Nah the translator wasn't crap, Captain Slow's german was

So you're a tractor loving Becky obsessed thermoman then? *runs*
All I can say is, don't kill me too much at Donington

Hiya all,
For about the past week I have had a problem with LFS when I try to load any of the Fern Bay tracks. It gets to Lighting Info and crashes completely. The only error I get is the Windows default one (LFS.exe has encountered a problem etc).

I have not replaced any data files from LFS with any from replacement packs, so I can rule that out as being a cause. Any other ideas?

Quote from Captain Slow :

ok then, what about..... 5 a side footie with one of those (see below)

Now THAT'S what I'm talking about! Pure genius!

Quote from Captain Slow :

naa, 5 a side hummer (or any other stupidly big gass gussling vehicle)football, the cheater is the ball.

Nah, we want them to die a painful death, the Hummer would kill them in one hit, would be no good

Quote from Captain Slow :

make a badge saying "i own 7 toyota prius`s" make them wear it, then lock them in a room with jeremy clarkson.

ROFL!!! Here's an idea: Prius 5 a side football, and the cheater is the ball

It's not THAT bad in Leeds...you just need to avoid the chavs...which there are a lot of...remind me to pack my shotgun when I move on the 11th

Another good punishment would be to shove them in Death Valley for a couple of weeks...with no water

Quote from thisnameistaken :

They should be forced to visit every pub in Leeds wearing a Chelsea football shirt.

Then they should have to go round them all again wearing a Manchester United shirt, then a Millwall shirt, then a Cardiff shirt...

Quote :

What I meant was that why they haven't updated the XP since it's launch. The installation cd (OEM) I got did have SP2, but no sata support (drivers) iirc.

As said, SATA was not really fully developed at that point, and all the SATA controllers that are on the market nowadays simply didn't exist. WinXP SP2 does, however, have support for SATA itself, which is why drivers were quickly written. As you probably saw when you installed XP, it recognises it as a SCSI/RAID interface, which is not always true, but for hardware support it is enough to get it working at full speed.

The main reason XP doesn't have SATA drivers built in is that it never has had. SP2 was introduced when SATA was in it's preliminary development, and it was not that certain that it would become the standard it is today.

As a sidenote, Vista's SATA support is much better, and you will be able to load drivers off USB sticks too, instead of just a conventional floppy. I won't be using Vista though, I'm a Linux man now :-D

Despite the fact I am a Linux user (I am writing this on a Linux box) I am against a Linux LFS client. Why? Simple: It would detract for the sim. If LFS was to be ported it would take time away from Scawen that would be better spent implementing new features in the current Windows client, such as the improved AI etc.

Another thing that would happen is that the Linux version would run slower than the native Windows port. I have seen this trend for all the games I have tried that have both Linux and Windows clients. Take UT2004 for example. On the SAME machine I get 20-40fps lower on average than in Windows, with the same graphics options.

I am also happy running LFS in Cedega. The shadow bug was solved for me by just disabling shadows altogether, and I do not need FFB, as my wheel does not support it (I have a Saitek R220). I may get a lower FPS, but it is better than it not running at all, and saves Scawen a lot of time.

The final thing that I would disagree with the Linux client idea on is the idea of unlocking. If someone was to, say, update their kernel (which is pretty common, considering kernel updates are released pretty much every few days) would that waste an unlock on that machine? If the way that unlocking works on Windows was used, yes. It is all well and good directly porting the game to Linux, but if it is going to lock itself again after a kernel update, then what is the point in it?

Forbin: In all the SATA controllers that mimic IDE that I have seen, the ports are each assigned a Master/Slave configuration by the motherboard ie the first port will be master, second slave, third another master on a different channel and so on. The main reason for this is that the conventionat master/slave/cable select jumpers on IDE drives don't exist on SATA ones, so the motherboard needs to handle that side of it.

Hyperactive: The Ultra you were referring to is nForce 4 Ultra, which is the chipset on it, which supports SATAII. You will be able to take the compatability jumper off and run it natively. If it doesn't work, then my bad, I am wrong on that occasion.

The issue of the ports is a strange one, which I can't seem to get my head around. But as long as both drives work, that should be all that matters at this point, and the issue with one motherboard should not put you completely off SATA. It is, after all, the future of Hard Drives, and when faster physical media is around then it will be fully utilised, unlike at the moment.

Last edited by JohnUK89, Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:42. Reason : Few mistakes made

There are several revisions of the particular motherboard you have (namely, SLI, F and Platinum). The Platinum and SLI models suport SATAII, while the F doesn't. If you have either the SLI or the Platinum you should be able to take the 150MB/s jumper off, and run it natively as a SATAII drive. If you have the F, however, the drive will not function without the jumper being present.

I know this may sound like a silly idea, but have you tried using the 320GB drive attached to the first SATA connector? If it works that way, check the 160GB drive with the second connector. If neither drive work with the second connector it could point towards a problem with the motherboard. If it doesn't, then it is almost certainly an issue with your new drive, and I would contact the store/online shop you bought it off and get a refund/replacement as soon as you can.

I once had LFS running on a P2 466MHz box with 128MB RAM and an ATI Radeon 9200SE. I could only have one car active, otherwise the frame rate would drop to about 2 or 3, but when I was driving alone I got 8-10 frames out of it.

Did not! Ner Ner!
PC World are such idiots at times, yet another reason to avoid them completely

In the example SamH gave, if you bought 2 £30 games, with the Buy One Get One Half Price offer, you would save £15 overall, for a total spend of £45. If you bought two games seperately and saved 30% on each you would save £9 per game for a total spend of £42, and a total saving of £3 more than the BOGOHP offer. (Just had to clear that up, since Sam didn't quite get what I told him about it in TeamSpeak)

Last edited by JohnUK89, Thu, 24 Aug 2006 01:17. Reason : Typo fixing

Yep, well done to both of the new mods, may they come down from the heavens and banish the crackers! :-D

Why no DX10? For me it's simple. It would break compatability with Cedega. I was pretty chuffed when I got LFS working under Linux, and I do not want that to go. I am actually considering getting rid of Windows altogether, and any implementation of DX10 into LFS would mean I would HAVE to install Vista, which (as I'm sure many others will agree) might not be the best option.

Quote from Frankmd :

Whats wrong with deleting them in windows?

I don't know which ones are obsolete from Windows, They're all auto-saved ones. Plus it would be good to be able to delete replays that you don't like, before you quit LFS. would save time

Quote from ORION :

when it's done

That has a hint of Duke Nukem Forever sprinkled in it, I think

Nice work on the test patches Scawen, some really good stuff has come in with them. As was said further up, I would like to see a replay deletion feature at some stage, I have a load of obsolete replays I want rid of.

The FZR has a LOVELY whine at mid-to-high revs, it really makes the car worthwile to drive ^_^
For the worst sounding car, I would say the UF1, I'm not sure whether it's the engine, but it really doesn't do much to make me think "WOW!"

My vote goes to Electrik Kar, his work is amazing

We have a follow up, courtesy of CTR:John with photo copyright of SSR CD :-P

We already have one oval in LFS...why have another? Driving round an oval all day gets incredibly boring, there is no real skill involved in it at all, you just fond a slipstream and abuse it. Nothing else about it. Instead of this 8 mile long oval we should have a le mans style 8 mile long race track, would be much more exciting.

While I await a lottery win () I play LFS on the system below:

CPU: AMD Sempron 3000+ (Skt 754, 64bit) @2.25GHz
Motherboard: ASUS K8S-MX
Graphics: 256MB GeForce 6200
RAM: 1024MB DDR400 @ DDR408
Monitors: Acer AL1916W + Dell P791 (Can only run LFS on one at a time though)
Sound: Sound Blaster Audigy
Case: Cheapy Evesham thing from back in 2001
[EDIT]Forgot me Saitek R220...most important bit of me rig!

Last edited by JohnUK89, Sat, 12 Aug 2006 17:28.