I know I said that I'd get something up by Sunday, and it's already Tuesday, but the sun got in my eyes and ate my homework.
Seriously, I got bogged down with a project on a car I bought that ended up with an issue that gave me fits, and ended up buying another car and duplicating my efforts on it, wasting a lot of time. I also got caught up in making decals I wanted, as I didn't have Live Gold and thus unable to get onto the Forza Marketplace and buy some. Between that ordeal - making decals can be as time consuming as painting cars - and lusting after rides in DLC packs, I decided to pony up and get Gold again and some MS points from Amazon, and am going to be doing what buying I can afford. Uhm... and on that point, if anyone has any spare pricey cars they don't mind gifting me, or if you can gift credits, I could sure use some help because I just don't get along with the racing in F4 and between that and not touching the game for two years, I'm kinda poor. Nigel Fox on Live by the way.
I'll share some stuff in a day or two, but I need to get out of a rut I'm in after not arting liveries for two years. In the meantime, I thought I'd discuss how GT6's Livery Editor could seriously juice up both offline and online racing.
For one, as others have said, whipping up a custom livery, even if it's one you bought from someone else is quite an experience. And it's something else again to see it running around a track in a replay, and knowing that you have your own racing identity with it, rather than driving a loaner as we've done in most Gran Turismos.
In addition, with PD giving us the capacity to create online clubs and leagues, this is practically begging for a Livery Editor to make it not just feasible, but engender enthusiasm from us, as well as online user shops. One of the things I look forward to in a league livery is how the league sponsors are marquied on the cars, on window shade banners and car number plates. Online leagues will want this same capacity, and will make decisions on sponsorships and how they're placed on the car. A livery artist will get tasked with whipping this stuff up and providing these banners and number plaques for the group to place on their cars. In addition, they may go so far as to mark off key sponsors for the league leaders, with limited or no use for the others. Car numbers will likely be assigned too, and for those with little skill in making those elements, someone would help out and share these pieces with the right members, and instruct on how to use he editor to place them. I'm in the process right now of buying and creating number plaques, decals and window banners for my cars from various leagues and sponsored events.
Another awesome feature in Forza since F3 is the ability to paint over existing race car liveries. They're always there underneath, and when you save your liveries in your libraries, if you want to display these originals, it's a simple matter to delete your custom livery to reveal it again. This opens up a lot of potential for homologated racing, as you use actual race cars, not just add performance mods to street cars. Gran Turismo could go a similar route in offering us blank cars to use as our canvas, or do the very same thing and let us paint over existing liveries. Giving us a user Shop would be a great way to share decals, league number plates and entire liveries, and make some credits on the side as well.
The one thing I'm a little antsy about is for PD to provide us a number of liveried cars in various leagues, and enough of them to fill up a racing field. Someone had mentioned previously how cool it would be if GT6 "borrowed" liveries from our library to apply to competitor cars, and give GT6 a unique new way to provide extra content to make the game a bigger experience. I think if anything, PD would produce some more basic or even fantasy liveries for this purpose, the way Eutechnyx did for the Ferrari/Supercar Challenge games. But I'm fine either way, I just want all unique cars on the field, with no duplicates and no oddball makes that don't belong.
Hopefully, next time I'll have some pics to share to help illustrate my points.
