My current project (LfS TV director) is using pth files. May I put these files into my distribution? Or do I need to get permission to do so? Or should I write something (and what) into the credits? I have looked into the readme of LfS Spectator and have not found any comments regarding the pth files or about the source of the pth files.
You can do that, that's fine. They are available for public download anyway. Perhaps you could add a note in your readme which version of LFS the path files are for, and point out that they may change at some point. Anyway, if you include our PTH files with your program, please remember to update them when there is a new version of LFS released with updated tracks. Thanks!
I wondered about this when using TrackIR Cams ( NaturalPoint) I contacted them and got a response that said and I quote "Use our logo in anyway that fits with any of the companies legal restraints"
just noticed that in the latest LFS versions the pth files are included in the smx folder, so there is no need to include these files any longer in my distribution. Nevertheless I have 3 questions about this:
What is the first LFS version where the pth files are included in the installation?
are these pth files also included in the smx folder if a user did not used a fresh installation but only upgraded everytime (from P to S, then to T, U, V... and so on)
how reliable is it that the pth files match the replay that is playable by the LFS installation (in other words: is it possible that pth files may have changed or change in the future with a compatible patch)?
The forward paths are a reliable source of information. I'm not sure when they were introduced but version X does have them and version U does not. I can find out in more detail if necessary (if they were introduced in V, W or X). But I'm stoppping work for the day now.
In version Y, reverse paths were also included by mistake, so now you have various tracks with reverse paths included but not Westhill, Kyoto or Aston which were not updated. Only the forward ones should have been included because this is just for the track selection screen.
Yes they will be reliably updated when new tracks come out and would be in patches as well - like all updated data. I'm not sure if I should now include the reverse paths as well (including the missing ones) from Y19 onwards. Would that be helpful for programmers?
The main advantage for the addon developer is, that an addon has always a matching pth file available. This will increase usability because the user does not need to take care of the pth version, it always matches the LFS installation. !!! This requires that a changed path file leads to an incompatible patch. I am not sure, but I would expect that this is anyway the case. It would be kind if you, Scawen, confirm this.
@Scawen: there is no need (for me) to determine the exact patch, when you first included the path files into the smx folder, since they only contain the forward paths (I did not know that before), but my tool needs the reverse paths too. Just make a note when you are going to include all (forward and reverse) paths into distribution. For all previous versions I have to distribute the pth files nevertheless.
An updated path would normally be because of an updated track so I think in almost all cases that would be an incompatible version, yes... you can assume that to be the case.
I will include all the paths including reverse configs, in the SMX folder, from Y19 onwards - they don't take up much space.