Quote from magicaldog :

Have I missed something cause driving the formula 1 car in past 170 K it feels like driving in about 10 K. Absolutely NO sense of speed OR acceleration !

So why not having a go at the world record if things are in slow motion for you in here?
And have a better a look at what you drive, FBM is NOT AN F1 car, beacuse you are on demo, right?

Quote from EQ Worry :

I'm afraid it is not as easy to adjust positions by required pitstops. Aonio relies with race positions on simple data provided by LFS and taking them only as a base and doing recalculations would be no doubt possible, but not simple. And I'm really not sure the output would be improved. As it is not, you have info about people who did a pitstop already, and how many of them. That should be enough info to assess relative race positions... But adjusting positions artificially, I'm really not sure it is a good idea...

this kind of info wolud be neither accurate, neither usefull as you never know what will happen in the race, the only information that counts are actuall positions in the race and info about number of pit stops done, everything else is just speculation
not worth the effort IMO
I woud rather see a "team radio", meaning some voice notifications about gaps, deltas, etc... much easier to code

in this case, considering compressing the video on the fly the CPU does take quite a role indeed, but that doesn't change the fact that the CPU was not a problem here, neither GPU (9650M GT)
anyway, if someone needs to record some video from LFS I recommend to test xfire from my own positive experience

Core 2 Duo is enough for me, and I don't see any sense in spending money on new hardware if there is free software available, that can do the job without any problems... and I don't even need that job to be done at all

I would recommend xfire, I managed to record 720x450 videos with it with no problems, while FRAPS on the same machine was not even able to record a decent slideshow presentation

the poll options are not set-up properlly, the poll lacks a neutral answer like: "I just play my game" or sth like that
reffering to either beeing addicted, waitnig for the patch or not beeeing interested in every single option doesn't leave a choice for a normal, regular player, or leauge drivers for example, and if you are seriously interested in what people think of LFS now this flaw in your poll will deform your results
you could also have a very interesting interpretation of the answer "not anymore interested" as people how will choose that already show their intrest by visiting forum and deciding to vote
just had to point it out, marketing research was one of my favourites at the university

you could also get the LFS logo from the website and order yourself a coffe mug of your own design with it

it should not be a problem to find a place that does it (the same places as t-shirts, calendars and other printed stuff people usually give as custom made gifts)

and it should both look better and be more durable than the sticker

lolzol you are completly wrong with almost everything you say here, and your biggest mistake was to draw all this conclusions from 9 laps in 2 days in the middle of the week

and you beeing slower some 20sec a lap than the rest also didn't help to avoid any problems you had, so take this into consideration too

before you judge something in public at least get to know it first

Well, hard to disagree that it would be a good idea to let some fresh air into LFS design department
Eric has done huge and great work so far but no company or project should be run by one person in the design department for years and years... if creative people work together they become even more creative, so sharing ideas with someone would definitely help Eric and LFS

but... we all know what

Quote from pandera :

they should be some kind of notification and should encourage people to learn this stuff from a proper manual that should be somehow integrated with it

in what other words, will you try now, to convince me to something I have already written before?

Quote from Dajmin :

Would also be useful if it had a clickable link to the guide page(s) as well, for anyone who wants to learn it all properly.

that's one of the options, just like I said before: "notification of larger topics"
I am not saying they should not be included, no harm done if they were, but they will not make the big difference if this will be the only change, just one or two sentences in a pop-up simply won't do the trick
- if you are a newbie this won't really tell you what to do
- if you already know what it is about then you don't need it

they should be some kind of notification and should encourage people to learn this stuff from a proper manual that should be somehow integrated with it

all I say is that to make a real difference the whole concept should go a step further

the real problem is the size of the pop-up vs the amount of information needed to make some real learning effect
my point is that only small pop-ups won't help that much, there is to much knowledge behind all that, and we need all this knowledge to be served easily for new players and accidental demo users
IMO the pop-ups should be considered as a notification of larger topics, but not as the manual itself

selling LFS in stores would make some more sales:
- some people buy for example presents (anyone realise how much of a years sales is done in Christmas period? it's HUGE!)
- teenagers do not need to have bank account or credit card, but they do always have cash
- not everyone is reading game magazines and you can not have a review of your game every single month, some people just go to the store, see what's there, sometimes ask and decide what to try out
- game laying on the shelf all the time is kind of advertising itself
- every single copy sold in the new market areas is also advertising (of course we assume the product is good and customers like it)
- in general every time you make your product more available to your potential customers you should expect more sales, this is called distribution

and in fact the more product you sale the more profit is connected with single copy, so it woluld not make it more expensive in the long term

but the problems are:
1. you need to invest money to get this higher profit, and this is what the devs propably can not afford at the moment
2. you should distribute a normal, finished product if you want to sell it to anyone who can just grab it from the shelf not knowing what it really is and this is not possible with LFS itself at the current stage

IMO the best what could be done now easily to distribute LFS is getting a deal with some wheel controlers manufacturer, including a demo CD in the controllers' box with some discount code for the lincense could really boost the sales, as the distribution would be perfectly targeted

Quote from adamshl :

I'd like to see a more possibility of damage components/parts of car, but not result of randomness.

just to make clear what I mean by randomness at the limit... I do not want any part to fail without the reason, but the possibility that a heavy damaged part will give up or not within reasonable limits of propability

Quote from Major Del :

Yes, that's what I was suggesting. Your driving behavior contributes to the chance of a particular component failing. Good example with hit points in fighting games, e.g riding the curbs to hard will eventually increase the likely hood of suspension failure. Another good feature would be brake fade, like some of the F1 races with heavy braking, where at the end of the race a lot of drivers complain of a long pedal or even experience brake failure.

I am for any improvements in damage model and I think it is going in this direction already, look at the clutch, suspenssion, tyre wear... all we need is patience we already have accumulated damage of the parts that alter their behavior, just add some more stress and randomness at the limit and here we go...
let's wait for the braking off parts and see what changes to the damage model will it bring in general
one day maybe we will even get tyre punctures from debris on the track in collision areas...

I would say both YES and NO

YES, it wolud be great to give people this knowledge as easy as possible
NO, I don't think it is possible to cover this topics properlly in small popupus all over your screen whatever button you rollover

just look at the current setup guides and try to imagine them in this kind of pop-ups
but LFS is for sure lacking even such a simple thing like an extra button caled "Manual" in the main menu that would open the existing wiki, doesn't take much time to code but it could really help, both the newbies, and... the LFS sales

Quote from cargame.nl :

Nothing to do with annyythhingg CTRA was known for though. I did my history and it is just interesting to know why some of you are so heavily into LFS that it almost is a lifestyle.

Don't get me wrong, I all respect your religion but in the end its still just a game

From a social point of view it is one of the weirdest games I've ever seen. Not necessarily negative by the way, just challenging.

well, not a lifestyle, just a racing game that I find to be the best choice for myself to have some challenging fun
I am also interested in software and web developement and I am online a lot for professional reasons,
and regarding the racing itself I simply want to get as much as possible from my very limited time I have
I can only regret I am not a teenager any more... why, oh why didn't I have LFS then

very nice update

Quote from menantoll :

You are either exagerating here, are very unlucky or you are doing something wrong because I see plenty of full grids pass T1 with all cars getting through fine. I'm not saying pileups don't happen because they do but they don't happen every single time.

well, of course it is not every time, but it is at least as often to get hit as not to get hit if you are not in the first 2 rows and when you are at some random server that you just decide to try out because there are some 9 or 10 connections... and I do not have that much time to waste 50% of it... that's exaclly why CTRA was so popular
I didn't try to go public for quite a while, I simply prefer to race with my friends instead

well, running a small IT connected business myself I am aware of the fact that it would not finance itself, and that current developement team can not handle it, that's why I am aware it is not really possible, just like I written
but I must admit that I did not take into account the fact that people could change their attitude to the game itself beacuse of their complaints/bans... maybe that's beacuse I use LFS for racing with friends, all of us above 30 yeras old and all of us have so called lifes

but I would really like to have a go on a public server from time to time, without beeing hit everytime I start braking before T1 just to take it clean...

so the main probem with CTRA kind of system to solve is on the admin's end, because on the driver's side the numbers of people in races were clearly showing that it was working, and working good
many have said before that money is the simplest answer, and maybe this is true, maybe something like CTRA should in fact be run by the development team, as part of the 'package', a few high quality racing servers, 'on top' of all of the community ones, that you can be banned from for some reasonable time, and so on... even some official events woluld be posssible then, I bet here are a few that wolud really want to be crowned as a LFS (name class) World Chapmion...
and that of course is impossible because there is only 3 of them and they do not want to run it as a bigger team (costs, costs, costs...), and so on...
but this in fact could be the best solution of the problem... if it was possible

from the real solutions I still think that allowing admins to join (and leave) the common system of bans and ranks with classes is the simplest idea to keep a few servers alive and not to flood one or two guys with complaints until they get sick of it... every admin does his part of the job only, but all the others would benefit from it

I sometimes use AI as a support for long races setups preparations (distances of 100km)
when I need to prepare myself a set for a 100km race on a new track after I'm done with the hotlap settings (based on WR and some set from the net) I simply put AI on the track for the full distance just to start adjusting the tires, after AI can do a full stint with no problems then I start to test it and change it myself
it always requires a lot of changes but, as I can run LFS with AIs in the background to do that (usually while I work ), it saves me the time of the first few outings on the race tires, it simply gives me a better starting point to work on the race settings myself
it is by no means an alternative to work on the setup by myself, it's just a way of saving some time in long races setups preparations

maybe it wolud be possible to use the CTRA leftovers for something easier to admin than the original at bigger scale

the software could run just like it did for the old CTRA, but the difference would be that any serwer admin could join the program,
so you set up a server within one of the defined classes, connect it to the database with provided access (by the whole system admin) and there you go

so any server connected would use rankings and all the rules but administrating would be spread out, every admin would take care off his own serever but bans and restrictions for players would be off course global, that way there could be qiute a big number of servers in the system, and every one of them would have an admin, so any admin would take care of incidents on his server

even if some servers were poorly administrated than they would benefit from the global ranks and bans, so would be kept alive by other servers admin

and the system administrator would only have to take care of the system itself

of course I have no idea if the current state of what is left of CTRA allows to connect any server to it, and the general idea is something like Becky stated above, but I'm thinking of something much simplier, something that could be run just like it was on CTRA, no extra features, only the one allowing any admin server to join the system and run his part of administration...

EDIT
well after posting I can see above that I am not the only one with the same kind of idea

Last edited by pandera, Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:01.

Quote from morpha :

Same bit depth and sample rate as the original notify.wav?

thank you man the bit depth and sample rate were the same but... once I started looking closer at them I found out that it's mono vs stereo
so if anyone has any problems with .wav files with Aonio just make sure they are stereo ones

now it only lacks the ability to set your own distance for warnings, 10m is quite a long distance IMO

Quote from Ripley :

Do they play at all outside of LFS ?

if they didn't I would not post the problem here