Yeah, I saw it... but as a developer, as must do, I have NIH syndrome, also it doesn't really do much that I already have done. 
CMS systems I tend to steer away from... but will have to check it out. And yes, one of the goals for a PHP framework is to rewrite my RLM (racing League Manager) that currently powers LOTA.
Guess I need to go back and review it again.
Dunno to me that was one of the most useless parts of Cake; along with the scaffolding (in more than just cake).
However, do you know any decent sample apps for the current Zend framework?
Dunno to me that was one of the most useless parts of Cake; along with the scaffolding (in more than just cake).
However, do you know any decent sample apps for the current Zend framework?
PHP Frameworks...
Just curious what people might be using as far as the plethora of php frameworks out there.
I've used:
CakePHP - Did not care for it; poor documentation and poor execution.
CodeIgnitor - Used it, seemed ok... although there is a fair amount of work to do for a website like authentication, etc. Really good documentation. (I was the one who created the Sentry auth. component, but lost all my CI stuff in a HD crash... sigh).
Currently trying:
Prado - Somewhat similiar to ASP.NET (which has its pluses and minuses... although some of ASP.NETs minuses are huge); decent documentation. Not really sold on it.
Have tinkered with:
Symfony - I was just left with the 'bleah'; code generation is ok, but I'm not really a huge fan of it because often it ends up causing more work.
QCodo - Um... way too much code and ui mixed together.
Zodo - Again, just sorta left me bleah.
PHP2Go - Might be interesting, some nice AJAX form examples, but all documentation/forum is pretty much in Portugese (if its not obvious, I don't speak Portugese
YellowDuck - Seemed ok, but nothing jumped out at me.
Zend Framework - Really more of a pieces, not an integrated framework solution.
PEAR components - Individually some are great, but hey don't always work well together. Significant work to mesh to understand options and then mesh them together.
I avoided must of the "Ruby on Rails" ports, because I find "Rails" too confining. Same with ports of the java Struts framework as its a bit long in the tooth these days.
There were a few others I looked into, but I tried to eleminate any that were mostly a "one person effort", had no forum or significant community interaction, etc.
Anyone got any good recommendations, something I missed, something to add? I know I was looking mostly at PHP5 support, use of PDO (or other database wrapper... not sold on ORM solutions even in compiled frameworks), Ajax support, decent seperation between UI and code (preferably without use of smarty, etc. templates... because frankly I'd just rather use PHP syntax rather than YetAnotherSyntax), and so forth.
I've used:
CakePHP - Did not care for it; poor documentation and poor execution.
CodeIgnitor - Used it, seemed ok... although there is a fair amount of work to do for a website like authentication, etc. Really good documentation. (I was the one who created the Sentry auth. component, but lost all my CI stuff in a HD crash... sigh).
Currently trying:
Prado - Somewhat similiar to ASP.NET (which has its pluses and minuses... although some of ASP.NETs minuses are huge); decent documentation. Not really sold on it.
Have tinkered with:
Symfony - I was just left with the 'bleah'; code generation is ok, but I'm not really a huge fan of it because often it ends up causing more work.
QCodo - Um... way too much code and ui mixed together.
Zodo - Again, just sorta left me bleah.
PHP2Go - Might be interesting, some nice AJAX form examples, but all documentation/forum is pretty much in Portugese (if its not obvious, I don't speak Portugese
YellowDuck - Seemed ok, but nothing jumped out at me.
Zend Framework - Really more of a pieces, not an integrated framework solution.
PEAR components - Individually some are great, but hey don't always work well together. Significant work to mesh to understand options and then mesh them together.
I avoided must of the "Ruby on Rails" ports, because I find "Rails" too confining. Same with ports of the java Struts framework as its a bit long in the tooth these days.
There were a few others I looked into, but I tried to eleminate any that were mostly a "one person effort", had no forum or significant community interaction, etc.
Anyone got any good recommendations, something I missed, something to add? I know I was looking mostly at PHP5 support, use of PDO (or other database wrapper... not sold on ORM solutions even in compiled frameworks), Ajax support, decent seperation between UI and code (preferably without use of smarty, etc. templates... because frankly I'd just rather use PHP syntax rather than YetAnotherSyntax), and so forth.
I'm not sure how portable that is between browsers; I know that IE has what is referred to as a XML Data island, but as NAI points out its probably better to use an XSL stylesheets to transform the data you want.
A couple of quick ways of doing XSL is to allow the browser to do it, i.e.
You can use the XSLT document function e.g. document('file.xml')
to load XML resources. Note that in the browser with normal security settings the same origin policy applies meaning you can load XML data only from the server the original document comes from.
Or visa versa and insert a stylesheet into the XML document as such as...
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="print.xsl"?>
where "print.xsl" is name of your XSL stylesheet.
http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/ is a decent starting point on using XSL stylesheets.
A couple of quick ways of doing XSL is to allow the browser to do it, i.e.
You can use the XSLT document function e.g. document('file.xml')
to load XML resources. Note that in the browser with normal security settings the same origin policy applies meaning you can load XML data only from the server the original document comes from.
Or visa versa and insert a stylesheet into the XML document as such as...
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="print.xsl"?>
where "print.xsl" is name of your XSL stylesheet.
http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/ is a decent starting point on using XSL stylesheets.
This is a text field...
System.Windows.Forms.TextBox tb = new System.Windows.Forms.TextBox(); // creates a new textbox
tb.Text = "whatever"; // sets the text of the textbox.
this.Add(tb); // adds the textbox to the form, represented by this.
This is a button...
System.Windows.Forms.Button btn = new System.Windows.Forms.Button(); // creates a new button
btn.Text = "whatever"; // sets the text of the button.
this.Add(btn); // adds the buttonto the form, represented by this.
Or better yet, just drag-n-drop it onto the form itself in the VS editor; this is pretty basic stuff though.... there are tons of tutorials on doing WindowsForm programming in .NET on the web.
System.Windows.Forms.TextBox tb = new System.Windows.Forms.TextBox(); // creates a new textbox
tb.Text = "whatever"; // sets the text of the textbox.
this.Add(tb); // adds the textbox to the form, represented by this.
This is a button...
System.Windows.Forms.Button btn = new System.Windows.Forms.Button(); // creates a new button
btn.Text = "whatever"; // sets the text of the button.
this.Add(btn); // adds the buttonto the form, represented by this.
Or better yet, just drag-n-drop it onto the form itself in the VS editor; this is pretty basic stuff though.... there are tons of tutorials on doing WindowsForm programming in .NET on the web.
Eclipse ain't bad; its does have some oddities to it that I've never really adjusted to since it debuted back as Visual Age in like '99 or 2000. I definetly prefer it over netbeans for Java development.
Cool..
LOTA (www.lfs-lota.net) has something like it called the RLM, but its for the most part specific to LFS... unfortunately it was also built into SMF (I suggest avoiding this forum like the plague) and since its majorily modifies large swaths of code it can't be released due to licensing in SMF (and the lack of communication by the SMF team) easily.
LOTA (www.lfs-lota.net) has something like it called the RLM, but its for the most part specific to LFS... unfortunately it was also built into SMF (I suggest avoiding this forum like the plague) and since its majorily modifies large swaths of code it can't be released due to licensing in SMF (and the lack of communication by the SMF team) easily.
Yup, usually caused by developers doing tasks that are too long. And yes there are some issues (especially in VS2005 that weren't in VS2003 but seem to be taken care of in VS2008 betas) with inheritance and controls moving, etc.
That's pretty much all of version 2.0.
WPF/WCF/WWF(when is the WorldWildLifeFoundation going to sue?!) is 3.0 so it makes since it'll come out later. LINQ is still beta along with all the other 3.5 stuff so I would not expect it to come out til much later.
Nonetheless, will be interesting to see the code as written (like you can with Java... which in some cases is horrific) instead of through IL interpreters like Reflector. Especially when dealing with ASP.NET. Basic .NET code is great, Windows Forms is pretty solid, but a lot of the design choices, etc. made for ASP.NET are just assinine.
WPF/WCF/WWF(when is the WorldWildLifeFoundation going to sue?!) is 3.0 so it makes since it'll come out later. LINQ is still beta along with all the other 3.5 stuff so I would not expect it to come out til much later.
Nonetheless, will be interesting to see the code as written (like you can with Java... which in some cases is horrific) instead of through IL interpreters like Reflector. Especially when dealing with ASP.NET. Basic .NET code is great, Windows Forms is pretty solid, but a lot of the design choices, etc. made for ASP.NET are just assinine.
Ok,
Thanks for the head's up. However, it should be noted that there are more and more InSim apps being created for new 'game types', to league tools to allow leagues to run more efficiently, so InSim really is becoming a key component of LFS (that separates it even more from the other simulation offerings).
Thanks for the head's up. However, it should be noted that there are more and more InSim apps being created for new 'game types', to league tools to allow leagues to run more efficiently, so InSim really is becoming a key component of LFS (that separates it even more from the other simulation offerings).
FYI, the VB language is not dying. It is fully supported is VisualStudio.NET.
The Java/.NET platforms are pretty much identical in terms of what they bring to the table, except the Java platform is more cross-platform, but there are options such for doing .NET cross-platform such as using Mono, and if a GUI is needed WxWidgets .NET wrapper, etc. Both are just as powerful as the other. Besides those two there are other virtual machine paradigm platforms available depending on your needs.
There is absolutely zero need for doing C/C++ anymore unless you are writing drivers or performance oriented (such as low-level APIs, databases, graphics engines, etc.) software and even then in many cases its not always a cut-n-dry advantage over virtual machine based paradigms.
Gotta pick and choose based on you (or your project/team/etc.) needs and what best fits those needs, not just accept that X is bad because someone said so.
But yes, the InSim structs only state what part of the byte array make up what data values. So what you need to do is take the byte array and pull out the relavent parts, such as bytes 5-12 of the IS_VER packet and convert that into a string. There might be a method in VB that does this for you, or you may need to do it yourself. Word, etc. types are a bit tricker. Seems, from a quick glance, Stuff's VB code has working examples of this.
In LFSLib (as far as using VB in VB.NET), sd plays some games with unmanaged code to basically take a byte array and copy it into a structure. See the GetBytesSequentially() method of the PacketFactory class.
As far as *not* using libraries; there are pluses and minuses to this.
A minus is you are re-inventing the wheel so are putting a lot of
time and effort into something that if you put your time and effort into your codebase that furthers your goals.
Sometimes re-inventing the wheel is good if you feel you can do a better job than someone else. Which is why there are so many dang 3D engines, or as an example in open source world so many logging libraries, etc. for any number of languages. Most programmers frankly have a "if not invented here" syndrome.
Plus in not using them is then you pretty much have written everything you are going to need from the ground up so you should have a great knowledge of whatever you are attempting to accomplish.
But really the bottom line is that just about everything is a library of some sort. All the languages, they are really *just* a library for spitting out machine code.
The Java/.NET platforms are pretty much identical in terms of what they bring to the table, except the Java platform is more cross-platform, but there are options such for doing .NET cross-platform such as using Mono, and if a GUI is needed WxWidgets .NET wrapper, etc. Both are just as powerful as the other. Besides those two there are other virtual machine paradigm platforms available depending on your needs.
There is absolutely zero need for doing C/C++ anymore unless you are writing drivers or performance oriented (such as low-level APIs, databases, graphics engines, etc.) software and even then in many cases its not always a cut-n-dry advantage over virtual machine based paradigms.
Gotta pick and choose based on you (or your project/team/etc.) needs and what best fits those needs, not just accept that X is bad because someone said so.
But yes, the InSim structs only state what part of the byte array make up what data values. So what you need to do is take the byte array and pull out the relavent parts, such as bytes 5-12 of the IS_VER packet and convert that into a string. There might be a method in VB that does this for you, or you may need to do it yourself. Word, etc. types are a bit tricker. Seems, from a quick glance, Stuff's VB code has working examples of this.
In LFSLib (as far as using VB in VB.NET), sd plays some games with unmanaged code to basically take a byte array and copy it into a structure. See the GetBytesSequentially() method of the PacketFactory class.
As far as *not* using libraries; there are pluses and minuses to this.
A minus is you are re-inventing the wheel so are putting a lot of
time and effort into something that if you put your time and effort into your codebase that furthers your goals.
Sometimes re-inventing the wheel is good if you feel you can do a better job than someone else. Which is why there are so many dang 3D engines, or as an example in open source world so many logging libraries, etc. for any number of languages. Most programmers frankly have a "if not invented here" syndrome.
Plus in not using them is then you pretty much have written everything you are going to need from the ground up so you should have a great knowledge of whatever you are attempting to accomplish.
But really the bottom line is that just about everything is a library of some sort. All the languages, they are really *just* a library for spitting out machine code.
Don't think so... see the LFSLib; it handles InSim, OutSim and OutGuage along with the relay server.
Scawen
Here is the link that contains a bunch of my suggestions based on work I have been doing while creating a bunch of league utilities.
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=28010
Here is the link that contains a bunch of my suggestions based on work I have been doing while creating a bunch of league utilities.
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=28010
Cool... any word on any of the other suggested/requested/etc changes?
Sadly you are right, it doesn't. Although I do drool at the thought of someone with the budget of say a Forza 3 making a cross-platform high-end racing simulator (with included arcade mode of course.)
Really, says who? Where's a mission statement and rules and regulations for this "arena" that states explicitly that handles are not welcome?!
But anyways, doing so smacks of exclusionary practices and isn't cool. In order to grow, if its your bent, any "professional sporting" out of simracaing, you have to grow the community. By being exclusionary, then you aren't helping to grow the community.
In a related example, ripping on other sims really isn't in the best interest of the overall sim racing community. Maybe they aren't "your" cup of tea, but someone else likes them.
Likewise, I may not, personally, find much attraction for CTRA, cruising or drifting, but they grow the LFS (and by extension the sim racing) community which can only be a positive thing if there are folks out there that want to see "professional sporting" events happen.
Mmms... well, Viper, I can honestly say that LOTA has no such aims. We are attempting to create a league racing platform for LFS in the western hemisphere (and hopefully spreading the word about LFS a little bit in the process), but we have no illusions about professional sports.
I personally, its not really something that's an aim of mine so when discussing new things concerning LOTA I don't think of it that terms.
That being said.. go check out the cyberathletics arena and see what names are being used there, and they already are "professional" with lots of corporate sponsors running around. Anyone using a "Fatal1ty" motherboard? If so, guess where that came from? That's right, the "cyberalthetics" and a "handle" used in FPS games (and others).
So I think that relative success of the FPS/RTS cyber athletics sets a trend for a "professional" venue to sim racing.
Does SRT have a mission statement that says they want to promote professional sim racing? I don't recall that from the first installment, and they don't have an "about us" or "mission statement" on their website either, so hard to say.
I personally, its not really something that's an aim of mine so when discussing new things concerning LOTA I don't think of it that terms.
That being said.. go check out the cyberathletics arena and see what names are being used there, and they already are "professional" with lots of corporate sponsors running around. Anyone using a "Fatal1ty" motherboard? If so, guess where that came from? That's right, the "cyberalthetics" and a "handle" used in FPS games (and others).
So I think that relative success of the FPS/RTS cyber athletics sets a trend for a "professional" venue to sim racing.
Does SRT have a mission statement that says they want to promote professional sim racing? I don't recall that from the first installment, and they don't have an "about us" or "mission statement" on their website either, so hard to say.
We do not not require (or will require at this time) the use of real names (or initials, etc.). Besides some real names are worse than the "LFS handles" that most people use in and around the forums and online. The "LFS handles" are those that our drivers normally race online with, so by using them they are more easily recognizable when out and about. Names people are familiar with like Forbin, Banshee, rcpilot, DeadWolfBones, Tweaker (back in the F08 series), Burnsy, Zolt, etc. Use the <F. Last name> nomeclature and no one would make the connection. So in a way its a publicity move.
And really if you check on the list (http://www.lfs-lota.net/index. ... a=series;sr=drivers;id=20) of drivers you get the following names that are easily said and pretty much get the following:
PeterLaan (happens to be real name), CWMax, Stu, BigTime, Banshee, Daniel, Jose, A.Terrahe (real name too), sweetchop, Mischief, G, Danke, NightHawk, Pacman, cannonfodder, Zolt (me), Jose, Merc, Spinjack, Burnsy... and so forth.
Of those I'd say A.Terrahe is the worst one to say, heck I'm not even sure exactly the appropriate Dutch pronuncation of it is.
So if there was an issue with the submitted material, especially when they are asking for help from the community and more specifically leagues, they need to commnunicate back and let the submitter(s) known.
Actually I'd like to see them put together a 'submit league/series results document' that describes what they are looking for; not just be vague about it. Do you want top 5 results only? Do you want all results? Season results only or season and last race? Do you want us to write up a race report? Do you want produced footage or raw footage, etc.
And really if you check on the list (http://www.lfs-lota.net/index. ... a=series;sr=drivers;id=20) of drivers you get the following names that are easily said and pretty much get the following:
PeterLaan (happens to be real name), CWMax, Stu, BigTime, Banshee, Daniel, Jose, A.Terrahe (real name too), sweetchop, Mischief, G, Danke, NightHawk, Pacman, cannonfodder, Zolt (me), Jose, Merc, Spinjack, Burnsy... and so forth.
Of those I'd say A.Terrahe is the worst one to say, heck I'm not even sure exactly the appropriate Dutch pronuncation of it is.
So if there was an issue with the submitted material, especially when they are asking for help from the community and more specifically leagues, they need to commnunicate back and let the submitter(s) known.
Actually I'd like to see them put together a 'submit league/series results document' that describes what they are looking for; not just be vague about it. Do you want top 5 results only? Do you want all results? Season results only or season and last race? Do you want us to write up a race report? Do you want produced footage or raw footage, etc.
We don't have anything using the TBO, no. And yes, there will be a 6 week break before the next season of the GTRs. We will be offering a 4-week mini series in that break time; not sure what it'll be... we've run a rally championship and a mini-GTR championship so far.
Here's one that is not dead or outdated...
http://lfs-lota.net
Both the GTC and the MRT CC Cup are current series with updated standings, stats, etc. And I know we sent in results.
In fact we do have RSS support for it...
http://lfs-lota.net/rss.php
That's only news... probably will have an rss feed with the latest standings, etc. at some point.
Might behoove SRT to have RSS of their own to announce when the new SRT and weekly videos are up... that way sites like LOTA, CTRA, STCC, etc, etc. can easily update themselves.
http://lfs-lota.net
Both the GTC and the MRT CC Cup are current series with updated standings, stats, etc. And I know we sent in results.
In fact we do have RSS support for it...
http://lfs-lota.net/rss.php
That's only news... probably will have an rss feed with the latest standings, etc. at some point.
Might behoove SRT to have RSS of their own to announce when the new SRT and weekly videos are up... that way sites like LOTA, CTRA, STCC, etc, etc. can easily update themselves.
Last edited by Hollywood, .
Well currently we have the MRT Custom Cup running on Monday nights, but we have been pondering what to do once that is up as our course guy won't be able to do it after that.
One of the suggestions was a random course/car with using the GT, LX, etc. cars as opposed to the race cars.
Yes, typically the premier and micro-series run on Thurs.
We are more than willing to host other series running in the western hemisphere as we already have servers available, a rules base, a series management system (constantly involving), and an established base to draw from!!
The only thing would be that typically we'd like to see different types of series rather than just the same old, same old but on another night. I.e. the MRT cup has been a success and has been quite different, but there are some technical limitations in LFS for it.
One of the suggestions was a random course/car with using the GT, LX, etc. cars as opposed to the race cars.
Yes, typically the premier and micro-series run on Thurs.
We are more than willing to host other series running in the western hemisphere as we already have servers available, a rules base, a series management system (constantly involving), and an established base to draw from!!
The only thing would be that typically we'd like to see different types of series rather than just the same old, same old but on another night. I.e. the MRT cup has been a success and has been quite different, but there are some technical limitations in LFS for it.
Yes the MRT Custom Course series runs on Monday night and the GTC (which runs GTR cars in a WTCC/BTCC format) runs on Thurs. night.
I know I never said there was, and no I don't think there is.
Yes you are right, it has had *some* positive effect. But its also not the end all be all either which sometimes overzealous enthusiasts can make it out be.
But I also think that having experienced, quality drivers (whether fast or slow or somewhere in between) out and about in general has a positive image; especially the fast (but not alien quck guys) because people ask "hey, why are you so fast" and the answer is "I don't screw around, I try and watch lines, pay attention to what I'm doing and don't go pellmelling around. Here, spectate and watch my lines for a lap or two". Another positive.
That same thing goes for the drifting community... there are those that just think spinning the car around, running into the things, or whinning about where all their hop-ups are is "drifting"; it's not and having the good drifters out in public for emulation purposes is a good thing.
I think some of them are beginners, but some of them are new LFS drivers and being a new LFS driver doesn't automatically make you a n00b, begginer, newb, or whatever.. just means you may have come over from another community. And with a ladder system, everyone has to start in the mail room and work their way up so yes, you are going to get more "n00bish" issues in your lower servers than you might elsewhere. Also note that there is 'something', how meaningful that is depends on your view point, and when something is "on the line" then there is always going to be more friction, more contention. Thats just the way of competition.
Yes you are right, it has had *some* positive effect. But its also not the end all be all either which sometimes overzealous enthusiasts can make it out be.
But I also think that having experienced, quality drivers (whether fast or slow or somewhere in between) out and about in general has a positive image; especially the fast (but not alien quck guys) because people ask "hey, why are you so fast" and the answer is "I don't screw around, I try and watch lines, pay attention to what I'm doing and don't go pellmelling around. Here, spectate and watch my lines for a lap or two". Another positive.
That same thing goes for the drifting community... there are those that just think spinning the car around, running into the things, or whinning about where all their hop-ups are is "drifting"; it's not and having the good drifters out in public for emulation purposes is a good thing.
I think some of them are beginners, but some of them are new LFS drivers and being a new LFS driver doesn't automatically make you a n00b, begginer, newb, or whatever.. just means you may have come over from another community. And with a ladder system, everyone has to start in the mail room and work their way up so yes, you are going to get more "n00bish" issues in your lower servers than you might elsewhere. Also note that there is 'something', how meaningful that is depends on your view point, and when something is "on the line" then there is always going to be more friction, more contention. Thats just the way of competition.
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