Quote from Jacob_B :

I still have to debate between S2 or saving a bit more and buying a faster GPU, my Geforce 6600GT isint good enough anymore, im thinking a Geforce 7950 would be a great match with my liquid cooled AMD 64 4000+ @ 5600+

maybe you need to rethink your priorities ?

here are some things to think about :

#1 do you really like LFS ?

#2 do you think LFS is not that good and there are many better racing games ?

#3 do you want LFS to grow and its development continue ?

#4 do you not care if LFS fades away ?

#5 do you want LFS to succeed and for other game developers to use the same approach and creat ground-braking software ?

#6 do you want LFS to not be a huge success and for other developers to continue making the same old crap they keep pumping out ?


If you said yes to the odd numbered questions, then you would be cheating yourself by not buying a licence and supporting LFS.

If you answered yes to the even numbered questions then what are you doing here ?

fwiw, your existing system is MUCH more powerful than mine - but if I had to choose between demo on your proposed new system or S2 on my ancient 'puter, I'd pick S2 on mine every time !

Col

Quote from MikeBlue :

...
I know that you are a great diver col , so all other people are going to know that too....

hehe, I really hope that was a typo

Quote from SamH :

We're going to launch an offensive on offensive driving in Silver+ servers. By the sound of things, this is going to result in a number of recently Silver licenced drivers going back down to New & Bronze, and this in turn is going to result in a lot of very peeved people.

Back me up!

Will do

Quote from Gabkicks :

yeah, some people just don't understand that if you are faster than someone and have better racecraft, you should be able to pass them eventually.

Yep, that should be the case !

However 'Sometimes' if you don't get past REAL QUICK the guy behind you will paste you all over the barriers as he makes his 'move'. (As I discovered while being dropped to the back of a pretty slow pack over and over again because I was trying to race fair!)

At least thats what people seem to be learning... 'the pack' is evolving into a nasty beast indeed

Last edited by col, Sat 26 May 2007, 23:13.

can I change My vote ?

I said I didn't care, but I do - I want pitstops, they give you a way to overtake crazy idiots without jeapordising your race - just pop into pit early, run some fast laps, and with any luck, you leapfrogged all the mayhem.

This is starting to drive me INSANE

first, apologies to fair drivers in the servers when I've got really annoyed and 'vented' my anger... (don't worry Sam, I do it between races and try not to swear)

I cannot believe how bad it has been in the last couple of days

Seems like all the Demo folks have got S2 licences and warped onto the CTRA servers. Today so far, in populated races, I've had maybe 2 out of 20 or so where I've NOT been shunted or cut up unfairly with no apology and no 'wait for repass'. In some corners especially hairpins, it seems like it's normal practice to dive up the inside with no 50% overlap at turn in point. I mean if you approach a hairpin with someone behind and take the racing line, 9 times out of 10, they will attempt to dive up the inside - so you have to go wide or you will be pushed off track...

I feel that the reporting system just is not working !
bad attitude and ignorance of the rules seem to be endemic, these days.

(fewer of the more experienced racers seem to be playing much on these servers these days ? maybe I've just been unlucky recently)

Just had a race on FEClub... the guy behind in FXO has just won his gold licence ...
so anyway, in the race I get slowed by a back marker and he gets by... ok so I follow for many laps being carefull, making no contact, no 'silly' moves... after many laps, he makes an error and runs very wide in a turn, I take my oportunity and pass him inside... he turns in slightly - we swap paint... no biggie... so at last after patience dilligence and many laps of hard racing I'm in the lead... penultimate lap (13 of 14), he shunts me out of the way mid turn and fires on through like it was a great move, and goes on to win the race.... no apology...
After the race, he explains it was OK.. he only tapped me gently, the reason I slid wide was because I was braking so hard !? like it was my fault because I was using my full traction budget and expecting a fair race ?

I have NOT reported this incident! I have had so many similar incidents racing today - often more than one per race - that if I was to report them all, I would spend more time viewing replays and writing up reports than racing.

One problem I feel is that that any punishments handed out after reports are not public !
If the less experienced racers were to see that people are losing licences and points for unfair driving, they would be much more likely to learn and obey the rules...
This is how it happens in the real world - when folks break the rules it's public.. which works ! it makes a much better deterent.

I reported a guy yesterday for multiple illegal pass attempts - he was diving up the inside at hairpins with no fair overlap over and over... he explained that it was fair to do so... I reported with conclusive (IMO) replay evidence and a detailed report... so today the same guy is pulling the same moves - what was the point in me wasting my time viewing replays, writing reports etc... I got no response - afaikt nothing was done, the same guy is still a danger on track.

Do we just not worry about unfair driving - as long as folks are not actively 'wrecking' then anything goes ? that's what it seems like when you're on track !

Unfortunately, the more that this happens, the more new racers will adopt this approach to racing - they will believe that the only way to compete on CTRA servers barge your way through the field...

aaaarrrrggggg....... ggggrrrrrrrrrrrr..... bah!

col

Last edited by col, Sat 26 May 2007, 22:30.

Quote from Mako. :

Imo, I think we should actualy CUT BACK, on the demo. Offer ONLY the XFG and XRG/ BW Forward (on time of day only as well). And have The demo only work for 30days.

EDIT: Also, no training missions above the XRG. Only one with the XRT, where you drive it around in the lot. Limit skins as well maybe?

Have to agree - a cut back is what I would do !

I would probably go with 2 cars (XRT and XFG), only BL1 and BLrally, no reverse configs. Limit players to two 'user' setups per combo. I would also limit laps so maybe races can be either 2 laps or 20 laps but nothing else. No hotlap mode in demo, no qualifying, no AI (especially right now as they don't exactly help the image of LFS ), no pitstops.
just bare essentials for racing with a FWD and a RWD car - enough to know if LFS is for you.
I wouldn't limit the demo to 30 days though - thats just like inviting crackers to attack LFS...

Oh, and I would consider plastering all the billboards at blackwood with adverts for S2 !
maybe some grafitti as well

Last edited by col, Sat 26 May 2007, 20:00.

Go and drive a few sessions in demo mode to get back into the swing of things - that's what I do when I've been out of the loop for a while. Once you start to get the feeling that it's everyone else who's a noob and not you (doesn't usually take long ), then its time for S2 again

Col

Quote from SamH :

I don't want to get into a situation where drivers' notes are for public consumption. I can't imagine anything worse than someone using CTRA notes as leverage in an argument against a driver's character.

I'm working on the web-based reporting function at the moment. While I understand that people want to know that "something's done about this terrible driver", I'm really cautious about relaying the action taken. 'Open | In process | Actioned' should be adequate. The mission is to ensure good driving on the servers over all, and anything more than a 3-stage report summary tends towards the witch hunt we're looking to avoid.

I'm not saying no, I'm just saying that there's got to be a REALLY good reason to give more info than that. We already frequently receive whinges from drivers being penalised without opening the floodgates to complaints from reporters that the penalty issued wasn't harsh enough.

e: Or TOO harsh, as happened once.

Makes sense.

When a report has been 'actioned' I would still be interested in getting more information when no action was taken against the reportee:

so if action was taken - from a gentle verbal warning to a 99 year ban, then 'Action Taken' is fine.
but if no action was taken, its good to have a reason:

the reporter got it totally wrong
there wasn't clear enough intent
the incident was not severe enough
the reporter was as much at fault
the reportee was given benefit of doubt etc.
we're sick of so many reports of minor incidents
etc.

cheers

Col

Quote from STROBE :

Well that's one way of putting it.
...I don't understand why there's more tyres on the left at the exit than at a Kwik-Fit garage, and nearly every lap they get bounced all over the track making it (as previously mentioned) a complete lottery for any drivers following.

Yes, this can be particularly bad and is made much worse by the way multiplayer system works...
The fastest line involves just missing all the tyres, however, because of lag and 'prediction' just missing them on your local pc may translate to hitting them hard enough to move them on one or more other machines.... then as the pack fire on through behind (you hope you are in front), some guy with no tyres on his system may be piling through tyres that are in the road on another system... causing them to perform supaPhysics™ antics.. whith so many tyres and so many cars, it can be mayhem - even though nobody actually 'hit' the tyres !!

A better example is the second last turn at FEclub - I went through there recently and saw the guy in front steam through the barricade... oddly he didn't seem to lose the car - he didn't even slow down !
My guess is that a car in front of him just clipped the barrier, by the time he reached it those objects had disapperared - unfortunately on my system, they had not, so when that driver in front of me cut through the space, on my machine he was hitting the bails and scattering them accross the track !
Big problem there is that you can take a legal line (two wheels on track - track includes curb) that if the bails are there means you hit them, so for some drivers the way is clear to take the optimum line, not realising that on the guy behinds system, they may be filling the road with obstacles... and the guy behind him is wondering why the hell he is swerving all over the road like a maniac

This is all guesswork - maybe these things have happened for some other reason.
Am I correct in thinking that physics objects can behave differently on all the multiplayer clients in a race due to fractional differences in car positions on the different client systems?
If so, then its another considerating when employing barricades.

FWIW, I like the ones thet prevent serious cutting e.g. final chicane of FEGold - they seem to work and don't change the racing line.
But not the ones that change the line through chicanes and add more objects just making it worse when they do get hit.

Things do seem to have got a bit worse recently.
I agree that its important for people who are filing reports to get a response with a brief explanation of what the decision was and why.
I recieved a response from Sam from the last report I filed and was surprised !
A while ago, I even wrote in the comments box something like "Please replay and tell me if the reports I've filed have been at least in the right ballpark!", but didn't even get a response to this !!

A couple of things, from the reports I've made, the only ones that _seem_ to have been acted upon were the obvious and successful wrecking attempts, and severe persistant cutting - the rest might have been filed and the driver warned - or they were not worth reporting - I don't know .

Ideally bad driving conduct would be reported, e.g. barging into corners, not leaving room when overtaker has a 50% or greater overlap continual tapping in corners... but it doesn't _seem_ to do any good reporting these things. I have lost so many places to FXOs recently to a gentle tap in the rear during cornering that is seems like accepted practice (amongst the FXO guys running at XRT pace ) - tap the XRT in the corner and pass him as he gets out of shape... What really bothers me most is when folks do this sort of thing and don't apologise... or give you a hefty tap and don't hang back and wait for a re-pass... More and more I've been thinking "if you can't beat 'em join em..." when it used to be "hehe, I'll report you and I'll have the last laugh" but it hasn't panned out that way .

............

One thing that might help the general mood is enforcing the rules at all times - no crashing or 'dangerous driving' between races. Some times recently on the CTRA servers, after a race, it's like a wreck fest as half of the drivers finishing go piling into the folks in front at full throttle, when you finish near the front, you better pit, of keep a good grip on your FF wheel ! So these guys get all over excited from their great crashes just in time for T1 in the next race !

[feature request]
Another thing that may help in future in silver servers is to auto-spectate racers whos LFS-World PB for the combo is slower than 107% (or some similar figure) of world record, this is supposed to be pro standard after all.

Anyhow, excuse my griping and thanks CTRA for the great servers and all the mostly good fun to be had there

cheers

Col

Quote from Hammerdown :

I'm just thinking that but if the kerbs are bumpy enough to make car vibrate visually, then surely I should be able to feel that vibration through the wheel. No? Maybe the ff motors aren't sensitive enough to render it...

I'm not sure that you understood what I was saying

It doesn't really matter how bumpy the curbs are, if your direction of travel is perpendiculuar to the curb ridges, and you are not turning (not much anyway), the curbs just make the wheels vibrate vertically... this doesn't make the wheels twist, so it wouldn't try to turn the steering either... that means you won't feel it through the wheel !

If you approach the curbs at 45º, particularly if you are also turning at the time, you will be much more likely to feel the bumps (assuming there are bumps on that curb .

Personally, I feel the bumps when I expect to , and don't when I don't - it all seems right to me.... my wheel is the old Logitech Wingman Formula Force 'old red' it only has about 180º turning circle, but the Force feedback is cable driven - much better than any geared or belt system I've tried...

I have the force turned way down, but I still feel curbs if I hit them at an angle so they 'grab' the wheel that hits them.

Greboth is right, there are no 'canned' FF FX in LFS, all the feedback comes from the front wheels... if the tyres, shocks, suspension setup work together with the angle of the car with respect to th curb mean that hitting the curb doesn't cause twisting force in the front wheels, you won't feel the curbs (think about it).
In a real car, you would also feel the bumps through the seat of your pants as the car vibrated vertically - in lfs you only feel stuff that imparts a lateral turning force on the front wheels....
That is of course the way it should be - anything that is turning the fronts for you is somthing you need to know about to help you drive... other stuff is less useful, so would just get in the way.
Maybe if you developed a Force Feedback cushion, you could get Scawen to output vertical forces on the car that your FFCush can use... until then, just enjoy the great LFS FF as it is

Col

Quote from chanoman315 :

its the question all the community is asking,,,

noooo, the question that the community wants answered is
"when will S2 be released?"

Quote from deggis :

...Feels weird how low priority this whole collision detection seems to have on devs' to do list... regarding that it has so huge effect on online play, everytime you touch a tyre or other car there's chance of getting a free flight ticket to moon.

Thats interesting... when did Scawen explain that collision detection was low priority? I must have missed that... [/sarcasm]

Do you have any idea how complex a comprehensive collision detection/response system is for this kind of game?
And of course, even if it was easy to do, it wouldn't be released until the next 'incompatible' patch

So what about when your lag bar is rising, but there is no visible lag, you see the other racers, they see you , you can chat, but you know you will be disconnected soon, because that ol' bar is rising, if you're lucky, you get a 'Replay stash space recovered' otherwise, its disco dancing time - yet again... !! ... should change my tag to Travolta - I spend so much time in LFS disco'ing

/me sings "I'm too sexy for my connection..."

Quote from mrodgers :

[off-topic] Just to note, it has to do with police chases so that the person can not disconnect on-track to evade police. The reasoning is because there is a bank you can rob and when there are a bunch of folks robbing and few cops chasing them, it would be more difficult to go the "ban cheater" route due to the number of players being chased.[/off-topic]

All very interesting, But surely that would be better dealt with using a set of rules and having mods enforce them ?
So one rule would be that if you diconnect while attempting to evade the police, you will be penalised.
This gives folks a chance to hand themselves in if they see their lag bar rising and fear the are about to get disconnected...

Still no reason to randomly penalise players because of their ISP (or the servers ).
I'm glad City Driving is not somthing that attracts me
It's bad enough getting disconnected from a race without also having extra punishment.

Col

Quote from dude56 :

...(For those who are not aware, the Caribbean Cruise servers use an economy system, and you must buy cars. If you pit, leave, or spectate without being inside a pit box, you lose your car...

Well thats crap isn't it - I woudn't consider using a server with such idiotic rules... why don't they(Caribbean Cruise) fix their system so as not to penalise people for connection issues that are just as likely to be caused by the server as the client.

Quote :

....all I experience is a brief lag spike. PLEASE consider fixing the netcode. Thank you.

I've had connection problems for the last week or two, It usually involves my connection bar rising slowly for maybe about 10 seconds, after which I get disconnected - this is a well known problem and sounds like whats happening to you. It's nothing to do with brief (< 1 sec) lag spikes... Scawen has been aware of this issue for a long time and it seems as though it is some sort of Internet issue to do with packet loss and connection quality. Someone discovered that with his ISP, his high bandwidth low ping DSL connection was very problematic, while using the same ISP through a dial up 56k modem worked fine (apart from the crappy ping)....
So this problem is most likely due to money grabbing DSL providers signing up more people than their system can cope with... Some are starting to provide 'premium' gamer accounts and letting their standard account quality slide even more....
Of course, these issues are going to keep getting worse not better as more people get broadband, packet loss is not an issue for Web browsing and downloading, so the ISPs don't care

One thing that I don't understand though is that the connection 'lag' bar is rising, and I know that in maybe 8 secs I will be disconnected, while at the same time, I'm racing happily with no lag, and I'm not lagging to others... it maybe some other type of packet that the game wants related to chat... or the master server that is the issue...

EDIT:
hmmm would it be possible to update the LFS system so that packets that are not related to gameplay (eg. chat related packets, or other houskeeping related info) get a much longer timeout than the car position packets ? (or maybe can be reported as not recieved rather than causing a disconnection ?



Col

Last edited by col, Wed 16 May 2007, 13:48.

+1

What first to 100,000 points gets a big red book with THIS IS YOUR LIFE printed in gold on the cover....
All the pages inside would be blank

I'm not sure its related, but I just had an interesting wrong track experience.

I went in to spectator mode and BL1, then used SHIFT+F4 to go to window mode and opened a second instance of LFS so I could view a replay (previous BL1 race)
When I had finished, I closed my second instance of LFS and returned to the original one to find that the track had changed, but my local LFS had not loaded the new track (AS3 I think) so the other cars were flying around madly in space - I didn't try leaving spectator mode to join a race.

I wonder if this is a different bug related to a track change while there is a second LFS instance running, or If it is the same bug and is due possibly to having the track change while some other windows app has focus...

I think if people were more willing to put the effort into reporting incidents that break the stcc rules, then we wouldn't be having this discussion!

Not just the blatent wrecking incidents though - the ones where drivers make a mistake and cause an accident, then instead of waiting to be re-passed, they speed on down the road leaving carnage in their wake. If people expected to be reported for these kind of misdemeanors, they would be far less likely to cause the accident in the first place:
They might think:
"ooh, I better be careful here, if I take that guy out, I will have to wait for him, and I will lose lots of places == lots of points"
instead of:
"hmm if I go in hot here I just might be able to get through safely and take the place, but if not, that guy in front will be a good cushion to keep me on track, and if he loses out thats his tough luck"

I wish more people would use the report form when they see bad driving and cheating...

If all the circuits end up with huge stacks of 'physics objects' at every chicane, I won't be able to race them. My elderly system can just cope with a large field in a normal race... as soon as someone piles into a big stack of physics objects the frame rate drops to an unacceptable level (I'm talking single figures).

Then of course there's the fact that on a smaller track, once the obstacles have been hit, they stay off until the nearby track is clear - in which case they're useless.
And the problems that happen when someone loses it and ends up in the bails - the road gets filled with bails and tyres, it becomes a lottery who gets through clean and who gets catapulted into the sky

+1 for 'use the reporting system'
-1 for 'stacks of physics objects'

Quote from Cr!t!calDrift :

col, if you read the whole topic, maybe you could understand that i'm done discussing that. Next time see if the whole topic is still the same as it first started, because honestly, I was done with the whole defence of this topic.

I don't care in the slightest if you are done or not - it is irrelevant.

This is a public forum, and this thread is also public, anyone who has an opinion on the contents of the thread is free to express it as long as they stay within the forum rules.

Quote :

The things you said about me being a D0r1ftorzzzz00111111, FnF Lover (I have never seen any of those movies), choob, and console kiddy was just immature.

So i think that you were the mistaken one here.. *shrug*

hmm, maybe you should pay more attention at school ?
If you read my post again, you will see that I don't say anything about you being a D0r1ftorzzzz00111111, FnF Lover or console kiddy.
I do however imply that the 'improvements' that you want are the kind of thing that would please a D0r1ftorzzzz00111111, FnF Lover or console kiddy
If you want to read anything else into my post that is your choice, but don't start misrepresenting me...
I did call you a 'choob' though, oops apologies for that - good Scottish word though

Quote from mrodgers :

I agree with those who has mentioned they see it abused in the future.

After thinking about this I doubt think it would be abused heavily. Anyone who really wants to prevent new drivers with low lap count can already do that pretty easily (I would imagine) using insim. Also, there seem to me to be plenty of good servers run by intelligent teams who welcome new drivers as long as their attitude is good.
I can imagine some mickey taking though...

Quote :

I've seen noobs with 10000 laps on their stats....

hehe, a few days solid of Oval/BF1 then