It's not like those who are pirating are using legitimate LFS usernames/passwords. By distributing those binaries, you're making whatever protection circumventable. At one point, a group had created their own re-implementation of the Master Server
To be fair its only me talking, we still didnt do any internal talk about it.
I need few days to wrap my head around the fact that we are not nearer, but further away from any meaningfull update to the racing side of the game than i thought.
I understand the change of priorities (piracy), just curious - is the 'big update' test patch something we can expect within the next 12 months (my guess and hope is yes, if not then you wouldn't mention the plan for postponing the Fern Bay rework until after the first test patch).
I think I thought the mods support could be done in a few weeks and would be a bit of fun while Eric finished some tracks and I did the tyre physics.
But the mods support turned into a much bigger project. It wasn't an easy task to turn development editors into ones that are suitable for public use, and the way that mods work with automatic in-game download and have version support and so on... these are pretty big systems.
Also it was becoming painfully clear that we needed a way to prevent piracy. Seeing your business melt away due to continual theft isn't a great feeling. Just putting out the updated tracks with the old system would have been a nice gift for the pirates and we simply can't do that any more. Our servers are linked with the mods system too.
And i thought we are closer as i was under impression graphics and physics are being worked on fully in last year or so, but this update shows that is not the case.
That's a very understandable reason - change server system before releasing the big update with refreshed tracks and day/night cycle (and maybe even new tyres),which was a hard work from your side.
The updated server system might be a pinch to those used to hosting servers on own or rented machines,but that's just something they have to get used to it. I suppose some better insim app support from the hosting side would eliminate most problems.
I would like to say yes that is certainly my hope. In my mind, after we get through the public testing of the mods system and it becomes the official version, I should be on the completion of the tyre physics system and Eric will finalise some tracks. So then we can put that together and release the new graphics and tyre physics.
That's how I see it. But plans can change and do change all the time. And apparently every task takes longer than I can possibly imagine. An alternative scenario is to re-implement the old tyre physics into the new graphics system (it was deleted years ago from that branch of the source code). But how much time would be wasted doing that? Maybe it's only a week's work, I don't know. The new tyre physics has a better feeling, which is encouraging as it is based on physical principles. So maybe some good solid work on fixing the link between heating, slip, load, pressure and grip could be sorted out and we'd be ready to go. I prefer this option, though the other way might be quicker to get the graphics to you.
I would really appreciate it if people think about this a bit. Do you really need to host insim applications on the gaming machine itself? I've thought about this for quite a while - I can make it work of course, using containers for example. But that also opens up a whole other can of worms, if I allow anyone to just run any arbitrary application. For a few euros per month you could rent an ssh host then basically (= the game server in a container with you having SSH access) with which you can do anything. And that is for me not an acceptable situation.
You can always connect your insim application to your game server, but you'll have to host the insim application yourself, either at home or elsewhere.
I'll gladly make other improvements to the hosting system btw. Please note them down and save them for later. We'll probably make a separate thread on this topic later.
I can't say i'm not interested about this progress, but certainly to me, it would be more interesting to drive the new updated tracks I'm curious to see what possibilities this can open though. I'll definitely see if i can create anything with the tools once it comes out.
I got a question pop up into my mind regarding the "object" status though, with the football for example, is this intended to be a layout object, or just a separate object you choose from the mod car menu? Would it be possible to model your own layout objects too?
Please, dont. Dont do extra work that will add extra time for making old tyres for new graphics as new kerbs and old tyres dont work together at all. Myself and others(i think) would preffer to wait for new tyres than let u waste another 2 weeks, month or who knows how long on making old tyres work here. An example https://youtu.be/g3HlxKZiucU
I believe there is a way to solve this scaew you could split the game in two parts who uses mod could use in a previous version than you updated
how much players loyal to the original game enjoy the original version that you are updating with graphics and other benefits so those who like real competition use the s3 pro mode
others who like clandestine mode would use mod mode so you would have time to work on new projects for the original lfs
it's just an idea you can use from what i'm trying to say
in the matter of servers, you can do the same to create the mod server
as long as players continue to buy the license to have this benefit
this idea came from aseto corsa, which uses two platforms one asseto corsa,,, and asseto corsa competizione
are separate games
That's something that can only be answered by cruise server hosters with their custom insims. And maybe also NDR,who uses the custom start app.
For me full access to all Airio config and data files (that are already on the host here) is enough,don't care about exe file as I don't intend to modify that. Then again - car mods update most likely will break the Airio support with it's 6-figure car IDs anyway,so that might be a very shortly usable solution.
Yes, i host couple of LFSLapper insims which i edit/add/delete/move scripts/files daily .Its for development as for normal use.
Connecting LFSLapper from my PC to the server will cause delays. Which is not ideal for insim connections. Especially with alot of players on the server.
Same for cruise servers aswell. They might have a database (SQL/Files) they have to edit daily/weekly).