I'd say a lot of people stopped racing in LFS because they grew old and gray, got kids, got jobs, and simply don't have the time anymore! 
Mmh I am still waiting for someone to rebuild Blackwood in real life 
I consider this layout one of the best, because it is so simple, yet you can pass nearly everywhere.
Also, I really like the S1 tracks, specially fern bay with all the tricky turns and bumps, and probably because they give the most track day feeling, combined with the normal road cars.
About "talent" and such: I thought I was good at doing art back then when I made LFSW with Vic, but once I got more into programming at university, it turned out that I am several magnitudes better there... So Eric, whatever you thought you were good at, keep doing what you do now - the sky is the limit
I consider this layout one of the best, because it is so simple, yet you can pass nearly everywhere.
Also, I really like the S1 tracks, specially fern bay with all the tricky turns and bumps, and probably because they give the most track day feeling, combined with the normal road cars.
About "talent" and such: I thought I was good at doing art back then when I made LFSW with Vic, but once I got more into programming at university, it turned out that I am several magnitudes better there... So Eric, whatever you thought you were good at, keep doing what you do now - the sky is the limit
uaah i just realized that it been SOO long that kidcodea is not banned anymore
Might be Devushka (sp?) with that yellow / light blue GTI if i remember correctly
Insane, I am just realizing that the last day i was online in LFS was one single day in early 2009. The last actual race was in 2007 :P
What about Cedje Dervo and Devil 007?
I just realized that pretty much everyone I know in LFS is from that pre-2006 era
[EDIT]
we drove all night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6AMjQsAj7w
What about Cedje Dervo and Devil 007?
I just realized that pretty much everyone I know in LFS is from that pre-2006 era
[EDIT]
we drove all night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6AMjQsAj7w
Last edited by ORION, .
Everyone is still around, but many people who started LFS early in the demo days (<= 2003) in their teens or twenties, are now really old people with jobs, responsibilities and some even with kids
Some switched to iracing or project cars for a while (and all the other sims), but I am pretty sure they will come back to LFS. Most simracers play all the games anyway!
[EDIT]
cool I didn't remember my avatar was animated
Omg its quite crazy that Scawen is pulling through such a large project without proper version control systems
insane 
lol are you kidding?
you are not shy, looking at all the hudreds of chicks you have as friends in facebook ;D
you are not shy, looking at all the hudreds of chicks you have as friends in facebook ;D
Well i would say, they have not done any management except the micro management every programmer has to do, in order to keep track of the bugs and todos. Its clearly a disadvantage of the way development Scawen and Eric had chosen in the very beginning.
But on the other hand this approach made LFS the way it was in the first couple of years - more like a little family of funny people having a nice time on track. When professionality found its way into LFS - mostly in shape of the big leagues like the ESL and the Intel racing tour - the community changed and the requirements to LFS changed as well.
The part about having a nice time got more and more subsidiary and for most of the old school people, LFS is not as much fun anymore because of all the 14 year old competition racers who just want to win. And the other part is just hanging out on cruise servers.
However, enough nostalgia, at the point it does imo not really make much sense to increase the development team. They should push really hard and make a reasonable S2 version as soon as possible, and then it is time to rethink the development model. There are plenty of different paths to S3, and only one seems silly now: Making all the new features and content and realeasing it all together when its done. LFS needs updates in 6 months cycles with new content (like 1 track and 3-4 cars), and the old stuff needs to be maintained as well. And every 1 or 1.5 years we need a new game version with a new major feature like night racing, rain, etc.
you get plenty of warnings and emails before you are actually banned. so you have to wait until the ban has ended.
iirc they are using lightwave to model the objects and then export them to the lfs modeller, where you set up all the functionality. I dont know how it works for the tracks, beacuse they require quite a different data structure. For example you cannot drive on the trees and various track segments have different materials etc.
You can quite easily outsource (parts of) the art work, like modelling or texturing, but currently the main problems are a) tyre physics is really a hard job and sc needs a lot time to make it good, and b) the graphics engine is getting outdated and thus all the modelling work that eric has been doing in the last 3 years or so might be for the recycle bin at some point.
probably, but after all it will also require someone who has an overview about all the things that other people are making, and first of all they might need some training for the tools that are need and not public atm. All this takes time and is also management work, which the devs do not like to make. (And this fact is basically one of the main reasons why LFS exists at all
)
Last edited by ORION, .
Hi m8
Im sure that they planned to integrate stuff from the community, but all those things would require man power and some systems to keep things clean and sorted. And most importantly, it would mean that they have to give at least some sort of editor to the community. And you know we have clever people like Phlos who will easily hack those tools and make their own editors from it, allowing everyone to get custom cars (and thus not buying possible addition cars or tracks the devs might release in the future).
Any of those significant changes have their pros and cons.
At the and of the day, most people would only be disappointed to see their McLaren GTR or Ferrari F40 in the game, with a tyre physics that cannot handle such cars (neither with a realistic not unrealistic setup).
So what would you do? I could not tell tbh... Go back to the classic game development method and hire plenty of people to get things done much quicker (and run out of budget and throw an unfinished crap game on the market), or suffer from the small indie team and get only small bits of work done at a time?
The devs decided to do the latter because at least its fun
However, its not good that the physics are taking such a long time, because the other parts of the game need a lot review as well. At some point, you just have to start over with some of the graphics because they got outdated.
Thats the development part of the problem.
But there is still the waiting community, and the other games getting better compared to LFS.
Im sure that they planned to integrate stuff from the community, but all those things would require man power and some systems to keep things clean and sorted. And most importantly, it would mean that they have to give at least some sort of editor to the community. And you know we have clever people like Phlos who will easily hack those tools and make their own editors from it, allowing everyone to get custom cars (and thus not buying possible addition cars or tracks the devs might release in the future).
Any of those significant changes have their pros and cons.
At the and of the day, most people would only be disappointed to see their McLaren GTR or Ferrari F40 in the game, with a tyre physics that cannot handle such cars (neither with a realistic not unrealistic setup).
So what would you do? I could not tell tbh... Go back to the classic game development method and hire plenty of people to get things done much quicker (and run out of budget and throw an unfinished crap game on the market), or suffer from the small indie team and get only small bits of work done at a time?
The devs decided to do the latter because at least its fun
However, its not good that the physics are taking such a long time, because the other parts of the game need a lot review as well. At some point, you just have to start over with some of the graphics because they got outdated.
Thats the development part of the problem.
But there is still the waiting community, and the other games getting better compared to LFS.
sexy :P
now lets wait for krani to show up with some uber video
funny that i just made a similar tool to render avi movies from flash a few days ago, for our audio guy so he can sync his sounds to our animations
now lets wait for krani to show up with some uber video
funny that i just made a similar tool to render avi movies from flash a few days ago, for our audio guy so he can sync his sounds to our animations
trust me, most of those guys are still dropping by every now and then
but how could you forget tinyk :P cookies for the rescue!
and what about devil 007 and arrechee, the keyboards gods (who never managerd to keep up with me though... lol just kidding
)and i also miss making something cool with vic, like lfsworld
lfs skins anyone?
very good job there!
little question though: what is the black stuff in front / at the bottom of the image supposed to be?
Your 40th birthday wont happen before your 39th, so lets stick to S2 at first
Normally, when you do a relocate, both servers stay online concurrently, and the various DNS servers begin to redirect the clients from the old to the new one. This takes a couple of hours, and some DNS servers update earlier than others, resulting in the two servers being online simultanously. So if they are compatible, this should not be a real problem, except that then you have connected to the old master, you will not see the games from the new one, and vice versa.
But if the servers are not compatible, this might be a problem. So my guess is that this is the first update for the backend for the next release. t least I dont really see a need for a mainteanance relocate because LFS user and server count have not really been increasing dramatically lately.
But if the servers are not compatible, this might be a problem. So my guess is that this is the first update for the backend for the next release. t least I dont really see a need for a mainteanance relocate because LFS user and server count have not really been increasing dramatically lately.
when you get an update notification in the game, there are a lot of servers displayed. they are all mirrors, that host the same file, so it doesnt really matter which one you click. if you live in europe you should preferably not chose a mirror from Australia or Japan though, because that might be slow
the version from lfs.net is always the latest, including all patches (as said before)
the version from lfs.net is always the latest, including all patches (as said before)
I guess you understood it wrong. The main license will be cheaper, and if you buy all cars & tracks, the final plrice should be she same as if it was included in a 'stage'. So effectively its ACTUALLY cheaper, because you do not have to buy everything. For example people who drive only RWD cars will never in hell want to buy the UF1
And additionally this adds support for custom content, which can be purchased only by people who want to use it.
Last edited by ORION, .
Well tbh 1+1 is 10, but to S10 its still quite a long way :P
so lets stick with 2 for now
NO! Proper light maps would SIGNIFICANTLY change the quality of lfs graphics. We have better car shadows now, which are a dynamic shadow mapping derivate. But thats something completely different than statically generated light maps, which are rendered at development time, and just added to the final texture result by for example using multi texturing.
Light maps can even be created with any renderer that supports rendering to a texture. This effectively means that you can create those light maps with Max or Maya, and use them in LFS. The best thing is, that the performance cost of light mapping is almost zero.
Therefore, the shadow 'story' should still be on the list.
But its however still a general discussion, how much has to be implemented to be a valid "S2 final". I would personally forget about the AI in the first place, and concentrate on adding the VWS and physics updated soon, add the interiors (that should already be done now), and most importantly, make the object collision better, beacuse this is the thing that distracts many people from the game, because it suggests "bad physics".
This package might be releaseed as S2 beta. After that, I would update the AI, add light mapping, etc., and the Rockingham track, and call this S2 gamma, and after a few weeks of intensive testing and bugfixing, this should be released as S2 final.
After that (on the way to S3), I would add support for custom content, and add weather support. For this, I would license a DX9+10 engine that ships with a decent content editor package, allowing everyone to try those editors, and taking a lot boring graphics programming tasks off Scawen's shoulders. New content could be made available to the users using micro payment (like, one car for 1€, a tarck for 5€ etc.), and content creators should earn LFS credits or real money with their work, too.
So lets say Don makes a nice set of new sky textures, and I would buy them for 1€, then the devs would get a part form that, maybe 20cent, for providing the download and server system, alongside with the content managemant systems, which should be user driven as well.
This means, users vote for good content, and each month, the best custom content from the polls is reviewed by the devs, and allowed to be put into the game. Basically the same method as used with the t-shirt designs, or the LX skin cometition. It is required that, without permission from the devs, no content may be spreaded, in order to avoid loads of crap mods (see rFactor), people stealing work from others.
So basically, S3 would add a new gfx engine + weather system, and allow users to add new content.
Just brainstorming a bit
Last edited by ORION, .
It just depends on the type of data you are compressing. 7z is providing one of the best compressions out there, but in some situations, rar is better, too (iirc for TGA images). The MAJOR advantage of 7z is the fact that it is completely open source!
Im really glad that ME has 0 votes, still... so there might be still some tiny glimpse of hope in the world :P LOL
So apparently, making use of this functionality would possibly exceed the amount of work that should be put into it. I mean, to adopt to this system in a nice and solid way, the user should have the ability to store custom files (textures, sounds, mods etc.) in his user folder, and the original files should remain in the program files folder. Then, LFS must first check the user folder, and then the program files folder, which might result in slower loading times or other problems, like for example the auto updater might not work anymore, because the user will not have admin rights to change the executable.
And even if this was possible - what happens when user A makes an online update of LFS, and user B has still some older files in his user folder, which are not incompatible with the new LFS version in program files?
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG