Quote from duke_toaster :

There are some versions for GR, but as seen as it's not a matter of converting the track, just recreating it in 16 colours, choosing the right objects and creating the hmap to built the mini-me of the track. GR forever

hah.. one of my first GR tracks was Blackwood.

I never completed it really.. fully raceable but in dire need of looking better

BL1 with MRTs are cool



Regards,

Ian

Quote from kyler :

were is that detach at? if u have msn add me [email protected] and u can walk me through

Hmm.. go back into normal mesh mode (click on the 'polygon' entry in the stack again). Make sure the trailer mesh is still selected, right-click and select 'Convert to editable poly'. Now select 'polygon' from the stack again and re-select the polys as you have in the screenshot above and the rollout on the right should change to a much larger one.. in there you'll find the 'Detach' button.

I don't have MSN, sorry.



Regards,

Ian

There's 1 and a bit

Stu (Madcowie) created a Blackwood Rally-X.. it's not quite the same, but close enough... and I have a basic track layout of Westhill modelled (but unlikely to be finished seeing as rF was never more than a poor beta release).

Converting them isn't an option unless someone was to write a SMX->3DS importer or similar AFAIK. If it was possible to get the meshes into 3DS, it'd be a simple task to get them into rF, couple of hours work or so and a few more to do the AIW / cam files. Longest part would be creating bump / spec maps for all the textures.

As for the Blackwood in nk, there's an old version of the BL1 mesh around, but it's untextured and has no texture coords either, so you'd have to map it completely and seeing as it's already built, it's a PITA using spline mapping for track corners etc.



Regards,

Ian

Last edited by Ian.H, Sun, 27 May 2007 19:43.

If you wanted to create an opening door for example, select the polys for the door and in the rollout on the right, hit the 'Detach' button and from the popup, select 'As Object'. Now the door is a completely separate mesh for you to do with as you like.

For best results after that, I normally then select the 'Pivot' tab from the top-right of 3DS and adjust the pivot point for the door to where the hinges would be, you can also set a min / max angle IIRC so that you can make the door open and close to specific angles.. much easier then to control when you open / close the doors with the rotate tool for various scenes



Regards,

Ian

Torrents _aren't_ illegal no more than FTP is. What content you download with them however, may be different.

harjun.. if you grab a copy of brazil from splutterfish site (IIRC, it's still available, but not easily seen on the site.. I haven't looked in a long time).

After that, reading the .NFO file(s) that are posted on my site with the scene downloads, and also packed with the actual download, it should be enough to get you started.. a few clicks and you'll have a render

As for tutorials, there's an abundance on the net covering everything you will and won't want to know

For shiny floors.. maybe one of the materials in this collection will suit you



Regards,

Ian

F-Prot, ClamWin, ClamAV.

Norton is just a joke.. for example:

Coder writes a virus with their nick as a comment in the code.
Norton then discovers and detects it.
Coder changes his nick in the code comment to something else, rest of code (virus) unchanged.
Norton doesn't detect it.

(and that's not a fantasy tale, it happened here with some tests some years back)

Not the sort of app I'd _ever_ rely on

Make-A-Fee was the same too



Regards,

Ian

Quote from VTiRoj :

Hmm, odd. I downloaded the drivers from the NVidia site, which turned out to be older than the ones I have already. I installed them anyway, knowing I could system restore if anything went poop. And it did go poop. After the drivers installed, LFS refused to open. So, a system restore later, and I'm back to square one.

It seems I have pretty much the most up to date drivers, so I'm sure the GFX card itself is the problem. However, it has no warranty, and I dont have the standard item either. Guess I should really take this to a computer shop.

I had the same with certain mods for F1C a couple of years ago.. I fixed it by _downgrading_ my gfx drivers to an older version. Never found out why it happened, only that I managed to fix it with older drivers.

Maybe you'll need to test a few older versions and find one that works (assuming it does eventually).



Regards,

Ian

Quote from anik360 :

I agree city driving is taking the fun part out of lfs out which is fun and racing. I mean come on, ppl race to take the city life driving away and flooring it for fun racing against virtual thrill seekers where as they are doing exactly the same thing in lfs following some gay rules like they are in a city. those tc things are taking the fun away from LFS

I think it's lack of updated content that's driving people away from "fun racing". LFS cars feel nice to drive, so they don't want to abandon it entirely.. but are sick of the same tracks (I don't care how many combos there are, many won't like them all so will stick to a selection of tracks) that they'll try anything new to keep an interest.

Driving normally in LFS doesn't appeal to me.. enough restrictions on real streets to contend with, but can understand why people are trying something new.

Just my £0.02 worth



Regards,

Ian

Quote from wheel4hummer :

[ snip ]

I just can't stand when people come on here and complain about the "big buisnesses" and stuff.

So you still have nothing to actually contribute to the thread.... one may wonder why you actually bothered replying in the first place

[plonk]



Regards,

Ian

Hi all..

I've come across some confusion with the SPR file format that I thought I had sussed a long time ago

There's 2 entries for names:


Obtaining both of these is simple enough, however, I always thought that 'real player name' was infact the same as the LFSW username.. but it would appear that's not the case because I have some replays with both '[dSRC] Ian.H' and just 'Ian.H' specified for that entry.. but know my account username is simply 'Ian.H'.

I was hoping to use this as a filter method allowing for a Username match (as player names can be variable) but I'm obviously misunderstanding the purpose of the 2 values. The local player includes colour codes whereas real player doesn't, but some of my replays have different values for both (ie: real player: 'Ian.H', local player: '^1[dSRC] ^2Ian.H') or sometimes the same (except for no colour codes in real player).

Can anyone shed some light on these values and exactly where the 'real player name' is derived from?

TIA



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Tweaker :

What are you smoking today? Lotus 7 is the primary chassis and body design many companies have used for years (50 years to be exact). Is it just a coincidence that the LX looks EXACTLY like one?

heh, I have to disagree here.. from the images (and real cars) that I've seen, the LX is more closely modelled (visually at least) to the Westfield than Seven

That said, I agree with yours and other's points.. whatever a new LX car maybe (if it ever came about), it needs to really be in a class of its own (unless a multiclass race between LX6 and itself.. and by that I mean deliberately unbalanced, like N-GT / GTS etc).

I also think those body mods for the Donkervoort ruin the car's appearance at least. I'm very much a "yesteryear" person with regards to car designs, most these days, including supercars and "hypercars" look like kids have been let loose with a pack of crayons (the Zonda immediately springs to mind). The LX* has character, something different to the majority... some wider wheels, "cheap slicks" and some more power would be all I'd personally be looking for... again that said however, I think the LX6 now is a really nice car to drive.. but can still bite ya hard on the rear-end if you cock it up.. is there really a need for something that will probably drive like the LX6 did in early S2 versions? (ie: terribly!).

Would far sooner have existing bugs fixed and new track environments than any new LX.

Just my £0.02 worth.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from kcvpr :

any pics of the lx8?

Most was untextured, hence the crappy plain "chrome" exhausts and I wasn't very good at texture mapping at the time.



Regards,

Ian

Hi all..

0.3.0.66 has been released, with the biggest part of the update being MPR file handling

See [POST=407199]first post[/POST] for ChangeLog / download info.


MPR display screenshot attached



Regards,

Ian

Quote from UnresponsiveBeeVictim :

I'd venture to guess that the possibility of having an insecure server is more the reason, rather than traffic.

Considering the number of botnets currently around, normally caused by idiots opening the likes of 'sexwithdogs.scr', you think an insecure web server is an issue?

My ISP (blueyonder) also have rules about what can / can't be done with a residential connection. I remember this as they threatened to terminate my contract ~5 years ago unless I removed my web, mail, FTP, and IRC servers.. I needed to buy their business package (at about 10 times the amount per month). Like fsck did I.

Yesterday alone, my mail server rejected 24 unique blueyonder IPs attempting to deliver spam.. web server security is really the least of Joe Sixpack's / ISPs problems.

blueyonder's reason was simple (although they didn't explain)... money, not traffic, not security.. the fact I was running a server on a cheaper connection thus they were "losing money"... it's always about the $$$ for big companies... most don't even know what security is themselves, let alone how to worry about their users



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Bob Smith :

[ snip ]

I want to be able to choose how much width the site uses.

[ snip ]

I think you hit the nail square on the head there Bob. Users decide how their boxes operate / what views they wish to use etc, trying to force something on them doesn't go well with many.. the number of times questions have come up in web dev / PHP etc newsgroups for "how can I force..........." and the normal answer is either "you can't" or "you shouldn't force anything.......".

One example for me is sites that unnecessarily force javascript to be required for something as simple as pagination (even when not using Ajax style calls).. sites that try to force things upon me are normally skipped as there's plenty of others available that don't



Regards,

Ian

I haven't checked into IE7 much tbh (need to install it in vmware as I'm not infecting my main box with it).. but you're probably right in it being buggy (isn't everything about IE? ).

That being said, I'd guess that IE6 is probably the most popular version of IE currently, which pretty much makes IE7's implementation null&void for a long time to come yet anyway.



Regards,

Ian

Last edited by Ian.H, Fri, 18 May 2007 12:08.

Keiran: Granted, will give ya that was no problems with what I could / couldn't see.. I just cringe whenever I see a horizontal scrollbar on sites


Kev: I normally have a max / min width / height at least once in a site, min-height in particular to pad out main content areas to balance floating <divs> etc.. but of course, I also have to duplicate the CSS entry with a standard width / height attribute to keep IE happy and this doesn't always work out well (god how I hate that damn app! and wish people would learn that it's crap and use an alternative that actually follows standards). Does IE7 yet support it? Unfortunately it's typical m$ bollox where they seem to think their methods are far better than the set standards.. but always fall miles short in reality ("multi-user OS" anyone? hah) but yes, I really wish those attributes at least were more strictly followed in some of the more popular browsers.. the same goes for form element styling in Opera

Web development is made so much harder than it need be due to crap like this IMO



Regards,

Ian

Last edited by Ian.H, Fri, 18 May 2007 12:01.

Your first site Keiran produces a horizontal scrollbar for me at 800x600 browser window size as your header image is 800px in width and doesn't allow for the browser's vertical scrollbar.

Just an observation



Regards,

Ian

Quote from thisnameistaken :

There is an ideal number of words per line though, more than that and text becomes more difficult to read (unless line height and/or font sizings changes dynamically as the browser window widens - which isn't possible without scripting). That's why I still work to (mostly) fixed-width layouts, so I can make sure the text works well.

I guess so (not something I complain of myself) and do sometimes look at pages I've coded and think they look bare if there's only a few shortish paragraphs.. but when resizing to smaller res' it works out.. but then other pages that are much fuller look strange in the lower res sizes.

Quote :

FTR I prefer to use em sizings wherever possible. If you've got the same resizable units in use for both the text and the whitespace around it, then users running non-default sizings will at least still get the ideal ratio.

I use em units for fonts always and normally use a mixture of px, em and % for design areas.. often depends on what I need and of course, hacking things to work in "do as I like" apps, namely IE

Quote :

I agree, but I don't agree that this credo necessarily means you need a fluid-width layout.

Agreed. That was more of a general statement than fixed / fluid layout, but I didn't clarify

Quote :

People with both narrow and wide browser windows can use a narrow web page, and IMHO a narrow web page is usually preferable to a wide one anyway, regardless of the size of the browser.

It's not something I've done a "poll" on personally, just gone by client / user responses but agree that narrow would fit for the majority, but that does mean having to keep it below 800px width, but as mentioned above, not everyone has a full 800px width to play with even if that's their screen res.. different OSes / browsers / themes may even have different width scroll bars changing the actual browser rendering area etc. At least with a fluid layout, you can almost guarantee it'll fit regardless of render area.

That said, this is all naturally just my opinion, there's no real right or wrong way



Regards,

Ian

All's still working fine for me here. My app is still collecting PB and WR data correctly at least.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from nikimere :

You cant please everyone.

heh true, I've lost count how many times I've redesigned a few bits for a current client after they'd showed the ideas to a few people who all had differing opinions

Quote :

For an aesthetics point of view fluid sites just look crap in most cases.

Maybe using a 1280x1024 res has blinded me as to this reason, but I much prefer a site that will utilise my entire browser window than a small block in the top left corner of it.

Quote :

I have never seen anyone leave a browser side bar open permanently. Maybe you do, but you are one of few.
You cant please everyone so for me i always for for the majority, forget the one of two bad apples

I don't know off hand of anyone either, I don't personally use it at all.. but IMO, a web designer should cater for _everyone_ (or at least as many as possible) rather than a select few. This is also the reason I _never_ design "flash only sites" or have javascript without a non-javascript fallback (ie: using href="javascript:......" or href="#" onclick="......." is just a recipe for disaster).

I'm draconian as such for my viewing habits. JS, Flash and Java are all disabled. JS gets enabled via 'noscript' in Firefox for sites I deem worthy.. for the most part, just like Flash, JS has been abused by scum and ad pushers so it suits me.

Personally when I design sites, I check them initially with Firefox as it's my daily browser and conforms to W3C standards pretty well, then I check in IE and Opera.. and lastly Lynx.. to make sure that it breaks down nicely when JS / CSS etc isn't available (phones (although this may have changed these days?), screen readers, etc).. I think you should always aim for the biggest audience, not a collection of people, unless you're designing an intranet or something for a company

Everyone will have their own methods / styles.. but fixed width sites are a real annoyance to me personally as most are designed to ~740px wide and thus occupy a small strip down the left side of my screen.

Just my £0.02 worth anyway



Regards,

Ian

Quote from nikimere :

Oh god no, scaling is the worst thing ever. It sucks for people with wide screens.

But you can resize your browser window to something more square.. making it fixed width but larger than someone's physical screen res means they have no choice but to leave your site and visit the next one that works

I haven't written a fixed width site in years, and never once had any complaints from clients.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from dodo.ger :

no free ones, but traktor dj studio is nice, worth getting it.

Yup, used this too.. pretty cool.. although nothing beats actually having your hand on a piece of vinyl to control it (I hate CD mixers, period.. I like to see grooves )



Regards,

Ian

Quote from SamH :

Since I'm just about done updating the UKCT main website, I'm now starting on planning to revamp the rather sucky (and totally cobbled-together) CTRA licence webpages (http://licence.ukct.net) and make something a bit more cool. You'd never believe, looking at that stuff, that I actually started out as a graphic designer.

I'm going to go back to MY roots for the site design (i.e. design it first, then build it). I'm going to make it multi-page, rather than try and get everything on one page as it is now, and I'm going to make it driving/racing themed. I'm going dark for this one.. mostly because I haven't done a dark-themed website in a looong time. I have the design already in my mind's eye, and that's not what I'm looking for advice on. The problem is dimensions.

I'm going to design the site to a fixed width. I want to retain a level of control over the layout that I'm not going to go variable width. But what dimensions should I design for. Historically, I've designed for an 800x600 browser window, but these days I don't know ANYone who's using less than 1280 pixel width monitor. Most people I know are using 1600 or 1900+ widescreens. IS there any point in catering for an 800x600 monitor in this day and age?

I've done a bit of research on the web, and all the pages I've seen so far are still suggesting that you should design to 800 (760px). The newest page I've seen, though, was last updated in 2004. I reckon we've moved on since then. No?

Your thoughts are gratefully received!

Fixed width == bad news and can _never_ be accurately determined.. so what if someone has a 800x600 screen res.. they might also have a sidebar open in their browser making their actual viewing area maybe 640x600.. not to mention other silly sidebar type contraptions on their desktop making the area smaller still.. fluid designs are always much more adaptable and fail to see why people even consider fixed width formats.. this is 2007, not 1997



Ian

Quote from rjm1982 :

@Ian...

So, basically, you think you deserve everything for free then?

I didn't say that and have no problem paying for things I want.

Quote :

Re: the websites/ads. When you are viewing a website, you are receiving a service, you are gaining information. Space and bandwidth aren't free. Eventually, someone has to pay for it. You expect service for free, even if the payment is simply to have to see an ad...thats a bit greedy isn't it?

I go to great lengths to block ads, including DNS null zones, firefox adblock rules and various firefox CSS edits.

I know all about web sites, space and bandwidth.. it's been part of $DAY_JOB for the past 5 years.

It's not greed, greed would be where I took everything I can and gave back nothing... on the contrary, I give back a fair share of what I take too, in various formats.. whether that be coding something for someone, hosting a web site for free or some other "favour".

Quote :

As far as the downloads in the game go, it is a huge chunk of bandwidth to serve all of those file.

No doubt.. just as I use a fair chunk of bandwidth on a monthly basis too.. but you won't ever find even a 'donate here' link on anything I have.. it's just not the way I work. As I said, maybe the costs of sold licenses could have funded this.. maybe not, it's not something we'll find out or entitled to know.. it's just not something I'm for paying for when I have other avenues that I can take.

Quote :

And, you must charge your clients for your services, correct? As the consumers of the game, we are the clients...clients get charged for services.

Of course, just like I was charged for my S1 and S2 licenses. Do I charge for everything I do? nope. Infact, I've just finished adding around 30 hours of extra work for a client's site that I finished a few months ago. I haven't and won't be sending an invoice. I've also coded (twice, once being a major overhaul / update) and hosted for 4 years another site for a local voluntary organisation. I've also done a fair bit for a few communities and continuing to do so, all free.. I'd never consider charging for my time or downloads in this respect.. it's just how I am. Sure, I'm far from the only person on the planet to do someone a good turn, but you made it sound like I just grab everything and give nothing.

Quote :

But alas, you don't need the skins anyways, so why even post. After all, most skins aren't "worthy" enough to reside on your precious hard drive.

Many skins aren't, but I have my "favourite artists" so to speak, of which all post their works either here or at master skinnerz.

This is a public forum for posting opinions etc isn't it? Last time I checked, I was part of said public

Quote :

Here's the deal though. Some of the best skins I have come across so far, have been from the in-game download. A lot of people don't post on the forums or elsewhere with their designs, as they design just for themselves. If I get 3 or 4 good skins out of the few bucks I spend, then the way I see it, I've come out ahead.

Fine.. the people's work who I like do post here and elsewhere.. so we both win

Quote :

And by the way, Open Source has nothing to do with free ($$) software. Open source is about free as is "freedom", not the money. Many many many OSS projects are for-fee... with that, you must not really be that much into open source...you would have known that.

Of course, but much of the open-source community is about "free". There's _very_ little open-source code that I've paid for, but have a lot of things installed across my 3 BSD servers and some open-source / freeware on my windoze box.

Maybe I should have extended open-source to include Freeware / Public Domain.. I grew up with the PD and BBS era, maybe that's my downfall.



Regards,

Ian