Quote from Scawen :

Well... time!

And as I've said before, it's based on inspiration, I don't calculate all priorities of all known tasks and work on the most important as dictated by some arbitrary importance calculation. I work in a more "human" way, prioritising of course, also concentrating on areas of code, also doing the small things that help along the way. AI didn't get any attention until recently, due to many other things that were done over the last few years. OF COURSE AI awareness was top of the list (I mean the paper list sitting here in front of me) for these last two weeks but as already explained, that could not happen (really, you must read the entire test patch forum).

I'll read through the test patch forum as things like that interest me generally and I do understand the approach (I also realise that when coding, some things are a lot harder to find motivation for than other areas), I just personally would have thought the AI would have generally been a highish priority in wanting it to function at least semi-well (knowing LFS is a WIP, I don't expect "perfection" in the first patch etc) earlier on than now. Maybe this is just a difference of opinion on what should be prioritised (in a human way).

Quote :

The only way to solve this would be to hire a team of very good programmers, and make them sign they'd never leave LFS of course, assign them different tasks and get more things done quicker. But... I doubt they'd sign never to leave, and also, that's not how we want to work. You are in a major rush, I'm not, I'm enjoying the journey!

Although that sounds a bit tongue-in-cheek, I'm no more in favour of hiring a large team than you are. From personal experience, I much prefer working solo or with a small team rather for various reasons.

While I'd like to see some things happen a bit quicker, I wouldn't call waiting 2 years for this particular area to be looked at, "in a major rush".

Although it may sound it, I'm not trying to bitch about the points I've mentioned, just a little disappointed about this part, that's all

That said, it's now xmas afterall.. so I wish you a good xmas for you and your family



Regards,

Ian

Hi Scawen..

Quote from Scawen :

Ian there's one thing you have totally overlooked - TIME!

I haven't overlooked time, I actually mentioned it in both of my posts here. "2 or more years" I think was the reference I made.

No point beating around the bush, I'll be blunt; why has it taken 2 years for the AI to even be considered being addressed?

Quote :

You are right, AI's lack of awareness is a serous lacking. And if I had been sitting around, gazing at stars, playing pool in ther pub, these last couple of weeks, you'd be right that I had wrongly neglected them!

I'm not trying to imply you were, and you know it.

Quote :

But I've recently been working 15 hour days to clear out all the bugs, don't know if you've been following the test patches but there were thousands of posts in that short time. I fixed hundreds of issues that were even more important than the AI awareness. That kind of AI programming takes some serious concentration.

There's no more I can do to explain it, oither than direct you to the test patch forum where you can read about all the bug reports, many of which were very serious. http://www.lfsforum.net/forumdisplay.php?f=66

Then, having read the entire test patch forum, you will be armed with the facts with which to judge me.

I have followed some, the sheer number was also a reason for me not trying this series of patches (I normally install them) simply as time for me is limited right now and I wanted what I had to remain working until they'd been ironed out, so I do understand you had a lot of work to do in a short period of time... but I'm still wondering why it's taken so long to even get to them? I mean, surely.. the fact the AI, being a apart of the core game having absolutely zero awareness of anything for 2 years, is a serious "bug" too?

I've looked at AI coding and it made my head spin (primarily as I never thought I'd need to know that side of maths back at school and chose to forget a lot, regrettably) so I understand that coding such AI isn't a 5 min task (I couldn't achieve it, period) and I do know you're capable.. I just can't understand why it's taken so long to look at this area of the game. Why did the clutches etc get priority over the AI for this patch? Again, I'm all for increased realism and it's something that will be a cool addition to LFS, but it seems you're adding more and more (that's then causing subsequent further bugs that need fixing, like you have done for patch Y) rather than fixing already long standing existing issues.

Time was tight for you between patch X30 and patch Y, granted... what was the problem between patch P(?) and Y?



Regards,

Ian

Quote from tinvek :

trust me the ai drive a lot better than some online drivers and when we introduced some on an early test patch server, they were finishing in the first 3 so they will give you a decent challenge to catch and past eg using the default set, my ai1 was laping in the low 1.08 s in his / her / its first race in the FBM

That sounds positive, but the lack of awareness is what really worries me. My littlen really likes LFS.. he spends hours playing it while he's here, but they AI are just so stupid, it becomes frustrating when you're taken out just because you're sitting on the defined racing line and the AI want to be there, whether you're there or not.

I know Scawen has the knowledge and ability to code great AI, the AI back in S1 days were pretty sweet! Just a disappointment that the awareness hasn't been worked on seriously yet as I thought that most of the AI stuff was planned to be resolved in this patch, and the other improvements really make little difference if they can't actually race properly. I know and understand bugs crop up and need addressing.. but it seems the AI really weren't that high up on the agenda for patch Y after all. I also know that the majority play online, but to ignore the AI for 2 years and still have poor situational awareness isn't very good, IMO as LFS does have an offline mode built-in, and some people much prefer it.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from JTbo :

[ snip ]

Every single ad company should be closed, imo. Previously part of my job was to clean up client computers from results of such ad companies actions so I might be bit over sensitive about it, but I'm pretty sure that never ever I could not support such activity.

Heh.. you're not alone there. Having run a mailserver for 6 years and hosting multiple user's mail accounts, spam / ads in general have become a real pet peeve of mine too.. I despise all advertising now, be it on TV, on web sites or in mails. It's also the very reason I didn't bother to try RACE due to the IGA. _If_ LFS ever became the same (and I seriously highly doubt it).. I'd drop it like a hot spud.

The thing that makes me laugh and cry at the same time is people who bitch about the amount of spam they get and how they hate advertising, and then say that it's ok in a game and go ahead and buy it anyway. They obviously can't be that pissed off about it afterall



Regards,

Ian

Quote from ColeusRattus :

Well, with my suggestion, people could freely chose to recieve mails or not. Also, I honestly don't think that scawen would put time in "such" a feature.
That doesn't alter the fact that people who play LfS for free complain quite a lot without benefitting it.

Don't get me wrong, I have to smile when I see demo users bitching about not having this or wanting that. While I think some demo users get a rough time here, like the tag on the makes 's2 licensed' some kind of godly resemblance compared to the 'demo user' jester's tag, I don't agree with them wanting more.

Quote :

EDIT: and if people would have to accept that their adresses are being used that way, I think it wouldn't be outright illegal

I suggest you start reading on how the laws work (IANAL) and then reconsider your above statement. Don't be fooled by the (I-)CAN-SPAM act either.

Quote :

And I was basically just taking shots at the long time demo players.

So you did forget the </sarcasm> tag


Regards,

Ian

Quote from Scawen :

No, there were a lot of actual bugs to fix, it kept me going, very busy right up until the deadline. I didn't get the few days of peace I'd need to code up their awareness and overtaking abilities.

A _serious_ let down. The only thing I was hoping for in the patch (and the reason I haven't bothered installing any of the X3x tests).

A real shame that after more than 2 years, the AI still sound about as bright as your average retard. Being able to pit, qualify etc means nothing if they have no idea how to avoid others on the track. Isn't that like going for your driving test, knowing exactly how to put in a new set of rings, but never having had an actual driving lesson?

Arse-about-face is the immediate phrase that springs to mind.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from ColeusRattus :

[ snip bullshit ]

You forgot to add your closing </sarcasm> tag, as I assume the OP was nothing but a poor attempt at humour? (if it's not, then I feel very, very sorry for you).

If you really are trying to be serious, then:

Quote :

Firstly, scavier could simply sell the registered demo e-mails and contact data

will land the devs in a whole heap of shit as this is illegal.

Please.. the preferred order of operation is:

• Engage Brain
  
• Engage fingers / mouth

You got things back to front I'm afraid, on the off chance you were serious.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Zachary Zoomy :

the best version in my opinion was the never released 0.3F. it included the LX8 GTR! it was origonaly for beta testers only but it leaked onto the internet. I've been tring to find it and no such luck.

You're really not missing out on much.. there was a _lot_ of issues. BL1 had major graphics glitches (you drove through a plain black sky as you came up the hill to the start / finish line) and the tyre physics were pretty bad (LX8 made the LX6 in S1 feel like a granny's shopping car). The current version is far better, especially the tyres



Regards,

Ian

Quote from ajp71 :

I'd hope most drivers have a rough idea because there would be no fuel gauge on the real thing (and I very much doubt it would even have a warning light). IRL the display would be used to display laptimes and engine instrumentation, something we don't have to worry about in LFS (yet)

True. I can't remember what all of the actual display readout corresponds to in the image I posted.. I just remember the overall look as I spent a while time studying many hi-res photos of the FBMW cockpit when I started (but never completed) the cockpit for the rF FBMW mod, although Nick modelled the actual wheel (very nicely too ).

Maybe the pit crew would be on the blower informing of such data if it was required, but I've never watched an FBMW race, so no idea what kind of pit technology / communication may be used in that series



Regards,

Ian

Mako:
Removing the music option probably wouldn't be a bad thing(tm). A race sim isn't really the place for such a feature, IMO, though as it doesn't literally affect the _game_ itself, it may be left in.

scooby:
There's no such thing as "an insim", so that's likely never to happen.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Ian.H :

[ snip ]

If people can keep the brokenly named files and bare with me, I'll code another tool to read the data from the setup file to get the car name and auto-fix the breakages I caused.

I'll try and get this done either tonight or tomorrow



Regards,

Ian

Hi all..

I've looked at both the .set and .col files and it seems there's nothing in them that contain any car related data. This means my original plan on extracting the car name and fixing the broken filenames isn't going to be possible

Sincere apologies to anyone who ended up with broken filenames as a result of running the first console version. I really hoped I could fix this



Regards,

Ian

Quote from JTbo :

They indeed are far better in rFactor, or was that need for speed, no wait it must been Project Torque

heh, no idea about the last 2, but rF doesn't model it at all does it? I tried (and failed) to emulate a switchable boost upgrade for my XRT conversion by doctoring the torque curves.. but this pretty much just resulted in uncontrollable wheelspin.

I'm sure LFS will model them better as time goes, but as it is currently, I wouldn't say it's anywhere close to being a selling point so to speak

Either way, the new car selection for demo is as others have said, a better representation of the full content and being an open-wheeler (while not my cup of tea), may draw some extra people in who've skipped the demo as open-wheelers are their cup of cha



Regards,

Ian

Leprekaun:

No idea about skins.. it doesn't do anything with any of the skin related files / dirs.


NeoSquall:

Are you pointing the dir browser to your root LFS directory? The util auto appends 'data/settings/' to whatever you select as your LFS root path and will then display that message if the settings dir can't be read. This will either be because you defined the wrong directory as your root path, or for some unknown reason, your settings dir is unreadable (I suspect the former ).

The dir you should be selecting for your root path, is the one containing your LFS.exe file.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from MoonForce :

wouldnt be writing a simple batch file much easier than coding an app?

anyway nice, thanx , but unneccessary in my eyes ^^

For my own use, the Perl script I coded was just fine (I don't bother with batch files these days when Perl is far superior ).. and alongside what Bob mentions, have you read the previous queries along the (simplified) lines of "WTF's DOS!?". If people can't click with a mouse and see pretty pictures, some are baffled (I mean no disrespect to those that are unfamiliar with a DOS prompt, just to me, worrying what they teach (or don't, as the case may be) in schools these days.. cmdline knowledge is _always_ useful)

As it turned it out, it took me about the same time to code the GUI tool as it did to write the original Perl script.. Borland's VCL makes it quick and easy to knock up something like this.. and at least it doesn't require some massive overhead of dependencies (.NOT for example, speaking generally here, not just for this tool)



Regards,

Ian

Quote from welshys90 :

just a small querie of when this shall be released and if its worth stayin a demo user and then gettin S3 when its released or if its a long time before it gets released gettin S2 and then upgradin to S3 when it comes out

S2 has been in alpha state for 2 years.. it's still not even reached beta.

We'll all be booking holidays on the moon before S3 is even thought about, IMO



Regards,

Ian

Quote from JTbo :

One thing I did came by, now demo has no any car that would show how well turbo system is modelled in physics wise, that could be actually bit negative thing, but overall I think change is good still.

That's a good thing, considering how badly (or at least, underdeveloped, to be more polite) the turbos are modelled in LFS.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Hankstar :

I wonder if a double-tap on the look button would be feasible?

There's a mod for GPL (GPLShift) which allows a double or triple click option for looking left/right. One click on your look button = 45 degrees, double click = 90, triple = 135 (over your shoulder at the rear wheel). You can also set custom angles. Damn useful :up:

Eek! That would be a real nightmare. Sometimes I check left / right various times quite quickly, depending on the situation.. I'd be pretty miffed to hit the button a couple of times only to find it within the incremental threshold and end up snapping my neck from looking too far round.

I don't see any problems with the current system. Maybe I got used to the 45 degrees (which I _far_ prefer) with ISI games.. it's actually something I've wanted added to LFS since before S2 was released.. 90 degrees meant that your door mirrors were just there for show as you couldn't see diddly squat in them as your virtual head turned too far.



Regards,

Ian

MP3 == proprietry, OGG == open-source

There's really no incentive whatsoever to change... and you surely have a music player? Just play music through that instead of LFS (both of which are ludicrous ideas really anyway while playing a racing game). And those "now playing" intrusions are just a royal PITA! and far more suited staying in the likes of NFS / EA games in general.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Becky Rose :

It was suggested I make a new thread for this, so here goes:

how about when you look right/left LFS points your head directly at the nearest car in that direction, and if there is none, does as it does now.

But not before all the other stuff I PM'd for !

:doh: And if I care none about the car but want to just look in the mirror or just over to a different direction? Automated "we think we know better than you" things in games are just bad jokes (DoF being the main contender for example).

When I turn my head, _I_ stop it at a sensible place to see whatever _I_ want.. my eyes don't say "there's a car.. look precisely there".

45 is far far far better than 90.. and 90 still exists... I fail to see where the problem is.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Cash_FLow :

I know but its kinda hard to see our speed and gas percentage on the speedo(the digits r a bit too little)

Maybe so, but unlike the others, the FBMW is real (ok, we all know the FO8 is an F3000 and FOX a Formula Renault, but they don't claim to be). This is how they are on an FBMW.. changing them to big mickey mouse displays like the other open-wheelers would both be wrong for the car and possibly upset whoever's involved with this BMW deal as it'd make it look cheap and nasty and non-accurate.

I doubt very much that there's a lot that's really readable on the display sitting in the real thing whilst hurtling around tracks.. there's really no reason to even be looking at it while on the move, is there? Surely people know how many laps worth of fuel they put in before they started.. and that's the only thing that needs to be thought about, IMO



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Dyllaann :

I'm not a demo drifter, it wont affect me, but, since you added the FBM and removed the XRT, it's going to drive away demo drifters. They will get mad and not want to play anymore. Well, just my opinion anyway!

EDIT: My point is, lfs will soon not be that popular, no one will buy it, and everyone will be driven away...

Sorry, sorry.... umm... you say this like it's a bad thing(tm)?

If they all left, it still wouldn't be bad thing as they have no intention of buying the game so the devs aren't hurt financially and hopefully there'll be discussions again about other things rather than "gimme gimme gimme" followed by the likes of "bodykits", "nawz", "spinners" etc etc.

Genocide worked for some people... maybe this'll help clean up the forum when the dust settles



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Cash_FLow :

Not a bug...but just a suggestion the speedo on the FBM shud be a lil bit bigger! Ive compare it with the 3 other car Formula and those r bigger then this one!

I hope this will be fix!

Nothing to fix, that's the way it is





Regards,

Ian

Quote from AppiePils :

Kind of you to say, but you didn't include the backup warning for nothing

Unfortunately that was an edit.. I hadn't originally (I took it for granted people would, but wrongly so).

I hate buggy tools and I know every tool has 1 bug at least, but that was pretty bad.

If people can keep the brokenly named files and bare with me, I'll code another tool to read the data from the setup file to get the car name and auto-fix the breakages I caused.

I'll try and get this done either tonight or tomorrow



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Sven Menkhoff :

Sorry for don´t knowing that.
That´s it, there are my missing ~100 Files

Thank you Ian, great work on that tool

A few Files endet in "setups" like _GTR_NAME.set and i don´t know from which car they are. But that don´t really matter, cause most sets are there and i have no idea how to find out from which car they was. Perhaps somebody who made a backup could reproduce that.

No probs at all. Apologies the bug has caused the setups to be named in a broken fashion, that's really not very good on my part

I've decided to scrap this console version. Really don't know what's causing the randomness in renaming issues. I've swapped this now for a full GUI based version (available in post #1). It also copies the files now rather than renaming with a checkbox option to auto-delete the originals.

Again apologies to people with issues of now broken setup names



Regards,

Ian

Quote from MAGGOT :

Could the XRG problem be releated to the fact that the XRG files are named 'XR GT' and the XRT 'XR GT Turbo?' It might be getting confused somewhere in there; maybe the XRT string is being applied to the 'XR GT' files too?

It shouldn't do.. it grabs all chars up to the first '_' in the filename and then strips the spaces from it. XR GT_TURBO would fail as a valid setup name, so issues should be expected if that was the case, but I doubt this is common

I think it may have simply been tied in with the regex bug I had checking the entire path rather than just filename.



Regards,

Ian