I hope some other server owners report to this thread too.
Because honestly I don´t think new users have a hard time finding the servers mentioned in this thread.
A bigger problem is they start there and hardly every get anywhere else than FOX @ BL1 and GTR @ ASNAT
No, it wouldn't. And how would you know anything about the amount of profit they make on LFS, and whether or not the profit is acceptable or too low?
Please try to understand that a game like GT is made for the mass market. People who just want to have fun racing on their consoles not caring too much about realism or physics. FYI, I play GT occasionally at a mate's, and we have fun doing it. Do I take it seriously as a sim? Hell no, just a fun game to play once in a while.
Sims like LFS are in a niche market, with big profits not being the single most important thing. The community and devs know that, and accept that.
You however are comparing these two products like they are in the same market. They're not.
You make so many assumptions with so little insight, I don't even know where to start.
To you it's this simple: GT sells millions of copies-->LFS doesn't sell as much as GT = GT must be better.
All because millions of people play it. So because the masses think so, it must be true. I once saw Britney Spears get an award for "best singer", chosen by the masses. Go figure.
GT isn't better, but more popular, big difference. Why? Because like I already said, the mass market just wants to do some casual racing, sim racers are a minority. If you want to compare a sim like LFS in terms of price, compare it to flight simulators. A much better comparison.
Because a) the demo is free and b)people crack the game.
There will ALWAYS be more demoplayers than S1/S2 players. And that's a good thing. If the amount of demoplayers would decrease relatively to the amount of S1/S2 users then there would be a problem. It would mean less people finding their way to LFS.
It's pretty simple really. Demoplayers upgrade to S1/S2 and new demoplayers come along. Sure, some people play the demo for ages and never upgrade. And often time just because they're cheapskates complaining about the price like you. But I believe those are the minority.
Oh, and just stop calling LFS just as expensive as GT. It simply isn't.
Yep, I guess that's your problem right there
Anyway, I'm not going to explain further because I already went too OT
//edit: no, after reading your last reply, I guess the problem is that you just called GT a sim (You think it's a sim because it says so on that box you bought it in )
Actually Scawen and Eric left their job at a games developer to be able to do things their own way and not have to sacrifice quality just because some guy in a suit and tie tells them they have a release date to make.
It's funny you show that your "complaint" is made out of ignorance.
Also, you should have been aware of which cars and tracks you bought with S1, since the information is publicly available on the official site.
Why is that darn box so important to you? The production cost of that thing is probably 30 cents or something.
lol, thanks for the laugh. Another example of your ignorance.
Circles? Kyoto isn't even in S1 And that's not even a circle.
One more thing about LFS being distributed online only. I think you will find that in a couple of years more and more games will be distributed through the internet, I think it's the future and LFS is actually a step ahead of most. If you think about it it makes a lot of sense. You buy a game which main focus is providing an online racing simulation, why would you need to go to a store to get it?
And now that online gaming is much more present in the console market, you will see the same there. Some time ago I read an article about the new GT (partially) being distributed through the internet as well. You would buy the base package with some cars and tracks, and you would have to download and pay for the extra content online.
I don't know if this is still the plan, but I do think a lot will change in the distribution of games.
What does the type of distribution have to do with it? Do you really think a CD Case and a printed manual make up a big part of the price of boxed games? No, it's the marketing and profit for the developers and the middle man.
Also, the price is probably relatively higher in Canada because of the currency conversion. Console/boxed PC games here (and in most other countries) are WAY more expensive than LFS.
Indication: converted to euros, LFS costs €35. Boxed games cost as much as €60 around here.
Besides, LFS aims for quality, Gran Turismo aims for quantity. If quantity is your thing that's fine. But you just can't compare an indie game developed by three people with a game released by one of the biggest players in the market.
Ruined? Why? Because a fault is made clear and an opinion is given?
Anyway, if you're informing newbies, at least inform them correctly. Why on earth would the FOX be a F1 car? One would expect some knowledge about racing classes on a forum like this. I've seen the FOX and FO8 being called an F1, the MRT a kart, and the FXO a Nascar.
It seems people see an open wheeler with wings, and it just has to be an F1 car.
The only difference between S1 and S2 is in the content. S1 receives any other update S2 gets. So in that aspect it differs from most other games, where a new version is basically a whole new game even though it is based on it's predecessor code-wise.
I do think it would be good if the seperation between S1 and S2 servers would be taken away. So a BL race with the XFG for instance on S2 servers would be accessible to S1 users as well. The same could be applied when LFS goes S3.
It would be a different story if S1 was a seperate stage and didn't receive any physics updates for instance. I don't know how hard this would be for the devs, and it doesn't affect me personally wether they do or don't, but I think it would be a good thing.
Even better would be the ability for S1 users to participate on all S2 servers, but being limited to S1 cars and tracks (as long as the server settings permits of course), but I can understand the difficulty and security issues behind that.
not really.
what is the point of "testting" the top speed anyway? You take a car, get it to top speed.....you know what the top speed is....and then?
I'd rather see time being spend on race tracks, much more important imo.
a tga file is just a 2D picture, you can't use that on LFS cars as they use 3D wheels. Unless you would make your own wheel and use a texture for the center, which would be useless and...ugly.
Files that you would be able to merge would have to be 3DS. Files that you can import are 3DS files.
edit: Just had a quick look on that site, there's .max files in the downloads. Use that and only merge the wheels.
you click on file->merge->select the file that contains the wheels. If that doesn't work it's not a file for 3DS Max or it's for a different version.
Don't use import, but merge like XCNuse already said.
To merge two cars, save a copy of the scene, and use the same merge feature to load the copy into the scene.
Yup, it can be considered odd, but that's exactly why I mentioned earlier that in this aspect LFS can't really be compared to other games as they have chosen a different way of doing things.
And besides that, alpha doesn't necessarily say anything about the quality of the product. I feel that, as far as stability and amount of bugs are concerned, S2 can be considered a good, usable product. After all, the S2 alpha picked up where the S1 final left off, so a good solid base has been laid out already.
This can't be said about all software. Take nkPro for instance, they already released their 1.0 version, but to me it comes across as an alpha. So, numbers and tags don't say everything.
This way of working also has a lot of benefits. With most games/software, the product is developed up until the final release or late beta has been completed, leaving very little influence and feedback from the community. In LFS the entire community is able to give feedback at any stage of the development, giving them a great opportunity to contribute to the development and make their ideas/wishes known. This is great for the community and for the devs. I guess when you've been around for a bit longer and follow the test patches you'll see that the devs truly listen to the community and will incorporate it's feedback into further development. So, in a way, in LFS the community is "the fourth dev". Which, to me, is one of the great things about LFS.
True, in a way. Conscious developers will release patches when serious problems arise even after the final has been released.
However, that doesn't necessarily have to do with beta or alpha tags. There is hardly any serious piece of software that doesn't have any bugs at all.
LFS is dubbed as alpha because not all planned features are in place, and not all existing features are considered finished. In short, alpha stands for "not feature complete" Dubbing S2 a beta would be incorrect as that would imply all features are implemented. Beta stands for "feature complete, but more testing is needed to improve stability, performance, etc". The term alpha has nothing to do with the software's lifecycle.
So, in the not too distant future when all S2 features are present, S2 will go into the beta phase. And that will probably be a pretty short time, as LFS has very little stability and performance problems.
After that, the first S3 patch will be released, and the Alpha thing will start all over again
No, it isn't the final version, it's still an alpha. Why would patches keep on being released for S2 if it's a final...
Most other games are developed in a totally different way from LFS and by a multitude of developers. With most games you can't even use the game when it's still in alpha, because it wouldn't be released at that stage. So you can't compare LFS to other games in that aspect.