What else is new in 1994 v4.0?
New Cars
Track Specific Liveries
As the GP4 cars were converted to other games, some track specific liveries were added. Now those new liveries have been converted back to GP4 and available for the first time in this mod. The main author was Alesanchez and Jdaddle who did the Tissot livery on the Sauber.
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| 1994 Mod - Sauber by McKey, Textures by Oggo, updated by Jdaddle |
I'm grateful for Oggo who was able to share with me his original templates and I was able to use these to create some more track specific liveries on existing cars, including the Ferrari, Jordan, Pacific, Lotus, Tyrrell and Williams so far. I plan to do more liveries and updates in subsequent releases.
New Cars
My return to GP4 started with the Ferrari 412T1B based on the Australian GP. Since then I've gone on to add the Williams FW16B, Ligier JS39B and the McLaren MP4/9. I've also just completed the Lotus 109 and a few liveries of this car are also included in the mod. My initial idea was that I create scratch made cars for the Australian GP and work my way backwards. That plan has altered to include some hybrid versions, like the Williams that merges elements of both cars together in the mid-season as rule changes came in.
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| 1994 Mod - Williams FW16B by Fongu |
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| 1994 Mod - Lotus 109 by Fongu |
To date, the only fully track specific versions are of the Ligier which are included in this mod.
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| 1994 Mod - Minardi by Loren, Textures by Fongu (Australian GP) |
I've also included an old car, the Minardi M194 by Loren in the mod. He created two versions, the French GP and the Hungarian GP versions. He created some fantasticly accurate yet amazing low poly cars back in the day. I've remastered the textures and added track specific liveries for now until such a time as I've created my own M194 shape.
I have some other newly shaped cars in the workshop, all at various stages of completion, so look out for them.
Updated early-season diffusers
As previously documented on this blog, 1994 was the first season without driver aids, and that made cars extremely quick and as it turned out, extremely dangerous. Massive shunts occurred on multiple occasions early on in the season, some drivers lucky to come out of it alive, but sadly, we all know two of them did not survive. In loving memory of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna, this mod is dedicated to their memory. What ensued was the biggest mid-season changes the sport has ever seen and has never seen since.
Now McKey and Oggo did a great job with the remastered 1994 cars, and we have them up to the Monaco GP in previous versions of the mod. However McKey mostly used the original diffusers from the original game, except for the Benetton and Ferrari. The Jordan by Oggo and the Williams by Loren had the correct diffusers and were added to the v3.0 cars, but the rest of the grid looked slightly out of place. So I've gone back and I've updated all the remaining diffusers for the early season cars, whilst making sure I wasn't taking away anything from the original work. The only other thing I added was bargeboards on the Minardi that they ran at the Pacific GP only. In fact since 1994, diffusers have been heavily regulated, so this was the last generation where there was visibly a wide variety of solutions.
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Spanish and Canadian GP
There were a couple of Spanish GP cars in v3.0, including the Sauber with raised head supports, and the Williams which featured barge boards.
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| 1994 Mod Preview - action from Canadian GP |
I've started, but not completed, an upgrade to some of the cars, some of them simply merging parts of my cars to the originals (with full permission from Mckey and Oggo). I've also started merging new cockpits, and adding new diffusers to match the new rules. The Williams, Tyrrell, Jordan, Lotus and Ferrari's have been updated this way so far.
On the new diffuser rules, some of the larger teams wanted to protest the bringing in of the rules so soon, in that removing such levels of downforce would make the cars more dangerous with little testing and analysis. Indeed Pedro Lamy's was testing for this race and had a horrific accident, penetrating the spectator fence and the monocoque of the car ending up in the Bridge spectator tunnel, he truly was lucky to survive. In practice, Andrea Montermini, filling the seat vacated by Ratzenberger, also had a heavy accident, his feet clearly visible in the aftermath, and obviously broken. The richer teams had come to the Spanish GP primed to argue, bringing both old diffusers and new ones. However the poorer teams had to literally cut their old diffusers up to fit the new regulations, such was the shortage of cash outside of the top teams in those days. There was no going back and so the new diffusers were introduced, as well as new front wing endplates.
The Canadian GP saw holes being cut in the airbox, with various teams choosing different solutions, some more extreme than others. Ferrari cut tiny holes to the side, to minimise the impact, whilst Tyrrell and Ligier went over the top and ran rollover hoops much like the cars from the 80s.
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| 1994 Mod - Ferrari 412T1 from Canadian GP |
You'll see some cars that I have updated the shapes and textures of, about half of them so far. The rest will have to wait until the next update.
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| 1994 Mod - Minardi M194 at the Canadian GP |
There are also some non-tobacco liveries included in this mod, by Alesanchez and some by me.
Other Rule Changes
A pit lane speed limit was introduced at the Monaco GP. Yes, it's crazy to think there wasn't one before. This was in response to the often forgotten incident at the San Marino GP involving Alboreto's Minardi and a loose wheel that came off. In GP4, I've simply raised the speed limit for the first three races. It's interesting the AI cars trying to exit the pits at Interlagos.
The other housekeeping thing is the number of cars entered at the early races. Because Barrichello had his major accident in San Marino in practice, which saw him swallow his tongue amongst other injuries, meant his car did not start the race, so there's only one Jordan in that race (unless you choose to race as him). In Monaco, Williams entered only one car and Simtek did the same. Karl Wendlinger also had a massive accident in practice at Monaco that left him in a coma, which lead to the Sauber team withdrawing from the event altogheter, so you won't see them on the grid around the Principality. Again, they only ran one car at the Spanish GP.
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