Sure they will get pissed off but they will probably just rage quit and go get a sammich

Quote from JO53PHS :

Although these people are more likely to care if someone bumped them off, since they are racing for championship points.

Granted and I am not criticising anyone in that thread because it's arguably all part of the gamesmanship. However, from what I can see, points were accrued in the CTRA league too (I never played) and whilst it's manageable for a championship with 7 rounds for that kind of moderation, it's a bit much to ask for daily races. Looking on that site they dealt with 4,000 reports, nearly a third of which the dismissed as unfounded. That's quite a whinge mountain.

If it was supported by devs, Or made by Cargame or another big server, You could pay money to race (monthly?), Similar to Iracing and supporting the devs/server owner(s) at the same time. But only for the CTRA Server, Other servers hosted by regular users could be free after the cost of S2 (or demo.. Or S1) Like they are now.

CTRA was a great system, I think many people wondered why LFS doesn't come with such features out of the box. I mean, most of us here want clean racing and CTRA provided an environment where anyone could just join and race competitively for as long as they wanted. Also, personally I don't care for joining a team, and with CTRA you didn't have to be in a team to race. It was just join, pick a car, and race. If there were any free slots that is.

Quote from englishlord :

Can see where cargame.nl is coming from. I was reading this thread http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=78053 last night, which is just from one race. I dread to think what an easy reporting system is like from daily races over multiple servers.

Exactly...

And that are so called elite's discussing who is wrong in some sort of crash.

You don't want all this constant 'being in between', as admin, because it-never-ends.

Scawen updated some InSim packets at my request to create auto crash detection and who's fault it might be... Upon this date nobody uses this section of the InSim system.

Why? Because Airio development has shutdown and I have no real alternatives at the moment. At this moment I'm not even interested to try to boost LFS server usage because higher demand cannot be properly maintained in my eyes without improved automatic safety control.

Besides, for me and the rest of the team this also stays just a hobby.

So... Up to the devs to design something you say... Well.. I don't know the point of view of Victor about this, never asked.. I think it's the philosophy to hand as much as possible to the community and let them (thats us), figure it out.

Personally I think it could go very wrong if there are certain individuals which have more rights in a closed official system. Which game (/sim) has that anyway?

Quote from Bean0 :

It's difficult to have a proper race in the road cars because

It doesn't matter.. Even if everybody is in the same car it still gives problems.

32 on grid, lets say 10% is inexperienced (which is extremely low) then you still have three cars which are problematic.

The amount of incidents/reports was not lower on CTRA, it even was the main reason for closure. I had to do it with Youtube video's but I've analysed them and it wasn't any better.

Maybe in your heads... It's normal to think that everything in the past was better

Example; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmRSpbvujs0 . Hello, spectate anyone? ..
Or this; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR8hoAAGjaw&t=2m15s

Somebody got autokicked for saying **** btw.. Somebody else spamming the chat... People keep driving with completely f. up cars.

This was good? Nah. Sorry.

.

Quote from cargame.nl :

Example; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmRSpbvujs0 . Hello, spectate anyone? ..
Or this; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR8hoAAGjaw&t=2m15s

Somebody got autokicked for saying **** btw.. Somebody else spamming the chat... People keep driving with completely f. up cars.

This was good? Nah. Sorry.

.

Why should people spectate, since when do racing cars magically disappear when they have an accident ?

The correct course of action is to heed the yellow flags, take care, and be prepared to stop if necessary. As you can see, I arrive late on the scene and do exactly that.

The other is the XFG/XRG 'noob' server, it was always expected that behaviour on this server would not be up to the standard of the higher ones.

Yes, it was good

Quote from cargame.nl :

And that are so called elite's discussing who is wrong in some sort of crash.

You don't want all this constant 'being in between', as admin, because it-never-ends.

CTRA didn't have the protest system to complain about every single contact. It had the "Report" thing, only to use in cases of extreme idiocy or intentional bigtime wrecking. People used to be different too, I can remember lots of problems sorted out by this magical five letter word and that's it.

Quote from cargame.nl :

Exactly...
You don't want all this constant 'being in between', as admin, because it-never-ends.

Admin makes a decision. The End!

Quote :

Scawen updated some InSim packets at my request to create auto crash detection and who's fault it might be... Upon this date nobody uses this section of the InSim system.

Wow, that is a really difficult programming challenge. To write AI powerful enough to make a correct and fair decision in all but the simplest of collisions would be a massive achievement. How did it work ?
Or was it just to help the admin rather than to replace?

Quote :

I think it's the philosophy to hand as much as possible to the community and let them (thats us), figure it out.

That's my understanding as well. Many years ago, devs made it clear that they didn't want to get involved in this side of things. I hope they change their minds about this in the future.

On a positive note, if you look at the real world, there are countless clubs in various sports and pastimes where amateurs give their time freely to work as chairmen, treasurers, referees, coaches etc. It is not unusual for folks to take on roles of responsibility and give a significant amount of time unpaid. It's all down to perceived value within the community.

If suitable organisational structure is developed, and there is community support, I think getting people to volunteer as admins is not an insurmountable problem.

I really don't know why. But when I joined LFS back in 2007 I used to race on CTRA a lot.

People were just different. Of course there were crashes, contacts and all this stuff. But there was no spectate policy, no crash ratio detector nothing like that. When someone crashed me he just said sorry and that was enough for me, because we had a nice battle and crashes happen. There was at least a try not to ram anyone, simply people more often thought they're driving a simulator and they need to act a little bit fairly. LFS was meant to be taken as a simulation, not a game.

Today it's just wrong. I have no idea how or why, but people has changed. I could get rammed out of the track and receive not a single sorry or something like that. It's like LFS nowadays are playing 10 years old boys, who have no idea about anything. Back in days it was somehow smarter in any ways.

I don't blame anyone here. I just think the community has changed. Simply LFS is more or less dead. So there is only this public racing and majority of drivers doesn't take it serious. When spectating them, it's like they say to themselves "it's only a game, nothing to worry about, I'll just floor it thru T1 and I'll hope for luck".

Back in days it was more like "Omg, I am driving with all the people I saw in league races, I need to act like a race driver by every occasion." I have mine nice shining XRT and I don't want to crash it even if I was forced to brake a little bit more.

To sum it up, it's the people who has changed, back in CTRA I was racing all the best drivers from 3id, spdo, Pallu the ultimate mouse driver who was never a team member and I can continue forever... Also team less drivers acted more like 20+y old clever guys. Today I race against some random driver from say UK who just received his LFS licence from no idea where, seeing that culture of today's races he thinks he's doing everything right even if there's a contact or crash. In past, this behavior and overall acting on track... Was just different. I can't help myself. Hawk.

Well Mysho I have a theory : XRT in demo instead of FBM. XRT is one of the hardest car to handle like a pro in LFS and BL1 combo level was much higher than FBM. FBM is way easier to drive and faster. When I joined LFS back in 2005 I spend almost a whole Year in demo improving my skills in that combi building what would become 3years later E-Team (ISR team at that time) and doing some leagues there. There was many teams indemo and some really good one with good drivers ( N I K I) and was quite common to meet some good drivers in those team's server like Worm.

It was quite common to stay a lot of time in demo and improving, building team...finally I got S2, wasn't really fast but I was clean at least and motivated to improve (btw I didn't mind about development as many new comers do). Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks like driver are now staying less time in demo so basically take LFS like NFS and don't care about heir and other pace and join S2 server with pretty low experience and no fair driving behavior that you almost automatically have when doing lot of public racing. They have NFS behaviour and driving a simulation like LFS isn't what they want.

Btw LFS was my first sim racing game, Now I have rFactor, tried iRacing, played GTR...finally those game motivate me for one week then I joined an LFS server and had fun back

Quote from Mysho :

.....

Couldn't agree with you more, its exactly the same in an mmo I play (regnum), the spirit of fair play is ebbing away there too and being replaced with an 'I'm having fun, screw you' attitude. Don't know why it is, thought it might be kids coming from first person shooters but thats just speculation, seems to be the same kind of mentality that gets a kick out of trolling though.

Quote from col :

If you don't know what CTRA is, please do some research to get an idea how it worked before voting

cheers

Col

Well, if you cant explain it in a few words I guess it is some boring stuff.

Edit: OK sorry, my fault. I was kind of ignorant as I did not play that much for almost 5 years so I missed it. So yes something to bring to more intelligent racing and more intelligent racer would be real great.

not really in fact kinda best public racing on LFS tbh

Hi guys

I dont have much time right now but I have read a lot of this thread and I want to thank so many of you for your fond memories of the CTRA.

There are a lot of points I would be happy to shed more light on and talk about further when I have a bit more time available than I do right now, but there is stuff I can clear up right now.

The real reason the CTRA closed has had a couple of theories in this thread, and when I look back on events both of them are sort of correct.

The truth of it, when I look back now, is that the argument was the first turning point in the downfall of the CTRA - and what I didn't know then and do know now is that it wasn't really a disagreement, in truth we both wanted the same thing but put it into different words. The reality is we were not arguing over a disagreement, or even the semantics of an agreement, we argued because we where exhausted and burnt out.

The CTRA carried on after I left until eventually Sam's burnout left a back log in the reporting system and the whole structure collapsed in on itself under its own weight. But Sam wasn't the only one burnt out, I was too - and neither of us knew how to handle that at the time.

Sam and I have since apologised to each other and parted on friendly terms, although I have not spoken to him in a long time. But I think I speak for us both and all of the rest of the people who made the CTRA possible, that it is something we are all immensely proud of.

Another point I've time to just quickly clear up that seems to have been forgotten, the web site truly was fantastic but it was not the only thing that made the CTRA unique at the time. We take for granted now tools like Ario which give us track rotation and all sorts of fancy commands, features and server scripts during online play - but before the CTRA these things did not exist.

At the time that the CTRA arrived it was a great innovator, it brought a fresh face to LFS and sim racing with technical innovations both in the realm of what features servers have - but also in the client thanks to its sister project the STCC.

Fewer people here seem to remember the STCC but it is actually the project which started it all, before the STCC the TBO class was dead - and likely it is the STCC that was the reason that TBO racing became so popular on the CTRA servers.

For those that don't remember it the STCC was a broadcast series with a very different style to typical sim racing broadcasts, it was done in a TV style and formatted for entertainment value. It reached a regular audience of over 120,000 viewers for it's monthly show and brought a lot of people in to LFS at the time.

As well as this there were other spin off projects such as LFS having hi-res skin downloads which happened because of my work on the STCC, I asked Scawen permission to release a tool I had made myself to download the hi res skins and Scawen baulked at the cost of bandwidth - prodded into action he released the hi res skin feature of LFS.

This and many other things such as the pit radio mod, backfires, and even an EAX environmental surround sound mod all came about because of this active innovation in LFS.

Others servers operating at the time did not have any of the fancy bells and whistles that you now take for granted in LFS, and this whole package of technical innovation from the CTRA project occurred at a time that seemed to coincide with healthy license sales for LFS and frequent patch updates.

I do wonder how closely those things are related...

And one last point. A few drivers at the time, and to this day, criticise the CTRA for putting content behind a "leveling" system.

I won't lie, the system was deliberately and mathematically influenced by MMO concepts - but the fact is before the CTRA you had a choice of 2 busy online race servers plus an oval server. After the CTRA you had a choice of 5 busy online race servers plus an oval server, and a further 2 busy licence restricted servers and another semi-populated server.

Those who argue that the CTRA removed content from LFS really are not seeing the picture clearly. LFS public pick up racing grew in popularity because of the CTRA + STCC project and provided racers with more choice. That is a statistical fact.

In closing, thank you all for the fond memories - and I may read up some more on this thread and post again if my life gives me more than 30 minutes to myself

I guess there is only one way to finish this post, with my closing words on most STCC broadcasts, "It's turrah from me, Becky Rose."

I Must agree with Becky with some points she wrote down.
back in the days , STCC broadcast was the event where everybody was looking for. I watched all the Broadcasts and it was just great fun.

CTRA was indeed a new System at that time. A system that was introduced at the correct moment in time (Middle of some big (content) Launch). this help CTRA a lot.

CTRA was a strong System because everything just worked. The base System that Becky made and a couple of addons on the system what the UKCT Community made. one off the most strong components was the website.
There always was a big run for all the teams and people to become #1

I have seen the last year or two from CTRA closely. I have seen a couple off people getting stressed about it. The System was great, but i believe that making a system like this is not even half of the work. Maintaining the system will be the biggest task (Special Thanks to SamH for doing this back in the CTRA days).

Like everybody knows a race server will only be as good as the server admin. a 15year old boy suck but a 30 year old guy needs some income to run his life.

A system like CTRA needs a realistic business model. Admins / Developers need to get paid. This to stimulate more people helping out.

To comment on #1 post, you can not expect that the developers can spent 24/7 maintaining this system. CTRA proven that a little group of people isnt enough.

I do believe that if you ever want to make a CTRA-like system that you need to have a close communication with the Devs ( Just like CTRA ). A system like this needs to carry most of the Community. almost like a Extension of LFSWorld!

Always looked forward to the STCC broadcasts and I'm sure they were the catalyst for the success of CTRA.

Ah. The good old times.

CTRA was great. Would I wan't to do it again just as it was? No. I think CTRA has given me most during my LfS career, so far. Great close races with the TBOs. And with the LRF towards the end. But I think its place is in the past.

I wouldn't like to go through the whole tier process now. I just wouldn't have the time anymore. That is one area where cargame.nl is better. It takes into account your previous LfS career. Last year I started racing again, learning to race again would be more appropriate, I could almost immediately get into the TBO class on the cargame.nl servers. If I would have been forced to go through a long period in the STDs I probably wouldn't have bothered with the whole system.

The main problem, to me at least, is the multitude of classes on the S2 server. As some have remarked in this thread, the mixing of road tyred cars with ones with slicks is not working very well. They have to use very long tracks to keep the lapping to a minimum. Furthermore the XFR/UFR seem to always have accidents on the first lap and come barging passed. I understand that keeping the servers populated is what cargame.nl aims for but I do not enjoy driving on the S2 server. Fortunately the S1 server is enough for me. I would however enjoy a spin in the RAC from time to time.

Maybe you could split the servers road/slick in stead of S1/S2. Although I do understand the need for S1 servers too.

I'm not knocking people running current servers but does anyone else think that newer add-on control systems are distracting from an earlier sim ethos?
As Beano said in an earlier post why would you want to disappear to the pits just because of a spin? I was on a server a while back, was knocked into a spin/slide and couldn't believe I ended up spectated and being told off. Sim racing should be about total concentration on the track, clipping points, awareness of cars around you and the such , some of these servers now you can't see the bloody track because of a sea of glaring irrelevant text. Just wondering if LFS has lost it's more mature/older racers because of things like this.

Quote from NigelY :

I'm not knocking people running current servers but does anyone else think that newer add-on control systems are distracting from an earlier sim ethos?
As Beano said in an earlier post why would you want to disappear to the pits just because of a spin? I was on a server a while back, was knocked into a spin/slide and couldn't believe I ended up spectated and being told off. Sim racing should be about total concentration on the track, clipping points, awareness of cars around you and the such , some of these servers now you can't see the bloody track because of a sea of glaring irrelevant text. Just wondering if LFS has lost it's more mature/older racers because of things like this.

We have a winner.

Airio is brilliant in the fact it can do so many things to help admins run servers, it has so many different functions that you can do whatever you want with it. Sadly several people seem to think that this means their server has to have EVERYTHING Airio has to offer and so it goes about spamming people screens with various things, e.g. "You made contact with JO53PHS [UFB] @ 5,5 - YES I KNOW THAT, I CAN SEE.

I think I got into LFS just as CTRA was in its heyday and I thought it was brilliant. I don't think anything quite on the same scale is possible at the moment (what with LFS "dying") but LFS is craving for a max-2 class (probably TBO/STD) non-tiered server with a half-decent reporting system.

Nigely: Yes! Airio on cargame servers has been sucking my balls ever since. As J@tko said, it can really be good admin helping addon, but why do i need to watch all those walls of text on my screen, being prosecuted (yes, my n00000b plate is verily offending ) etc.
I understand it has to be fun for everyone, idlers need to be spectated, crashers and abusers removed, but with overusing all that stuff it isn't fun anymore. Less is more!

I rather prefer decent ride on Dead men server, but that is mostly only once in a week and some combos aren't what i'd like, so when i join CG, i want to have a good race, but i leave it with feeling of being violated (in almost all possible and relevant meanings).

Also i'm talking only about Cargame, because there's no other place for casual everyday race left anymore.

And to join the bandwagen, CTRA was the best place for race ever. There is no way to recreate it under current conditions, which the LFS and community is in, but i agree with Bean0 and everyone, who are for splitting racing/road/open wheel to separate Cargame servers. It would certainly mean more, than just renaming and reconfiguring current servers, but it _will_ bring better racing, if nothing else and that is worth thinking about it.

Quote from March Hare :

That is one area where cargame.nl is better. It takes into account your previous LfS career. Last year I started racing again, learning to race again would be more appropriate, I could almost immediately get into the TBO class on the cargame.nl servers. If I would have been forced to go through a long period in the STDs I probably wouldn't have bothered with the whole system.

Hmm I want to clarify this, that's Airio actually. EQ Worry gets the credits for all that. He spend a tremendous amount of time in developing a great race InSim. Without that.. Well.. Would have run LFSLapper... Which isn't that bad to start with.. Actually I started with that on the demo server.. Different story.

I'm sure this can be brought to a next level with the right people. There is still some development going on, let's treasure that.

I don't believe we can expect anything from the devs on this point. Sorry. (Apart from PRISM, in which Victor had a great deal of coding in it. Do not forget that).

LFS Lapper development is dead since 2-3 years ^^ Gai-Luron made an awesome job about that but LFS Lapper was origally made to run leagues and an automatical prequalification and pool system (FRH site is down so can't show it but there is still that one : http://www.lfsfrance.org/liguesfr/gcomp/index.php). Airio is more an insim to run some public server for me and then EQ Worry added a league system for Genuine Racing dailycious series that was quite awesome and a next step to LFS Lapper gcomp system.

Airio is really a good help especially for its AIRIO world database and basically because it records your time and help you to follow your improvement. When options are well setted it isn't disturbing at all. Wanna remind you that !silent command that enables you to delete any message.

Quote from MoMo92i :

Well Mysho I have a theory : XRT in demo instead of FBM. XRT is one of the hardest car to handle like a pro in LFS and BL1 combo level was much higher than FBM. FBM is way easier to drive and faster. When I joined LFS back in 2005 I spend almost a whole Year in demo improving my skills in that combi building what would become 3years later E-Team (ISR team at that time) and doing some leagues there. There was many teams indemo and some really good one with good drivers ( N I K I) and was quite common to meet some good drivers in those team's server like Worm.

It was quite common to stay a lot of time in demo and improving, building team...finally I got S2, wasn't really fast but I was clean at least and motivated to improve (btw I didn't mind about development as many new comers do). Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks like driver are now staying less time in demo so basically take LFS like NFS and don't care about heir and other pace and join S2 server with pretty low experience and no fair driving behavior that you almost automatically have when doing lot of public racing. They have NFS behaviour and driving a simulation like LFS isn't what they want.

Btw LFS was my first sim racing game, Now I have rFactor, tried iRacing, played GTR...finally those game motivate me for one week then I joined an LFS server and had fun back

ditto. Those were fun days. Man, you surely remember Svemirko Joca. We were chasing him like forever.
But there were some great servers in those years, even in demo. Completely clean racing, almost CTRA alike. I think you can still find some awesome videos by Jens O. from demo days and IIIRC [d9] held the best server for a long time. Good to see him still online nowdays. NFS Fans usually hanged out on carpark.

Quote from MoMo92i :

LFS Lapper development is dead since 2-3 years

Yes well.. Hmm now that I read my posting again, you could read it as I was talking about LFSLapper development... What I meant was LFS InSim development in general. I follow topics about it closely and some are busy with 'something'.. Motivation sometimes is unclear to me.. But there is some activity..

Especially on the cruise servers. Which is something completely different, I know.. But for programming an InSim the difference is not so big.

Don't get me wrong, with a good website I could still manage to replicate a lot of this CTRA buzz but I personally am not waiting for even more people. As stated before, you need a very good admin team for it. We have that (I think) but 'we' are too small. And I didn't see any fresh admin talent lately to fit in.

Mostly also the lack of Teamspeak usage. I don't know why but communication with a shooter game is better then here

.

Quote from NigelY :

I'm not knocking people running current servers but does anyone else think that newer add-on control systems are distracting from an earlier sim ethos?
As Beano said in an earlier post why would you want to disappear to the pits just because of a spin? I was on a server a while back, was knocked into a spin/slide and couldn't believe I ended up spectated and being told off. Sim racing should be about total concentration on the track, clipping points, awareness of cars around you and the such , some of these servers now you can't see the bloody track because of a sea of glaring irrelevant text. Just wondering if LFS has lost it's more mature/older racers because of things like this.

Why was that auto-spectate feature invented? I think it came from the attitude that started to emerge on the servers.

Scenario a) Driver A is spinning. He thinks: "Darn, spinning, darn wall coming closer, darn, impact. Keep standing still until following drivers can pass the crash site safely. Hm.. I have serious damage, but I can make it back to the pits. .. Ok, wait until the track is free,....., alright, now I can re-enter the track." Driver A crawls back on track, stays off the racing line and crawls back to pits for repairs.

Scenario b) Driver A is spinning. He thinks: "Darn, spinning, darn wall coming closer, darn, impact. Hm, well I have serious damage, but the car still somewhat moves, lets get back to racing." Driver A crawls back on track and *boom*, a car approaching slams into him.


Which scenario do you think lead to the invention of auto-spectate? And which scenario is more likely to happen on public servers..

I honestly think it's our own (the racers) fault that the servers are what they are. No admin has the nerves to keep arguing with everyone about who's fault it was, who spun, who didn't slow down despite the yellow flag etc..
It seemed nobody cares about general racing/race track rules anymore. So mechanisms had to be invented that made dealing with this easier..