Quote from seinfeld :

of course development is going to be slow with 3 semi commited creators, I mean not working 100% on this game.

Semi committed? Lol. I think they're very committed. It's just that there's only three of them, and there's only so much work three people can do.

Quote from seinfeld :

and really the car has no place in LFS, its useless, the FOX is only a smidge faster, and they are both a good battle between eachother, the clucth is useless on it, even just normal racing burns it out.

I guess you haven't learnt to drive the FBM then. There's nothing wrong with the clutch on it. I've only managed to cook the clutch with deliberate effort to do so.

Quote from seinfeld :

also there is so much talent on this site, there are awesome skinners, and the high res tracks, and details, those people should be asked to help desing new tracks, and I dont even need to ask them, I know they would love to do it.

And would they expect to get paid for it as well, since their work would be included in a commercial product? It's not as simple as just saying "you, let's use your work in our product" when Scavier are selling that product.

Quote from seinfeld :

not consumed by this game, they want to keep this as a hobby not a full time job so to speak

I think it's quite clearly a full-time job - at the very least for Scawen. Victor appears to have taken a little step back and worked on another project or two, and none of us know about Eric. Either way, it's not for us to make demands or accusations about their working arrangements as it's none of our business. Yes we can voice concerns and opinions about the product, but it's up to the devs to allocate manpower/resources as required to keep the playerbase stable/content/not going anywhere/growing, and being sniped at won't change their minds in the slightest. I think the devs have more confidence in themselves and their product to pay any attention to your kind of comments.

Quote from seinfeld :

what ever happens things need to be moved forward, you have GT5 out in a months time, which promises to be better the GT4, and if it is alot of people will leave LFS

this is where I stopped reading.


LFS is slow in development and increasing numbers appear to be dissatisfied with the current amount of content (tracks) and pace of progress, but it's by no means "the rest of the community" nor does it warrant troll comments followed by "i don't mean it in a bad way..."

I think people need to look back at last year this time, we were lucky to hit 900 racers online, we are not double that but getting closer (1500 racers online at a time during the weekend)

This time of year has always been slow. It picks up again after school is out and the summer hits.

Quote from Christopher Raemisch :

and the summer hits.

ufff 3 months till summer for me

Quote from Christopher Raemisch :

This time of year has always been slow. It picks up again after school is out and the summer hits.

Yup, I agree. In fact, I'd rather been left with the impression that that WAS the consensus/conclusion of this thread, barring some overt speculation etc.

Quote from N I K I :

ufff 3 months till summer for me

All good things come to those who...

To be honest, I wouldn't mind if LFS is a result of someone's hobby, full-time job, or even that of a programmer with a bowel disorder doing 24-hour-on-the-toilet-with-a-laptop coding spree. I liked what I saw and I pitched in and I enjoy whatever limited LFS-time I manage to squeeze in a day. So all this arguments based on the commitment levels and what-not are really lost on me.

I understand that there is a dedicated (and one could say devoted) fan-base that Wants What's Best For LFS but sometimes even that has to be slacked a bit. It's good, it's healthy, but there are limits.

Sinefeld, don't flatter yourself. And before I get into other reasons why you shouldn't, let me just say that if you manage to overheat the clutch on the FBM unintentionally, you're a clot.

For those who think Eric is working slowly, we've seen plenty news to suggest revamped car interiors, an improved Westhill and an improved Kyoto ring are sitting on his computer as it stands. Aston is nearly S2-ready, Blackwood and South City already are. That leaves Fern Bay as the only thing he really needs to finish before S2 final and moving on to new content. It's a shame that this is still only on his computer, yes. But Eric really isn't behind on his work.

Correct me if I'm wrong but very few people think development is slow. Progress is. Because development is targetting the wrong things to a certain extent, or at least because things are *still* left unfinished after they've been a focus area of a patch so it's like they've only been patched up a bit. Take the AI - that's been worked on for a good few months but still hardly usable so it's like those few months of development never happened until a few more months are spent on it. They are still useless as far as racing goes.

We got S2 Alpha in 2005. 2.5 years have passed, the tag is still there and with good reason.

And for crying out loud, in a game genre called simulation racing a good 20 or 30 years after its dawn we've still not got a single sim that manages to simulate tyres properly. How is that not the first thing on the physics to-do list? Every force that affects the way the car drives is transmitted through the tyres (apart from collisions and drag). Anything else that's implemented will instantly be wrong because the tyres are wrong. And the more things are implemented, the worse the model gets in extreme situations, resulting in exploits, like locked diffs.

Quote from axus :

And for crying out loud, in a game genre called simulation racing a good 20 or 30 years after its dawn we've still not got a single sim that manages to simulate tyres properly.

Well then m8 hurry up and finish uni and start coding the ultimate tyre model I'll let you take 3 - 5 years because that will be about the time I intend to retire and it would be nice to have it by then, so how about it eh

Todd and Gregor Veble have already beaten me to it. Now we just need to get our hands on some of their work.

Quote from axus :

Todd and Gregor Veble have already beaten me to it. Now we just need to get our hands on some of their work.

Hmm with your contacts that should be a sinch

I wondered why you had changed your tone so much

Quote from xaotik :

To be honest, I wouldn't mind if LFS is a result of someone's hobby, full-time job, or even that of a programmer with a bowel disorder doing 24-hour-on-the-toilet-with-a-laptop coding spree. I liked what I saw and I pitched in and I enjoy whatever limited LFS-time I manage to squeeze in a day. So all this arguments based on the commitment levels and what-not are really lost on me.

This is exactly my thought process as well. I liked what I saw in the demo, I thought S2 would be worth $50, I bought it. I wasn't disappointed with my purchase. That was when S2 first came out. It's gotten a lot better since then and I still haven't paid another dime for it.

Sure, I'd like lots of things fixed or improved, more content, etc. But I'm not exactly in a position to demand it now, am I?

Quote from seinfeld :

also there is so much talent on this site, there are awesome skinners, and the high res tracks, and details, those people should be asked to help desing new tracks, and I dont even need to ask them, I know they would love to do it.

the game could improve so so much with the help of some experienced fans. it would speed up development by 300%.
Victor keeps saying we dont want more ppl, because then it wont be built the way we want it built, thats just an excuse really, because in the end he will have the final say, he will say what goes and what stays

I dont know why extra talent hasnt been recruited, the two things I could think of is they are just lazy, or its not a priority for them, and I dont mean this in a bad way, its that they are not consumed by this game, they want to keep this as a hobby not a full time job so to speak, I understand that, but as i said , ask for some volunteers that are experienced, in skinnning, maps, tracks, they can help you guys, the development can continue, you guys can keep the hours down on the development and just have the final say, compiling part to do.

Well, this is a point I really agree to. Like you said, it's the decision of the devs if some third's work will finally be integrated or not.
And why do so many people instantly hope to get rich with this? What a community of capitalists we are! Successful and officially added contributions could be rewarded with vouchers and their name standing in the credits, what I think would be enough for most of them - even more than skinners and modders and programmers currently get for their effort: nothing, nada, null.

I fail to understand why the devs don't even try to hook people that do a great job AND are respectful for the devs' work and loyal enough to be critisized and pushed in the direction the devs want it.
Or do they?

I guess nobody of the potential contributers wants to destroy LFS. Instead they'd like to make it better, bring it forward, maybe for a lower priority bring in themselves with their work.
Surely, not everybody has the qualification to contribute on the high level of LFS (in most game areas), but maybe a kind of a competition could be the solution: Give the community example tasks and the person solving the problem the fastest, the best, or even both, is the winner with the chance of a future cooperation with the LFS team! Okay, I have to admit this costs time and effort what leads to finding somebody to do - oh my god, this is a vicious circle! So I now shut up.

Ooops ... after finding my last post maybe was a bit off-topic, here comes what I originally wanted to say when entering this thread.

I see myself as an average LFS player, nothing more, nothing less. Maybe not the fastest in the world (missing records only several seconds ), nor the slowest (of which I'm sometimes not entirely sure). So I firstly guessed there are many, many, many others like me having not the time to play LFS some hours a day, but maybe several times a week - of which I sadly couldn't find more than 10 the last months regarding the servers LFS offers when choosing multiplayer: There are the what I call pros at CTRA and CD, there are the oval junkies, the cruisers, cops and robbers, and the sad rest seems to be drifters or just-starters jumping instantly into the BF1. Means: Nobody for me I'd like to compete with, though I'm (at least I think so) rather a person of the original target group of LFS than at least five of the groups altogether I just mentioned. Hm.

So my question is: Where is the average LFS player, like me??? Where are people that have a work and/or family that are not able to play 24/7 but actually want some nice, fair, average, maybe advanced racing sometimes a week? Can anybody hear me? This is a bit disillusioning I think.

Quote from smove :

There are the what I call pros at CTRA and CD

This is where you are wrong IMO.

There are drivers of all abilities at the CTRA entry servers. I can't speak of CD but I guess they have different skill levels there, too.

You actually can finish almost always in the top 5 on the CTRA tier 1 servers if you drive clean and don't have any crashes even when you are 3 or 4 seconds slower than the WR.

Quote from zeugnimod :

This is where you are wrong IMO.

There are drivers of all abilities at the CTRA entry servers. I can't speak of CD but I guess they have different skill levels there, too.

You actually can finish almost always in the top 5 on the CTRA tier 1 servers if you drive clean and don't have any crashes even when you are 3 or 4 seconds slower than the WR.

Could be that I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I needed a kind of license for joining a CTRA race recently ...

Quote from smove :

Could be that I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I needed a kind of license for joining a CTRA race recently ...

Well, you do need a licence for the higher servers which are using TBO, LRF, GTR and the faster single-seaters.

You can join Race 1 (XFG/XRG) and Single Seater 1 (FBM) without a licence.

Quote from zeugnimod :

Well, you do need a licence for the higher servers which are using TBO, LRF, GTR and the faster single-seaters.

You can join Race 1 (XFG/XRG) and Single Seater 1 (FBM) without a licence.

So I might try this - but how to gain the licenses you talk about? Are they depending on lap times, or laps raced, or races driven, or what?

Quote from Glenn67 :

Hmm with your contacts that should be a sinch

I wondered why you had changed your tone so much

*ahem*. Nah, I've not really had the opportunity to try out that much yet. It's just that I'm a bit disappointed with the last physics patch considering what it could have focused on.

Quote from smove :

So I might try this - but how to gain the licenses you talk about? Are they depending on lap times, or laps raced, or races driven, or what?

Look here, to not turn this into a CTRA thread.

Quote from Christopher Raemisch :

I think people need to look back at last year this time, we were lucky to hit 900 racers online, we are not double that but getting closer (1500 racers online at a time during the weekend)

IIRC there was quite some time when there were twice the number of Demo users as Licensed.

Quote from smove :

Ooops ... after finding my last post maybe was a bit off-topic, here comes what I originally wanted to say when entering this thread.

I see myself as an average LFS player, nothing more, nothing less. Maybe not the fastest in the world (missing records only several seconds ), nor the slowest (of which I'm sometimes not entirely sure). So I firstly guessed there are many, many, many others like me having not the time to play LFS some hours a day, but maybe several times a week - of which I sadly couldn't find more than 10 the last months regarding the servers LFS offers when choosing multiplayer: There are the what I call pros at CTRA and CD, there are the oval junkies, the cruisers, cops and robbers, and the sad rest seems to be drifters or just-starters jumping instantly into the BF1. Means: Nobody for me I'd like to compete with, though I'm (at least I think so) rather a person of the original target group of LFS than at least five of the groups altogether I just mentioned. Hm.

So my question is: Where is the average LFS player, like me??? Where are people that have a work and/or family that are not able to play 24/7 but actually want some nice, fair, average, maybe advanced racing sometimes a week? Can anybody hear me? This is a bit disillusioning I think.

I think we both have the same kind of "driving possibility", I have a job and I'm not able to race 24/7, even when I'm at home I'm not a pure gamer any more (those times were as I was younger) and further I got other duties.
So sometimes I have no time to race for a month or more.

But I like LFS for it's realism and complexity, but while not being able to race 24/7 I'm really slow in creating a good setup for only one car on one track and when physics updates come out every now and then and all the work gets destroyed it is just not funny and so I and other players quit since the work get destroyed ever now and then.

It wouldn't be that bad if we'd been given better possibilities for setup creation, but I (we) as player feel quite left alone with the most important part in LFS.

There are still missing:
- A well documentation not only covering physics but what setting exactly causes what in LFS-
- A problem-solution-documentation covering what to change to solve speciffic balance problems (LFS still does not work as real life, as ride height does not influence downforce for example)
- Ingame tools that help you analyze replays to see which (spring *example*) settings to change in which direction to improve grip/ balance ect.

If it was not so difficult and time consuming to create setups, racers could concentrate more on racing instead of playing pit engineer, and that's what LFS is/ should be about => racing.

Just download some setup from the setup field, or ask some fast driver from the server, you don't have to adjust it perfectly to your driving style, i always drive with other people set's and i can get within half a second of the WR in 90 % of combos and i also drive very rarely.. Don't think too much about the setup, just drive and watch other fast drivers and try to copy them

Quote from Lhunathwen :

If it was not so difficult and time consuming to create setups, racers could concentrate more on racing instead of playing pit engineer, and that's what LFS is/ should be about => racing.

Imho, that is not a valid point at all. Creating setups with so many setup parametres will always take time, especially if you go all the way to get the setup fast and good to drive. No manual will help with it.

And there is always the easy option to download setups from setup sites and make some small tweaks to fine tune them etc.. Yes, the default setups are not very good but it doesn't take a lot of effort to replace those with better stuff.

From my own experience, creating setups has never been the factor that has "slowed" me down or taken time off from racing. And I'm having some difficulties understanding how it could have done so to anyone .

Quote from Lhunathwen :

It wouldn't be that bad if we'd been given better possibilities for setup creation, but I (we) as player feel quite left alone with the most important part in LFS.

There are still missing:
- A well documentation not only covering physics but what setting exactly causes what in LFS-
- A problem-solution-documentation covering what to change to solve speciffic balance problems (LFS still does not work as real life, as ride height does not influence downforce for example)
- Ingame tools that help you analyze replays to see which (spring *example*) settings to change in which direction to improve grip/ balance ect.

If it was not so difficult and time consuming to create setups, racers could concentrate more on racing instead of playing pit engineer, and that's what LFS is/ should be about => racing.

I can see what you're saying with this because not everyone has the time patience or knowledge to create setups, but again I think if you spent about 30 minutes playing with a setup or trying to create a setup you would find that it really is very easy, and most setups don't require a full rework for different tracks.

80% of the time I take an existing reliable setup that suits my driving style (which I've either tweaked before, or has been given to me by another driver) and just go ahead and make fine adjustments according to what track it is I'm driving. With this method of creating/adjusting setups you give yourself the opportunity to either only make small adjustments (camber/tyre pressures/down force) or go all out and completely rework (camber/tyre pressures/down force/anti-roll/spring rates/bound rates/etc..etc..) it so its specifically created for that particular track.


Alternatively you could go to a setup site www.setupgrid.net and just download a setup for that particular track you're wanting to race on, However I think you'd get more enjoyment and satisfaction out of creating your own setup, and then having people ask for it because they think its making you fast.

Quote from Hyperactive :

Imho, that is not a valid point at all. Creating setups with so many setup parametres will always take time, especially if you go all the way to get the setup fast and good to drive. No manual will help with it.

And there is always the easy option to download setups from setup sites and make some small tweaks to fine tune them etc.. Yes, the default setups are not very good but it doesn't take a lot of effort to replace those with better stuff.

From my own experience, creating setups has never been the factor that has "slowed" me down or taken time off from racing. And I'm having some difficulties understanding how it could have done so to anyone .

Actually I'm quite familiar in optimizing the setup roughly very fast, but getting it good takes much more time.
I drove 6044 laps with FOX on blackwood during the last 2 years and I really was able to drive a single good lap 1,5 secs behind WR, but average was 2-3 seconds behind, then came the new physics update and I even had holidays these times and I wanted to use the time to create a set to come up with new physics and track layout and while playing a lot of others just passed far in development, thus I found it a waste of time.

Two friends of mine did so, too, they quite with the last patch.

And I got a bunch of other one's setups, even WR setups, but I got an other driving style, I simply can't control them so it is not always as simple as downloading other's sets.

Quote from Lhunathwen :

I drove 6044 laps with FOX on blackwood during the last 2 years and I really was able to drive a single good lap 1,5 secs behind WR, but average was 2-3 seconds behind

Geez, was that with a default set? Can't imagine having 6000 laps on a combo and still be 2, 3 seconds average off the WR?