Ok I've found something a bit odd.

I just managed to obtain my Bronze licence and so I thought I could join RACE 2 server. Well when the server let me in I assumed I could drive there with a Bronze but then when I go to choose any of the available cars it says you need a Silver license to drive them.

Errr.. maybe I'm being dumb, but what's the point of letting people on the server if they can't drive any of the cars? I can't believe anyone is going to want just to spectate surely??

Quote from Stefani24 :

doesnt look bad, now the grass texture and the road, and u have a beautiful blackwood.

I did the grass, though admittedly it's subtle. If you look closely you'll see it's a bit different. Colour wise that is, I'm not good enough to actually change the texture !

What do you suggest for the road?

First off this is just a bit of fun. I was a bit bored and thought I'd mess around with Gimp.

Anyway, take a look at the two pics see if you can spot the difference.

I couldn't work out which files were for the main trees otherwise I would have done them too.

Ps - I hope doing this kind of thing isn't against the rules. If it is can a mod remove the attachments.


Texture pack now available for download here:

Blackwood Autumn Pack.zip

I take no responsibility for it messing up your LFS install. The textures work fine on my PC but it's on a Patch Y20 install so I've no idea if they will mess up a Patch Y installation.

Last edited by gezmoor, Fri 30 May 2008, 15:59.

Quote from NotAnIllusion :

The problem with the current way the CTRA mid-race is implemented is that it's easy to bypass the "once per race" restriction by rejoining the server. On busy tracks like fe1 and so3 sometimes it ends up being a constant cycle of
- join midrace
- crash
- pit
- leave server
- join server
- rinse & repeat

Perhaps if the x-system remembered who has already joined, even if they leave the server, so that they can't rejoin twice a lap.

Whilst that would be a good idea under the circumstances you mention, unfortunately it's not the only circumstances under which you are deemed to be joining the race by the system. eg go to garage and forget to set the fuel level correctly for the race, pit and remember you didn't do it before actually driving out of the pits, go back to garage to correct your mistake and when you then go to join you get: "you may not join - car is being repaired" popping up. Unless there is something like being able to detect someone actually exiting the pits, then what you suggest can be problematic.

Personally I wouldn't allow mid race joins, but I accept that the decision has been made to do so. It also seems apparent that there are people that can only seem to think about themselves and just don't want to have to be patient etc when it's their turn to be a mid race joiner. No surprises that these are very often the people that complain the loudest about others who get in their way as mid race joiners. There also seems to be a strong belief that "being quick" makes them immune from having to adhere to any rules or racing etiquette in general, (in LFS in general - not CTRA specifically).

Unfortunately much as I enjoy LFS I do get tired at times at the (inevitable) fact that because there is no real danger associated with the racing that the definition of "clean" racing is far closer to that to be found in stock car racing than would ever be found on a real track. There is far too much contact and barging going on IMO and its mostly seemingly accepted too. If I had the money and the time I would love to host a server where every single physical contact was subject to scrutiny with the potential to become the subject of a "stewards enquiry" as would often be the case IRL.

Quote from AndroidXP :

How about, not at all? AA/AF is not forced, you know...

Well it appears to be. At least in my experience you turn it on just to try it out and then it refuses to turn off again.

That's under Vista with the latest nvidia drivers (1175.16).

I have to say that since starting to play LFS I've become much more sensitive to what my car is doing in real life. Things that I never really noticed before such as the delay between turning the wheel and the car actually starting to turn, the transfer of weight (or rather the the time it takes) etc.

I believe in this way, LFS has helped me to become a smoother driver on the road.

8600 GT here. I've never had any of the problems stated in this thread so far. Only issue I've had is with the AA etc not working in CP with 169.xx drivers.

Having said that I tried patch Y20 and set the AA to max in that and ever since I've not been able to get rid of AA in LFS, even though I have two installs on my PC, Patch Y and Y20. Both now have AA no matter what I try. I actually saw a similar thing in patch Y18 with the 169.xx drivers but put it down to a driver glitch because of that known AA bug in those drivers. As far as I'm aware though the latest drivers dont have that issue, so I'm beggining to suspect the way AA is set in LFS is global.

Either way, I'm not too impressed.

Quote from duke_toaster :

FO8 is good how it is, there's Euroseries 3000 which uses F3000 machinery IRL. A GP2-style car would be nice, but there would be little difference. If we want a new slicks + wings single seater, either a ChampCar or IRL type thing would probably be more unique.

True, however it was purely because they were so similar that I thought of the swap. A bit of a case of something for nothing was what I was thinking. Won't really make any difference to people already playing the game, but might make a difference to whom it attracts.

I agree an american style Indy car would be interesting too.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Why does it need to be 'up to date'? Is a F3000 clone not good enough? Which year of GP2 car would you prefer, and will you complain when they change the mirror design and LFS still uses the sidepod mounted mirrors...?

Just race. Everyone has the same beautifully handling car, so have fun. The 'age' of the car doesn't matter a jot.

Any real reason to take such a confrontational attitude?

Firstly, I'm not complaining. I'm just opening up a discussion. There is a huge difference.
Secondly, I'm not suggesting a pedanticly exact replica, just a tweak which will make the F08 in to a generic GP2 car.
Thirdly and lastly, why does it matter? Well probably because to attract new purchasers you have to have a relatively modern looking product, (unless you're specifically aiming at the retro market). GP2 is current, it's even on mainstream TV, F3000 isn't, (and never was as far as I'm aware). Given that it's such a minor change to the specs of the car, I wouldn't have thought it would be such a big deal for the significant increase in saleability it would give LFS as a product.

Other than that I couldn't care less whether its a F3000 or GP2 clone, I'd enjoy driving either just as much. I'm just trying to give back a little to a game I enjoy by making a constructive suggestion.

As per title.

A little modding could easlily turn the F08 in to a GP2 clone.

Both V8, GP2 is 600bhp rather than 450 and 4ltr rather than 3ltr.

Apart from that they're both 6 speed, have no electronic aids etc

GP2 car specs: http://www.gp2series.com/en//w ... idegp2/about-gp2/our-car/

A small change that might help bring the game a little more up to date? Thoughts?

Ok fair points the request system is open to abuse, I had thought of that but I thought I'd throw it open for debate anyway.

Of course if you ask for a set you should be ready to save it, but the problem is timing. Even if you're prepared, you have no control over whether the other person spectates or disconnects immediately or maybe the race starts and then you loose the set that was sent.
Even if you are sitting there waiting for it, as has been said already you may not get one so you're sitting there staring at the text waiting for a "sent setup" message that may never appear.

I still think the best solution is an auto save system where the set is actually sent when the text says it is and is automatically saved. I don't see the point of making things less user freindly when there is a way of preventing it being so with no negative impact.

Quote from i_MAXIBON :

a couple of pages late but can i just say


HAHAHA "more sophisticated colours"



i need another wine. great work on the everything as usual please feel encouraged despite the "sophisticated aesthetic critique" being "offered"

The day I insult your point of view on aesthetics, (or anything else for that matter), is the day you have the right to insult mine.

Just ran Y20, (as a separate install from patch Y), and set the AA and AF settings to max. All seems to work fine but .... then I switched back to Patch Y, the AA settings (and presumably the AF), are still applied, even though before running patch Y20 there was no AA.

Even restarting the computer doesn't get Patch Y back without AA. Even resetting my global driver settings in the nvidia control panel doesn't restore the AA back to default in patch Y either.

How can this be? Makes me a little concerned about how LFS has altered my graphics drivers.

Running Vista Home Premium with 1175.16 WHQL drivers

Edit - Even setting the AA and AF back to none in patch Y20 doesn't turn them off, (either for Y20 or Y) !!


Totally different issue.

The mapped buttons in my Wheel profiler don't work in Patch Y20. If I start the profiler then start patch Y seperately, (ie not from the profiler), everything works fine. If I do exactly the same thing and run Y20 the buttons I've mapped to shift+P, Shift+J, Shift+R and Shift+S don't work. I haven't checked all the buttons but it would seem only the wheel, pedals and gear shift paddles are working, (as these are directly mapped in the controller options in LFS). So looks like Y20 is not talking to the wheel profiler software maybe?

Last edited by gezmoor, Thu 22 May 2008, 21:12.

Quote from morpha :

FYI a right-click equals ten left-clicks
€: and you can enter exact values by right-clicking the slider

I guess that's a classic case of RTFM then huh?

Ok well problem solved, case closed.

Thanks.

Currently when you want to change a value in a set, (eg rebound damping or gearing), you have to keep clicking to change it.

My suggestion is that if you click and hold down the mouse button the setting value starts to scroll.

For example if you want to change 1st gear from 2.030 to 3.125, you can use the slider which brings it roughly close but then you have to click the pointer at either end of the slider, (usually around 10-30 times), to get the exact value you want. I think it would be better if once you get approximately there using the slider you can hold down the pointer and the value will just increase or decrease automatically in what ever the increment value is for that particular setting, (eg gearing would be 0.001).

Thoughts?

Simple idea really.

Don't loose the set that someone has sent you when they/you go to spectate or pit etc.

It would be better if you could receive a set at any time. At the moment you have to be in pits or race and so do they. If either of you go to spectate or a new race starts etc you loose the set they sent and have to ask for it again. I'm assuming this is because the set isn't actually sent until you get to the "save" point.
It would be better if the set were actually sent to your pc and automatically saved with their name at the time they send it to you. Then when you go to the pit you will find it there whatever happens "in game", at which time you can rename it as you please. I don't really see the purpose of having to manually "pick up" sets that have been sent.

Another way of doing it might be to have a "request setup" (RS) next to the driver name on the connections list. This will pop up a request on their screen telling them who's reqesting and they can choose to send, deny. This will pop up text on the requesters screen saying "<driver> denied request" or "setup received from <driver>"

To be able to provide decent voice quality the VoIP part of the game will have to have priority over processing. This can only lead to a detriment in performance of the core physics processing. The physics processing is only going to get more CPU intensive as the game develops, so yet another real time processing element to the client will only make on line gaming worse.

On top of which how would it actully be implimented? P2P or through the LFS server? I would imagine it would have to go through the particular server that you're racing on. There would be a not insignificant impact on server resources use if there was voice packets flying between all the different players back and forth between the clients and the servers.

Then there is the issue of all the rubbish that people will use it for as already stated.

All in all, a bad idea.

I appologise if this has already been mentioned, (and appologise again if it already does it and i'm just being blind), but it would be good if the graphs could have a track position (ie distance) as well as time. Time makes it difficult to compare braking points and throttle positions because faster/slower drivers will reach the same points on the circuit at different times.

To clarify. Could we have the X-Axis have distance as an option for the Gear/Throttle/Brake/Speed graphs etc. Rather than time as it is currently.


Edit - Scrap that, I've just found the Sync button.

Thanks.

Last edited by gezmoor, Thu 22 May 2008, 16:05.