I think I may know the reason and I have made a change. Please let us know if you can connect now.

Please be aware you don't know the history of this struggle.

After so many weeks doing almost nothing but this battle, I feel it may be beneficial to try to explain what our aims are, in case they think maybe we are the 'bad guys' in some way. You know, like one of these big companies that despises its customers and tries to think of ever more ways to suck money out of them, to keep the shareholders happy. Really we aren't that at all. There are no shareholders, just a couple of developers. We are trying to be the good guys, and we are part of the community ourselves. I'd like to make sure the attackers know that, in case they have misunderstood us.

I'm not sure if this is a welcome suggestion but have you checked the price of second-hand PCs? A old PC good enough for LFS can be very cheaply bought. It's not like you need an up to date computer. Not recommended for delivery but local pickup type of options could work.

Have you tried graphics options like:

Textures: low res
Texture filtering/AF: 1x

Misc options:

Full physics for remote cars: [no]

In case the attackers might read a message, I will ask sincerely:

What is it that you really want?

We are two people - a programmer (me) and an artist (Eric) that try to provide a game for anyone in the world to play. Also, part time, Victor does a few things on the servers (he did a lot more in the past) and Geraldine helps with support emails. That's all. This is not a big company.

We are massively helped by community members including forum moderators, mod reviewers, creators of mods and software, race organisers, broadcasters and people simply participating in races and events online. People do this for a hobby, to have some fun, entertain and interact with others around the world.

In addition to the free demo, so that we can continue developing, we have a license, people can make a single payment and play for ever, getting free updates for life. What could be fairer than that? Other developers keep making a new version and charging you again for it. It's possible because we have such a small team, our business can get by on a low income, even though we try to provide servers around the world so everyone can play with a good ping.

Why do you seem to want to disrupt our players, who just want to have a bit of fun racing around? Who is it that you are trying to attack? Is it the developers, or our community? Are you on a side, and trying to attack the other side? Have we or our players harmed you in some way? I would love to know, because we really have no idea.

Live for Speed is a system that aims to bring the people of the world together to have fun with each other. A bit of peace in a world with too many conflicts. Can't we all just get along, wherever we are from, and whatever language we speak and whichever culture we have grown up in?

Can't we all just have a bit of fun, try to be one of the good things in the world?

I think your question is about the quality of the internet and its infrastructure. There's nothing I can tell you about the connections and hops between Singapore and the Netherlands, because I don't know anything about that (or the connections between any other locations).

Well for several weeks now nearly all development has ceased on my side as some strange people are doing daily attacks on our servers, for unknown reasons.

I mean, we are just trying to provide some entertainment for the people of the world. And although we are one of the world's smallest game developers, these peculiar individuals derive pleasure from bringing down our game servers.

One of the updates to make the servers more robust was to close open ports. One of those open ports on each server was the one listening for ping requests. As such it was a target for attacks, so the servers are now more resilient without leaving that port open.

Anyway, regardless, the attackers have found new ways to attack so everything is pretty pointless. But now you know the reason why.

The whole year I have been dealing with hacks, cracks and attacks. It's pretty joyless and not the reason I do this job. It would be great if the attackers could find something else to do, and I might get a chance to work on developing Live for Speed, for the benefit of all the world's people.

Most recently faved goes to the top, then after that the most recently visited one moves to the top.

Here is a link to download only the requested file (in a zip)
https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/106062

It's done this way so that when you add or remove favourites, they don't jump around.

You don't need to click refresh to update it, you can click the star at the top of the sorting column.

Thanks for the testing. I've put it on the auto updater now.

I've uploaded a minor update, this time it's E to E14 (not A to E14) so it won't update any background image unexpectedly.

This update simply adds favourites to the List of Hosts screen, which is helpful as there is no longer a ping column. You can sort by that column and also the two-letter country code column.

I'll wait for it to be tested before adding it to the auto updater.

Download: https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/106967

Quote from redekizde :

Any idea of what it could be or is there any way to fix this?

I've sent you a PM about a quick test to get some more information.

EDIT: problem solved.

Last edited by Scawen, Mon 24 Jun 2024, 07:15.

Quote from Flame CZE :

I see, it's because the patch is from 0.7A to 0.7E13 and the new background was added in 0.7C. Ideally the patch should only include changed files from 0.7E to 0.7E13, but maybe there are some technical reasons why it's done this way

I think this should be possible and I've made a note to look at it for the next test patch.

A very few hosters will encounter this restriction (actually only 3 including you). This is part of an ongoing process to reduce the number of open ports and firewall rules.

I don't know of any reason why you need to allow more than 8 IP addresses to connect to your InSim port, as there are only 7 InSim slots available.

If there are good reasons for this then we can reevaluate the restriction.

There has been a change but it does not require you to purchase a host.

You must enter your IP on this page after starting your host: https://www.lfs.net/hosting/admin

E15 has some more improvements and is now the only supported version.

When convenient, please restart your hosts in E15.

It is fully compatible so I may restart some of the hosts if there are no connections. If you find your host has been restarted in E15, please do not be offended. I am doing it for good reasons.

There is no important urgency as there was last time so there should be no disruption but I reserve the right to close down hosts if necessary or when people don't upgrade in a reasonable time.

Just to be clear, I'm not pushing you around. I'm working on security measures all day every day, and need to get these updates out there. I don't believe it is a big deal for you to close the host and restart in the new version.

Thank you for your cooperation!

I looked at your host and see there are no IP addresses allowed to connect to InSim. You need to add your IP address in the "Access Control" section.

Quote from Windx :

I did it when change version, but it doesn't help.

Hi, I've been having a look into your host.

I found one setting was out of bounds. I don't know how it happened but I see that pps is 16, which is not possible. I hope your host will start if you set this to something between 6 and 12.

The setting is "Packets per second" in extended settings.

OK, good to know you got it sorted.

It seems strange, if the antivirus blocked the installation, that it did not inform you of this.

Something tells me it could be antivirus software. Every time we do an update there are several reports about issues with antivirus. I wish people would report the problem to the antivirus software developers, instead of us, as the bug is not in LFS but the antivirus software.

Anyway, maybe that's not what's happening in your case. Do you have antivirus software?

Do you see something like the attached image when you run the installer?

EDIT: If you have the correct LFS.exe in your folder, it will have date: 18 June 2024

Hi,

1) I don't know why the auto updater doesn't seem to have worked on your computer. That's the first I've heard of that (after a few thousand downloads) so I assume it has been working for most people. Can you see the install file LFS_PATCH_7A_TO_7E13_setup.exe in your LFS folder?

2) If you don't update to E13, no servers are shown in the list due to a change we have made.

You do need E13, so if the auto updater doesn't work then I suggest you get E13 from the first post of this thread and manually run the installer.

I can't reproduce that issue. I can start a host in Brazil with no problem.

Your host "TEAM AMERICA®INDYCAR" is set to E13. It is intentionally not possible to start a host in version E13.

After setting to E14, remember to click "Submit changes" at the bottom of the page, before you start the host, or it will certainly not start (because it will still be E13 which is no longer supported).

EDIT: I've added a duplicate "Submit changes" button at the top of the page. It was easy to miss as you would have to scroll down to see it.

Last edited by Scawen, Thu 20 Jun 2024, 08:11.

That is a feature to allow sidecar outfits to be driven by only one wheel. I haven't heard of another type of vehicle with drive wheels not aligned, but would be interested to know about it.

I can see that the E13 update makes your local servers harder to find.

Maybe I can add a text quick filter to compensate for that, similar to the one on the mods page but probably will not implement favourites at this time as it's more complicated.

Maybe it should be possible to sort by the location column too, to finish off this change for now.