[EDIT by Scawen - my UF 1300 has been reinstated and several mods have been approved. This thread served its purpose and good points were made. Closed thread now as it is no longer relevant. Thank you!]



So sad, why has the UF1300 been removed?

I really liked to have a RWD version of it too.

OK, it wasn't really a new car, but only because the mesh didn't change? Having different technical specs still make them different cars.

It was removed by Scawen because it encouraged people (including me) to submit mods where they haven't done much work but to the engine and other small changes. You can still play with UF1300 offline if you downloaded it.

Well, it should be up to the consumers to decide which mod is an addition to the game and which is not, rather than an authority deciding.

People could vote on the quality and decide freely whether they want to use it or not. The "garbage" could be sorted out later on, after a year of nobody using it or similar.

Definitely better than turning things down right away.

Quote from chucknorris :

Well, it should be up to the consumers to decide which mod is an addition to the game and which is not, rather than an authority deciding.

People could vote on the quality and decide freely whether they want to use it or not. The "garbage" could be sorted out later on, after a year of nobody using it or similar.

Definitely better than turning things down right away.

as I said in another thread it would be cool to create a separate category of mods, where people can just publish their own configurations of original cars with the original model, but different config (engine configs, swaps, suspension) that way you won't be downloading the same 3d model of a car, but just a config to it

I am having fun creating an AWD XFG with FXO engine, kinda like the XFG Cross version

I like the numbazZ propose, I'd call them "variants" not "mods".
So, we could see in the LFS cars interface, for each official car a "variant" button.

However, there could be still thousand of variations for any car, for istance about the UF1000: the UF1300, but also a UF1305, UF1306.. you get the idea.
So, car variations too may have to be limited, but still they could be accepted more easily than a new car (aka "mod").

Yeah, Scawen told about it here;
https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/95682-Submitting-mods-and-the-review-process

I though alot about this. Having moderators being very strict about which mods to approve will lead to very few mods and a dissapointed community.

Which means that the community will find a different way of using the mods they want. Sharing files on different sites etc. Which is a shame becuase the current native LFS system seemes to be great and allows online play.

I think you should have very few rules for submitting mods. e.g. no Copy righted work (ripped models, company logos, etc.)

Like Chuck said, people can choose themselves which mods to use. No one forces you to allow/use a all mods.

The option to sort mods by toprated should work really good. Maybe a option to sort by most downloads could also be a nice addition.

Quote from numbazZ :

as I said in another thread it would be cool to create a separate category of mods, where people can just publish their own configurations of original cars with the original model, but different config (engine configs, swaps, suspension) that way you won't be downloading the same 3d model of a car, but just a config to it

I agree with this idea. I get not wanting to have the main mod page filled with dozens of default cars but with slight performance and visual tweaks, but there should still be some way to allow people who do actually want to use these to be able to.

Quote from ClasK_03 :

I though alot about this. Having moderators being very strict about which mods to approve will lead to very few mods and a dissapointed community.

Which means that the community will find a different way of using the mods they want. Sharing files on different sites etc. Which is a shame becuase the current native LFS system seemes to be great and allows online play.

I think you should have very few rules for submitting mods. e.g. no Copy righted work (ripped models, company logos, etc.)

Like Chuck said, people can choose themselves which mods to use. No one forces you to allow/use a all mods.

The option to sort mods by toprated should work really good. Maybe a option to sort by most downloads could also be a nice addition.

I agree, there should be better filtering options - categories, sort by download numbers/rating and such. Let the community filter out the best ones. It works in BeamNG for example.

Quote from chucknorris :

Well, it should be up to the consumers to decide which mod is an addition to the game and which is not, rather than an authority deciding.

We are working on this. It has been impossible for our (currently very small) group of reviewers to approve the mods that have been submitted so far. Some may deserve approval but we couldn't really decide.

We are trying to act very fast on this.

The trouble is we have received one or more:

- mods that are just LFS cars with slight tweaks
- mods whose license we need to question
- mods that we aren't certain are 'original work'
- mods which really need more work - why not improve it a bit before submission
- mods that look like a good adjustment but could be one of many of the exact same idea

Our current thoughts are that the mods should go through a process of community evaluation and discussion before being submitted.

This was first mentioned by user luchian https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/1969335#post1969335

Right now we're considering trying to make this a workable system and a way to sort out these issues above, and remove the problem of an 'authority' (group of reviewers) making the decisions.

Current plan is, using the mods work in progress forum, a user could post their ongoing work there, in early or late stage. They might receive any kind of comments, help, suggestions, approval - depending on how advanced a modder they are. Anyway in the end, maybe aided by a voting system, it should become clear if the mod is ready for submission.

On the Submit a vehicle mod page there could be a box where you must enter the forum thread where the mod has been discussed and generally approved by the community.

How does it sound?

IMHO, if a mod qualifies by the lowest set of rules, i.e. legal minimums, it should be allowed to be submitted.
People then can express their opinion either by using it or by avoiding it.

Having a forum talk prior to that would only discourage people from creating mods, simply because there will always be people disagreeing. There would be no Twitter or Facebook today if people were asked beforehand if they'd found them any useful.

Yes, some mods would certainly make no sense to others. Like we on [TC] would appreciate having mods reflecting our needs, reflecting the cars we use, like cop or tow cars, but I'm totally aware that those cars would be pointless to others.
But nevertheless, having those mods as an addon would be a tremendous benefit to us, even though outsiders wouldn't understand them. If there was an option for semi-private mods, it would help a lot, but I guess that's no technically feasible option.

Quote from chucknorris :

IMHO, if a mod qualifies by the lowest set of rules, i.e. legal minimums, it should be allowed to be submitted.
People then can express their opinion either by using it or by avoiding it.

I like the point that instead of having to create a thread first and wait for feedback, the community ratings, & downloads would decide if the mod is useable or not. We can already sort the mods by rating in game. But on the other hand, allowing pretty much anything that's legal would most likely clutter the mods listing with a lot of very similar mods with slight spec tweaks, I'm afraid.

Yes, and the "legal minimums" is very hard to decide without a lot of people seeing it. We expect a lot of attempts to submit copyright-breaking rips from other games, and it's very hard for a small group of reviewers to deal with this.

We are already seeing experience modders discussing high quality planned mods. That's more what I personally would like to see, rather than hundreds of quick rip bodge jobs and minor tweaks. But we are talking about letting the community decide.

I agree with Chuck on this one.

You could have a special list, like mods "certified" by LFS. Which consist of high quality tested mods, if you really want to rule out bad ones. But I dont think that the quality should decide if the mods can be used at all by other players or not.

People will also want to play around, building ramp cars crazy monster trucks or whatever. Why should you stop people from having fun with the amazing game you have created?

Its also hard to tell the quality from just forum posts. Playing with the mod yourself would be the easiest way to see if its any good or not. Then the current star rating system could show if the mod is good or bad.

But should legality be an issue or shall we just not give a shit really?


EDIT: I think this is a difference between seeing it from your point of view and our point of view. From your point of view, total freedom is best and maximum choice of mods. From our point of view, encouraging quality content and staying within the law is very important. Our business is actually at stake here.

Quote from Scawen :

But should legality be an issue or shall we just not give a shit really?

Ofcourse noone wants to get sued, but there must be a better way than what you described. Maybe have people prove more thoroughly that there are no legal issues with there mods. And if you still are uncertain deny it. But the quality should not be the deciding factor imo.

Approving more mods will certainly lower the overall quality but the really good mods that you want to see will still be there. I totally see your point, but in my mind bad mods will not drive people away from a game.

Well the great thing about allowing the community to decide, is that our opinion is taken out of it.

How it appears to me is you are simultaneously saying "Reviewers should not decide what is approved" and "Reviewers should apply maximum rigour and detailed investigations when deciding what should be approved".

Quote from Scawen :

How it appears to me is you are simultaneously saying "Reviewers should not decide what is approved" and "Reviewers should apply maximum rigour and detailed investigations when deciding what should be approved".

Exactly. make sure nothing is ilegal, but dont look at anything else.

Quote from ClasK_03 :

But I dont think that the quality should decide if the mods can be used at all by other players or not.

Quote from ClasK_03 :

Exactly. make sure nothing is ilegal, but dont look at anything else.

Well, I will take it to the extreme, but would you approve this mod? It is legal and all original work. Kinda low quality, but that shouldn't be the deciding factor.

Quote from ClasK_03 :

Exactly. make sure nothing is ilegal, but dont look at anything else.

Well maybe that is the most important aspect of the community approval. We don't think we can do that part on our own.

I did do a "request changes" today but had to write a bit of an essay asking about the copyright and then suggesting a bunch of improvements that are really needed on the mod. It's way too much work and distraction. The best modders are discussing their work in progress. Doesn't that suggest it may be a good thing to do?

Quote from michal 1279 :

Well, I will take it to the extreme, but would you approve this mod? It is legal and all original work. Kinda low quality, but that shouldn't be the deciding factor.

Hi, I would like use another game's user-created content management as a reference to LFS mod system.

There's this game called Beat Saber (maybe you've heard about it, idk ):

You slash some boxes in VR to the rhythm of a song.

There's a huge modding community for it, since original content is considerably boring.
Although all mods (custom songs/maps) break the copyright and are borderline illegal, just hear me out about it

There's this "underground" leaderboard (scoresaber.com) that only includes results from modded songs.
But the interesting part is that not all modded songs count to your "total score".
There's a ranking team that approves maps if they conform to the criteria and follow guidelines.

So the takeaway from this would be a 2-tier mod list - verified and unverified mods.

Servers could choose if they want to enable none, only verified or all mods.
There would be minimal requirements (legality, profanity, etc) to submit mod as "unverified" - later the creator could be guided how to improve it to reach a "verified" status.
So a small team could focus more on whether mods are worthy of being officially verified, and the unverified mods can still be accessed by masses and receive votes.

When the system settles, there could be some changes made to it according to how it goes.

That's my 2 cents. Thank you for reading

Well it is a hard problem and I dont really have any other ideas. BeamNG has system with a manual approval, maybe take a look at how they do it? I think they have many volunteers working with the the approval. Approving mods shouldnt take away time from developing.

I can't see a reason to not allow the cube car. Like what harm would it cause other than it taking up space on the servers? If you are worried about too many mods you could implement the same system as with skins. You can only upload a certain number of them then you have to pay.

I don't think a community voting system can rule out legal issues.

If you dont want to deal with anything you can allow "side loading" from something like racedepartment.

Quote from xspeedasx :

Hi, I would like use another game's user-created content management as a reference to LFS mod system.

There's this game called Beat Saber (maybe you've heard about it, idk ):

You slash some boxes in VR to the rhythm of a song.

There's a huge modding community for it, since original content is considerably boring.
Although all mods (custom songs/maps) break the copyright and are borderline illegal, just hear me out about it

There's this "underground" leaderboard (scoresaber.com) that only includes results from modded songs.
But the interesting part is that not all modded songs count to your "total score".
There's a ranking team that approves maps if they conform to the criteria and follow guidelines.

So the takeaway from this would be a 2-tier mod list - verified and unverified mods.

Servers could choose if they want to enable none, only verified or all mods.
There would be minimal requirements (legality, profanity, etc) to submit mod as "unverified" - later the creator could be guided how to improve it to reach a "verified" status.
So a small team could focus more on whether mods are worthy of being officially verified, and the unverified mods can still be accessed by masses and receive votes.

When the system settles, there could be some changes made to it according to how it goes.

That's my 2 cents. Thank you for reading

Except those unverified mods still open LFS up to legal issues by potentially distributing copywritten work.

Quote from gu3st :

Except those unverified mods still open LFS up to legal issues by potentially distributing copywritten work.

I took this in consideration:

Quote from xspeedasx :

There would be minimal requirements (legality, profanity, etc) to submit mod as "unverified"