Quote from the_angry_angel :

In a very basic nutshell when you start playing or listing servers your client connects out, which gets noted in the NAT database. Any further communication is then allowed back in which corresponds to this database. This is standard NAT behaviour. Since the server doesn't initiate any inbound connection first any inbound firewall isn't likely to affect this.

In short because your PC is connecting out first, the inbound firewall is irrelevant (in this instance - in others, more sophisticated firewall solutions can differ).

The "random port choosing" is also a design feature in IP communication. Whenever you connect to something you will get a known IP and port to connect to. This is why there are standard port numbers for certain services - such as DNS, HTTP, HTTP over SSL, SMTP, etc. - one end needs to initiate the connection first. However, the other end obviously needs a way of communicating back. A random, unused, port (larger than 1024) is chosen by your client and your IP and that port number is used by the other end to talk back to you.

You might benefit from learning a little more about general networking if you're interested in what's going on under the hood.

I'd love to have time to learn these things in depth.

Thanks for the quick answer. I have a question though. I'm alright with everything you explained, but... I'm a bit confused about the UDP part. Since TCP is a connection oriented protocol there's a conversation between the client and the server, and so that conversation has a beginning and an end. But UDP is not connection oriented and it's just like throwing packets to an IP/port hoping they will arrive. So, even if I'm the one that first sends an out-going UDP packet, how does the NAT mechanism know when all the UDP sending/receiving "has finished" so it won't allow further incoming UDP packets from that temporarily accepted IP/port?

I know this is completely unrelated to LFS in any way now, but I'd really appreciate it if you could answer

This is actually a question out of curiosity, I was just wondering why LFS' TCP and UDP packets reach my machine when supposedly the router firewall should be blocking non default ports for incoming packets.

I've analysed the TCP and UDP traffic generated when a connect and disconnect to a LFS server and the TCP and UDP ports used seem to be chosen randomly.

My modem/router is in a multiport configuration and it links my home LAN to the Internet, so I have to use port forwarding if I want any non default port to be available for my private LAN IP.

So my question is: How do LFS packets sent by servers reach my machine? I guess it has something to do with NAT. Maybe LFS servers are sending packets to ports that are usually open by deafult, and my router changes them while performing NAT and that is why they appear as "random" to me.

I hope this is clear and someone can give me the answer

Quote from Scawen :

Hmm, I'm a bit confused by your first sentence.

Please can you give a step by step guide of a simple way to produce the bug?

Damn, this is what happens with multilingual menus

We have "single player", "multiplayer" and "hotlapping". If you go to the drag strip in any of the single player modes (single player or hotlapping, doesn't matter which one), and then you go to hotlapping mode to any other track (not the drag strip), then you have starting lights in your hotlapping session.

Step by setp:

• Go to hotlapping -> choose any car and the 2 lane drag strip and enter the track.
  
• Go back to track selection screen and choose another track. When you enter the track you have starting lights.

or

• Go to "single player" mode (the one where you can race against IAs offline). Choose the 2 lane drag strip and enter the track.
  
• Go back to the main menu -> hotlapping -> any track (not the drag strip). You have starting lights too.

If you go back all the way to the main menu and then again to hotlapping mode then you won't have the starting lights anymore, but if you just go back "one level" to the track selection screen (still being in hotlapping mode) and choose another track they will still be there.

EDITED:

I found a bug in Y20:

Whenever you go to the drag strip either in one player or hotlapping mode, and then you go to hotlapping to any combination the start lights are activated and you have to wait for them or otherwise you get a +45 seconds penalty. The only way to make them disappear is coming back to the main menu and then going into hotlapping mode again - changing the car or the track won't solve it.

Last edited by MaKaKaZo, Mon 26 May 2008, 09:42.

Quote from Scawen :

Changes in Y20 :

Connections / race positions / pedals are visible beside controls

Suggestion:

Before Y19 the mouse pointer would only show during replays or ingame when you had the connections list on screen, but now with Y20 during replays the mouse is visible all the time whenever you move it. So, this made me think that it would be useful if we could use the "positions list" to click on which car we want the focus to be. This would be the same than clicking on the W next to a driver name in the connections list, but using the positions list instead.

To me it would be quite intuitive and very useful, as some of us barely use the connections list during replays because we prefer seeing the race positions list.

Quote from Scawen :

Well, my current plan is this :
...
(plan)
...

Everything looks OK to me. The only thing I would add is something to announce that there are replay controls when you move the mouse to the bottom, so you just don't have to discover that feature by randomly moving the mouse - this is meant for new users. Maybe a chat message generated automatically with "drag mouse to the bottom for replay controls" or something like that.

About F9-F12 controls disappearing:

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Or make it so that the mouse has to move into that area (the timeline) to bring up the replay controls.

That sounds good to me. +1

Last edited by MaKaKaZo, Sat 17 May 2008, 08:16.

Quote from Scawen :

OK, thanks for explaining why the connections list needs to be visible during a replay while the mouse is moving. I'll have a look at that.

In addition to the connections list, some of us like to change players using TAB and SHIFT+TAB looking at the race positions shown when the connetions list is off. When the time bar is on you can't see
the positions so although you can change using TAB you don't know who you are focusing as you can't see the name with the little arrow pointing to it.

Actually I don't find it very useful either to hide the F9-F12 graphs when the time bar pops in. Maybe it's just a thing of both things sharing the same location on the screen.

This new patch is great. It's not totally awesome yet as it has to "reload" from the beginning when you want to rewind, but it's very useful indeed

Quote from Victor :

i wonder how useful it really is though. Those forces are fun to watch, but you can't really tell anything from them...

Maybe if you could make some graphs out from that info so we can compare. As you say they are fun to watch, but just 'playing' it doesn't give much valuable info

Quote from Victor :

NOTE (1) - Some hotlaps will not load in the analyser. This is because they don't exist. Now that we have a background RAF exporter, we can also do actual HLVC (HotLap Validity Check) and OOS (Out Of Sync) checks. Since Scawen improved the wall detection for example, some hotlaps have become HLVC invalid and will soon be removed. The same thing goes for OOS checks. A hotlap going OOS is normally due to the use of cheats. This way we can make sure the hotlap charts will remain cheat free. More on this topic later when we will do the actual removing of the invalidated hotlaps.

This means that invalid hotlaps will not be accepted when you try to upload them in the future? I mean, right now some cleaning will be done but in the future it will be done automatically when you upload the lap so it doesn't ever appear in the charts.

Victor kind of replied to my first post here:
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=42824

Quote :

NOTE (2) - The setup values controversy.
The idea behind RAF files and this hotlap analyser is to stimulate people to study their driving skills. Because hotlap analysis is now as easy as a couple of clicks, it should become much more attractive and fun to learn how to improve your driving. Part of this is studying basic setup settings. Yes some people regard full suspension values as too much, but it is only half of the full setup, and it is the part that people can learn the most from. Seeing why someone uses a softer or harder suspension on a certain track allows them to better see how suspension works and that it should not be the same for all tracks. These values can also be used in addition with the suspension movement and remaining range graphs in the analyser.
If you really feel that it is a breach of your privacy and do not wish others to learn from your hotlap, then you should not upload your hotlaps to LFS World, or anywhere else for that matter, because these values have been in RAF files ever since the format was created. I don't think we will remove them either.

Suggestions:

1. Two graphs that I find specially useful in LFS Replay Analyser are "Camber" and "Wheel angle". It would be nice to have something similar.
2. To be able to play the lap faster than 1x speed, like in-game replays you could also put 2x and 4x, so it's faster to play longer laps.

Last edited by MaKaKaZo, Fri 9 May 2008, 20:02.

Quote from Gekkibi :

Reminds me a thread about "private layouts".

Shouldn't this be in the improvement suggestion -section?

Mmm maybe this should be noted as a suggestion. If someone can move it...

On the other hand, I don't see much resemblance between private layouts and private setups. Well, that they're both private

I've read about setups being encrypted in SPR files so people can't get a hold of them, but if you generate a RAF file you can get some parameters directly using applications like LFS Replay Analyser or simply using an hex editor and a little patience.

With the RAF file you can get gear ratios, all suspension settings, brake settings, and tyre compound.

OK, that's only part of the car setup, but it's a BIG part. I haven't found any post containing an official statement about this, and I don't know if this data in the header is mandatory in order to analyse the rest of the RAF file.

In our community we've come to the extent of deleting HL replays from lfsworld so other teams don't have access to our private setups. Even people who beat WRs won't upload them to avoid espionage.

Will it be possible in the future to have 'full' private setups in spr files? There are a lot of people concerced about this and keeping their private setups safe.

Last edited by MaKaKaZo, Thu 8 May 2008, 20:12.

Quote from MikeB :

I THINK that at a replay start always the first position is in the focus. (Can you confirm?)

I just made a couple of tests and it looks you are right. I've cut some replays in different ways and the focus always goes to the car that started the race in pole position - even when the position at the start of the splitted replay is not first and when the car position shown in LFS is wrong due to what we comented before.

I think that might have something to do with copying the entire header of the original mpr file or something like that, so the game thinks that the first pilot is the one who started in pole and not the one who is displayed as first when the replay starts - even if it's a 'fake' first.

Well it could actually be just one new command to "mute" yourself, separate from the blocking messages command.

I have a couple of suggestions. I think I (or somebody else) already made them but now that the basic stuff is working reliably I guess you could start thinking about a workraound for this:

1) Fixing race positions/number of laps.

When the replay starts everybody's position and lap are messed up. Everybody's lap is 1 until they cross the start line and then their lap number gets fixed. With race positions I'm not sure how they are generated but they are incorrect and they don't get fixed when racers cross the start line.

It would be nice that mpredit could automatically fix these two things so that at the moment that the replay starts everybody's position and lap are correct and you know tha actual situation of the race.


2) Possibility to choose what driver is the focus (camera) on when the replay starts. I don't know if this is even possible, but would be nice.


Thanks again for your hard work Mike

Some people might find this not useful though.

It's been suggested that you could choose what kind of messages to block when pressing "-", but I think no one has suggested the possibility to disable your own chat messages too.

Sometimes during league races if you get too nervous or heated up you might end up pressing some f1-f8 function key when you are actually trying to press f9-f12 to check tyres, suspensions, etc. That generates a chat message that might annoy the rest of the people, and in some leagues even leads to a penalty. I usually block incoming messages (I recently learned about "shift" + "-" for blocking ALL incoming messages) but I'd like that when I block messages I also block my own messages, rendering me unable to use the online chat, and even receive a message back saying "your messages are blocked" so you know that you can't talk.

If you block other people messages because you don't want to read them then I guess you don't want/need to talk to them neither.

Thanks for the new update

I remembered why I wanted to be able to select another pilot for the ending. There are some times when there's an accident and the pilot disconnects after getting upside down, but I don't want the replay to end either when he disconnects or at the end of the actual replay, so I'd rather pick another driver for the ending point.

Btw, thank you for fixing the colour tags in the driver selection, now it's much clearer

Suggestion: To be able to set the start and ending points at events of different drivers. I mean, like the resulting mpr starts when driver A begins lap 10 and ends when driver B enters the pits. This may be a little troublesome, but I've had times when I'd liked to be able to do this.

This little app has saved me a lot of time for when reviewing accidents and for making video captures.

I get the most out of it when using it with lfs-stats. In our league we generate stats for every race and division with lfs-stats which are put online. The graphs generated at the end of the stats file give you quite an accurate view of when you come across a certain someone during the race, be it an overtake or an accident. Then I just cut the mpr file using mpredit and I got it

If you are interested in understanding that better. Here's an example:
http://www.q3team.es/estadisticas/20080317/1/indexR.html

That's last week's race, in which I happenned to win but was given a penalty. In the last graph you can see that I ([Q3] makakazo) had an incident with a car at the beginning of lap 14, as a line touches mine and suddenly drops.

I didn't remember which lap that was at all after 40 laps, but using the stats you can easily find incidents involving any car, and then using mpredit you can cut the exact point you need, be it a 50 or 100 laps race or whatever

Quote from AndroidXP :

Yes. Very likely, actually.

I didn't want to hear the truth

The good thing is that eventually I'll have to update either the gfx card or the whole computer and I'll be able to switch AA and AF on

I'm having graphical problems since I used this patch. After some time running the game (like 10 mins) it's like random flat coloured triangles spawn from the horizon totally messing the image up and then my computer crashes. Is it possible that my old gfx card is dying and it has nothing to do with the game? I haven't changed any gfx options at all nor activated AA or AF in-game, but I think it has started happening since I installed Y14, though it could be a coincidence

The link isnt't working

EDIT: It's working now Looks like I just had bad luck with timing on my first attempt...

Last edited by MaKaKaZo, Thu 21 Feb 2008, 17:13.

I've only done one test so far with a car that started the race from pits and it worked fine

The only thing that bugs me is that positions are totally distorted when loading replays until the cars pass checkpoints or the start line. I don't know if this can be fixed somehow though.

Great job so far!

Nice, I have some friends that were specially interested in the new features