Legends
October 22, 2002
7:02 a.m.
How the heck was I supposed to know that FedEx doesn't deliver to post office boxes? Yeah, I suppose I should have done something simple like actually read the instructions, but I'm a male of the species and therefore exempt from this requirement. My only defense is that the lady behind the counter actually looked at the package as she took it, and she didn't say anything at all. So the manuscripts I sent away have taken an extra day to arrive. Not a big deal in the overall picture--what's another day in an eighteen or twenty-four month adventure?   Ron, you say, what's whit the dead zone? No entries for about a decade? No words on the site? Well, all I can say is I've been busy. Some of it has been recuperation after a massive September, some of it has been catching up on things I let slide, and then there's the racing. Some of you may know, I'm a sucker for a challenge laced with complexity. Give me a simple system or simple game or simple problem, and I'll get bored. But make something difficult, with complexity in multiple dimensions, and I'm there--even better if it's something with no defined process. Writing is like that, actually. Fantasy baseball is like that. Dungeons and Dragons is like that. Management of projects is like that. These items, along with the required participation in basketball and softball with guys at work, are the bulk of what have made up my life outside the family since I was, what ... sixteen or eighteen? So, along comes Grand Prix Legends. I have been a closet sim racing fan for years. I had an old Grand Prix game back in the Indianapolis years, and it was great fun. But it was boring in the end because it was so basic. Just cars and the road, and a not very realistic representation of physics. But it was fun for a while. Since then I've been dabbling. I had a Lankhor game, and piddled with a few arcade style things. Lisa got me EA Sports Forumla 1 game a little ways back, and that was pretty good. But still, there was something lacking. I don't know what. Maybe it was that these formula 1 cars are mostly make believe for me. I've never driven a car with enough downforce to rip asphalt from a corner, so I just don't know what it's like. Yes, I could tinker with settings, and the simulation is premium. Very cool and all. I'll still play it here and there. But John Bodin, a friend of mine who wrote "Oh-oh" with me, and now "The Day the Track Stood Still" (see below), recently sidled up beside me and said something innocuous like "You ought to try Grand Prix Legends." He then proceeded to talk about 1967 race cars--Lotus, Ferrari, BRM, Repco Brabham, Cooper ... you know, cars from the days when race cars were race cars. My blood got that little boil to it then, but I wasn't a lost soul at that point. He talked about 300-400 horsepower engines and 1200 pound cars. He talked about skinny tires that lasted all race. I was intrigued, but still salvageable. Little did I know. Two weeks later, I humored John. I hopped in a Ferrari. The engine turned. Oh my. Back a long time agon, there was a movie entitled Grand Prix. It had James Garner, and David Niven, and a few others in it. If you like racing, you'll like it. If you don't well ... anyway, it starts with the sound of engines. There is nothing like the sound of one of these cars, and this game had it pretty much right on. I started. The car glided over a corner. The engine revs came up, and a second later I was riding backwards amid a cloud of smoke and the screeching of rubber on roadtop. Oops. This was my first inkling that this game is hard. It's hard because the cars behave like real cars, and the drivers behave pretty much like real drivers. It's had because there are a gazillion things you can change. My goodness. I've been hooked ever since. Brigid and Lisa, of course, find my absorption with these cars and these tracks to be something curious. They smile at me funny when I talk about it. They make fun of the times where I run off the road. They do not get particularly excited when I turn a fast lap. They take pictures.  In the interim, John Bodin and I sold a story to Analog. It's an Indy 500 thing--the second of the type we'll have that sees print. We signed the contracts and dropped them in the mail this week. My pure guess would be that it will show up in the May issue next year. Have a great day.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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