How d'you mean, 'not enough racers to score points'? You can always score

Sam

So do I, actually - I think the newer S2 licencees wanting to get away from the XFG and XRG outweighed the S1 licencees who still had to use them. Not to mention that the UF1 server had a higher capacity, and was more fun

It was almost always more full than the S1 server, as I remember it.

As for the main issue, it does seem rather odd to let us loose on the GT2-class cars before the turbo roadcars, but I do see your point entirely, Becky. It's pretty clear that there's really not another viable option, and as you say, TBO always was the highest level available, and the only thing that should change that is the full-frontal GTR cars. Anyway, TBO-racing is more of a fine art than GT2 racing

Sam

+1 for the 'points per race' idea, that would certainly be an interesting one to put in!

Sam

It seems this problem might have sorted itself out after all, but this looks good - so I'm doing it anyway

*clicky*

EDIT - After a restart, I'm not convinced that it's running any faster - in fact, it might just be me, but it seems a tad slower - but at least now I'll be racing with confidence that it's not going to destroy me.
Thanks again, guys.

Sam

Last edited by Dark Elite, Sat 18 Aug 2007, 11:53.

Quote :

Just a small note.. there's a big difference between browsing the internet and playing a game. If your connection dropped for 15 seconds, browsing the internet, you probably would never notice. In an online game, if it barfs for a few seconds it's game over.

I know - but when chatting on MSN (which I didn't mention as it takes very little bandwidth/CPU time), you notice things pretty quickly it likes to sign itself out at the slightly provocation.

I haven't moved the USB port - I unplugged it and put it back in the same one again to see if that did anything, but I might move it to see if it's suddenly started to dislike the one it's in.

No changes to the phones in the house, I've always made sure they have filters. Having said that, I'll go around and check the filters themselves on the other two phones on this line.

Thanks again - all is still well here. I'll see what happens when I try and race tomorrow

Sam

Excellent help, guys... Let's see if we can trace this...

Quote :

where do you plug in your modem,

It's in a secondary socket - although, oddly, the phone in that socket seems to have better quality in calls than the one in the primary (probably more to do with the phones themselves, that) - but then, it always has been, and I don't think anything's happened to that since.

Quote :

does that 330 modem get hot? has it enough room to cool?

It can get a bit warm sometimes, but it always copes with it. I haven't noticed this happen when it is warm, it's generally not connected long enough to heat up. It's in an open place, anyway, so it should be OK for heat.

Quote :

have you installed anything new just before this started? USB? or new telephone?

Nope, most recent thing was my DFP, about two months before the problem.

Quote :

If you have a friend with a spare all in one router you could always try that, Im not a fan of the speedtouch modems.

If this persists, I'll try and find one.

Quote :

are you running any P2P clients in the background? ISP might be knocking you off for that.

Sometimes, but they seem to keep the connection alive, for some reason. Although, it never disconnects entirely when I'm on LFS, and I'm never running P2P clients then, so that might have something to do with it.

Quote :

run a full virus scan and spyware one too then try a hard reboot, might help

I'll get that done tomorrow, see if it throws anything up.

Quote :

is the modem powered with a powerpack?

Nope, it runs on USB power only.

I wonder if this helps with any solutions... Although, having said that, I've been connected for about three quarters of an hour now with no issues when browsing normally, which seemed to cause the most frequent disconnects earlier today. I tinkered blindly with some random settings earlier, and that might have sorted it.

Menus & Me: :jedi:

Thanks for your help and suggestions, guys, I really appreciate it

Sam

Last edited by Dark Elite, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 22:28.

Hmm, that's weird - because I'm getting Yellow Roof drivers who finish behind me having two or three points less, and those in front of me having two or three points more, as if the licences have no effect. Maybe it only kicks in when you get to Silver?

I think, if the points do slow up at Silver, Gold might as well be Unobtanium

EDIT - It seems Parkway RallyX in the LX-4 is still running 9 laps on its first race only - I noticed this a while ago. What gives, Becky?

Sam

Last edited by Dark Elite, Sat 18 Aug 2007, 12:23.

Thanks for the suggestions,

I'm using a Speedtouch 330 USB modem, and have been for over a year with no trouble - however much stress I put on the rest of my system (a lot ). It doesn't seem to be the modem's fault either, as the lights on it aren't changing when this happens or anything, implying that something somewhere down the line is playing up. I wouldn't know if the problem had stopped, but it hasn't happened again for about fifteen minutes.

Interestingly, when I'm just browsing, the problem will be a disconnection from the Internet, but if I'm on LFS, it will just disconnect me from the host and not the Internet entirely. This could be coincidental, but that's what I've noticed so far. My Internet connection hasn't actually closed while I've been playing yet.

This gets more confusing by the hour...

EDIT - Done it again, cutting me off from Race 1 this time.

EDIT2 - Again, another ten points lost from my Bump and Jump licence.

EDIT3 - Within about two minutes, my Internet connection has cut off entirely while browsing. It took about two minutes to get it to connect, until then it was giving me the 'No Dial Tone' 680 error.
Does anyone have any ideas what's happening? Could my modem be dying, or something? I've just disconnected and reconnected all the connections to my modem and PC in a final attempt to keep it going...

EDIT4 - That's done nothing, it's disconnected me from the Internet again whilst browsing.

Sam

Last edited by Dark Elite, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 18:14.

I know about the entry fees
I was wondering more about what you say about the points you earn - a full-server win should be worth about 50 points, so are you not earning as many points now that you're Silver licenced? I mean, are the people finishing behind you (with lower licences Except White, obviously ) earning more points than you are?

Much as I hate to tell you this, but the evidence so far points to the Gold licence being 50,000 points. So you'd better get used to the Silver Roof

Sam

I'm using Tesco Broadband, and I don't know of any P2P blocking employed by them - it's a very good thought, but as this has only started happening in the last couple of days I don't think that's what's doing it. It might be an absolute fluke that it's happened to me half a dozen times in two days, but it used to be that I could trust my connection entirely.

Perhaps it's just having a bad couple of days - my Internet connection is occasionally cutting out and refusing to reconnect (although not at the same time as my LFS disconnects), which started at around the time this problem came up. Doubtless the issues are related, but I can't figure out how. I'll keep racing, and if it happens again I'll post the situation.

EDIT - It's just happened twice, within about a minute. As soon as I reconnected and left the pits, it cut me off again. The first time, I was in spec. No lag and no Internet trouble either time. I have no idea what could be causing this, but it's @#%~ing annoying....

Sam

Last edited by Dark Elite, Fri 17 Aug 2007, 15:10.

I'm having trouble with the Bump and Jump server - or, more specifically, staying in it.

I'm being disconnected at random. People say the message 'Lost connection to [LXC] Sam GBR' is being shown, and I'm getting no lag whatsoever right before the disconnection, so it's not a problem with lag, timeouts, anything like that.
My Internet connection isn't to blame either, as I can immediately reconnect to the server. It seems the host is just disconnecting itself from my client, or vice versa, at random... What could be causing this?

I've been noticing it for a couple of days now, and it's starting to cost me a lot of points

Sam

That should be quoted back at any Demo racer asking for more, from now on

Sam

I thought the only way you could lose points is by joining after the race has started, ie, if the race starts with three people and finishes with five, you lose points for being 4th out of 3 starters? Or do we get penalised for being too slow now

Must say I haven't noticed it if we do, I managed to come 7th out of 8 and still gain normal points - which makes it look like the points awarded to Red Roof drivers are the same.

Sam

Hehehe... Well, Tudor Rose is always going to be a bit lethal for you now. It's expensive even for me. Places like BusterSprint, The Maze, Figuratively, Oval, and the Parkway tracks should be OK, though. It's a shame that you're being slowed up so much, and are now limited to where you can race, though...

Sam

Quote from Celtic :

Is it possible to drop back to Red Roof Grade

Very much so, I know this because I made the mistake of leaving just after I got to Red Roof - the result being that the 10 points it cost me to re-enter dropped me back to Blue

Congratulations on being the first to get Silver, though.

But 25 points sounds vicious for an entry fee >.< you'll just have to be bloody careful, and make sure you can get a lot of races out of each entry. And don't swear I can just imagine the frustration of joining right before a track change on Silver Roof, though...

Sam

I can confirm 1300 points. Then you need 4300 for the next one. I could go on, but I might get shot for leaking secrets

Sam

I think that if you select the setup that's not working, and click 'New' from that (duplicating all the settings), the new one will work. That way, you won't lose your settings

I've been told that, I haven't actually confirmed it myself

Sam

Last edited by Dark Elite, Tue 14 Aug 2007, 23:33.

I can confirm the three-times-message thing,

The Invalid Dimensions message is getting very frequent - but, you can get around that by opening $ctra and then closing it again, that stops the Invalid Dimensions thing. It seems that the message is started by using $track. Not sure why...

Sam

I'm not sure if this is a bug, but the auto-restart delay on Champagne is 180 seconds at the moment. Three minutes seems a little bit excessive when a race lasts four and a half, and a lap is less than thirty seconds any chance of this being shortened? It needn't be more than 45 seconds or so at Champagne.

Sam

I voted for 'I love it', because I do, and I would personally like to see more of the LX-4 in the Bump and Jump server - it makes racing more engaging, to have an interesting car to drive. However, I don't expect to actually see the LX-4 in use more, as a lot of people seem incapable of driving it, and it is a sensitive car with the wrong setup. I can see some people being put off by it, until they know how to handle the car properly.

It puts something different into the Bump and Jump servers, and having just had half a dozen races in it at BusterSprint1 (which I expected to be quite tight and close racing) I've noticed that the field generally spreads out quite a lot, making for races decided by skill with very little wrecking.

I think it works very, very well once you know how to handle it and drive it fast - made for Bump and Jump

There is also the advantage that idiots who come into the Bump and Jump servers just to wreck cars stand no chance in the LX-4

Sam

That's rather harsh, we couldn't have this discussion if Demo users didn't have forum accounts

Sam

Demo racers having user accounts is not viable, for the simple reasons that if they did, they could create more accounts to avoid bans for wrecking or other misbehaviour, and that good racers would be having one of the priviledges of licenced players. S1 and S2 charge for content, and giving Demo users more of that content undermines the system.

That's without going into the server and administrative costs mentioned that might be incurred, for less gain - because more people would be happy with just their Demo accounts.

Sam

That's the flaw, I suppose, in working out the points from the number of racers that started, rather than the number that finished - but if it wasn't like that, you wouldn't be rewarded for being the only person to finish out of a full grid...


Aha, what if the system worked out the points awarded from the highest number of racers to be on track during the race? So if, say, five drivers start the race, and then four more join during the first lap, and two finish, the winner would count as being first of nine - because he beat all nine cars that were driving at one point or another in the race.
This would solve the negative-points-because-of-start-list-removers problem, anyway. How does that sound to you, Becky?

It'd be nice if LFS showed a message every time someone clicks the expensive little '-' sign in the start list, too... "X removed X from the race" or something similar, so that the CTRA system can track people doing this.

Sam

Spectators are not allowed to jump over the fence and push cars back onto their wheels/the track. In most series (apparently not F1 these days), marshalls are supposed to move cars to safety, not onto the track to continue racing.

The spawning should probably be an option. Maybe you wanted to reset the car to get it back onto its wheels, maybe you wanted to do it to fix the damage - you'd have to be able to choose which condition you wanted the car in first.

Even if we did have automatic gearboxes, why should they have fewer gears? You've come up with one example of a car that has more gears in its manual guise than its automatic spec - this is not universal, and the gearboxes with the most gears these days are almost always automatic - take Mercedes' 7G-Tronic 'box as an example for this.
But, as has been said, automatic is hopeless anyway.

No opinion on the on-screen driver moving.. If you have a wheel, then you can feel free to watch yourself change gears.

Sam

Quote :

In LFS, the above technique works.
In real life, driving into the pits using your gearing and the redline limiter to keep your speed down WILL destroy your engine.

Just depends whether we are comparing LFS with reality or not.

I was trying to avoid bringing reality into this, I know that's a very unhealthy thing to do - and I don't do it anyway, even if first gear can act as a limit I'll still use second and my right foot - because it just feels wrong.
And once engine damage is modelled better, nobody will do that in LFS either.

Using the handbrake probably won't do your tyres any favours, and I'd have thought it's a bit less reliable than just... easing off the throttle.. But I can understand keyboard users going for the gear ratio option.

Sam