Here's one I sometimes use on my server.....
.....along with other personnel.....
.....along with other personnel.....
Whatever kind of text editor you use (Notepad, PSPad, etc), make sure it will save text (encode) as UTF-8 and not ANSI.
Assuming the letters you want to use are part of the UTF-8 character range you should get the correct characters.
Assuming the letters you want to use are part of the UTF-8 character range you should get the correct characters.
There you go.
Sorry I don't have anything later, but I tend to make changes to them and don't bother to keep a backup of the zip file, as it was always (well, used to be) available on this forum.
Sorry I don't have anything later, but I tend to make changes to them and don't bother to keep a backup of the zip file, as it was always (well, used to be) available on this forum.
I've just checked some of my lapper sql database files, and they show track only saved as AU1. No layout name saved.
Due to a reset on my server on xmas eve, drivers were allowed to do 5 laps instead of a single lap. This means that some times were set from rolling starts, so were consequently much quicker than those doing a standing start.
For that reason, I've deleted times set on multiple laps, where these laps were set between 15:30 and 19.40 (gmt), when I reset laps back to one.
This has mainly affected times set by;
LLM.TCLF
DOBBY
EVO D Rernatt
HUGO
Bass8
[MRc]Niko.H
Eddie ITA
Apologies for that, but I'd rather delete these times than make the other 2,500 times that have been set worthless.
I've found where the issue for the reset to 5 laps comes from and if another reset occurs, then reset will always be 1 lap.
I've just reset the server so apologies if you had times up on the top 12 on screen (especially to Google, who had 1st place) as they've now gone.
On the plus side, if you're quick, maybe you can get your time on screen.
For that reason, I've deleted times set on multiple laps, where these laps were set between 15:30 and 19.40 (gmt), when I reset laps back to one.
This has mainly affected times set by;
LLM.TCLF
DOBBY
EVO D Rernatt
HUGO
Bass8
[MRc]Niko.H
Eddie ITA
Apologies for that, but I'd rather delete these times than make the other 2,500 times that have been set worthless.
I've found where the issue for the reset to 5 laps comes from and if another reset occurs, then reset will always be 1 lap.
I've just reset the server so apologies if you had times up on the top 12 on screen (especially to Google, who had 1st place) as they've now gone.
On the plus side, if you're quick, maybe you can get your time on screen.
Just before Turn 2 (aka "Chigago"), where the tyre wall is, there is a white line. You have to stay in the 'lane' created by line on left, and line of speed humps / green tyres on right. In that 'lane' is a route marker. Miss it and the next route marker you hit (which is just after the turn), kicks you off track.
Everyone has to go thru this marker - all the ones who've recorded a lap (quick or slow), have had to do it.
There's another marker at the "Hammerhead", which also catches people out.
Just for the record, I don't believe in deities or any form of divine celestial supreme being, so I'm incapable of loving any non-existant act of faith.
And as what to call it, some call it 'potato' and some call it 'photatho'; where I come from, we all call it a tattie (as for instance used in the phrase 'tattie howking'). Singular: tattie - plural: tatties.
As long as the person I converse with understands, who cares, as long as we can make chips out of it?
And to any north american reading this, when I say chips, I don't mean crisps, I mean fries. And when I say crisps, I of course mean potato chips. And when I normally talk of potato chips, I'm usually referring to chips made out of potatoes. That's french fry chips, and not potato chip crisps.
And as what to call it, some call it 'potato' and some call it 'photatho'; where I come from, we all call it a tattie (as for instance used in the phrase 'tattie howking'). Singular: tattie - plural: tatties.
As long as the person I converse with understands, who cares, as long as we can make chips out of it?
And to any north american reading this, when I say chips, I don't mean crisps, I mean fries. And when I say crisps, I of course mean potato chips. And when I normally talk of potato chips, I'm usually referring to chips made out of potatoes. That's french fry chips, and not potato chip crisps.
That's probably because most people want the same thing now.
Remember, this game is quite a few years old now (look at my Join Date - and I was a latecomer!), and its likely that features that people would like to see in an Insim have probably already been done.
I'm not saying there's no benefits; just don't expect to make any/much money from it.
Rather than worrying just now about the pros and cons of a new insim, make it, put it on a server - both to show people what you've done and for testing, and then come back to the forum and then ask if there's a market for your insim.
HOWEVER!
If you show or tell people about a new feature, be prepared for people to make their own version of that feature - there's a lot of very bright progammers using LFS that can make an insim (look at how many give free advice to budding and existing programmers), and once they've seen something new, there will be nothing to stop them making their own interpretation of that feature.
Even if you manage to sell one copy of your insim, once its in the public domain (ie showing running on a server - which is the very point of an insim) then any new idea is open to being plagiarised. You don't need to see actual code to copy an idea.
I don't want to appear all negative - I am trying to be constructive.
If I could programme (I do scripts using someone else's main code, so don't consider myself a programmer) I'd start by doing an insim with just some of the 'common features' that you talk about in your first post, and show on a server that it works, and is stable. Once you've got to that stage, then think about your additional features, and what to do with them.
At the very least, putting it out there and therefore proving that you can programme in the real world might well be something that you can put on your CV/Resume. That might be where any money might come from.
After all that, if you do decide to do some programming, then good luck.
Last edited by sinanju, .
Reason : stupid spelling mistooks
Turned out to be bit less work than I thought, so the script has been re-written so that you are asked when you are in spectator mode if you want stats to show on acceleration. Click on button to show stats. Join race and stats will show when you hit 0-60mph/0-100kph. Spectate, and message changes to question about closing stats window.
Stats now only shown to driver - previously everyone saw them - so now if you're mid-lap, someone else's stats won't pop up on your screen when they're just starting their lap.
Only quickly tested by myself, and as I only see what I expect it to do, may have missed something, or it may have a bug.
Hopefully I won't get complaints now about an extra button showing in the spectate screen.
Excellent riposte!
Seems I'm going to have to revise my estimation of some Glaswegians! And this from someone born in Edinburgh!
The 2 main InSims that I've seen used on servers are LFSLapper (aka lapper) and Aario, which are both free (Aario has a pay for version, but now that EQWorry has 'disappeared' not sure that that version is still available).
There are other Insims around - bit more specialized to use (I think, although I maybe doing them a dis-service), like PRISM, etc.
And as the cruise element of LFS always seem to be having spats and falling out with each other, you sometimes see someone make a cruise insim available for free.
With all these free choices, and not having tens of thousands of server owners, not sure would even be worth it.
And even if you managed to make a sale, what guarantee would you have that it wouldn't be available for free (stolen, hacked, accident) within short time anyway. I mean if Microsoft can't make Windows or Office hack proof, can you make your software such?
As someone who writes add-on scripts for lapper, much better to do it for the challenge, or the experience, or for fun, or for showing originality, or for kudos, or whatever, but NOT for making any money out of it; especially not a living!
There are other Insims around - bit more specialized to use (I think, although I maybe doing them a dis-service), like PRISM, etc.
And as the cruise element of LFS always seem to be having spats and falling out with each other, you sometimes see someone make a cruise insim available for free.
With all these free choices, and not having tens of thousands of server owners, not sure would even be worth it.
And even if you managed to make a sale, what guarantee would you have that it wouldn't be available for free (stolen, hacked, accident) within short time anyway. I mean if Microsoft can't make Windows or Office hack proof, can you make your software such?
As someone who writes add-on scripts for lapper, much better to do it for the challenge, or the experience, or for fun, or for showing originality, or for kudos, or whatever, but NOT for making any money out of it; especially not a living!
Server seems to have reset recently to 5 laps (not sure why, especially when I have it set to 1 lap as default) - I've reset server back to one lap again.
Most of my layouts tend to be for doing a lap, and most of these only 1 driver can start at a time. In some cases this is deliberate - especially where I have a figure of 8 track, and drivers can crash into each other at the intersections!
I think I only have the one layout where I've had it so that 2 people can start side by side, but separated with barriers, and follow 'their' piece of track till they finish on the other drivers start position - as they do in Race of Champions (RoC) events.
I understand what you mean about 'pop-ups'. Some drivers don't want anything to show on their screen that doesn't appear in real life - they want the true immersive experience, and with the work currently going on in LFS on 3d and the 'Rift', that number might increase.
In my defence, so of these pop-ups I find useful (split/sector times, drift scores, etc), some I find add to the experience, which is why I wrote and use my WinnerFlags script, so there's more of a hooray when you finish a race, or my yellow flag system when there's a crash, and some I do just for fun, like the marshalls and other 'people' that can appear at certain points of a circuit or layout and can display semi-serious or silly messages.
Currently working on the pop-up that appears when you hit 60mph/100kph, but its quite a bit of work, and now that I'm working again (after loooonnnnggg period of unemployment), the number of hours I've got spare to work on anything has reduced enormously. On the plus side, I can probably afford to keep my server going for another year now.
Most of my layouts tend to be for doing a lap, and most of these only 1 driver can start at a time. In some cases this is deliberate - especially where I have a figure of 8 track, and drivers can crash into each other at the intersections!
I think I only have the one layout where I've had it so that 2 people can start side by side, but separated with barriers, and follow 'their' piece of track till they finish on the other drivers start position - as they do in Race of Champions (RoC) events.
I understand what you mean about 'pop-ups'. Some drivers don't want anything to show on their screen that doesn't appear in real life - they want the true immersive experience, and with the work currently going on in LFS on 3d and the 'Rift', that number might increase.
In my defence, so of these pop-ups I find useful (split/sector times, drift scores, etc), some I find add to the experience, which is why I wrote and use my WinnerFlags script, so there's more of a hooray when you finish a race, or my yellow flag system when there's a crash, and some I do just for fun, like the marshalls and other 'people' that can appear at certain points of a circuit or layout and can display semi-serious or silly messages.
Currently working on the pop-up that appears when you hit 60mph/100kph, but its quite a bit of work, and now that I'm working again (after loooonnnnggg period of unemployment), the number of hours I've got spare to work on anything has reduced enormously. On the plus side, I can probably afford to keep my server going for another year now.
Doesn't matter what layout you use on AU1 AutoX, Lapper just saves any top lap/drift scores against default AU1, so anytime you change the layout it will still continue to save them as AU1.
Takes a little bit of work, but the way I've got round it, is to have separate directory for each layout, where I save ALL the files and folders for that particular layout to that directory, including the sql database files and the .lyt file.
That way I also save Zone and Node 'triggers' that I've set up for a layout too. And, as I use Yisc's Pitboard script, and I've set different splits/sectors for each layout, these are saved also, so will work properly next time.
Whenever I want to re-use the same layout, I just all these files back onto the server.
That way, I know the top lap/drift scores, the zones and the nodes are only relevant for that layout.
I also do the same for X/Y track layouts, as lapper doesn't know that AS2X could be A21, A22, A23, etc).
I have a 'master' folder that I use for all non specialist (AutoX, X/Y config, etc) where if I'm just loading 'normal' tracks, all the data can be saved together because i'm happy for lapper to save things as BL1, BL1X, etc, as normal.
If you use a lot of layouts, will mean that you have a lot of directories, with same files in each directory, which can be a pain if you have to make an update to a particular file. In mitigation, things are fairly static just now, so (apart from Yisc's recent Pitboard update - which I ballsed up!) there are not many changes to be made.
If someone else is providing the LFS game server, then there's usually the facility to ftp into server and download the folders/files periodically into your own particular directory (online and/or home pc), which makes the above process less of a chore. That is how I do it.
Takes a little bit of work, but the way I've got round it, is to have separate directory for each layout, where I save ALL the files and folders for that particular layout to that directory, including the sql database files and the .lyt file.
That way I also save Zone and Node 'triggers' that I've set up for a layout too. And, as I use Yisc's Pitboard script, and I've set different splits/sectors for each layout, these are saved also, so will work properly next time.
Whenever I want to re-use the same layout, I just all these files back onto the server.
That way, I know the top lap/drift scores, the zones and the nodes are only relevant for that layout.
I also do the same for X/Y track layouts, as lapper doesn't know that AS2X could be A21, A22, A23, etc).
I have a 'master' folder that I use for all non specialist (AutoX, X/Y config, etc) where if I'm just loading 'normal' tracks, all the data can be saved together because i'm happy for lapper to save things as BL1, BL1X, etc, as normal.
If you use a lot of layouts, will mean that you have a lot of directories, with same files in each directory, which can be a pain if you have to make an update to a particular file. In mitigation, things are fairly static just now, so (apart from Yisc's recent Pitboard update - which I ballsed up!) there are not many changes to be made.
If someone else is providing the LFS game server, then there's usually the facility to ftp into server and download the folders/files periodically into your own particular directory (online and/or home pc), which makes the above process less of a chore. That is how I do it.
Good point!
As for the numbers, can you ever see anyone taking the #2?
Maybe if Mark Webber was still racing, he may have.
And which wag is going to be brave enough to take the #69?
Very surprised the FIA didn't decide to auction the numbers to the highest bidders rather than give them away.
Many thanks for the constructive comments.
To answer some of the points you've raised;
Problem with AutoX is unless you use the default start position (underneath the lights) you have to make your own start position and you can only have the one. And the default start position is on wrong side of track to how I've had to do layout.
And as the Top Gear lap starts and finishes at the same point (like most races), you have to have start/finish together.
What can make it more chaotic is the fact that the layout is in a figure of 8, and cars coming to turn 1 sometimes meet cars that have done over half a lap. Also, some people insist on doing a second or third lap, even though only the first lap counts, and people are doing their timed lap.
Thanks, although I've done other AutoX layouts before - the next busiest/popular was my "Erectyle Dysfunction" layout (HERE).
If I can ever find my old files (esp database of times, although I think I may have lost them when 500Servers folded), I mean to put back up sometime.
I was on server last night trying (and succeeding!) to better my FO8 time, and to be honest, I was so busy looking at the kink before turn 1 and working out where to brake, I hardly noticed anything popping up on screen.
Maybe I'm more used to it than you, especially when (usually on proper tracks rather than layouts) I have some of my 'personnel' popping up in various places, and I usually have my drift scoreboard up and running, and my leaderboard and my winner flags and .....!
As for the reply pop-ups, I've coded automatic replies to various words that people type in (started as replies to swearwords - a no-no) and grew from there.
Thing is, other people do like to see their name up on screen, and other people see these times and think they can match these if not actually go faster (I'm an average racer and if I can get within 3 seconds of someone's top combo time, I'm well aware that I've driven an exceptional lap).
I was on server other day when someone was doing lap after lap after lap after lap trying to get his name up the listing - he ended up top of the car group he was driving. So for some people, including myself (especially as I'm in the group!), its very important.
As for the !top listing, most people never look at it (I have 2 ways of looking for it, either the normal !top command, or via a menu that appears when you spectate or you type !menu). I also have a !mystats available via typing or via the !help menu - again, hardly used.
That's partly why I have the pop-ups about pb and theoretical pb appear when you hit 60mph/100kph, so you can see them without having to remember and type in commands.
To answer some of the points you've raised;
Problem with AutoX is unless you use the default start position (underneath the lights) you have to make your own start position and you can only have the one. And the default start position is on wrong side of track to how I've had to do layout.
And as the Top Gear lap starts and finishes at the same point (like most races), you have to have start/finish together.
What can make it more chaotic is the fact that the layout is in a figure of 8, and cars coming to turn 1 sometimes meet cars that have done over half a lap. Also, some people insist on doing a second or third lap, even though only the first lap counts, and people are doing their timed lap.
Thanks, although I've done other AutoX layouts before - the next busiest/popular was my "Erectyle Dysfunction" layout (HERE).
If I can ever find my old files (esp database of times, although I think I may have lost them when 500Servers folded), I mean to put back up sometime.
I was on server last night trying (and succeeding!) to better my FO8 time, and to be honest, I was so busy looking at the kink before turn 1 and working out where to brake, I hardly noticed anything popping up on screen.
Maybe I'm more used to it than you, especially when (usually on proper tracks rather than layouts) I have some of my 'personnel' popping up in various places, and I usually have my drift scoreboard up and running, and my leaderboard and my winner flags and .....!
As for the reply pop-ups, I've coded automatic replies to various words that people type in (started as replies to swearwords - a no-no) and grew from there.
Thing is, other people do like to see their name up on screen, and other people see these times and think they can match these if not actually go faster (I'm an average racer and if I can get within 3 seconds of someone's top combo time, I'm well aware that I've driven an exceptional lap).
I was on server other day when someone was doing lap after lap after lap after lap trying to get his name up the listing - he ended up top of the car group he was driving. So for some people, including myself (especially as I'm in the group!), its very important.
As for the !top listing, most people never look at it (I have 2 ways of looking for it, either the normal !top command, or via a menu that appears when you spectate or you type !menu). I also have a !mystats available via typing or via the !help menu - again, hardly used.
That's partly why I have the pop-ups about pb and theoretical pb appear when you hit 60mph/100kph, so you can see them without having to remember and type in commands.
The server name was correct the first time I had it up and working, which was couple of years ago.
Not without resetting the server, in which case, the top 12 fastest positions that show on screen (top right) would be lost, and I'm loathe to do that really. Maybe if the server is reset (after a fault or something), I'll think about it.
This layout is likely to be running on my server until the New Year.
Put this layout back on my server few weeks back, keeping all the old times that were recorded for drivers to race against.
Over 250 more times recorded, of which 4 are new top spot records (3 by the same person; 55 - T Ulrich).
Shows there's still some quality drivers around.
Over 250 more times recorded, of which 4 are new top spot records (3 by the same person; 55 - T Ulrich).
Shows there's still some quality drivers around.
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG