speaking of challenges, like I already mentioned before, The Run is easy to get into, but can be quite tough at times. New to the game, is the Reset function, which automatically kicks in if you stray too far off the track, or when you wreck your car. It sets you back at the last ‘checkpoint’ at the speed you were carrying at that moment, and the number of resets you have during a race depends on your difficulty setting. If you’re going for a best lap time, you can also use it to retry the last section if you think it wasn’t good enough. If you fear that this might make things too easy, rest assured that Justin Wiebe pointed out that this actually prompted the dev team to step up the difficulty in The Run a bit. 


Several of the challenges are inspired by previous NFS chapters, not only in choice of cars, but in style of gameplay too; you get hot pursuits in Most Wanted, street racing in urban settings in the Underground series, and so on. Some events are quite long and difficult: challenges in the true sense of the word.

Conclusion
I found The Run an entertaining game to play, I think it succeeds at what it set out to do, that of an epic coast-to-coast drive across the USA: once you hit the highways leading out of San Francisco with the sun shining, and one of the licensed rock songs playing in the background, you really feel like you’re at the beginning of a great adventure. And with gorgeous scenery,  plenty of variation in gameplay, and driving physics that have more depth to them than you’d think at first, it managed to keep that feeling until the finale in NY City. The Story elements do a good job at keeping everything going without really getting into the way of the game itself.
About the replay value, once you’ve finished the career, there are the challenges and of course the revamped multiplayer mode, but I wish there was a custom or quick race mode for those who aren’t really into online play. Just like with previous titles like Hot Pursuit 2010 or ProStreet, I regret that you don’t have the freedom to race any car on any track (like you could in Shift 2 Unleashed). In a similar way, fans who enjoyed the extensive tuning options from the previous Black Box games, may wish for more freedom in customization.. But The Run isn’t trying to be a sequel to any of the older NFS games, it’s a Need For Speed in its own right, and an enjoyable one, in my opinion.


So, just like the last time, if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.

[Physics]

Earlier this month, I was lucky enough to get invited to EA's Community Day in Guildford, England, together with representatives from other NFS websites (and a few non-NFS communities as well) to learn all about the upcoming Shift 2: Unleashed. We were given lots of time to play the game as much as we wanted - nearly two days. All three platforms were available: X360, PS3 and PC, the latter had two machines setup with a steering wheel, all the others were played with the regular game pads.
Shift2’s lead designer Andy Tudor was present there too, to answer questions, and to explain the most important changes from Shift 1, such as the Helmet Cam view, the night racing, the improved racing physics, and the involvement of the professional real-life racers from Team Need For Speed.
In the following article I’ll try to describe my experience with the game, and to give you an idea of what it has to offer over the part One. Pardon the quality of the pictures, some of these were taken ‘over-the-shoulder’ of other players without trying to disturb them.  


Slightly Mad Studios' Andy Tudor was there to answer questions, describe the new features, and explain some of the decisions made during production.  


Colleagues from RSC and GT Planet trying out Shift2 with steering wheels. The car they're both driving is the Caterham Superlight R500, one of the few really new cars in the game; notice how similar the hood (left) and dash (right) view are. It's not exactly robust, so it'll only take a few shunts before you'll be greeted with the detailed sight of the Ford Cosworth engine, making you feel as if you were driving a hot-rod.

Physics
Now, I'm not a hard-core simulation fan, and that's why I initially had my doubts if I'd be the right person to judge this game. I enjoyed the first Shift, but to be very honest I mostly played with most driving aids on (I turned everything off recently, and was surprised at the difference it made). Even if Shift was generally well-received, after its release in 2009, there was some criticism about its driving physics. More than one Shift dev has admitted that the physics in Shift1 were a somewhat unhappy compromise between sim and arcade. Not so in part two, we were promised: this time, the game would be more focused on simulation, while at the same time staying accessible to beginners. The game seems targeted at the same audience as Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport, and it's no coincidence that EA invited community members of both Forzacentral and GTPlanet to give the game a try too.
As I tried the medium settings at first, I soon found myself repeatedly eating grass or gravel, even when using a wheel. Trying Elite mode, the game was even more unforgiving (but then, that was the intention) so I decided to stop being overconfident and set the difficulty level to ‘easy’ (ahem). But I did turn off the ‘brake assist’ right away, as I found that way too intrusive. Like I said, I’m not a good judge on sim physics, so if you want a more detailed opinion, I’d better refer you to the reviews written by ForzaCentral or RSC, as these guys are probably better qualified for this. Difficulty settings mean that you still can play this if you’re a beginner, but â€" except for the overzealous brake assistant maybe â€" the game doesn’t take you by the hand as much as part one did.


Night races are a lot more intense thanks to the great lighting effects. The interior here is so bright because it is actually lit by the beams of the cars behind him. And look: Proper rear-view mirrors!
Tracks based in cities aren’t too dark thanks to all the ambient light, but on real race tracks that take place in unpopulated areas, it's just your high beams that tell you where the road goes. Good luck lapping the 'Ring with your lights busted.


This telemetry screen can be brought up at any time during a race (it's one of the HUD options), for when you want to monitor precisely if your hand-tuned car behaves like it should. Or if you just want to look clever.

The move towards realism doesn’t means that Shift2 has introduced pit stops, qualifying laps, fuel management and other elements that you'd expect in more 'serious' race simulations. In that sense, it remains a driving simulator rather than a race sim. Tire wear is present, but because you can't change your tires halfway, the degradation is spread out along the length of the event: the longer the race, the slower your tires will wear. In Drift mode, this process is considerably faster.
On the topic of drifting: new for this edition is the practice stage you'll be going through before you'll enter one of the 'real' drift races. Taking place near some empty warehouses, on an improvised track marked off with traffic cones, Vaughn Gittin jr. himself will teach you how to do circles first, then figure 8s, then a small test circuit. I still found the drifting quite difficult, especially with a game pad as the input has to be really subtle (it's said to help if you use manual gearing), but it was nice to be able to practice it, rather than having to figure it out on your own during an actual race.  Unlike in part 1, drifting now uses the same physics model as the race modes do, meaning that you really have to tune your car to make it a competent drifter.


Tuning menu doesn't look all that impressive at first. Until you see the button at the bottom of the page that says: Go to advanced... (Picture below) A cool feature is that you can do a test run with your newly-tuned car, pause the race, tweak some more, and then continue right away with having to re-start, re-load, etc. so that you immediately experience what difference it makes.


...and that's the Advanced Tuning options for you. Using the L2 and R2 buttons you can cycle trough nine pages of similar detailed tweaks. Thankfully there are explanations for everything for the non-gearheads (like myself). Tuning is only possible after you've upgraded your vehicle. On a completely stock car, you'll only be able to adjust a few things such as tire pressure.

Career
The overall look and menu design may have been restyled, but the game will soon feel very familiar if you've played Shift 1 before. Just like in Shift 1, you'll start with a test race, after which the game will recommend you a difficulty level and settings. After that, your career starts, and as usual, you're given a choice from slower entry-level cars. A welcome change from S1 is, that car slots are no longer limited: you can have as many cars in your garage as you want. What's more: not only can you save multiple tuning setups for one car, but you can even have more than one copy of the same car from now on. Nice to see that these limits have been lifted.


This is the game's main menu screen, the only "fancy" looking part; the rest of Shift2’s interface is thankfully straightforward and oversee able. Both the PC and console versions booted up pretty quickly, with few ‘click enter to continue’ moments. Hopefully this will stay the same in the retail version.


Lots of familiar faces in the car menu, almost all cars (dlc included) from part 1 return, with only a handful truly new ones. The Team Need For Speed cars and other pre-tuned race cars add some welcome variation. Browsing them is a lot faster, thankfully. You can even filter by genre, or sort the cars differently, depending on what you're looking for.

Career mode takes you through various disciplines that are again, familiar from S1, such as Race, Time attack, Endurance, and Drift. However, you're not required to take part in everything to complete your career, so you can for example, skip Drifting if it’s not your cup of tea.

In S1, it was sometimes difficult to see how far you were with your career progress, and this too has been addressed in part two: from the beginning its clear to see how many disciplines there are, and how many races they consist of, what the conditions are, etc. Each event has its own 'poster' now, a little like it's in Forza Motorsport, which I personally thought looked very cool. Overall, the menus and interface have been streamlined: in S1, the design would occasionally get in the way of the info and navigation, but in S2 it's all very clear and to the point. The use of tabs helps to display a lot of information without having to go back and forth between menu pages.


Each event is marked by one of these poster-like logos, many of them almost 'retro' in style. A nice touch in my opinion - inspired by Forza, perhaps?


Shift2's menu design is clear and informative thanks to the use of tabs. Autolog will not only show you your place in relation to your friends like it did in Hot Pursuit, but it will also display he best lap times worldwide and in your region. You still get 'XP' for your results to Level Up (next to money), but you're no longer showered with countless 'achievement' medals and badges like you were in Shift 1. You're also no longer awarded for driving aggressively.

Visuals
The already good-looking graphics from Shift1 have been improved, this is most visible on a fast PC that can run the game in high resolutions. The visuals are probably one of the game's strongest points. Textures on the cars themselves are a lot sharper in quality than 2 years ago, and while racing, you'll notice all kinds of neat details such as the windscreen wipers or wing mirrors vibrating as your car builds up speed; the subtle reflections of the hood in the glass of your windscreen; on race cars with lightweight bodies you can see the hood shake when you're idling at the, and occasionally, mud, gravel end even bugs will splatter your windscreen. Damage is more detailed too, with more realistically crumpling metal, hoods, bumpers, and even wheels flying off, and the risk of totalling your car if you abuse it too much. Even the engine department is so detailed that I was tempted to bust the hood off on purpose, just to see how accurate the engine looks.


Tracks look better than before too, especially on a hi-res PC screen. Places like Spa Francorchamps have dropped much of the fairgrounds, balloons, ferris wheels and other distracting stuff in the backgrounds, which was one of the complaints about Shift 1. It looks more like a place of work now - some other tracks still have quite a lot of advertising going on, though.

Customization hasn’t changed that much from the previous game, aside from a new interface for the paint colours, it’s all familiar territory. On the consoles, many of the customization and tuning menus suffered from saving and loading pauses. On the PC, not so much, but then it was running on a pretty quick machine. A small, but welcome addition is the ‘peek’ button when you’re browsing through the body upgrades

The much-published helmet cam is a nice addition; to avoid any confusion: it’s an extra view option, it doesn’t replace the standard dash view. Initially I worried if it might be too intrusive, but I found the effect subtle and natural. In particular drift races seem to benefit, IMO it makes a lot of sense for the driver’s view to be pointed at an angle when going sideways, so I personally preferred this view over chase view here. In the end, I didn’t feel it added THAT much to the gameplay, but it didn’t get in the way either.


The cinematic replays stayed (hooray!), and this time, you can actually save the replay, and even upload it directly to Youtube. Photo mode has more freedom for composing your beauty shot with zooming, tilting and panning options, but it doesn't have the special effects that Hot Pursuit offered.


Another new feature is that you can now at any time pause your race and rewatch the past 30 seconds, then go into photo mode to record it. Wind/re-wind controls help you to freeze the action at the exact right moment. (PS3 screen)

So, do I think the game is good? I’d say definitely, I liked the first Shift, and I feel this game is an improvement in every area, while at the same time addressing a few shortcomings from the first game. As so often with “part 2”s of game titles, I got the idea that this was the game that the creators wanted the first game to be. Maybe on the surface it looks like not much was changed from the previous game (only a few more cars compared to part 1), but I feel the gameplay itself has been enhanced enough to recommend this game, even if you’ve already played Shift 1 extensively.
It’s a pity that there’s no pre-launch demo this year (no news if there’ll be one after release); an odd decision, because this game is really about the immersion, and what better way to sell this, than to let people experience it for themselves.


So, if anyone has any more questions, I'll do my best to answer them.  

This topic has been moved to General NFS.

http://nfsaddons.com/forums/index.php?topic=1578.0

(This topic has been moved to General Discussion, because it's not really related to NFS Editing)

http://nfsaddons.com/forums/index.php?topic=1574.0

(I know I also posted this at NFSCars, but I just thought it was too funny)

A few weeks ago, EA overhauled its Needforspeed.com site... and for the first time (as far as I know) they actually presented an overview of the entire NFS bloodline all the way back to TNFS from 1994, each one of the classics finally having its own page and description, pictures and all.
Which is nice. I think.  
http://www.needforspeed.com/games


But then I saw the image of the supposed box art for Need For Speed High Stakes, and something looks off about it, see if you can spot it?
http://www.needforspeed.com/game/need-speed-high-stakes



(seriously, trying to re-write history is one thing - I'm guessing because of licensing BS - but can't you at least try to insult everyone's intelligence a little less by picking a car that's actually IN the game...? :squint: )

http://web.archive.org/web/20010428054124/http://nfsgarage.racerplanet.com/hs/

Any of you familiar with the Internet Archive Wayback Machine? Check out what the NFSGarage looked like back in 2001 (I know many of the images are deadlinks and not all the other pages work either, but that's just how the Wayback Machine works).

Don't forget to look athe list of Network & affliated sites for extra nostalgia.

Back then, NFS Garage was pretty much unique for being the only site where modders could upload their own add-ons. In those days, the NFS mod community consisted of either big sites where the webmasters offered the collection they put together on their own (such as NFS HQ, NFS Design, Omega Design etc), or the creators' own homepages, where they hosted their own made stuff. (often on Geocites, XOOM, Angelfire, etc. )

Other things I notice when browsing through those old pages: not only the looong lists of comments, but also the enormous download numbers.   I remember that the most popular cars were ranging in the tens of thousands...
Example: http://web.archive.org/web/20011005031235/nfsgarage.racerplanet.com/hs/index.php?topic=carinfo&id=441

Really shows you how big the NFS4 mod scene was back in those days... :/