Quote from NaBUru38 :

One question: why does "open-source software" exist for?

LFS will never be open, at least in the near future. There have been very heated discussions on this, which I'm sure you're aware of. Its The Team's choice at the end of the day.

To be honest, I'm partially in agreement with Scawen / Victor / Eric on keeping LFS closed. As much as I love Open / Libre software, some projects just dont benefit in the long term. Whilst Apache maybe the greatest bit of HTTPD software of all time, a massive amount of shit gets dumped into the trunk, which the release manager then has to clean out before release time. Its likely that the same would happen with LFS. Plus if LFS was openned then Scawen would have to spend his time documenting the whole thing. No progress made. Just look at Open Office; about 6 people understand it as a whole.

Quote from NaBUru38 :

Yes, I know you three work too much to make it for free. But the gaming community is waiting for the developers to release official game editors. Older / simpler racing games have them (GeneRally, Stunts Car...) but nobody has ever allowed to make a full 3D racing track with permission. Why are you wanting to delay this?

I'm afraid to say the people who want the ability to create custom tracks an vehicles for LFS is tiny. Something else to note is that most of the games you've listed were in an almost complete stage. LFS is not. As Scawen said at the meet, the tools change often, create in compatibilities, etc. The community couldnt cope. Wouldnt you be a bit pissed if you updated a tool and your track which you Just Finished(TM) was screwed again?

Quote from NaBUru38 :

The same could be done for LFS, but a little bit organised (not centralised, btw). In the official forum (here) track designers would discuss new projects, and could work in a team. If a designer found that someone else was doing the same track (especially real tracks), he/she could join the other person and finish the track in less time and with better quality.

Things never work out that way. Sometimes it would be better to fork, or even branch an open source project, but how many damn bits of software just start from scratch? Humans like to do their own things, they're not inherently collaborative. For instance Micheal Meeks who works on OpenOffice said he once wrote his own spreadsheet in java to get out of doing the actual accounts data he needed it to do, and also because it would be cool.

Quote from NaBUru38 :

Legal editing and modding is the future of videogames. Be the first group to make it possible.

First group....that conflicts with your point above. You've already shown they aren't the first, and they definately wouldn't be the first open source game which you can mod. I'm clearly not understanding this point...

Quote from Vykos :

Even if M$ sux big time etc. it still gives us the most compatible software platform all over the world.

I'd argue that whilst Microsoft products maybe the most widely deployed consumer systems, they definately arent the most "compatible", in the traditional sense. And to be honest, theres no reason why you can't or shouldn't run Open or Libre software on a closed platform..

I used to dabble quite alot with the FPS editing tools for most major games and have made maps for (HL Q1,2&3 RTCW and MoH) , the thing really do like about LFS is the "lack" of modding tools for vehicle creation, with LFS still in alpha and S3 still in devs head, this is somthing id rather have after the project is complete.

Quote from tristancliffe :

But it's a major problem in sim racing - if someone just makes a GTR car than can pull 7G and do 400mph then they'll win until someone does something more extreme

this is what i see happening if it was to come to be. Also how would you hotlap these things ie get them intergated into LFSworld ? LFSworld is the ICING on the cake For LFS imo.

But track Editing i can see a few problems with it, but surely if the track is good enough it will be used and accepted, surely there will be real bad creations , but like any art , some people are good some are genius, most are below average, but just imagine ....... south city mega long :jawdrop:
Guess what im trying to say is no making your own car is somthing id rather see in some other racing game, LFS is pure sim , lets keep it that way please

Quote from Vykos69 :

In terms of cars, I dont think and i actually do not hope that this will happen.

.....okay....I give up....this sentence is too much for my little brain

Quote from BlakjeKaas :

Nurbürgring

Everyone repeate: NÜRBURGRING NORDSCHLEIFE



About the Topic?

I think when LFS is finished it might be cool to have it opened a tiny bit so stuff could be designed and then be authorized by the Devs (or some people chosen by them) to implementation into the game.....so there might be some LFS-Quality-Seal for Add-Ons.....

.....and somehow I like the idea of a race series that gives the teams some rules.....and then they design their cars according to these rules.....I WANT MY GROUP C RACING!!!!!!!

Lord.....there is so much that MIGHT be possible in the future......guess we will have to wait

CU, Sebastian

Racer might only have held your interest for 10 minutes because of the modding, but plently of people have loved LFS without modding for over 3 years.

But lets say modding is allowed. Someone makes an F1 mod, someone else makes a DTM mod, someone else makes a kart mod, someone else makes an F3 mod, someone else makes a Stock Car Mod, someone else makes a NASCAR mod... All is fine and dandy to begin with, and we all think hurrah for modding. But then the F1 mod never gets updated or it's bugs fixed. Or the download links change for another mod. Or a patch is released for a mod, but only works with certain other mods. How is anyone, especially a newbie, supposed to ensure he has the most up to date compatible mod at any given moment.

It's exactly like rFactor - it was made to be modded. The devs didn't even bother to make decent cars or tracks to start with, so it HAD to be modded. But now there are 100's of mods, and all bar 3 are utterly crap. Same with tracks - that Nordschlief is poo, and I'm, not going to bother trying to drive it until it works - even seen 2ft kerbs at a race track?

I've played rFactor quite a lot, and do have even the teensiest amount of fun I had to faff around for ages making sure that I had the most up to date versions, which meant a trawl through lots and lots of threads and websites. And then I might discover that my friend doesn't have the latest version of, say, donington, so we can't play it anyway, cos he can't be bothered to get the latest version right now.

The ONLY way to make modding a racing game work is to have it as part of the game. This would mean that someone (either the Devs until they 'retire' from LFS or a specified replacement) would be the ONLY one who can add mods to the game. Then if you want to download the mods you download a mod-pack which is guaranteed to be the same for everyone ("I'm using Mod-Pack 3, so you'll need to upgrade from 2 to play with me, cos it's not Donington in it"). A pack could be released every 6 months or so (depending on what happens).

So open modding, imo, will destroy LFS. But 'closed modding' MIGHT add a little bit to it. It keeps it simple for the end user, keeps it simple for the modder (how to get your mod seen), and keeps out the vast majority of poo work which will undoubtedly be spammed everywhere like AutoX layouts are today.

Quote from WorldFamous :

That's just counter productive. The easier it is for people to work with something the more time they can devote to polishing the product rather than having to jump through hoops just to get it working.

Yes, making it easy will bring a lot of sub standard items to the party but like with any other game, people will only download and continually use the quality stuff.

There are a lot of terrible skins out there but I don't hear people calling for the devs to make that more difficult so only the most commited survive.

I don't think I came off clearly, I dont mean like make it hard just for the sake of being hard, i mean very detailed, very complicated, so you can actually make tracks that are up to the standard the game already as, not dumbed down like i have seen in Rfactor and other games...

Quote :

"*cough*custom tracks suck*cough*"

And coustom tracks do not suck, i happen to have hundreds of hours in coustom tracks for nascar 2003 :wtf2::inq:

i can not agree with everyone who thinks that modding can destroy a game. It's your choice to download custom stuff and i dont think the intention of making a game moddable was that the custom models would end up in the actual game in some release.
Modding can also be for the single individual, trying out modellingskills and so on.

Quote from Theafro :

I'm tempted to say the N word but i won't.

i covered my ears cause i thought you where about to say NI!!!!

Quote from tristancliffe :

I had to faff around for ages making sure that I had the most up to date versions, which meant a trawl through lots and lots of threads and websites. And then I might discover that my friend doesn't have the latest version of, say, donington, so we can't play it anyway, cos he can't be bothered to get the latest version right now.

This is the problem, not the content itself.

Oh the memories of quakeworld, join a server, you get the mod automatically, you get the maps installed, you join the game.

Ofcourse there's quite a change in filesize, but it's not completely unfeasible to have a central repository for even the 400 mb downloads, last time i installed debian linux i think i grabbed around 1 gb with the net installer.
Essentially the same idea as a mod-pack, but open to anyone, at any time, don't like a piece of content - don't use it.
It's not like every single person who figures he'll make some content will come up with a 200 mb mod.

Imagine automatically patching a mod when attempting to run it, instead of spending 30 minutes trying to search rsc for the broken url pointing to the 5 mb .zip you could have downloaded in 10 seconds, 30 minutes ago.

And, i don't really feel like there's a need for new content in lfs, but if there could be, why not. FOX on laguna seca?

Most standard tracks for nr2003 seem to compress to around 5mb, i'd happily have my server sending 5mb tracks to new players.

So, addons and mods (tracks!) thru a well designed system, yes please, thru searching rsc, horror.

Edit:

Quote from NaBUru38 :

Do you have bad articles on Wikipedia? Yes. Are there extremely good articles in Wikipedia? Yes.

Quote from tristancliffe :

It's exactly like rFactor - it was made to be modded. The devs didn't even bother to make decent cars or tracks to start with, so it HAD to be modded.

This is exactly why rFactor is a poor example to look for when speculating what would happen to LFS if modding would be 'allowed' - It seems that most rFactor mods suck, and, in my opinion the whole game is a mess now because:

- There is almost no standards to which a good mod could be compared, only the default cars and tracks that come with rFactor, and as you said they are not of very high quality. This makes people release all kinds of junk, and even the good mods end up being built entirely differently so they dont fit together well.

- There is very little content in the game by default, so there is a huge need for mods, which makes everyone rush their mods out so they would have something to play with. This will propably improve over time though.

- Despite being built for modding, the mod suppot is crap. There is almost no official information available, no tutorials, no proper documentation, nothing. The tools aren't very easy to use, and the way the files are organized for mods isn't very good so your whole game ends up being a mess after installing a bunch of mods.

For LFS even the starting point would be different since everyone would compare the mods to the stock LFS content which is already high quality, and (hopefully) modders would try to get their things to match that quality. I think, that to make things work there should be:

- Good documentation. Not just how to use the tools, but what you should do; recommendatios on how to make the visual appearance match that of the default content, how many triangles there should be, how many LOD levels there should be, what kind of texture mapping and what kind of texture styles you should use, what elements should a good track have, and so on.

- Good mod organization. Mods should be easy to install, and easy to uninstall. Extracting 50 files to your game directory that go to ten different subdirectories is a mess. A single mod (ie. a car or track addon) should be a single packaged file that you place in a addon directory, making it easy to install, manage, and uninstall. A decent example of this is Operation Flashpoint, where regular addons are archive files that you put to a directory named 'addons', or you can make mod directories that can be used from the command line to load a bunch of addons and files that replace the default game files. For a bad example look at MS Flight simulator, where the easiest way to uninstall an addon plane is to reinstall the whole game :P

- Some feedback and interaction from the developers. For example, one important thing to keep things looking good is to have the cars all have the same visual style. This can be very difficult, so it would be great to have some comments from Eric on how he does the models and textures so other people could try to make their work look similar.

If there will be official mod support for LFS, it would also be great to have the best mods to be picked by the devs to be sort of "officially" supported. They could be added to be part of LFSworld and be promoted on the official website. These should have very strict requirements to make sure they integrate seamlessly with the official content in every way.

Quote from Kegetys :

If there will be official mod support for LFS, it would also be great to have the best mods to be picked by the devs to be sort of "officially" supported. They could be added to be part of LFSworld and be promoted on the official website. These should have very strict requirements to make sure they integrate seamlessly with the official content in every way.

:bowdown::bowdown::bowdown:

well thought out idea there.

hmm, that's kinda like what valve is doing with halflife...

and valve made it work...... although i just dont see the need for lfs to get modded. Many have loved the game for years without any mods, mods would just ruin lfs if they are poorly done.

if u want mods play rfactor......


mad

Modding is a very 'in' thing atm. With many new releases packaged with a mod application of some description. But remember, these products are finished and have an official release. LFS is along way from that yet. Let the guys sort out the physics before pestering them to get a mod app out there. How can they give you a mod tool when they havn't even finished the very thing you wanna mod and won't have for another few years yet.

I for one would be in favour of a modding ability, not for my personal use (I am no way near literate enough to produce a half way decent mod) but I do like seeing new and interesting content. But all in good time. Start messing with the product now and you'll just end up with a mess that will only cloud the true heart of LFS and make it difficult for the Devs to get their product out there and selling well.

But when everything is hard coded for the final and last time and LFS is offiacially released then the devs could think about controlling their modders in a similar way that Valve do. By being an active component in the modding community. Staying on top of releases, aiding and giving advice and advertising good mods on their website, hosting dwloads and such like.

But, like I said, any developer activity concerning a modding kit or tools is still along way away. Give them a chance to get the game out proper first . . .

still a mod CAN'T destroy a game. And i am not talking about an app to make cars and levels in. There are programs like maya and 3dsmax you know.

Quote from Madman_CZ :

Many have loved the game for years without any mods, mods would just ruin lfs if they are poorly done.

I've used my windows box with no desktop wallpaper for years, there are really really bad wallpapers available for use, but in some brilliant way i'm not forced to using them.

.. anyway

Kegetys, packaged files ftw!

Bittorrent technology for mods! snatch <option> kb/s from licensed racers racing, get a few high speed servers attached to the project, use normal bittorrent tech for when people are actually downloading something, with relaxed ratio settings.

Get mods ingame at blazing community-powered speed!

And yes, lfs isn't finished, but think tanks are good

Problem with mods is they splinter the community. Once a new one comes on the scene everyone jumps over to that one even if the quality sucks. Look at all the track/car combos we have at the moment and it's always the same ones being used over and over again. So lets throw more into the equation and we end up spliting the community. There needs to be a good system in place for modding to work because mismatches are the most annoying thing in the world and rFactor is full of them if you don't keep up to date.

You have to remember the LFS devs couldn't put their names to a mod because that could cause legal issues with licensing.

I'm not against modding but I want to be able to boot my game up and be racing people within a few clicks with no frustrating troll through the internet searching for the new version of a mod etc.

Keiran

All i'd really want is tracks, i agree full-conversion-type mods can split the community.

Quote from Don :

track & car editor released for everyone cant end very well

ex:
http://forum.rscnet.org/attach ... d=350894&d=1140418967
http://forum.rscnet.org/attach ... d=349314&d=1139758252
http://forum.rscnet.org/attach ... d=340401&d=1136340895
http://forum.rscnet.org/attach ... d=342047&d=1136933280
etc...

what game is that super 7 in?

Quote from keiran :

I'm not against modding but I want to be able to boot my game up and be racing people within a few clicks with no frustrating troll through the internet searching for the new version of a mod etc.

Keiran

I'm with you. If I had to search the net to download the currently being used version of the mod it would go something like this:

Log on.
See where everyone is.
Search the net for the mod.
Save the url and send it to work in email.
Wait until the following day to go to work.
Download the mod at work and wait to go home.
Get home, install mod, log in only to see that now everyone is at a different mod tonight.
Rinse and repeat.

It would kill dialup users having to download all the new mods as everyone flocks to them. LFS is so fantastic for us dialup users as it is now. I connect to servers almost all over the world and race with 20+ others without problems usually. I've asked in other forums for other race sims and the answer is usually, I'd have a problem with more than a few cars in the server. LFS netcode ROCKS for us dialup users.

When broadband starts pricing it as current technology, not like new tech as it is still priced now, I'll get broadband. It should by now be priced like dialup was back when it was common. Broadband isn't new anymore!!! GET THE PRICE DOWN!!!!!

If a game has a very large fan base, it could survive an onslaught of mods (quality ranging usually from piss-poor to good) as there would always be enough players blasting away with the unmodded version. I certainly would not want to see LFS facing the same situation as where rFactor is right now - splintered community and empty servers everywhere.

My opinion:

- Track modding - YES with an approval system, only approved quality tracks can be played online.
- Car modding - NO, except maybe experienced modding teams with a lot of physics knowledge.

Quote from GP4Flo :

Track modding - YES with an approval system, only approved quality tracks can be played online.

Why would you need an approval system?
What would force you to drive on tracks you dislike?

What if i want to run a server with my wip-track?

To stop crap tracks being released and never improved after release.
It's not to stop people driving on the per se, but to stop the crap tracks making LFS look like a crap sim, just like some of the mods do with rFactor. It IS a crap sim, but the mods don't help.

Then you'd use the tools provided when modding is allowed that would let you drive your track in the car of your choice, but wouldn't have multiplayer capabilities to stop WIP tracks spreading.

Atleast let me run a hidden server with my crap track?

Quote from Don :

track & car editor released for everyone cant end very well

ex:
http://forum.rscnet.org/attach ... d=350894&d=1140418967
http://forum.rscnet.org/attach ... d=349314&d=1139758252
http://forum.rscnet.org/attach ... d=340401&d=1136340895
http://forum.rscnet.org/attach ... d=342047&d=1136933280
etc...

LOL, but that's kinda unfair.

Compare those to these: http://thepits.us/gallery/rFactor-Screenshots (NATG Mod)
And a video of the same mod: http://forum.rscnet.org/showth ... &highlight=nagt+video

Quote from Kegetys :

There is almost no standards to which a good mod could be compared, only the default cars and tracks that come with rFactor, and as you said they are not of very high quality. This makes people release all kinds of junk, and even the good mods end up being built entirely differently so they dont fit together well.

I think the current standard would be that Porsche Cup Mod. But I don't know because I don't have rFactor, altough I've been thinking about getting it.

Quote :

- Despite being built for modding, the mod suppot is crap. There is almost no official information available, no tutorials, no proper documentation, nothing. The tools aren't very easy to use, and the way the files are organized for mods isn't very good so your whole game ends up being a mess after installing a bunch of mods.

Are all of the mod tools even available for everyone? As far as I know at least ISI gave mod tools in advance for some mod teams?