I'm sure Scawen would put in a squelch / disable option if VoIP was integrated, including the ability to suppress particular racers while allowing others.

But I think there's mileage in making it easier for server admins to provide talk facilities. For instance on some servers it's annoying to get the flood of spams from the admins telling you to go to the teamspeak server.

Also I imagine that being able to see a letter code on the server list that shows there is a chat facility up and running might attract (or dissuade!) racers in joining them.

However there are plenty of other features I'd like to see in LFS before this, and there are serviceable alternatives already available by the sounds of things.

Rakhsh

I'm quite fond of the XRT / BL1 combo which is rather rare in S2-land (TBO dominated by FXOs, "all car" BL1 servers inevitably end up as a BF1-fest). So I spend probably a bit of an unhealthy amount on time on demo. Is it the wrong thing to spend time on a combo in which you are vaguely competitive?

Yes, the quality of driving and level of driver etiquette is noticeably lower on demo, and indeed there are some sessions when it really is spectacularly bad, but if you know where to go, you can get some great racing in. DFH seems pretty good nowadays, and the old domagk45 server was certainly a place of legend.

What I aim to do when I'm on demo is to be an exemplar of the right sort of racing behaviour. E.g. politely remind folks to observe the blue flag (without being smug or arrogant about it), even explain what a blue flag means, race with courtesy and respect, politely ask people not to mindlessly join the track from the pits just in front of me as race leader, be extra careful not to punt slower drivers off the track even if I am 5 seconds per lap faster than them*, be gracious with setups and advice etc.

This way you encourage the right behaviours, for both demo and potentially for S2, if any demo racers make the switch. Certainly it also gives you a good opportunity to put a gentle sales plug in.

One thing that would be nice is some sort of visible differentiation for the S2 racers hanging around on a demo server. I wondered if perhaps letting the auto-skin download for only S2 licensed racers on demo servers would be a big incentive - you'd have all these anonymous white cars plus a few guys with the full car skin treatment:

Demo: "yo Rakhsh - ur car looks rly cool m8 wtf??!?!?!omg!!!!111one" etc.
Me: "Well that's because I'm an S2 licensed racer. Cool, huh? "
Demo:

etc.

And don't think that this is an academic or farcical conversation thread. I often get asked how do you have a coloured racer name...

While this would chew up some of the LFSWorld bandwidth as the demo racers download the skins for the S2 racers, but potentially it might get a few more demo guys to buy the game, even if it was only for the skin feature (not that they would stick on just demo if they had an S2 license, but you know what I mean). Think about T-shirts with company logos on them ... you are just a walking advert. An S2 racer on a demo server could act as the same.

Cheers

Rakhsh
* p.s. not being arrogant here, it is not that hard to be 5 seconds a lap faster than a newbie on demo

Quote from Flycantbird :

Can you set a limit to the number of restarts for a given race ?

+1 from me, should be easy to do for Scawen (making promises on his behalf, of course, but the logic flow + options screen changes can surely only be trivial)

Alternatively you could also do an exponential back-off for restart time limits. So first restart enables after 30 secs, second restart after a minute, third after *two* minutes....

Cheers

Rakhsh

Quote from mrodgers :

My skins_x folder is over 2000 files with my dialup after a year and a half. You broadband folks must have 10000 files in there by now.

Oh man I am such an amateur. Only 2,268 objects in skins_x for me (daily racer, ADSL2+, same install of LFS for about 6 months now). Although I attribute my meagreness to horsing around on demo far too much despite the S2 license. Where are all the XRT / BL1 S2 servers?

Rakhsh

Absolutely fair points by Fl!p and thisnameistaken about the current priority work for the devs and whether we could put enough effort in to make it a reality. Maybe a simple cut-down version like this could work:

* Server admins get together to participate in a federation (a bit like wrecker barricade). E.g. a "hardcore club". Hardcore servers are password protected and an agreed name convention is used for the list of games (e.g. [HC] ProRacingRoom or whatever)
* (Optional) Some hardcore server admins would run two servers - a private one for qualified racers, and a public one to enlist or attract new drivers - let's call these 'qualification servers'. Note that there would have to be at least *one* qualification server!
* New drivers find a public hardcore qualification server. On the welcome message, it explains the concept and gives a contact email for new racers who wish to join
* New racers who are interested in applying for a hardcore race license notify the admin, and they provide their email address (a bit obvious, but see later)
* An evaluation race - or races - is organised to make sure new applicants are up to scratch. Maybe a combo that is a bit infamous or difficult (you guys could guess this better than me) so that the level of race discipline is made obvious. Something like RACs at South City?
* Someone needs to observe the evaluation race. This could be in realtime or just by reviewing an MPR afterwards. Ideally there would be a way of finding places in an MPR that shows contact / accidents to make this easier but that's another topic. So yes, this would involve real effort. Some folks might find themselves more prepared to do this than others. The decisions about whether an applicant racer is awarded their license or not doesn't need to happen on the spot, e.g. if you want a second opinion, you could email the MPR to another qualification 'marshall' or adjudicator
* Server admin for the hardcore server sends a group email to all successful applicants with the server password
* At some point in the future you might need to withdraw someone's license - you do this by changing the password and telling all the drivers - apart from the ones you just banned, of course!
* You could use LFS Lapper to see if any unexpected racer user ID names appear in the stats. This would detect people giving out the password to their mates. You could ban *both* of them - the cheeky guy using the borrowed password, and the idiot who gave it to them in the first place. This might be tricky, or then again might be dead easy. Maybe we should buy Monkster a pint and see what he can do. NB this is an advantage of S2 over demo (ha!) as user IDs can't be changed
* (Optional, but would be extremely cool) Hardcore server admins syndicate their password with other HC servers. So once you have your license, it gets you in on *any* hardcore server
* Banned racers who are blacklisted could always buy another copy of LFS to get a new user ID and try again, but I don't think anyone would really object to that ... least of all Scavier


What do you think?

Rakhsh

Any of you guys read Slashdot? And are familiar with the 'karma' system, and the ability to moderate?

Well - I liked the suggestion of getting your LFS "race license". Sure, this license wouldn't be mandatory for all servers (so as to remain welcoming for the casual newbie racers), but it wouldn't be hard to code in a feature where servers could require a virtual LFS race license to allow people to join. A "hardcore" server filter, if you like.

So how would you get your license? You could organise race license 'driving test' races. I don't know what the equivalent is IRL but I know you have to apply and pass some sort of examination before you get a race license. Here's one possible solution (there would be many other ways, just bear with me and see the principle behind the suggestion): So you'd get a bunch of guys to enter a race under 'supervision' mode. Once the race is over, whether the drivers like it or not, the MPR would be submitted for review by approved examiners (i.e. drivers with high karma - you could call these guys 'moderators' or whatever. Race examiners. Something like that).

You'd get awarded points (oooh, remember them?) for clean races, until you got a certain total which would qualify you for a license. Drive like an idiot? Lose points. Or lose *all* your points for some of the mad manoeuvres described by Setu. You would also have to get at least one lap in within a certain time (e.g. within - say - 115% of wr? or something like that) and obviously have to finish. Maybe force some sort of consistency - i.e. we don't want one superhero lap with every other lap involving a crash or an "off". Maybe even force candidate racers to complete the full driving tests in the game as has already been suggested. Generally, raise the barrier to entry.

There would also have to be some sort of mechanism to catch out people with race licenses going a bit mental after they've received their license. Perhaps licensed racers could click a 'marshall' button that voted for the MPR to be reviewed. Only licensed racers (or even those with high *enough* karma) would get the option to call a marshall vote. If enough marshall votes were amassed, the MPR gets sent off for review by a similar sort of panel, with real consequences if poor racecraft was demonstrated. Potentially driver(s) could be penalised (reducing points, reducing 'class' of license etc), even to the point of revoking their license completely and even blacklisting them for some time (or forever!).

You'd also have to work on making sure that the awarding of race licenses was done fairly, i.e. people wouldn't abuse their moderator priviliges. So possibly a meta-moderate feature like Slashdot could be implemented. E.g. every 10 race licenses awarded would be reviewed to make sure the *moderator* was performing their job properly.

I see a huge flaw here in the amount of work involved to review MPRs to award licenses, and interpretation of what is a fair pass (that goes wrong) versus someone driving like an idiot would need some care. Appeal systems / consistent rules / lack of interest....

... maybe this would never work in practice.

But I am pretty sure that the idea of some prestige or glory associated with "Rakhsh (gold race license - 11,204 credits)" versus "Rakhsh (bronze license - 25 credits)" might be enough to get some folks to commit time to make this kind of system work. Think about the amount of care and effort the forum regulars put in here, for instance.

And of course this would allow us to have licensed-racers-only servers (hardcore servers) which addresses Setu's original point: it gives the net result of some sort of consequence resulting from driving like an idiot - it makes you have to *work* to get that damned license, and it matters if you lose it. And you *could* lose it. In real life, it is $$$s and the threat of personal injury that hopefully slows you down - in virtual LFS racing we need to create something artificial to make racers "care". Being denied entry, and being marked a bit of a poor racer might be enough, or then again maybe not.

Does anyone else remember what it felt like, having to win those races in S1 to get enough points before you got the higher cars? First time I unlocked the XRT .... woah ... this thing *goes*. Same sort of thing for having a race license - that sense of 'damn, I had better be sensible, this took an AGE to earn - better not lose it in a marshall vote....' You'd approach your first races on a hardcore server with a feeling of privilege, and respect, not only to the racing in general but also to your fellow racers, and who wouldn't want that?

Even if all this sounds hare-brained, thanks Setu for a great original post. I'd support this being a sticky (possibly in Newbie section?). Apologies for rambling on.

Cheers

Rakhsh

Hi Angry Angel, nice guide - thank you.

One small problem that I bumped into but solved - I was editing the cfg file and kept getting this error:

info parameter before start parameter

It turns out that the correct syntax is that all commands have to start with a single forward slash, like this:

/qual=25

whereas I, in my infinite wisdom, thought that the slash was some weird LFS-specific comment character (e.g. like # normally would be), so I was removing all these forward slashes, which produced the error.

A small thing, but probably worth incorporating into your sticky.

Cheers

Rakhsh

In many ways what you've just been through is probably invaluable - it's shown you at very little "cost" that you don't actually have a force-field of invulnerability when you drive, and that in real life Shift-R is a tiny bit more expensive...

Very glad you're OK, this will make you a much better driver. Take your time getting your confidence back.

Cheers

Rakhsh

Averaging 80 - 110 even with a grid of a dozen cars.
Hotlapping can get higher, e.g. up to 130 or so.
AMD 3500+, 1GB RAM, nVidia 7800GT, all at stock speeds
12x10 with everything on max (including Honey's hi res skies)

Funnily enough, I was searching for just this a couple of days ago for a skin for my good mate Spikee. Here's the article in question:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_racing_green

There is also a link to "formal" or traditional racing colours for various nations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L ... tional_auto_racing_colors

Who knew that Egypt's traditional colours were pale violet, with red-on-white numbers? (Apologies to our Egyptian racers who, to a man, knew this)

Now if only someone could help me with an RGB for Payne's Grey, then I'd be in business....

Hope this helps

Rakhsh

This is where Joca, Spikee, Homie, V17, Vito, Speedyboy, Evo Elec all hang out...

Low :23s are common, apart from when Joca comes down from his sacred mountain and blitzes everyone with a 22. Watch out for their last-corner-last-lap shenanigans, too...

Sadly for me, my pings times are too high so after a while they start grumbling and I have to skulk off, left to endure the endless drift servers in Australia...

Rakhsh