I tried to dig into this and from what I saw, a part of the reason why it got shut down was the sheer amount of people converting cars and tracks from other games without any mention about permissions etc. (I can't tell if this is what actually happened since there is very little about the subject that I could find) It can be possibly stopped by what three_jump suggested a few posts earlier and I shared a similar idea to a few of my friends when I talked about this yesterday. There's many great 3D artists that have frequented the forum, surely some of them could have time to review posts before accepting the post to be public on the subforum?
I tried to dig into this and from what I saw, a part of the reason why it got shut down was the sheer amount of people converting cars and tracks from other games without any mention about permissions etc. (I can't tell if this is what actually happened since there is very little about the subject that I could find) It can be possibly stopped by what three_jump suggested a few posts earlier and I shared a similar idea to a few of my friends when I talked about this yesterday. There's many great 3D artists that have frequented the forum, surely some of them could have time to review posts before accepting the post to be public on the subforum?
More info regarding why the forum section closed here: https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/kunos-shuts-down-modding-section-of-official-forums.122721/
I was hoping to see something concrete and reliable, such as a page on a government website (hopefully UK) or something else carrying some authority. Something that really nails down the situation without needing to hire any lawyers (which we are absolutely not going to do at any time in the near future - I've got far too much work to do and don't have cash to burn - this attempt to open a special section was really just a quick idea that turned out more complicated than expected).
Thanks for the screenshot of the attorney's comments, but it is written with some errors and seemingly open to interpretation (I can't even understand the second sentence). It doesn't really constitute sound legal advice.
Thanks, quite a lot of info there.
Thank you for the discussions and suggestions so far.
I believe we need to take a zero risk approach to this and that would mean that we can only open up a special mods section for cars that are:
- fully fictional (not real cars)
- own work (not converted from another game)
And as some people have mentioned, it would need strict moderation by volunteer section moderators and posts might need to await approval before being made visible.
I guess it should also be licensed users only because people can create Demo accounts too easily and it doesn't really make sense for us to support Demo Racers having access to an unlimited choice of cars.
These are just thoughts, not decisions. There's no rush.
I believe we need to take a zero risk approach to this and that would mean that we can only open up a special mods section for cars that are:
- fully fictional (not real cars)
- own work (not converted from another game)
And as some people have mentioned, it would need strict moderation by volunteer section moderators and posts might need to await approval before being made visible.
I guess it should also be licensed users only because people can create Demo accounts too easily and it doesn't really make sense for us to support Demo Racers having access to an unlimited choice of cars.
These are just thoughts, not decisions. There's no rush.
Any thoughts about increasing the ~16k polygon limit in each mesh? And the use of a tweak - or if we can have 'internal' tweak build in-game?
Are you considering these concerns before committing to this?
It's just way too early for that. I'm actually not sitting here working on this mistaken 'quick idea' we decided to do yesterday. I'm working on something to do with lighting.
I'm not feeling there is a strong connection between these two issues.
1) You are talking about a problem that already exists where people are apparently using a mod and either a mysterious system or a bug that seems to bypass the collision sync check.
2) On the other hand we are talking about a new thing of allowing people to discuss modifications on our forum instead of being forced to do it out of sight from the rest of the community.
I'm not talking about changing (1) in any way by implementing (2). There is already code designed to prevent cheating and modification of the physics mesh. I've now been told that apparently there is some kind of bug with that, but I don't know how to reproduce the bug at this point. I need to keep a separation between considering a bug (1) and talking about allowing something that is hidden to become visible (2).
I just want to repeat: There's no rush. What I mean is no decisions will be made for at least a few days now.
Fair enough, but by allowing discussions to take place on the official forum, the use of VOBs online will inevitably increase as more people are exposed to them, whether that was your intention or not, that's the main reason these concerns were brought up here. I had no idea you were not aware that there is an apparent bug in your detection system, but I'm glad it has now been brought to your attention.
EDIT: Bug is unfair, I meant loophole.
Internal tweak-like system to quickly make a car playable with custom physic engine could be a killer feature compared to other mod-able sim, it will make things way more easier for those who doesn't have any idea how to approach physics side of modding.
Even if it's only fictional car, this is huge news for LFS!
, I can already imagine myself doing XR2020 project !Totally understand regarding something more clear but the second sentence for me seems clear but is more directed towards it being the game developer who will be using/making the models to be imported, in other words you could not import lets say a ford escort car model and call your game ford racing or make it look like ford are officially affiliated with the game.
Another way to look at the situation is that people are and have been importing car models into LFS for quite some time even though it was not officially supported, the models are all representatives of real cars so what currently would have stopped you already being liable for any issues. If you only create an importer for LFS and do not advertise/supply the car models here then the blame will be with those sharing the models, you could only be held accountable if your importer broke some law which it would not do
Holy.... my dream coming true scawen?
So, what i can do is help the community, we made a tool for LFS conversion
16k polys per mesh is very good because we can make the game optimized for any car and everyone can use it!
i'm very happy lol
And dont worry about Copyrights or anything
This is responsability of Modder, so this is not a problem for the Game and devs
A biggest thing for community, its true
the great idea is turn LFS to ADD-ON game.
maybe can create more cars for the game without Replace >_< just for S2/S3 "lock" users to keep the game with more licensed users
(self add mods with own engines/sounds like a content of actual LFS)
This is not mysterious system
we just use a stock vob files based on new cars, this don't change colisions and hitbox, only the "3d model"
the car list is very big on lfs modding community
we just know how create new tracks e.e
16k polys per mesh is very good because we can make the game optimized for any car and everyone can use it!
i'm very happy lol
And dont worry about Copyrights or anything
This is responsability of Modder, so this is not a problem for the Game and devs
A biggest thing for community, its true
the great idea is turn LFS to ADD-ON game.
maybe can create more cars for the game without Replace >_< just for S2/S3 "lock" users to keep the game with more licensed users
(self add mods with own engines/sounds like a content of actual LFS)
This is not mysterious system
we just use a stock vob files based on new cars, this don't change colisions and hitbox, only the "3d model"
the car list is very big on lfs modding community
we just know how create new tracks e.e
On the 'already existing mods causing bad collisions' reported issue:
The problem that mbutcher and Degats are talking about is that apparently some people are connecting with VOB mods and causing bad collisions, as if their collision box has been changed and the 'mysterious' part is they are not getting an OOS kick in this case.
It's not something that I can fix without being able to reproduce it. I've checked the code and if the code is working then the guest gets an OOS kick if any point or triangle of the physics mesh is different. Of course this is tested and known to be the case.
The easiest way around the OOS check but still use a VOB mod is as you say, to use a VOB mod that leaves the physics LOD unchanged. In that case the car's physics is not changed in any way and this should not be a problem online. I can't imagine anyone going to great lengths to somehow modify the exe to return correct OOS checks for modified physics boxes, as that would really be very difficult (I don't how they would even start with that) and pointless when there is a simple and safe alternative.
But just saying "more often than not, it turns out that the player involved has a VOB mod on the car they're driving" when there is a bad collision doesn't bring me any closer to the solution. I guess we need an example of a MOD that can bypass the OOS check, otherwise I am being asked to solve a problem that I cannot see, understand or reproduce.
The problem that mbutcher and Degats are talking about is that apparently some people are connecting with VOB mods and causing bad collisions, as if their collision box has been changed and the 'mysterious' part is they are not getting an OOS kick in this case.
It's not something that I can fix without being able to reproduce it. I've checked the code and if the code is working then the guest gets an OOS kick if any point or triangle of the physics mesh is different. Of course this is tested and known to be the case.
The easiest way around the OOS check but still use a VOB mod is as you say, to use a VOB mod that leaves the physics LOD unchanged. In that case the car's physics is not changed in any way and this should not be a problem online. I can't imagine anyone going to great lengths to somehow modify the exe to return correct OOS checks for modified physics boxes, as that would really be very difficult (I don't how they would even start with that) and pointless when there is a simple and safe alternative.
But just saying "more often than not, it turns out that the player involved has a VOB mod on the car they're driving" when there is a bad collision doesn't bring me any closer to the solution. I guess we need an example of a MOD that can bypass the OOS check, otherwise I am being asked to solve a problem that I cannot see, understand or reproduce.
Elmo and I spent some time last night testing with a player who had some VOBs to test with us online and as far as we could tell, there were no issues with collisions in this case. The VOBs had been run through a script (which I have been sent) which ensured that the collision box was not modified from stock.
This is not the end of our testing though, we will reach out to other people and see if we can find any examples of VOBs that cause botched collisions because we have certainly had issues since the OOS checker was updated, but have yet to dig up any concrete proof to show here.
Thanks for the testing.
To my mind it is still possible that the bad collisions were related to lag and prediction causing excessive intersections rather than being related to VOB at all. As we know bad collisions can happen at any time between unmodified cars. It's true I could do a better job with that.
I understand you asked some people when you saw the collisions and often found out they were using VOB mods. But maybe these mods are just commonly used by people who go to cruise servers?
To my mind it is still possible that the bad collisions were related to lag and prediction causing excessive intersections rather than being related to VOB at all. As we know bad collisions can happen at any time between unmodified cars. It's true I could do a better job with that.
I understand you asked some people when you saw the collisions and often found out they were using VOB mods. But maybe these mods are just commonly used by people who go to cruise servers?
For me XRT is clearly identifiable representations of Mitsubishi Starion GX, but that is approved by devs, that means mods like that is okay, but then where is the boundary that determines the difference of "clearly identifiable representations of real cars" to quite a change from the real car?
I can model my own mesh and make mods, but without this clearly understood borderline for everyone, maybe problems will arise here.
TBH, I wouldn't hold out any hope in finding an actual VOB file that can bypass the check alone - as you said, the checks done by LFS itself should probably find any issues.
My concern is that there are tools that mess with the LFS client (or network) in some way that fools the server into thinking that the mesh is the correct one. Considering the many weird and wonderful physics hacks we've seen over the years that don't get caught by OOS checks, I'd imagine it would be (relatively speaking) trivial for similar tools to load un-fixed VOB files on the client, but just trick the server into thinking that the mesh is fine.
We know of a few tests that can be done to check whether issues are lag related or not and LFS itself is pretty good at letting us know what kind of lag issues an individual has. Typical VOB-related issues are also subtly (and sometimes not so subtly, depending on the mesh) different from lag, though it does often require specific testing that we usually don't have the luxury of doing - people don't tend to hang around once they think they've been busted breaking the rules; the number of times the problem goes away after the suspicious player "accidentally" disconnects/loses connection when questioned and returns shortly after is remarkable.
Would be cool to see something like that in future. In my opinion it's good idea to did it similar to skins system, like approved mods gonna be uploaded, and then everyone can download it directly from game via simple Mod Browser (Just for example), and when player entering server, client going to download "VOB mods" which used by players on server (like it doing now with Skins).
+1
Wow, good idea, will be nice to see some like that in future
I'ts because have 2 ways of modding on LFS
OSS mods is created with old way called LFS Car Importer program
this program change literally everything from vob, colisions, lods and this cause OSS error online and replays.
have "other way" for lfs modding dont get any oss errors. you can open my files and see
we call this Gen Black
Mods with Gen black way dont have any OSS errors, its more secure way because change the model like a Skin
Colisions / lods / driver pos and engines still stock from RB4
Here a example.
the vob have same structure of the original vob of LFS, that's why we can pass the LFS "security" since Z13 update.
TODAY i think no one use mods make in lfs car importer because they are very old
[ EDIT by Scawen: Removed the attachments as we are not sure we can show or share these things ]
What if we forget this whole modding business and move on?
care to elaborate ?
There always be modding. With or without official support or whatsoever. The only difference is that with official support it will better for everyone.
i see possibility for modders and devs work together to make lfs a great simulator
let they think about this situation
All other games that have/allow mods don't care about licensing and copyright since it's not shipped with the game, why does it matter with LFS?
See: GTA V, rFactor, Assetto Corsa, Need For Speed, etc.
See: GTA V, rFactor, Assetto Corsa, Need For Speed, etc.
This thread is closed
VOB Mods [discussion]
(170 posts, closed, started )
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