I really, really love the idea, but i have a question about the paid mods:

What if the original modder wants to distribute it for free?

I think this is a good idea but people shouldn't have to pay for mods. In the contrary I think people who make mods should pay to get it in the game. So that the devs don't go over it without getting anything out of it if it's not a good mod.

So people would like give 2 dollars to get it reviewed and see if it would be added and something small like 5$ would have to be paid to get it into LFS. It would also chase the cheap mods from being given for revue.

Quote from zeugnimod :

This is everything that needs to be said on this topic, IMO.

If certain ideas are being toyed with by the devs, it might be good for them to know how the community feel about it. I would have thought how the content of LFS expands from here is one such issue.

I've only ever seen two things suggested.

open modding -we all agree would be bad
modded modding -were licence issues become a problem as the devs have to 'include' the content themselves.

There is another option. Such as only giving the modding tools to those who show an aptitude to use them responsibly and have been around long enough for the devs to trust them with it? Who says the tools have to be a public download?

Quote from Becky Rose :

...
open modding -we all agree would be bad
modded modding -were licence issues become a problem as the devs have to 'include' the content themselves.
...

or maybe more like?:

"modded modding - there'd be a community based authority, legally not related to Scawens corporate body, that would add the mods.
However that would be huge huge responsibility and it possibly could backfire sometime in the future."

Well, it is Scawens call after all, but I personally crave for new content and I know I am not alone.
Tapping into the huge creative power of this brilliant community still seems like a good idea to me...
I'd love to hear how he personally plans to expand the content of LFS in the future. But maybe it is his business secret.

Getting 3rd party content into LFS would only work (= LFS stays being the best sim for pick-up racing and keeping its easy accessibility) if the new stuff is included into LFS download, that people don't have to download separate packages from forums / different websites. This means that the devs would have to spend time on integrating the new content into LFS, which would take time.

If the devs would like to get paid for their efforts, then the added content should be charged for. Depending on the amount of added content, the cost could be spread into 2 or 3 different packages like rallycross license, gtp license, stock car license or whatever.. So that people wouldn't have to pay for each and every car & track separately but in simple, genre oriented bits so they can get what they want and live in the know that there's not gonna be version mismatch or missing content in the racing genre the user likes.

But.

If the devs charge for the added content, then all the stuff would have to be fantasy. There are tons of mods for rFactor (some of them are very good), because most of the content is from real world, either converted from a commercial product or scratch made. There's no design to be done. There's always blueprints or photos or something to go by. Fantasy content, like most of LFS currently is, would be much harder to produce in numbers.

I don't know if it's "ok" to just copy whatever is in real world and just call it something else, some games of the past did this but are there any legal issues, I just don't know (Hoellsen, where are you BTW?!). We know there's a MacGyver F1 up for grabs if this is OK Paying whatever licensing fees should need to be done before any LFS user licenses for the content could be sold. This would mean either an existing capital to be spent to several licenses or an investor to back up the sim. I don't know if this is possible at all.

Pricing the content could be hard as well, should it be a set figure of say £12 to get one of the genre packages. That would mean let's say 6-9 cars and 2-3 tracks. How many people need to be working on a package to produce that content in x time? How long will it take if x number of people work on the content as a hobby, of their spare time?

Food for thought, :twocents: etc..

I'm not sure if it's modding that could rejuvenate LFS, but something needs to be done. At the moment this sim is almost dead to me, and to many others.

Luckily iRacing doesn't allow pick-up racing as such and is quite expensive, otherwise LFS would be :expressio

Quote from Huru-aito :

...

my idea now is rather:

let the modders copy whathever they want (there's a lot of good mods out there already), let them re-create real tracks and simply don't care about licencing because it wouldn't be officialy published by Scavier

then set a filter (the moderaing 3rd party) to choose just the best cars and tracks and publish them for free
this isn't fair at all, but rFactor guys do it for some time already, so we supposedly could too (well, it certainly is morally skewed, but...)

the question is how to support Scawen because he makes his living through new content and not through updates of the engine

Yeah, but every word I wrote so far in this thread is just plain speculation. I'll try and get Scawen to share his opinion/plans.

The funny thing about some of the rFactor modding guys is they get really touchy if you copy their unlicenced illegally produced work...

Quote from Becky Rose :

OK so i'm not the best looker or the hottest chick in town, but my girlfriend is *smug grin*.

Prove It!!

Quote from southamptonfc :

Prove It!!

Trust me, she's a bit of a looker

Quote from southamptonfc :

Prove It!!

Come to Bob's karting do I got pics on my phone - but no looking at the folder marked "Private" mkay.

Quote from Bob Smith :

If certain ideas are being toyed with by the devs, it might be good for them to know how the community feel about it. I would have thought how the content of LFS expands from here is one such issue.

Yes but there have been enough threads on this so that the devs know what the majority of the community thinks. IMO.

Quote from zeugnimod :

Yes but there have been enough threads on this so that the devs know what the majority of the community thinks. IMO.

Maybe so, but after so many years, if the community didn't keep going back over new stuff, then there'd be no conversation going on. 'Cept the crackers, course.

Quote from windmouse :

But somewhere halfway between user-generated content and developer generated content lie moderated mods.

I seriously doubt that this is a realistic alternative. The problem is not whether Scavier will allow mods -- let's just assume that they are willing to consider it. The problem is that you won't get many mods, or none at all.

Making top-quality content for a sim is a lot of work. Suppose you have the skills. Would you invest all the time and effort to create a new track or car, if there was a good chance that it would never be published? That you would never get praise from the community for all your hard work?

Furthermore, to become a creator of first-class content, you need practice. Your first few projects will not be that good. And if you are sure that they won't make it into LFS, you will probably start out on some other sim, like rFactor. The question then is: is there any reason to switch to LFS later on?

There are some solutions for this, but they all have cons:

1. Create a "premier league" of moderated mods and a second, non-moderated league for the lesser-quality mods. But that would essentially be like rFactor's approach, with the same problems: a lot of garbage, and a thinning-down of online racers.

2. Pay the content creators. This comes down to expanding the development team, and I can't see Scavier agreeing to that.

3. Only do conversions of mods from other sims. Not a real solution, because a good conversion is still a lot of work. Besides, you need to get permission from the original author.

I think moderated mods would only help to liven up the stereotype of Live For Speed !

As the others, I am against the idea of making those mods paid. Feel free to make it as a S3 feature, I would only be pleased to buy it

Sorry but Awnser is no.

S3 perhaps (once final)

I could explain but id just be repeating myself over and over. (as this discussion has been done countless times before now)

I still think the best modding method is one that is self-contained and requires no downloads.

I posted the idea for tracks months and months ago, but basically the idea is you use road "parts" with a series of sliders to dictate widths, curves, inclination, surface, etc. Servers can choose to load them in much the same way they do with autocross now.
That way you can create any track you want, but there's no danger of everyone having to go out and find the latest version of the track every time you log in.

Cars on the other hand could be done by having Tweak-style stats saved to the server, associated with a body shell. When someone logs in, they download that shell and the stats are assigned to the car. The download would be pretty small and you're always guaranteed to get the most up-to-date version available.

Servers could use as many or as few cars as they want, and people could go nuts with making whatever licensed cars they wanted because it's a freeware mod and doesn't need to be paid for by anyone.

My understanding of what you are describing Dajmin is that it would result in tracks that have to look very generic in their scenery and would have less character.

problem with releasing mod tools to the public would be that certain groups ( cracker) could use them to extend their cracked games. Look at that one thread about the modified XRT models. As soon as you publish a MDK, even if you need to unlock it with your game password, some time someone will crack it.

Quote from Becky Rose :

My understanding of what you are describing Dajmin is that it would result in tracks that have to look very generic in their scenery and would have less character.

Possibly, but it doesn't have to be. Right now I'd say choose from one of the existing environments and yes they'd all look similar. But let's be honest, would anyone really notice that the background was the same as Blackwood or Westhill if they were driving Nordschleife?

I'm just trying to think of a way to keep everything versionless and with as little downloading as possible.

I mean I guess you could go as far as allowing the positioning of trees and billboards, maybe even up to allowing people to use a server-hosted jpg to give custom signs (since the format was changed anyway).

But with enough sliders there's no reason the tracks would look any more similar than they already do. Starting width/height, end width/height, smoothness, placing random bumps and dips, the list wouldn't have to be that extensive to get enough options in for some decent recreations. At least for a first version.
And in terms of appearance, the texture library is already there, it's just a matter of getting the software to use it. Nothing stopping you using South City textures on a Fern Bay track in this case.

There'd need to be limits imposed for file size and number of background objects (to avoid frame rate death), but I think it could work.

Ah well now we are entering into the world of fractal topography... Did I tell you about my other hobby? Fractal topography? *expects blank stares* well...

Dont do it. Trust me on this, a track should be hand crafted and not be generic - otherwise it's like the difference between Aston Cadet Forward and Aston Cadet Reverse...

It is possible to create amazingly details landscapes with huge variety using fractals, I do this for pleasure, but all that variety needs coding in in the same way all that atmosphere and ambience of a race track needs modelling. You're not going to get good results with a generic system.

Whilst a tool such as that could give a 'framework' on which to work, I dont think your going to end up with the standard of tracks you're used to seeing in LFS unless you make the tracks in more or less the same way as LFS does now...