Hi beefy..

Found the post I was looking for

Thanks to SpeedyKev for posting it over on our team forum



Regards,

Ian

Hi beefy..

I've never used bigrender myself.. but I _think_ if I remember from posts asking a similar question, there's a setting somewhere to use it from the render tab.

It'll still only render to a maximum of 512x384 but it will render the image in sections of that size. You then take the individual images and paste them into a single image in something like photoshop and voila! one big render

Have a look in the render settings window, pretty sure you'll find the bigrender info there.. but I'll also try adn find the thread where this was answered for definite a while ago



Regards,

Ian

Replica of the Mitsubishi Starion Turbo gauges

Would be nice to see something textured in LFS too



Regards,

Ian

Quote from brendaga123 :

I used the player hacker but i couldn't use my police racing suit to go with it.

You could, but LPH wouldn't display it as your custom suit as it uses a collection of built-in images.

I've updated LPH again to cater for your query.. now you should be able to display a preview of your custom suit instead of the built-in standard suit



Regards,

Ian

Hi all

2.0.1.2 released.

A query was posted on our team forum regarding using custom suits with LPH. LPH doesn't actually store or use any such data, but I've now made it possible to display custom previews.

See [POST=442477]post #1[/POST] for info on how to achieve this.



Regards,

Ian


(ps: Could a mod remove the version number from the thread title please? I can then use this thread for any future releases with less confusion ).

Quote from Shotglass :

ok hypothetical question
assume its 1940 and youve only ever heard of any f1 track (monaco maybe) on radio and someone sat you into a very f1 looking car in lfs on south city ... would you know the difference ?

[ snip ]

Was just about to follow up with something along these lines too. At some point, Silverstone for example was just a dream someone had, scribbled it on paper (or maybe slate with chalk? ) and then the excavators moved in.

Cars the same, someone has a dream, sketches a car, makes a 3D model either digitally and / or via a mould and some get put into production.

Eric sits at home, has a dream, scribbles some notes / drawings on paper.. models them and releases them as part of LFS.


Seems to be somewhat of a pattern there to me



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Mike85 :

The question is clear. Would you be please if LFS stayed fantasy only. I wouldnt. But Im surprised at the poll results. Why dont people want real cars and tracks? Someone not being honest?

Why do some people desperately want real cars and tracks? No matter how much you want to dream it, you're not a professional racing driver racing for his years salary.. it's a game played at home in an office chair for the most of us.

Fictional, you can make tracks as imaginative as you like (within reason of course if you want it to be believable) and for a snippet of the licensing costs.

rFactor has just about every track you have and haven't heard of available.. does it make it a good game? no.. because so much else is flawed with it.. I'd personally far sooner see more fictional tracks and the current tracks updated to give a little more atmosphere.. such as washboard effects in braking zones.. varying degrees of roughness in grass and "deepness" of gravel traps.

Same thing goes for cars really.. driving a car in a sim is _nothing_ like driving a car for real and most people won't drive the cars in the flesh they're asking for in LFS anyway, so you'd never have anything to compare.. so that makes the real / fictional debate kind of moot for the majority of people IMO and as sims / real cars are completely different, even pretty much moot for any real racing drivers.



Regards,

Ian

fb: Sorry if you comment has flown straight over my head.. were you asking if I need to fix anything? or was it a light hearted comment in reply to my "when I update things....." comment above?


Dan: At least you do make contributions and I think a "drifter" saying something is "pointless" is quite a cute remark no matter what it is


ITBRTI: You can't edit the player name in the text field.. this value is taken from the filename as it's not stored anywhere in the PLY file itself. If you want to change the name to create a new profile, just open an existing PLY file, make the changes you want and save it as a new filename.. it'll update the player name text field with the new filename once it's saved



Regards,

Ian

Hi nav..

As you're just starting out for now, it might be easier to grab a copy of the free brazil version available from Splutterfish's web site and then do a web search for 'bigrender' (free too). That'll enable you to use my scenes without having to mess about (yet) and be able to render large images via bigrender. At least you'd be able to get some results quickly.. then you can spend some time learning and changing things like the materials to use whatever renderer you like

I think most people here doing renders started that way.. now many just use my scenes as a base and modify the hell out of them to create much better / more interesting scenes for themselves.. I do too

If you do want to change materials.. hit the 'M' key to open the material editor window and select the relative material ball for the car. You should see a list of material slots. Click on each one in turn and just under the balls to the right, you'll see the 'Brazil Mtl' Davo mentions. Click on that and you'll see a long list of material types.. select 'Standard' from the list. Now you'll need to load the texture again by clicking the small empty square button next to the 'Diffuse' colour.. adjust the specular / glossiness values etc to get the look you want.

There's no right / wrong settings per-se so I can't give you a 'click this, change that to 100, make this grey' etc instructions.. but hope the above is useful anyway and always remember this takes time.. I've now been doing it for a couple of years now on and off and still nowhere near as good as some.



Regards,

Ian

sid: I'll drop you a PM to sort it out


herki: The installer's not actually that big.. LPH.exe == 1.94Mb, Installer == 1.96Mb. The previous version contained loose image files, this one has them embedded as a .RES file and the main reason the binary's so bug (the 34 images in the RES file total 1.3Mb).


Bob: Yup.. as I slowly get around to updating things, they'll all adopt a "standard" of sorts


Ghost: Do you mean that you can't see any .ply files in the Open dialog? or something else?




Regards,

Ian

Current Release: 2.0.1.2


Hi all

Been meaning to do this for a long time, but finally got around to updating LPH

Bugs fixed, more driver styles selectable and updated UI.

Download available from:

http://www.clue-by-4.org/viewtool.php?t_id=3

Note: Uninstall any previous 1.x.x.x versions before installing version 2.


2.0.1.2 Notes
Custom suits can now be displayed within LPH for better representation if you've modded these. To get them to display:

• Make a note of the suit texture that you've replaced with your own custom design.
  
• Take a screenshot in LFS from the 'Player' screen like the other preview images in LPH. For best results, this image should be 260x500 px.
  
• Make a note of the driver number in LPH that represents the suit you've replaced.
  
• Save your preview image you've just made from the screenshot in the 'LFS Player Hacker/data/custom_suits' directory relative to the driver style number you replaced, so if you replaced 'Suit_A' which might be driver style '32', save your preview image as '32.jpg'

Now when you browse, if a custom suit is found matching the current driver style number, it'll load that as the preview rather than the built-in image



Enjoy :drink:



Regards,

Ian

Last edited by Ian.H, Mon, 4 Jun 2007 16:15.

Quote from duke_toaster :

So that's no to an FPA, A1GP or ChampCar then

I wouldn't drive them if they were in the game anyway.. not an open-wheel fan in the slightest.. tintops all the way for me and preferably street cars like the TBO / LRF classes



Regards,

Ian

Quote from VTiRoj :

4. I've always liked the idea of boost control in the TBO's, but that would be only good when engine damage and cooling effects are properly modeled.

When I say boost control, I mean a set up slider like 5psi |------|----| 20psi or similar, and you slide it about. Of course higher boost = engine heats up much faster, which is why we need good damage modeling.

I don't think any cars in LFS (at least currently) would have such a system.. most of these are aftermarket add-ons aren't they? I know mine was and it only had a 2-way switch... 25psi or 40psi but naturally wasn't running a stock turbo either



Regards,

Ian

None.. I don't see any cars in LFS that would warrant it.

Maybe we need to have Kitt added for S3 :cool:



Regards,

Ian

Just came across an old ad I did for something to do, may as well post it here



Regards,

Ian

Hi Fisch..

Quote from Fischfix :

i am not sure what causes it, but if i put only let's say 15 replays in the mpr folder. it loads those 15 replays without a problem.

It'll depend on the player names in each of the replays. If none contain a ` char, all data will load just fine (the reason I didn't spot this bug before I released this version).. but I hex-edited one of my MPR files and changed my name to include a ` char and was able to reproduce the bug.

I'm rewriting the entire replay reading / parsing functions atm as I've had to rethink the method I was using to be more reliable and stable.. hopefully I'll have this completed over the weekend



Regards,

Ian

Ahh good point.. something I forgot to consider which would definitely make an aggression type setting worthwhile.

IIRC, the skill level is global.. so setting it to pro means all the AI will behave as pros etc rather than being able to add a varied field.

Apologies for the confusion.. been over 2 years since I raced against S1 AI and forgot this (rather important) detail



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Fischfix :

i got the error message: list index out of bounds (2) when opening the program. then it says: Building replay list, but nothing happens. i let this run for 10min. but nothing happened, so i quit it, tried it again several times with the same results.

Thanks Fisch.. once the error is displayed, that's it.. it won't load any more info and won't hide the 'building list' message.. it's a bug I need to fix unfortunately.. but am working on it as I type this



Regards,

Ian

Quote from mattupson :

As for insurance, so far i've found Direct Line and Quinn Direct the cheapest.

MoreThan have proved good to me for insurance, especially if you have family already insured by them.

DirectLine gave me a quote for £620 for a 3.0L Merc, fully comp.. MoreThan took £505 off me for the year, fully comp, legal cover, hire car, yada yada



Regards,

Ian

Thanks for that too buedi.. I've tracked the bug and thought I fixed it last night, but alas....... back to the drawing board

The bug's caused by any replay that has a player name containing a ` char in it. For some silly reason, I used that as a delimiter for splitting up the results of the MPR files but obviously, if that's found "where I don't want it", it screws up the number of array elements and throws the List Index error.

Stupid me decided to use AnsiStrings for this info, so I need to rewrite that as it's just not happening how I want.

Glad you like the other bits.. there's some more "goodies" added too for the next non-bug fix release.. just need to tidy some of it up before beta testing it



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Becky Rose :

If it involves a car, then it wont be cheap - check the Oxford English Dictionary

Car, noun
A financial sink hole. Some models prettier and more desireable than others. See Woman for similarities.

HAH

Quote :

When I was learning BSM had a reputation for getting you past your test rather than teaching you to drive, but then, that was a LONG time ago.

I think this stems back before BSM (Bollox School of Motoring it was always referred to then).. was something my Mum was told when she was taught waaaaaaay back in the day and something that was relayed on to me... "now you've learnt to pass your test, you can learn to drive".. was pretty accurate too although my instructor (small firm) was cool and taught well for £12 a lesson



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Electrik Kar :

They're pretty brutal wreckers currently, mostly at the beginnings of races where you can almost be certain that they'll trip you up- that's the most annoying thing about AI's at the moment; they seemingly just have no respect for the spacial boundaries of the human driver(s). It would be neat having them anticipate collisions to a degree so that they make adjustments to keep out of the way (or maybe Scawen could allow a setting which controlled AI aggressiveness).

I don't think there's any need for the aggression part if they return to how they were in S1 days.. as the n00b, ok, pro etc settings worked pretty well and if you let them drive for say... 50 or 60 laps (preferably with a mixed grid so they learn overtaking too) they could be quite a challenge sometimes and definitely knew where you were on the track and tried to avoid you but still race hard.. as you say, right now, they have no spacial awareness and follow a fixed path, whether you or any other objects are on it or otherwise

Out of F1C, GTR2, rF (if you can call rF's AI and mean Intelligence with a straight face that is ) and LFS, LFS used to have by far the best AI of them all, IMO



Regards,

Ian

Last edited by Ian.H, Thu, 31 May 2007 15:28. Reason : damn typos!

Quote from Scawen :

Well I got it as a bug report and thought I might as well fix it, as I've been fixing a single player thing here and there on my way. Next thing on the list after patch X is to sort out the AI drivers. Although that's not what everyone cares about, there are a lot of people who do use single player.

[ snip ]

Despite my rants and raves from time to time, I'm _really_ glad to hear the AI are going to be addressed sooner than later. I had some really good AI races back in S1 days when they functioned very well after running some laps of their own.. and my littlen loves LFS, but isn't ready yet to race online yet, so will be a welcome update for him too

Hopefully it'll help some n00bs learn to race before they enter online races and destroy them for others too.. maybe wishful thinking, but there's a few people I know would sooner train offline so not to disrupt others until they're a bit better.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from navarro967 :

two more renders i did using blender tilll i learn how to use 3d max7
1 http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p257/navarro967/2.jpg
2 http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p257/navarro967/1.jpg

Cool

One thing that'll help the renders look better dude... if you open up I think it's the 'XR_INTERIOR1.DDS' (or TGA if you converted it) file in Photoshop or whatever, you'll find a small white square outlined by a dark colour. Paint that white square either black or very dark grey. It's the area in the texture used for the likes of the window rubbers, the rear diffuser, under the wheel arches etc.

It's the same for all the cars, so you'll need to do it for each one, but will definitely make the render look better and more realistic



Regards,

Ian

Hi fel..

Quote from felplacerad :

I get "List index out of bounds (2)" when the application tries to update/refresh/retrieve my replays.

Thanks for the report, I'll look into this

Quote :

I've also got a improvement suggestion:

If a particular replay is recorded with for example 0.5U10, look for LFS_U10.exe and use that rather than LFS.exe

Ahh, hadn't thought about that as I only have 1 install. I'll look at sorting something for this too.

Quote :

And oh, 'date' column would not hurt.

Already added in my current dev build



Regards,

Ian