jsp@key.COM (James Preston) (07/07/90)
This is a good game, and most of the lack of realism I can forgive (I mean, can't a real Porsche take a posted 30mph mountain curve at 170mph?). But I have a serious problem with the shifting. The click while accelerating or decelerating to upshift or downshift sounds like a reasonable shortcut, but the actual implementation here sucks. How the heck do you downshift without stopping completely? Upshifting is no problem: Hold down the accelerator, and click whenever the tach needle touches the red line (an oversimplification, ok?) Now I'm in 5th with the needle in the upper-middle of the dial. Something happens and I need to downshift (say I stay too long off the road). To do this, I need to momentarily hit the brake. But the damned car slows down so quickly that, as fast as I can hit-the-brake- click-get-back-to-accelerator, I'm now going too slow for 4th gear! Try to downshift again, and I'm too slow for third. (Of course, you know that there's really no such thing as "too slow" in this game; it's not like the car ever stalls or anything. I mean too slow to optimally use the gear.) And heaven forbid if I should stay on the brake even a tad too long, then I find myself at a dead stop, getting a ticket! So does anyone have any hints? And why the heck can't you use the keyboard expert shifter with trackball (er, mouse) steering? That would solve my problem! --James Preston