No, you won't have to pay for 1.03. What it means now is that you'll have to pay for a hypothetical 2.0 version, but if nKP continues developing at the current rate you won't ever have to pay this due to our limited ability to age (same goes for LFS S3, sadly )
The nKP website is an out-of-date POS and it still saying the one year thing is just the icing on the cake, really.
If i was not satisfied with my signature i would take your whole answer as it .
And i totally agree with what you say , i cant even believe some people are planning to buy this "thing "
Its not, Net Kar Poo did all it could to stop people buying it.
Pre release it rode on the back of NetKar (Which was good) and promised a quick release of dev tools, patches etc. What it delivered was an early Alpha build with a broken offline demo and a "ghost town" online experience and very P***ed off customer base.
Since then is has moved into the same release cycle as Duke Nukem Forever and has promised much vapour wear, such as the hill climb circuit and car.
If all is to be believed we are very nearly almost at the point where Net Kar Poo moves out of alpha, skips beta and into full release. We have been promised a working demo with online etc.
Only time will tell TBH. 9+ months ago Jaap said he would resign as the voice of NKP on RSC and he is still there so something must be going on. Who knows, 2009 might be the year, but then so might 2010 and we will have to suffer another year of bitching on the NKP forums
NOTE: For those that feel LFS moves slow, go buy Net Kar Poo
It's probably hard to get a proper answer out of the nKP people here (Moose for instance) but I'll try anyway...
The original release of nKP was not good enough to be v1.0. It was more like v0.1. The patches have increased that to about v0.2. Using that same number system, would you say nKP in 1.0.3 is at v1.0 yet (where it should have been at the initial release) or still basically a late beta version (e.g. v0.9).
I'd say that what looks like is going to be released as 1.03 is,in reality, a v0.9 imo.
There's no way it could be called a V1.0 due to a couple of things that need working on that would delay the process for another couple of months. There is still a list of bugs/issues yet to be fixed that will not be dealt with for this release. (remember, the focus was to make 1.03 better online, not make v2.0 of the sim. From what's been seen in testing this has been achived. Hopefully it will stand up to the big test when the public get their hands on it.)
Kunos is committed to getting to work on sorting out these issues as soon as 1.03 is out. Updates should be more like LFS in the future, more regular with public test patches.
I reckon 1.03 will be out in a matter of days, followed swiftly by a barrage of "it's shit" posts. Some whining and moaning will ensue, Kunos will be slagged off as if he's the living embodiment of Satan, the Retards Social Club (RSC) will have a frenzy of halfwits trolling the crap out of the place, and those of us who love it will get on with business as usual and enjoy some quality racing at GPC.
I just dont want to hear a load of "how was that not picked up in beta testing", because it probably was the beta testers have reported a load of stuff that hasnt been addressed yet.
How will the mulitplayer side of this work?
Eg will it be like LFS where there is a main server which means we can create our own races, or do we have to buy / lease a server to host races?
Cheers Moose. Looking forward to giving it a try. It sounds like (a dangerous thing to rely on with nK!) most of the major issues will be resolved and the unlucky ones will be able to play online properly, which is where the fun is.
You said "the next couple of days". Are you willing to wager anything on those words?
You can host your own servers from home.... but as is the case with these things, the quality of your connection will determine whether the experience is good or not.
As always, a properly hosted dedicated server will always be the best solution for the lowest risk of laggy gaming.
@Tristan. I've learned my lesson. I'm not putting any money on anything concerning nKpro anymore :P All indications are Kunos wants to release it as it is now and fix outstanding issues in the next couple of months. We may be getting one more release candidate to test, and obviously its unlikely that he will release over the next two days. If i was puting money on it i'd say next Monday. Pure speculation though.
I haven't bought this game, yet, however, it took me about 5 -10mins of playing with the ff1600 to realise that you didn't need the cockpit display to be able to drive properly. Its only got 4 gears, so not to difficult to remember which gear you were in, and the engine sound gave enough info to know when to change gear. Run the demo again with an open mind and the ff1600 becomes quite enjoyable to have a blast around in.
Don't do that. One of the biggest reasons why so many don't like nk is the constant announcements of release dates which never hold. Everytime someone who has some kind of ties nk mentions a release date my riight hand makes a reflex move and closes that tab in my web browser and my brain wipes out all what I just read
I'm hoping that the missing .1 is in inconsequential bugs like stats, or or or with the interface, or or or custom skins. If there's 1/10th of a version worth of physics missing from this release then I will have lost all hope.
When I used to play nKP (back in the day!) I found the gear change annoying - I thought it was too difficult and that I missed gears far too often. Then I realised it was me that was the problem, and that nKP's gear change is surprisingly close to a real one - you need to be accurate with the throttle cuts and blips, timing and revs otherwise it'll baulk you. Considering we're stuck with paddles, sequential sticks or h-shifters with no 'feedback' it was very good.
And I won't praise nKP unless it really deserves praise! And the gear changing does!
(same goes for LFS S3, sadly 
)
the beta testers have reported a load of stuff that hasnt been addressed yet.
