I talked myself into buying the s2 license as soon as my paycheck arrives... I know, it is not much, but hey, every little bit helps
Also, the great and uncomplicated multiplayer setup for lan-games made my brother and one or two friends thinking about purchase. I think, if I show them s2, they will probably hop in.
And concerning PR: did anyone think of a LFS-TV tool? It would basically include all the cars, tracks and the skin download-feature, but would only allow to watch races as a spectator or replays.
Well, i think there isn't, only if some Japanese/Chinese/Korean guy who speaks good english could translate in to Japanese and then ask for devs to put that in the next patch..
My brother doesn't have broadband, so downloading LFS would take him forever. I burned him a CD with the LFS demo, the latest patch, the Road Going and Easy Race car setups, a bunch of skins, the keyboard shortcut pdf, the unofficial manual, the advanced car setup guide, a few extra background pictures, wallpapers, etc. It goes in the mail today. If he likes it (which I'm sure he will), he'll be able to easily burn copies to hand out to his friends as well.
Eventually I'd like to see most of this stuff included with the program. The manual and car setup guide are must-haves, especially since they're quite small. The next CD like this that I burn for someone will have the track maps on there too, along with some of the better car renders, specific track setups, etc. I'm thinking about burning off 10 copies and putting them outside the door of my office with a "free! take one" sticker near them.
edit: is there a way to make a particular setup the default that gets loaded when you first start the game? I'd like to make the Road Going setups the ones that are loaded when you first try out each car.
edit 2: Is there a way we could change the name of this thread to be "Digital word of mouth"? Digital mouth-to-mouth makes it sound like you want us to make out with each other.
We SA racers are struggling because most of us are using Telkom, the local telecommunications company as an ISP, and we are on shaped accounts (unshpaed are extremely expensive) and we get bad pings. If enough people e-mail the SAIX gamesmaster at [email protected] we would get a local dedicated server with low pings. Please forward the following email to him with subject "Live for Speed - online racing simulation dedicated server".
It doesn't matter that you are in another country, just send that please and a lot of people will hopefully do the same. If a server is created, the South African community, currently consisting of about 10 good racers, will grow quickly. Flood him with e-mails, hehe!
Thanks!
EDIT: I also e-mailed a local car magazine that has a section for game reviews asking them to reveiw LFS. This magazine is very popular, the biggest in the country I think.
Thanks jmkz , and also to axus for starting this campaign, lets see what we can achieve with the help of this great community , thanks in advance to everybody that will send a mail
Anyone who does send the mail, would you please change the amount of time you have been racing for so that the gamesmaster doesn't recieve a list of identical mails Thanks for your help. GTR already have a server so I see no reason for LFS not to have one.
Well I have showed LFS to some friends...
That has brought about 8 to 10 new S2 licensed players...
I know some of these guys have showed it to some of THERE friends...
I guess it's irrelevant to talk about my friends I have forced to test the LFS and those I'm bothering with my questions when will they finally come on S2 servers. But what I wanted to tell here is my way to LFS world, since I guess it was too long and hard:
I was fan of racing games from my Amiga times. Never had a wheel (and always wanted it) so I really didn't feel too satisfied when I was trying to play F1 sims. I liked NFS series until 5th tale (if i remember right), I really loved NFS Porsche Unleashed, I've bought ColinMcRae Rally 02 and enjoyed "arcade" mode LAN circuit races alot. Tried CMR03 (omg) played some CMR04 (quite good) and tried CMR2005, which meant my loud bye to CMR and everything anyway connected to Consolemasters. Not to mention how they actually burrowed the excellent 1NSANE game with their shitty marketing.
Then Richard Burns Rally came to my attention and I quickly bought this great rally simulator. Still without a wheel I had troubles to make good times, but I loved the game which didn't excuse any of my driving mistake and offered genial keyboard control system.
Then I wanted something, ahem, less rally. You know. Actually I was looking after some kind of NFS Porsche Unleashed 2, but only found rice U2 and plain stupid HP. I've been desperately googling for everything anyhow similiar to PC racing games and don't wanna hear about all that crap I have downloaded, installed, and loudly swearing deleted....
As an old member of another massive online community (space action btw) I've decided to try to shoot the moon: asked for good racing game. All of a sudden some finn posted www.liveforspeed.net and here I am.
THE END OF BEGINNING.
Sorry for a long personal story, I wanted to lit my way to LFS, which should, in turn, ignite your ideas guys. As you can see, there was a potential customer, who always wanted exactly this game. But couldn't find it even after months of searching. This should never happen to anyone again.
There seems to be a good chance that we will get that SAIX server now. Thank you to everyone that participated in e-mailing the gamesmaster! We are soon going to hopefully have a "www.liveforspeed.co.za" up and running and there are some other things which aren't official yet, so I can't mention them but there is slow growth in the South African community. We have gotten quite a lot of the serious racers in South Africa together and we have a server thanks to SniperZA with low ping times. I e-mailed a big local car magazine - Car - that has a games section about LFS and asked them to do a review. They said that they may do one in the next 3 months (it looked like a standard reply so don't get too excited) which would hopefully bring some new racers.
We are also trying to organize a big LFS LAN towards the end of the year to celebrate the success that we have had this year in growing the community.
I've started a campain on SCORE to convince the people there that LFS is the sim of the future. Since 50% (or more) of the regular visitors are from USA or Canada, I think I'm doing my part to spread the word in the right direction.
Progress so far... Four of the regulars have signed up for the league. Two from Europe and two from Canada.
[offtopic]
- KiDCoDEa -
Love the Amiga (1200 is it?) in the photo. Mine gave up on me a while ago, but I'm trying to get hold of a new one
[/offtopic]
LFS is growing quite quickly in SA now... we have a little race series going down weekly (we are on a bit of a break for now, but it will start again soon). We have our own forum section on the SA Internet Exchange Gaming Services website and people from other simulations are drawn in quickly