Thank you for your frankness .
Could you tell us in two words your definitions of Spam and Troll?
It would help me a lot to understand what you are saying.
I understand now.
We got off to a bad start. My messages are too long, you don't read them and you think it's not about LFS. I assure you it is quite the opposite. The long post on this page (for example) was a reply to the post jjust above. I did not quote it. It's a mistake. Sorry. It would have helped you understand what I said.
Good race to you
TL;DR the LFS userbase is small and there's basically no pick up racing.
While this is true, i think you're maybe overestimating the impact of the fixed setup thing here.
If that happened now, i don't see attendance numbers magically skyrocketing or new players coming in, more is needed for that such as the elusive update and new content. Tracks especially. And even then the ship may have sailed.
All of the other stuff you wrote is pretty much irrelevant to scheduled events.
You're talking about pickup racing with fixed setups.
I didn't say it was magic .
Of course, the next updates will be decisive. I'm just saying that it lacks an intermediate class between demo and professional races. This new class could allow for a smoother transition between the two. This is where the fixed configuration could help.
For the rest, I'm sorry, but my post has on the contrary everything to do with the scheduled events in the sense that these events are scheduled by communities that address their members. The LFS community being small, communities have difficulty filling in the grids. It's logic.
The idea is to have events that reach people outside of the established LFS audience.
Scawen, I've noticed that you're creating more objects and signs and that's really good!
Would it be possible to create an object similar to this mod? for rally championships it would be amazing !!
Mod is called " STAGE START "
I believe that if LFS also bet on more objects for rally's we can have very interesting rally events in the future!
I believe we can help attract more people and hold events like other simulators in LFS.
Well that's true. I mean I'm not interested in casual racing so no surprise I don't even consider it as something that shall have a collateral impact in improving attendance.
You may be right, and I guess it is not that difficult to implement a "same setup for all" option, and it won't hurt anyone. However, we don't see much of that casual activity going on these days... as I said I wish I'd be proven wrong, but my eyes tell a different story.
You know, the devs were already talking about cars with fixed or limited setups a good dozen years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if that happens with the next update. There's a lot of bustle here, but most of the time we're watching a train go by with long-scheduled stops.
What is strange and funny too is that this idea of fixed or limited setups seems to appeal much less to part of the community.
The best (I think) is to initially let the modders limit themselves the possibilities of setups for their vehicles. Which is already possible, in part at least.
Last precision, having a new class of cars with fixed or limited setups, would not prohibit organizing events scheduled with these cars. There is no incompatibility. You are in a better position than me to know and/or verify that racers would be interested in this.
Perhaps a timer for each event would increase the probabilty of entering in a race. Other aspect that comes to my mind is career progression, lfs is a sim I know, but perhaps a little more gamification would converge toward this goal of helping drivers to organize themselves and achieve more in game. I love to play lfs and my dream f9r this game was to become a granturismo done properly, I know that's a lot to ask but perhaps looking around benchmarking what other sims and games are implementing to retain people playing. What I noticed after mods came into lfs is a lot of great content (srsly there's some mods that are awesome) but no focus whatsoever in propperly racing them, perhaps is just a matter of time to tweak and adjust them, but anyhow I'm feeling that lfs also needs some guidelines attinent to format of racing and categorys to keep things on rails specially on mods department.
The only way to increase attendence at events and all other servers in general is simply to attract more players. Note that I used "simply", while in fact this is a very complex thing. Lfs needs more updates in all departments, but they will come in time. Don't forget that one of lfs main strengths is that it has a very specilized and small community. This is a double egde sword, that may bring a lot of risk. We survived all these years, so community will exist as long as the sim exists. I actually preffer that Scawen keeps the game as it is, without too much mumbo jumbo.
I've done a bit of holiday work on the calendar, with a bit of help with html from my son Leo (who isn't actually an expert but knows more than me how it works).
This is nice, makes it a bit easier to see what's going on for sure, and the logos to the broadcasts is a nice touch.
I wonder if it could skip to the current day, or somehow highlight it a bit more obviously, or dim everything in the past rather than just the previous month?
Either way, this is a nice improvement, thanks both!
At first I thought of auto-scrolling using a # in the url but think that might not look too good.
Now I'm wondering if it could operate in two different modes: weekly or monthly.
- Weekly mode could be the default start with the current week and have e.g. 3 extra weeks below.
- Monthly mode could be an option to show traditional calendar style as now.
Added a stream start time hover text to the stream logos.
It should be in your local time zone. Please could someone, who is not in GMT time zone, check if the hover text stream start time matches the stream start time shown in your LFS entry screen? EDIT: Thanks for the replies, I am sure it is OK now.
Hi! Thanks for showing that updated calendar. I do like the design of this new calendar as I believe each event is now displayed more clearly and can be more easily seen
Yes it does match
About the option of showing current date. To improve usability/user experience, it should be displayed in different color, than past and future dates. And, to improve it even more, text "Today" should appear next to that date, if possible. With those, people will immediately see what is today's schedule in league races. And with text "Today", it will also help color blind people to see that schedule.
I would like those two modes, as that is pretty much the standard in all kinds of calendar sites (Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar etc.). Usually in weekly mode though, only the current week is shown. One plus would be the fact that you could control what will be shown in the weekly mode and what in the monthly mode. For example: it would make sense to show more details of each event in weekly mode, but only in there, as it might get too crowded if you are displaying everything in monthly mode. Therefore, monthly mode could probably show just basic information of each event.
However, this came to my mind when looking that calendar: would it be possible to show all sessions of each round at least in the weekly mode?
I noticed this, because there is one feature the new calendar is lacking at the moment: rounds that are held on multiple days. For example, you can see tomorrows £100 Sprint Clash!-rounds there, but those rounds are actually held on two different dates. In both cases, there is just one practice session held on that first day and all other sessions are done on the second day. Problem is that event is now only shown on that day, when the first session of that round is held. Also, in the old calendar, it did show all sessions and their start times for each of them. This is also missing in the new calendar.
Maybe only the first session of each round can be shown in monthly mode, but at least in the weekly mode, all sessions and start times for them in each round should be displayed. Of course with that, the problem rises if the round is held during two different weeks, unless those extra weeks are also shown
- Make multi day events appear on multiple days (but not showing each session, you can click to look at the event page for details.
- Have the current week at the top by default. Probably allow click forward or back 4 weeks at a time. Possibly allow month-based view as well though less important.
- Calendar as the default for leagues section, which I think should be renamed "Events" (unless someone has a better idea - to me "Leagues" at the top is a bit obscure as a way to find out what's on).
I also prefer Events. With term "Leagues" (as well as "Series"), it does give the impression for user that leagues will contain multiple rounds. Events can also be one-off events after all.
By the way, I found two issues related to this:
1) When you look at "League Races Today" on the front page, you can see that if there is a situation, where one league has multiple seasons running on a same day, all those sessions will be listed under one season.
You can see it right now: league "Sport Racing Team Finland", has two seasons running today called "AI Endurance 2025" and "AI Endurance Jr". However, only that latter one is shown on the front page, but interestingly enough, it imports that other season's session held today to that season, acting like that one season has two sessions today, even though it really only has one.
I've attached an image about this.
2) I'm not sure am I doing something wrong or is this a bug, but I found two issues related to my organizing seasons hosted on a same host:
2.1) Why my host "Sport Racing Team Finland" is shown on lowercase format at both league page and in the entry screen, even though I did use capital words when typing that host name on my league-page?
2.2) And additionally, users can't join that server directly from the entry screen, but instead have to manually find/type that server's name and then join there from the multiplayer mode. Even though that server is online. And when you look those seasons pages here:
You can see that those both season pages even say that host is online.
I don't see this issue happening with any other league on the entry screen, regardless if those events are password protected or not. (Only other league which does seem to do the same is "JGTC Season 1", with host "JGTC" but that host doesn't seem to be online)
Also, it doesn't keep track of users online on the entry screen. Because it thinks that server is not online, it also thinks there are no users on that host, even when there really is.
tl;dr: LFS entry screen thinks my host is not online, even though it really is, and its season pages here also say it's online.
new look calendar is awesome, but Fragmaster's FoX Friday is not listed enough. You do realize it happens every Friday. Same car, same server, same time.
I've made the code for the in-game list match the code on the season details page, so now LFS entry screen does show the host online.
Why it is in lower case and cannot be changed, I have no idea (remember I had no part in writing this system). Maybe at some point in the process the lower case version was entered and is somehow stuck that way. Maybe I'll find out some time but I'll get on with the other changes first.
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is that this idea of fixed or limited setups seems to appeal much less to part of the community.
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