EDIT by Scawen:

This thread is for suggestions regarding the Mods System including how it appears in game and on the website.

Please DO NOT post suggestions for the VEHICLE EDITOR or the MODELLER in this thread.

If you have suggestions for the vehicle editor, please post them in Vehicle Editor Suggestions

If you have suggestions for the modeller (3D object modeller) please post them in LFS Modeller Suggestions



Original post by PopnLochNessMonster:

One thing I noticed with mods is that they do not keep the last color used.
I will choose a color on one mod, switch to a different mod, come back to the first car and it is back to the default color.

The default LFS cars keep the last color you used with your driver name, but the mod cars do not.

If possible I think it would be a good idea for the ingame mod search to include matches from the mod's description and maybe also from the Intellectual property field. This would make it quite a bit easier to find mods without having to remember their fictionalized names. It could also help if you want to find multiple similar mods.

For example if you wanted to see all the various F1 inspired cars you could simply search F1 or Formula 1. If you wanted to see all the Japanese manufactured cars you could just search Japanese or JDM.

I'm not sure if including results based on the Intellectual property field would be fine legally but I don't really see why it wouldn't be. The actual name would still appear nowhere ingame.

I have a suggestion for the WEB MOD system. Mod uploaders could have a "skins uploaded for your mod" statistic somewhere. This way they will think more about changing skin mappings. It could even be more complicated, for example: if mod uploaders can notify skin uploaders - that they changed something in the mappings and the skin will look different now.

Maybe the notification system isn't that important (might be too annoying for skin uploaders), but the statistics would be a nice feature for the mod uploaders.

Guys, we need sort cars by power i think! Have good roads!

A few thingys for a future update

1· For me this one is a must have: to have both the Game and the Website to remember your mod listing settings. A bit annoying having to select "Last Update", Show "All" and check "Include tweak mods" in rapid succession so it only reloads once to display the full list in the Website. Same goes for the game, having to click "show All" and "Include Tweak Mods" everytime I launch LFS;

2· A check mark to know which mods are installed, or a simpler way to differentiate (aka the bars are darker if a mod is not installed);

3· A button ( for example a trash bin or a cross X icon ) to uninstall a mod;

4· More sorting options (Power, Weight to name a few)

Not sure if this is the right place for these suggestions since it's more of a suggestion towards how the mod ratings and things like that work:

I think the cars should appear in order of when they went public instead of when they were originally added to the mod system when ordered by "date added".

Also, I don't think private mods should be rateable. This relates to the first suggestion. I just noticed a completely ridiculous mod (ridiculous as in it had more downforce than formula 1 cars while having much less drag, not a meme mod) that was not realistic in any way basically "in the middle of the list" that had more than 10 five star ratings just because it was private for a while and then set to public while only mod makers' friends were voting on the car.

I'd personally love the ability to "save" the Sound Editor file on modded vehicles to the mod itself, client-side just like doing it on a vanilla vehicle.

Some mods have borderline intrusive sounds, having to swap them out in the Shift+A menu every time you pit feels like an oversight.

This can be overridden when the mod updates, but if a published version is available, I'd love to be able to just go into the Sound Editor, tinker with the sounds and save it.

Hi

A few of us ended up having a bit of a debate online yesterday regarding how the license info is displayed on a vehicle mod page. This doesn't seem to correspond with the mod submitting process where you give the license info for the 3D base model that is used for the vehicle mod.

The green arrow points to the portion that makes sense and lines up with the submitted info but the red arrow points to duplication of the license info with the "Derivatives are allowed" No/Yes" below it.

This contradicts itself in the sense that if the license type "lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work" it can be assumed that by the placement of the "Derivatives are allowed" No/Yes" below it no longer applies. This is what it looks like at face value to someone who doesn't know the submitting process.

I think the license info that the red arrow points to should be removed in order to eliminate this potential issue because the question of actual licensing only applies to the base 3D model. The "Derivatives are allowed" No/Yes" is merely a permission or lack thereof granted by the vehicle mod creator to use his/her LFS mod as a base for their own LFS mod (essentially a tweak mod of a user created mod).

With more and more mods being added, its getting harder and harder to navigate. I think the mod list needs more filters.

A "Drift" class would be a good idea because there are many drift car mods that don't really fit into existing classes.

Also a way to filter based on driveline type.

The more filters the better basically.

1) links with preview picture
On a mod's page there could be a field like "copy link" and it would automatically generate BB-code for use in forum:

Quote :

copy link:


[url=https://www.lfs.net/files/vehmods/C9F8FE]
[img]https://www.lfs.net/attachment/310904/thumb[/img]
[b]LSV 12 GTR (C9F8FE)[/b][/url]

So it would be easier to make nice links like this:


LSV 12 GTR (C9F8FE)


2) 3D-skin preview on mod's page.
Beside just showing skins as 2D-pictures like it might be nice to show a 3D render of the skins.

3) A separate category for "non-sense" mods. There already is "tweak" and "objects" but maybe there should be something for silly vehicle mods, too. They do not fit into either category.

Quote from pärtan :

With more and more mods being added, its getting harder and harder to navigate. I think the mod list needs more filters.

A "Drift" class would be a good idea because there are many drift car mods that don't really fit into existing classes.

Also a way to filter based on driveline type.

The more filters the better basically.

Well i posted something alike you said but with brands of cars
https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/99964-Brands-of-mods
But i see that nobody gives a f about this idea after seeing names in mod reviews

As the number of mods is growing, I think there should be more ways to search mods.

The default LFS car classes are not granular enough in some situations. For instance, there is a subset of mods made for drifting but it’s hard to find only those in a huge list of hundreds of mods.

There could be a feature which would allow a mod to be put in a custom category. My suggestions so far are:

- Drift
- Drag
- Cruise (buses, vans, tow trucks…)
- Fun (animals, moving objects…)
- Rally
- Rallycross
- Endurance

There’s a couple of points to think about:

- Should it be possible to assign a mod to more than one custom category, like multiple “tags”?

- Should mod authors be allowed to specify their own custom categories, or should it be a fixed list?
By allowing own custom categories, there will be cases where a mod author adds nonsensical, random or otherwise unacceptable categories. Of course that can be checked by the reviewer team prior to publishing.

- Should it be allowed to edit the custom category for a mod after initial publication?
Then I think the custom category should not be allowed to be edited after initial publication to prevent abuse by mod authors.

- Who should be allowed to categorise the mod?
I think it should be the mod author and incorrect assignments could be marked as “Requires changes” by reviewers.

Quote from Flame CZE :

As the number of mods is growing, I think there should be more ways to search mods.

Brilliant idea, this will work very well!

I think that there are a number of great mods that just get missed now with the vast majority of mods. If the classes were more specific then the user can really search what they want without remembering the mod name (we have some weird ones.....me included)

Quote from Flame CZE :

The default LFS car classes are not granular enough in some situations.

If we look at the existing car classes, already this rather simple system is sometimes used wrong: Cars are put into wrong categories.
Also consider how sometimes other basic things fail like proper screenshots or description texts.
So maybe it is better to not make things too complicated. Better to have a simpler system instead of a system with lots of details but half the details are wrong.

Maybe it just needs some small changes to existing car classes:
1) Rename "Object" to "Object / Fun / Experimental"
All funny/nonsense mods like animals, buildings, decoration, airplanes etc go in there.

2) It seems unclear what is the difference between "Touring Car" and "Saloon Car". Looking at the entries it is pretty random.
Combine them into one category (imo keep "Touring car") or just rename to "road car"?

3) Remove class "Formula 1" - there is only one entry.
There already exists class "Formula" which also covers F1.

4) Remove class "Formula SAE" - Of the three entries
only one entry https://www.lfs.net/files/vehmods/7F891E fits into the SAE rules. (the other two have too much engine displacement.)
Such cars are already covered by "Formular" or "Buggy" or "Kart" all of which are used more.

5) Create new classes "Drift" and "Rallye"

It's been more than one year since the new mods system has been around us and it's very nice that we got a lot of new content. But there is one thing that is bothering me for quite some time and that's the LFS/mods folder.

We need older mods versions, so we can watch older replays, but in my opinion, probably only 30% of LFS players save replays. So maybe we should find a way to optimize this because it's not efficient at its state at the moment.

We have a game that by default is approx 1.5GB, but after 1 year of mods, we have a 30GB mods folder full of trash in my opinion. (old versions and a long time ago deleted mods)

I think we should rethink the ecosystem and find ways to optimize this, so it keeps being smooth as it always has been before the mod system launch. A lot of people get some glitching or frame drops sometimes, while in multiplayer, including myself.

I get that most people have expensive tech and that maybe the future multithread update will improve the gameplay and smoothness, but for some reason, the game doesn't run smoothly as it used to run.

Fast forward to my suggestion: When a new version of a mod is uploaded, LFS users should have an in-game option to choose between:
1) Download mod versions separately !WARNING! Takes a lot of storage (Make a new folder ~002 as it is now.)
2) Overwrite existing versions. !WARNING! This option takes less storage (Overwrite the ~001 folders by replacing the modified files and renaming the folder to ~002.)

So what do we win from such an in-game option?

In case:
1) Keeps all versions. People could inspect older versions. Maybe check and report older versions for some reason. And they could run replays faster because they already have the specific mod version.
2) Overwrite existing versions. People will get a lot more free space and players using SSDs, especially with TLC memory, will get more durability on their drive, because fewer cell rewrites will happen. Also rather than downloading every time a new 4MB mod version, they will download a few new files for a total of 1MB, which will make their gameplay smoother, because not everyone has 500 Mbit internet.

There is only one thing that bothers me and that's people who want to check older replays with older mod versions. Maybe they can download only the necessary files, which are different. For example - The veh file and a few textures or engine sound files.

BTW. I've attached a screenshot of my mods folder. If anyone wants to free up some space on their drive, you could delete all the folders in LFS/mods/vehicles and redownload all mod's newest versions inside the game. This in some conditions as mine, could free up a few GB of your space.

Cheers to the people who read all of the text in my post.

Quote from r3zp3k7 :

I get that most people have expensive tech and that maybe the future multithread update will improve the gameplay and smoothness, but for some reason, the game doesn't run smoothly as it used to run.

There's a simple answer for why the game doesn't run as smooth as before. The fidelity of models of the mods. If you look into a LFS made vehicle, for example the FZ50, it only consists of 6400 tris. Most mods are multitudes of that. And when you get on a server which uses a lot of mod vehicles, a lot of unique textures, you have a lot more draw calls and detailed models to render. At that point it's simply a hardware limitation.
Only way to fix that specific issue is to limit mods to lower triangle count and texture resolutions, then the mods would load faster and would be more optimized. I'm not suggesting to do that, I'm just saying for your issue that would be the solution.

Quote from FIZ :

I'm going a bit off-topic and I apologize, but your post gave me some open-minded ideas.

What is using most resources in LFS?

- MPR /replay folder/
- MODS /mods folder/
- SKINS_X /downloaded external player skins folder/
- SHOTS /screenshots folder/

Maybe all these things can be added at some point in the future to their own options menu. For example "Storage" and people could look up what resources are used and clean some of them or know more about them, like skins_x and mods folder. Why skins_x? Because deleted mods skins are still available in the skins_x folder.

I did a 2 min GO with PAINT to express my idea and I'm using actual storage data from my LFS folder. (I've attached it.)

Quote from r3zp3k7 :

I'm going a bit off-topic and I apologize, but your post gave me some open-minded ideas.

What is using most resources in LFS?

- MPR /replay folder/
- MODS /mods folder/
- SKINS_X /downloaded external player skins folder/
- SHOTS /screenshots folder/

Maybe all these things can be added at some point in the future to their own options menu. For example "Storage" and people could look up what resources are used and clean some of them or know more about them, like skins_x and mods folder. Why skins_x? Because deleted mods skins are still available in the skins_x folder.

I did a 2 min GO with PAINT to express my idea and I'm using actual storage data from my LFS folder. (I've attached it.)

Yes. This. This is good. Please.

(but AFTER the big release )

When ur uploading mod that has been from another user with derivatives on, why you cant no longer chose on your mod if u want derivative or not, because youre now locked to yes, and for example i dont want my original parts used on other vehicles

Quote from NoScOpE_LV :

When ur uploading mod that has been from another user with derivatives on, why you cant no longer chose on your mod if u want derivative or not, because youre now locked to yes, and for example i dont want my original parts used on other vehicles

It depends on the license.
Some (popular) licenses require that the new work is licensed under the same terms as the original work.
If the original material allows modification then your new work (which is build upon the material) must allow modification, too. -> "Share alike."

Sometimes it depends on the definition what "build upon the material" means:
For example you have created some game and want to use an audio file that is licensed as "share alike." Your game's code is is not built upon the audio file, so you can still forbid modification of the code.
However, if you use the same audio file as a sample in a music track then you are building upon/with it and must release your music as share-alike. Meaning remixing your song must be allowed.
In the case of 3D modeling it is basically impossible to make the argument that editing a 3D file (adding things or editing its mesh) is not building upon it. So for 3D files share-alike applies.

Well I have been reading and hope to be on the right place.
It is linked to mods and main cars and website:

We would like to create car thumbnail with specific skins. Either own skin or team skin.
There is the skin viewer here:
https://www.lfs.net/cars
But it gives a 3D and not a thumbnail.

What I call a thumbnail:
https://www.lfs.net/attachment/452812

https://www.lfs.net/files/vehmods/C5F6ED

Would it be possible to have an url or a way to generate a skinned thumbnail?

I did a separte thread before but I don't know if it had visibility.
https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/2039113#post2039113

it would be usefull to be able to sort mods by power/weight ratio, tyre compound, weight, power, wings
then we could much more conveniently find matching cars for improvised racing, or filter allowed cars on server.
as it is now, it requires a lot of time to browse and read those numbers for almost each mod, and the "class" filter is not quite relevant enough.

Quote from turbofan :

it would be usefull to be able to sort mods by power/weight ratio

There's a little problem... If car mod have intake restrictor in default setup, mod system will show power with that restrictor, not maximum possible power.

Quote from versiu :

There's a little problem... If car mod have intake restrictor in default setup, mod system will show power with that restrictor, not maximum possible power.

This sounds like a very unlikely "problem". If it happens, it would be 1 mod over 1000 ?
Makes me wonder if your post is an intended joke.
Let's remember Scawen is a developper, he can program quite anything, that's what programming is about.

Quote from turbofan :

This sounds like a very unlikely "problem". If it happens, it would be 1 mod over 1000 ?

I literally called it "little"... It could be confusing and I know it could be coded. I just just let u know how it works NOW so ur answer is more a joke that mine...