I am constantly making setup changes and use a seperate window to look at setup information/guides etc.

I was thinking, why not make a small InSim setup helper program.

Online you can press !help for help !rules for server rules etc.

Why not have something like !setup, which would then send a message like:

press !Front toe in, for information on toe in.
press !rebound damper for information on rebound dampers.
etc. etc.

Then when you pressed that it would say

+rear rebound damper=more oversteer mainly on corner exit.
etc. etc.

Or even something like, when you press !setup, it asks:

Type:
!loose
!tight

then:
Type:
!entry
!middle
!exit
etc. etc.

and it would list a bunch of different options to help that condition...

Only problem is I'm not a programmer.

Good idea though?

Quite a cool idea - in theory you'd only have to write the actual program once, and then just yank the data out of a database.

I'll have a bash later in the week, if I get a moment - although I'll definately need someone to write most of the "technical advice"

Well, I think you could just take the stuff from the setup guides of the LFS wiki:
http://wiki.lfs.4players.de/index.php/Car_Setups

You Sir, are a rock and roll god Florian

Waits for mods to move the post with the message,
"The programmers forum is not some request section, moved post."

Once that's done i'd say it's a bit pointless as you wont be able to reply with the necessary depth and you're far better off printing pages from the wiki and keeping them handy .

Quote from Becky Rose :

Waits for mods to move the post with the message,
"The programmers forum is not some request section, moved post."

I didn't want to be a meanie, but I will admit that we do appear to be getting more "stuff" here recently.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Once that's done i'd say it's a bit pointless as you wont be able to reply with the necessary depth and you're far better off printing pages from the wiki and keeping them handy .

I was thinking along the lines of extending the idea to be a general "infobot" (see: http://www.infobot.org/), to hold any old data, etc. which racers can change. Perhaps hooking it into being an msn / irc / jabber / <insert your favourite chat method here>, as well.

It's b/c of me. I'm very popular you know. *Barely Misses the tomato being thrown at him.*

Quote from Dygear :

It's b/c of me. I'm very popular you know. *Barely Misses the tomato being thrown at him.*

:duck:

Sounds like a good idea for people that need a quick setup reference. If done right, this program could access a whole database of material. Depends on how far you want to take it, like the_angry_angel said.

Quote from MonkOnHotTinRoof :

Seriously, in case you are willing to put in all the info, you can use LFSLapper for that. No need to make new application just to do simple messaging on given commands..

The only thing lapper wouldnt allow you to do is to get racers to add new info nuggets, unless I'm mistaken?

!add_info <setting> <data>

No, LFS Lapper does not allow that. It could be added. But why would you want to.

Quote from Dygear :

!add_info <setting> <data>

No, LFS Lapper does not allow that. It could be added. But why would you want to.

Bear in mind I come from a background, where I help people in IRC channels. I have done for quite a long time now. Frequently asked questions are pain in the arse, which is why infobots exist. If someone wants to add something, they can and do using a very simple english-style semantics. It will also pickup nuggets / factoids by studying the general chat in the same way. To get that response back you just say that phrase followed by a question mark.

So why have it free range? Despite being very open to being corrupted, people rarely do because its there to help them, and because it is so open, and more people contribute.

If you guys think its a potentially daft idea, then perhaps its not worth the effort involved? My thought was: imagine the LFS wiki on-demand (albeit rather smaller, probably with links), from your server or via msn / irc, which you can grab updates for periodically? The major problem is the 64 character limit on chat messages, and the "potential" for spam.