Yes. The M$ boys don't bother to put much effort improving their stuff. It usually complains some unknown unicode char. They don't put much effort in following standards either. If you want to see it as intended I would use some other browser (I use Firefox). Of course it would help a bit if people didn't go crazy using every odd looking char they can find in their names (because IE doesn't handle all them)
So far I haven't found an IE proof solution, sorry. (if you know one, please tell me too)
Btw. Besides atleast I had to download a new unicode font to see most of the special chars like the Japanese Katakana letters (otherwise they look like a box or a question mark etc depending the browser used)
Currently no (hardcoded). If you really want that now, you need to make some script etc to change the names. Atleast the number system is language independent
"...nb of races won by a racer and his total score points..."
In a way nice idea, but...
I haven't made any permanent (saved) statistics of the points, because it is not fair in 99% of cases. In F1 or WRC the group of drivers is always the same so the 10pts here is usually as well earned as 10pts somewhere else. But in LFS races you could score easy points if there is only a group much slower drivers against you. It should somehow take into account the count of racers and how good they are. So some kind ELO ranking points (like in chess) except for multiple players... hmmmm... ELO ranking... hmmm... got to go... got something to think
-Idle tool : when a player do nothing during 30s 45s or 1 min he's autokick in -spectate mode
-Scheduled messages or action : every 20 minutes auto display message
-Autorestart after all racers finish : custom delay 1, 2 or 3 minutes.
-points system: when a players is spectating a race, the current race should be added in his race/points ration.Cause actually when a racer win 2 races and spectates during 10 races he's always in the lead cause he got full points and top Races/points ratio.
i know u r working on the next release maybe u have already implemented some of options listed upper
Because you requested it again, I just did that tonight. Seems to work, but needs still some more testing (nobody wants to be spectated w/o a reason). (It works only in server and with players having account names (NOT demo?) )
User can give the time allowed to idle before kicking (e.g "45sec"), the speed limit (below which it is considered to be idling) and the warning text (e.g "Drive or spectate noob!") which is printed middle of the screen (together with the time left before being kicked). The time ticks down from 10... to 0 (seconds) with the text.
The other suggestions... I think them. Actually the second one is something I've been thinking already.
@duke_toaster
No no. Some good ideas. Some of them require bit more coding. The idea of multiple servers connected to the same points table could be expanded to 1 lap time/stats log for multiple servers (but that is a large thing to do). Other points...not so hard.
ELO ranking... I studied it a bit. The original ELO system doesn't work well. Needs some tweaking but basicly it would still have issues. The MS TrueSkill is in some ways better (XBox), but more complicated. One of the bad sides is that all systems take some amount of races before the calculated skill level is settled to the players true skill. In racing the time difference should be the measured variable (IMO) (e.g. 0.01 sec difference is basicly a draw) and how much value e.g 1 sec difference is. It would take some intensive adjusting.
Another thing is that in racing all kind of abnormal things happen like: out of gas, being wrecked out of race, forgot to make the compulsory pit stop, etc. Should those be calculated to the skill level and how. And those who wreck their car, teleport to pits and begin the race again. Chess starts to feel so much simpler game.
I'm not completely abandoning the idea, but it needs more thinking. In the end you should think "does it bring anything to the game?".
Inflation is an issue if you want to compare drivers at different times. That's why chess players moan and whinge about the greatest chess player of all time. But if you aren't comparing different people at different times, ELO should do the trick.
There is Glickman and Chessmetrics as well.
[QUOTE]The MS TrueSkill is in some ways better (XBox), but more complicated. One of the bad sides is that all systems take some amount of races before the calculated skill level is settled to the players true skill. In racing the time difference should be the measured variable (IMO) (e.g. 0.01 sec difference is basicly a draw) and how much value e.g 1 sec difference is. It would take some intensive adjusting. [.QUOTE]
World Football Elo Ratings uses different K (volatility) factors. If the win is by two goals, the factor is increased by 50%, 75% for a 3 goal win and so-on and so-forth. Maybe 1% per second?
[QUOTE]Another thing is that in racing all kind of abnormal things happen like: out of gas, being wrecked out of race, forgot to make the compulsory pit stop, etc. Should those be calculated to the skill level and how.[/QUOTE]
If InSim provided us with packets on collisions, the wrecking thing would be simple. A set number of collisions (maybe excluding T1) ==> Spectate.
But in making formulas you need to do at least some handwaving. The tennis rankings (for example) do not take in to account court types, colours are not taken in to account in chess etc. All of those other than the wrecking are simple. Put enough fuel in, and make sure you do the pit stop. I get it out of the way early (second or third lap).
[QUOTE]And those who wreck their car, teleport to pits and begin the race again.[/QUOTE]
Shift-S ==> Spectate + no midrace join?
[QUOTE]In the end you should think "does it bring anything to the game?".[/QUOTE]
IMO an ELO system is better than the STCC system of points for positions, more points on higher servers as it's not related to strength of opponents. I mean, if you are racing biggie and bawbag you should get more points for coming second than for coming between me and someone else painfully slow.
Haven't checked those Glickman and Chessmetrics. The normal ELO is only to rate the results on the basis of win/draw/loose system. It would need some tweaking to rate race stats on time difference basis.
Yes, but it needs the testing to choose right kind of values. If the values are not correct you get feeling the system doesn't track the player skill level correct. The time difference off course is affected by the lap count or actually the total race distance (those affect how much are allowed to loose). I understood MS made large number of statistical analyzing to choose their values for TrueSkill. The system in LFS would need some kind of testing too to choose them. For the best reliability it should be used in large number of servers and best if it was general LFS feature (stats in LFSWorld).
Yep. It was just the point in the "out of fuel" case that it doesn't really make the driver slow (can happen to a good driver too). And alter the skill rating (ELO etc) on the result of that race is quite hard. Basicly it would be DNF result, but again the issue of how much to substract from the skill level.
In the end I think the rating would show little bit more the racer reliability/consistency than the speed. But of course the speed would have an effect too. Then the rank should be calculated for every combo or atleast every car. Like I'm ok (I think) with XFG etc, but I suck with FO8.
Yes. Actually that's why I haven't made it so that the points are saved. Simply because you cannot compare them between different races. That would indeed need the ELO type rating system to make it wise. Without that the point amount would have a strong correlation to the amount of races driven and less to the skill level. And I've understood that the skill level should be the idea behind the STCC system. Atleast they give some kind of 'licenses' and allow only certain licensed persons to enter certain servers.
Actually I wouldn't like to see the ranking system to be used to categorize people into different classes with the sole idea to kick out people who are not high ranking enough.
Glicko and Glicko-2 (Glicko is the system, Glickman is the guy who invented it) is a bit confusing. Well, more than ELO.
Chessmetrics is about as difficult as elo BUT it would also need some re-engineering to sort out the thing for LFS. In chess with chessmetrics, matches become insignificant after 2 years. I imagine that chess players do less matches than LFS drivers do race. Bear in mind that a 4 car race would probably be assumed to be 3 "matches" for each driver. This would mean that ELO would need a lowish K factor (i'm guessing around 3 to 5). Note that chessmetrics is a weighted average.
It looks like ELO is the least fundimentally flawed, if you get what I mean.
Same with me, but using some form of application would definately make it easier for people running leagues. A ELO rank of a number of races is much more representative IMO than a single hotlap.
One thing which might be needed - a way to stop selective pairing - a poncy term for running away from good opponents and packing your bags half way through a tournament when you are sucking like a vacuum cleaner that day.
What I suggest is - and this would need experimentation and revision - an option to limit the minimum number of races you must do in one go and the maximum number of times you can go with less than that that week.
For example, let's say that both are set to three. If you connect and just piss off three times, you could get your rating suspended or get docked 50 points or something - maybe even a week ban. Just thinking aloud.
Because the rotator works now I don't return to that...
Flood action... Ok. How do you want to define it? Some frequency (messages/time)? Do want it to allow a short time crossing of the limit with a warning?
Swear filter... Considering. Are you sure that is a working thing? I mean that there are 101 ways to go around it. Also the list must grow quite long if you add all the curse words. I bet there would be always one missing and in the end I would feel dirtier writing such a list than having to see an occasional dirty word in a server. I do understand if there are children driving, having to see such words is not good, but nowadays those words are unfortunately so frequent that you can hear them in a kindergarten too (not saying it means you have to listen to them in LFS servers too)... ...(just considering the good and bad sides here)
What am I doing wrong here? I can't get the track rotation to work and I've read trough this thread twice, looking for the answer. The rotation part of the setup looks like this:
--
rotate{
races_per_track=2; // races before changing track
//races_per_track=2; // min 2 and max 5
randomize=0; // 0=in order, 1=randomize, 2=randomize, not same track(entry) twice
wait=10000; // millisecs (1000..10000) - how long to wait track changes etc
track{
id=SO1; // SO Classic
qual=5; // minutes before the first race
laps=8; // race laps
bias=2; // bias used in randomizing new track (0=not used)
wind=0; // 0=no wind, 1=light wind, 2=strong wind
weather=1-3; // 1=day/brigh clear, 2=evening/cloudy, 3=dusk (usually)
cars=XRG;
mustpit=0;
}
track{
id=FE1; // FE Club
qual=5; // minutes before the first race
laps=9; // race laps
bias=2; // bias used in randomizing new track (0=not used)
wind=0; // 0=no wind, 1=light wind, 2=strong wind
weather=1-3; // 1=day/brigh clear, 2=evening/cloudy, 3=dusk (usually)
cars=XRG;
mustpit=0;
}
--
After two races, the changer kicks in, but selects the same track again, not the next in the list as it should be. Please help me out here
Thanks for the reply and the hint. I'll try and put a fresh copy in there and also put some more people on the server to test with. I'll updated you on how it goes
Hmmm. Yep, I've heard this sometime before. It seems to happen in multiplayer only. At least I cannot make it fail offline. There is a delay it waits before issuing the track change (/track) after the /end command. It could be that in multiplayer there can be sometimes excess delay before the entry screen is loaded. So in the new version I put more delay and also user given delay is not limited to 10000.
Yes, but that is not my fault. I read that it happened sometimes in W patches, but it still seems to be an issue. I've understood LFS should keep the order of packets and quarantee their delivery to clients (it uses TCP) except the car position packets (UDP). So the /end should arrive earlier than /track, but maybe they arrive with a too short interval sometimes.
I hope the newer versions fixes that. In principle you would like to keep the delay at minimum but still long enough that it never fails. Best would be if you could send one packet which makes LFS go to the entry screen, load new track, make car selections, weather changes etc etc.
it works! you rock 
