Hi there.
I'll "break the silence"... though I do think I said something quite recently.
There's really nothing to report, that's why we don't report anything. I've been continuing with the tyre physics. It's a mathematically based model as you know. That involves assumptions and simplifications to make it workable. During testing we found some extreme situations where the assumptions used caused a breakdown of the output forces. It turned out that the extreme situations can actually come up quite often. I don't really want to go into detail, I've been working on the model and studying the situations where things go wrong.
My work rate has not been very high these few months, I admit. For a while I seemed to fix something, it started to look good then on further investigation and analysis, another problem showed up. That kind of stumbling block caused me to take a break while I tried to get my head around it, to try another approach. The new approach might work or might not and I needed to think again. In those thinking times I didn't just sit here pushing myself until i came up with answers, instead I just sorted out other things unrelated to LFS. At this point in life in am not motivated to sort of sit there and pull my hair out and bang my head against a wall until the solution appears, I'd prefer to just do something else, running the problem over in my mind until I know what do do. That way I can make progress gradually without the frustration that can be experienced by someone who is stuck but needs to produce solutions in a given time.
It's not worth releasing a model with fatal flaws that make it worse than the current model in some situations, even though the on-track normal driving feel is better than the old tyre model.
Unfortunately the slow progress with the physics does delay the release of the Scirocco and Rockingham, but it can't really be helped. What I really want to do is get those improvements out there and then work on some more fun things I've been thinking about. You'll understand I can't comment on future things that may or may not happen, but there are things I want to do but can't until this hard stuff is out of the way.
About slow progress... some people comment how progress is so unbelievably and ridiculously slow... well I guess that means there must be a whole lot of sims out there that have overtaken LFS in nearly every way. If so, you can use them for a while, that's why we have an email notification when a patch is released. If people "leave" LFS that is fine. That kind of thing really can't be something I can get worried about. All I can do is work on the things I need to do, to get LFS to a level we are happy with, then release the updates. Sometimes that is delayed by obstacles as I described before, and sometimes by other things that come up in life generally. With two children and a house to look after, things that go wrong, guests that visit occasionally and that kind of thing, it's true that I don't do the same hours that I used to in the early days, when LFS was my hobby, my passion and my work all in one. Now it's more my work, I have other interests as well and there are now other things in life that are more important, but LFS is something I want to be proud of. Something that I want out there and being enjoyed.
Anyway, we have not died and we are not sipping cocktails on a tropical beach. Actually we are working on LFS. I'm developing the physics, Victor is keep things running, Eric is working on things too. We've done a load of work that we want to release, partly for the excitement of it, but we also have mortgages and other bills to pay and the releases will increase sales, so financially it would also be a great idea to get it out there!
Nothing else I can do do really, I'm just trying to get my current LFS projects finished and released. Threats of people "leaving" LFS, predictions of impending doom and so on don't really make any difference. I'm not about to release unfinished stuff and I will still get plently of sleep and relaxation time, and look after the other things I need to look after and develop LFS physics in whatever time it takes. Then we'll get there in the end and we'll send a notification email when the patch is ready, so you can all have a go on an improved LFS with more content.
I'll "break the silence"... though I do think I said something quite recently.
There's really nothing to report, that's why we don't report anything. I've been continuing with the tyre physics. It's a mathematically based model as you know. That involves assumptions and simplifications to make it workable. During testing we found some extreme situations where the assumptions used caused a breakdown of the output forces. It turned out that the extreme situations can actually come up quite often. I don't really want to go into detail, I've been working on the model and studying the situations where things go wrong.
My work rate has not been very high these few months, I admit. For a while I seemed to fix something, it started to look good then on further investigation and analysis, another problem showed up. That kind of stumbling block caused me to take a break while I tried to get my head around it, to try another approach. The new approach might work or might not and I needed to think again. In those thinking times I didn't just sit here pushing myself until i came up with answers, instead I just sorted out other things unrelated to LFS. At this point in life in am not motivated to sort of sit there and pull my hair out and bang my head against a wall until the solution appears, I'd prefer to just do something else, running the problem over in my mind until I know what do do. That way I can make progress gradually without the frustration that can be experienced by someone who is stuck but needs to produce solutions in a given time.
It's not worth releasing a model with fatal flaws that make it worse than the current model in some situations, even though the on-track normal driving feel is better than the old tyre model.
Unfortunately the slow progress with the physics does delay the release of the Scirocco and Rockingham, but it can't really be helped. What I really want to do is get those improvements out there and then work on some more fun things I've been thinking about. You'll understand I can't comment on future things that may or may not happen, but there are things I want to do but can't until this hard stuff is out of the way.
About slow progress... some people comment how progress is so unbelievably and ridiculously slow... well I guess that means there must be a whole lot of sims out there that have overtaken LFS in nearly every way. If so, you can use them for a while, that's why we have an email notification when a patch is released. If people "leave" LFS that is fine. That kind of thing really can't be something I can get worried about. All I can do is work on the things I need to do, to get LFS to a level we are happy with, then release the updates. Sometimes that is delayed by obstacles as I described before, and sometimes by other things that come up in life generally. With two children and a house to look after, things that go wrong, guests that visit occasionally and that kind of thing, it's true that I don't do the same hours that I used to in the early days, when LFS was my hobby, my passion and my work all in one. Now it's more my work, I have other interests as well and there are now other things in life that are more important, but LFS is something I want to be proud of. Something that I want out there and being enjoyed.
Anyway, we have not died and we are not sipping cocktails on a tropical beach. Actually we are working on LFS. I'm developing the physics, Victor is keep things running, Eric is working on things too. We've done a load of work that we want to release, partly for the excitement of it, but we also have mortgages and other bills to pay and the releases will increase sales, so financially it would also be a great idea to get it out there!
Nothing else I can do do really, I'm just trying to get my current LFS projects finished and released. Threats of people "leaving" LFS, predictions of impending doom and so on don't really make any difference. I'm not about to release unfinished stuff and I will still get plently of sleep and relaxation time, and look after the other things I need to look after and develop LFS physics in whatever time it takes. Then we'll get there in the end and we'll send a notification email when the patch is ready, so you can all have a go on an improved LFS with more content.
Thank you all for the testing.
Higher resolution textures are added one object at a time. Eric likes to work on one thing at once. So when he updates the FXO and FZ50 cars then you will get higher resolution textures for them. When a track is updated, you will get higher resolution textures with it.
It's just a gradual process.
If people could stop saying "Scawen is alive!" and "Eric is alive!" as if that is surprising in some way, it would be helpful.
We are just working on LFS as we always have, no change at all.
As usual we are working on some things you know about and some things you don't know about. There is too much discussion on this forum about what is happening with LFS, where are the devs etc...
The answer is just too simple, we are working on LFS, as we have done for many years and continue to do. There is no reason to think anything different, it is just pure fantasy created in the minds of a few noisy forum users, for no reason other than they can't think of anything else to do while they wait for an update in their favourite simulator.
Just to be clear - I was not making excuses or apologising, and I don't think I have a personal problem.
I could have kept it really short but I thought it would be a good idea to relay my ISP setup experience. Just some word of mouth "advertising" for BT and Virgin...
Thank you, yes. To add to what you say, I worked as an employee from approx age 19 (pizza delivery) to about 30 (at Lionhead). Then I took the risk of leaving a good job and setting up my own business (with Eric and then Victor) and lived very frugally for a couple of years until we could sell S1 licenses!
The reward now is that we can take our time to get things sorted out in our life, and work as we wish, when the inspiration takes us. The result... LFS, whether you think that is good or bad. Employed people do most probably have to go to work even when their house is still full of boxes, or at other times when they should really have a few days at home. There are some advantages in being self employed!
By the way, I did not feel pressured directly to make a post. Victor said to me that he had been receiving a lot of technical support emails and there was unrest in some threads in the forum. I have not seen any of them, just wanted to make life easier for Victor, and saw no harm in letting people know I had moved. I decided the ISP story might be of some interest to British residents...
And are we obligated legally and morally to add free cars and additional content, as we do?
I know you have worded your post not to be attacking us, but it is quite hilarious how many people (although I am aware it is a small minority and ther are plenty of patient people out there who respect our methods, even if things take a long time) have appeared and are attacking us (only with words of course) on the actual thread announcing many new developments, and a few days after a clear statement from me about what we consider most important for development in the near future.
Nothing more could we do than that, other than work twice as hard but as I've pointed out before, sleep is required in order to remain alive. No way am I morally obligated to work more than the 270 hours I did last month, and no way am I morally or legally obligated to hire additional staff when the only thing we have promised, is development to S2 stage, with clearly stated goals, that we are gradually getting nearer to achieving. Working the way we want to do, which we are happy doing, and is the reason for LFS's existence.
The standard keeps getting higher, many new unplanned features are added, and that is why things take longer than planned. You've got most of what I have done but there are some things on Eric's hard drive awaiting completion, and you'll get them when they are done. It's easier to release a half-baked code feature that works, but you can't release a track with some hills you can see under and cars with holes in them.
Anyone who thinks we should do better in a shorter time should present to us all their work that proves their point. Anyone who says we should change our way of working and turn LFS into a company with employees, I have a very short phrase for them but can't say it on a public forum.
I've had a look into it and the reason I gave previously was wrong. The actual reason why the lights are dimmer is because of the overlay texture Eric used to cover the gauges. The texture with holes in it where the lights are, those holes are not perfectly clear, they have some deliberate lack of transparency.
Anyway I've made the lights a tiny bit brighter by giving them a tiny bit of saturation (in RGB terms, on the red light, the R part stayed at maximum, but I've added a tiny bit of G and B to it).
That's all I can do for now.
Well, I guess I should have said redder rather than brighter. It now has red to maximum and the green a bit reduced so it is less orange, and now the same colour as the red LED lights of the gear indicator.
I think this is a bit easier to see in your peripheral vision, there was something a bit washed out about the orange, though I'm not certain it achieved all that Dru wanted. It is still not popping out at you, to say the least.
Although the red channel of the shift lights are now at maximum, the whole texture is toned down by the colour Eric chose for the dash texture, so it is duller than on some other cars.
One thing I can tell you when I drove the real FBM, as I went down the straight at Bruntingthorpe, I could hardly see the red LED gear indicator at all. That was quite inconvenient as I wanted to know what gear I was in. Being a learner I did not always know. On the other hand I could clearly see the LCD display although it was small even in reality. Well that's not so relevant when we are talking about a car with a roof, but anyway red LEDs aren't THAT bright in the day time. I toned down the BF1 dash a little today as it seemed to be burning red holes in my retinas. It's still bright but won't damage your eyes like looking at someone using a mig welder.
An editor tool for Eric. I recently added a dashboard editor for the LCD clocks. He needs an editor for road car clocks and that will give more flexibility and better dashboards in future.
It's still awaiting my UF improvements. I did nothing to the UFR apart from adding the race car dash and also made the mirrors less angular.
I've answered over there. It's not at all easy to fix, actually it's impossible to fix and keep compatibility.
I just wanted to make a note about a couple of things I will not be fixing, so you are not surprised when you see they are still there in Y32.
Not easy to fix, the way it has been done. But I expect this will change in future when I provide Eric with some better road car dashboard editing controls. Anyway, is there a rule that the speedo must always be on the right? I don't know...
True but that has always been the case for the ride height, and the double slider bars in the garage. The reason is too long to explain now. Just so everyone knows, left click does small steps and right click moves the slider bar in 10 times steps. So you can get accurate values quite quickly even without typing.
I won't fix this either. It's not important enough at this stage. I fear the consequences of adding a key to a bunch of screens that are used in different places in the program. What happens when an official patch goes out and a real bug is found the next day... that's very bad.
Not easy to fix, the way it has been done. But I expect this will change in future when I provide Eric with some better road car dashboard editing controls. Anyway, is there a rule that the speedo must always be on the right? I don't know...
True but that has always been the case for the ride height, and the double slider bars in the garage. The reason is too long to explain now. Just so everyone knows, left click does small steps and right click moves the slider bar in 10 times steps. So you can get accurate values quite quickly even without typing.
I won't fix this either. It's not important enough at this stage. I fear the consequences of adding a key to a bunch of screens that are used in different places in the program. What happens when an official patch goes out and a real bug is found the next day... that's very bad.
Last edited by Scawen, .
No, these cars are awaiting Eric's next update of GTR cars (not patch Z)
No, not at this time.
We are in the extreme final stages of releasing Patch Z. Just fixing holes and bugs, not adding anything new (even if it could be considered a bug that it is not there).
OK, I read this and your conversation with JJ about that.
Had a look in the editor and it seems this was a way of creating a shiny but not too shiny surface within the limitations of our graphics engine.
There are shiny black triangles behind there and that alpha mask is not shiny, so partially removing the visible shine.
At the moment the LFS engine only allows setting of shine level per object so cannot be done per surface. Eric was working around this to create the desired shine level.
I'm running out of different ways to say the same fact.
But of course I nicked some parts from Eric's cars, like steering wheel / seat / XR racing dash.
New Baby Girl!
Dear LFS community.
I wasn't sure whether to post this in General Discussion or Off Topic but finally decided to post here as I guess it's quite relevant knowledge to the LFS community.
I just wanted to let you know about our new baby, Nicole, who was born on Sunday (30th March) weighing 7 lb 4 oz (3.3 kg).
Geraldine and Nicole are very well. At first the baby seemed to sleep all day and was awake all night but that's already improving, she did some good stints of a few hours last night!
A paragraph regarding LFS development which is of course affected in some ways by this - we spent quite some time in January and February rearranging our house. I had to move my office out of the upstairs room so Leo could have a new bedroom in time for his 2nd birthday and to make way for the baby in his old baby room. The new office (which was previously acting as a store room... we really need a garage...) and Leo's new bedroom needed major refurbishment so this may give you some idea of why the LFS updates you have seen, although useful to a lot of people and important towards finishing S2, have not been the major developments many people are hoping for so far this year. Eric has been continuing work on the GTR interiors using new reference material, we visited some racing car garages and got a lot of interior photographs of some cars to help make the LFS ones a lot more realistic.
I hope you like the pictures. We are very happy with the new arrival!
I wasn't sure whether to post this in General Discussion or Off Topic but finally decided to post here as I guess it's quite relevant knowledge to the LFS community.
I just wanted to let you know about our new baby, Nicole, who was born on Sunday (30th March) weighing 7 lb 4 oz (3.3 kg).
Geraldine and Nicole are very well. At first the baby seemed to sleep all day and was awake all night but that's already improving, she did some good stints of a few hours last night!
A paragraph regarding LFS development which is of course affected in some ways by this - we spent quite some time in January and February rearranging our house. I had to move my office out of the upstairs room so Leo could have a new bedroom in time for his 2nd birthday and to make way for the baby in his old baby room. The new office (which was previously acting as a store room... we really need a garage...) and Leo's new bedroom needed major refurbishment so this may give you some idea of why the LFS updates you have seen, although useful to a lot of people and important towards finishing S2, have not been the major developments many people are hoping for so far this year. Eric has been continuing work on the GTR interiors using new reference material, we visited some racing car garages and got a lot of interior photographs of some cars to help make the LFS ones a lot more realistic.
I hope you like the pictures. We are very happy with the new arrival!
Well, I didn't really sell it off, the Matrox Parhelia died so I installed a Radeon 9800 Pro that ATI had sent me some time before. To give me a good view I then bought a very nice Dell 27" 1920x1200 widescreen LCD which works well with the card. Then after failing to sell for a fiver or even give away my 3 matching 21" CRT monitors and 2 old 17" monitors all in perfect condition, I had to load them in the car and drive down to the dump! It was a bit sad I must say, unloading good clean stuff at the dump, but that's how it is, no-one wants heavy old monitors that take up space - and I didn't have the space either.
Still using the Radeon on my 2GHz Intel PC. It chugs a bit when there are too many cars on screen but runs smoothly most of the time. Just gradually I'm starting to want a better computer. I like the way Moore's law has stopped being true, it used to be silly that your computer was obsolete almost immediately after you bought it. Eventually I'll upgrade of course but it seems sensible to wait while what I've got does the job and the best time to upgrade would be when I start on a new 3D engine... if I can wait that long. Decisions to be made about whether to get Vista as well so I'm sort of waiting to see what happens with that. Anyway regarding LFS there's one more important optimisation that needs doing and will make things faster for everyone, namely that the subobjects like steering wheels need to be drawn as hardware meshes. Right now the subobjects are slowing things down because they are being sent vertex by vertex, triangle by triangle every frame. This method should only really needed for flexible objects like humans and tyres.
True. Eric does read the forums and appreciates the feedback. He just doesn't want to get drawn into conversations which could contain a lot of "when will this be done" and "what are the plans for this and that". His situation is not the same as mine where I really need very thorough and interactive testing done for any of my updates.
Last edited by Scawen, .
You must try to understand that sometimes there are more important things in life than one particular issue on one track in one racing mode in LFS.
This bug has been reported, noted and discussed. There's no need to sigh. We get round to things in the end. We can't provide a running commentary on the progress of every bug on our list. The problem here is you forget there are other things going on, other issues to fix, other developments going on. When someone reports a issue, we don't just stop everything that is going on in life or LFS, and instantly make a new full version to fix one bug. If there was a frequent server crash, sure, we'd stop everything and fix it immediately. The importance of this hotlap issue is no way in that league.
Anyway in the discussion I had with Eric, it turns out that the walls that are hit in these hotlaps are marked as "dirt wall" so they make the right sound effect on impact. This means they bypass the HLVC protection. I plan (in the next test patch whenever that is) to switch on "dirt wall" as an HLVC wall riding violation.
There were serious issues with some of the AI paths there (the raw paths from which they generate their own lines). Such as walls being marked as driveable areas.
So Fern Bay had to be edited and resaved, While I was at it, I added pit lane cameras and fixed some reported bugs such as floating walls, improved the visibility of pit stop markings, also removed the large advert banners over the bridge which wre never meant to be there but were used to avoid drawing too much scenery. Eric also repaired the missing start lights and FE Green and fixed some yellow pit lane exit line Z buffer issues. Finally the tyres were added at FE Rallycross Green.
So this was actually several hours work. The fact that there is just a small note on the note sheet, does not mean that was the only thing that was done. Did you actually drive around at Fern Bay before making that comment? I would have thought the removed signs on the bridge were quite noticeable.
But this was not an "Eric update" where a couple of months go into improving things, this was some quick fixes by me. So now do you really think I was wrong so say the "updated tracks" got new jpg textures? Look in the patch folder, you'll see BL, SO and FE - the updated tracks.
Hmm, I feel writing this was a waste of time, anyway I'll post it just for the record.
Off Topic : TESTING Opportunity (UK and International)
Hello Testers!
This post is not about LFS but is relevant to game testing. Some of you I am sure are interested in games as well as simulators. Well here is an opportunity to test games before they are released.
Andy Robson, who Eric and I used to work with at Lionhead (he was Head of Testing) has set up a company Testology in the UK. They are contracted to test games for game developers.
Testology website : www.testology.co.uk
Testing is a fluctuating business, the number and scale of projects on the go varies constantly. So they need people on call so they can expand on demand, also sometimes there is large scale testing on the internet.
So, if you are interested in some testing, please send Andy an email, tell him a bit about yourself, how much time you have free usually and of course where you live.
UK applicants are likely to get more testing, for volunteer work and sometimes permanent or temporary positions may come up. International volunteer testing could be quite fun I am sure.
Contact Andy Robson : [email protected]
This post is not about LFS but is relevant to game testing. Some of you I am sure are interested in games as well as simulators. Well here is an opportunity to test games before they are released.
Andy Robson, who Eric and I used to work with at Lionhead (he was Head of Testing) has set up a company Testology in the UK. They are contracted to test games for game developers.
Testology website : www.testology.co.uk
Testing is a fluctuating business, the number and scale of projects on the go varies constantly. So they need people on call so they can expand on demand, also sometimes there is large scale testing on the internet.
So, if you are interested in some testing, please send Andy an email, tell him a bit about yourself, how much time you have free usually and of course where you live.
UK applicants are likely to get more testing, for volunteer work and sometimes permanent or temporary positions may come up. International volunteer testing could be quite fun I am sure.
Contact Andy Robson : [email protected]
The XF, XR and FZ road and race car interiors are mainly done and look very nice, but Eric isn't happy to release them yet because of certain details which are wrong or incomplete.
None will be released in Patch Y but they will be released as soon as possible. They are a high priority, along with certain other parts of my work that need to be updated so finally we'll be able to remove the ALPHA tag. These things just take a lot of time as the standard is higher now.
Thanks to those who helped get Patch X sorted!
Hello Racers.
I feel Patch X is quite a landmark in LFS development. Although physics changes were minimal, there were so many other updates to old code, multiplayer improvements and general all round updates of so many parts of LFS that were getting a bit old, it has brought us a lot closer to S2 Beta and S2 Final. Of course there's still a way to go, plenty of nice updates to come, including AI, physics and Eric's graphical updates and we'll be continuing with that as you would expect.
We have received a lot of appreciation on the Patch X thread and I would just like to thank all those who helped get it to this stage - there are really a lot of people involved in getting a Patch ready for the release - not just the developers! So I just want to give the other contributors a little recognition for that.
So... thanks and praise to :
Official beta testers - for helping get the initial changes up to public test patch standard
Translators - for the many updates to the translations, helping LFS around the world
Franky500 - for providing the powerful test servers for this last week of intensive stress testing
Don - for entertaining us with videos and providing screen shots for the website on release day
Florian - for updating the lessons and reporting the "final bug" and reproducing it at the last moment!
Programmers - for thoroughly testing and suggesting improvements for the new InSim interface
Forum moderators - for keeping the forum clean and stopping the fights while I ignored all the reported posts
All the people who participated in testing the test patches - for all your bug reports and suggestions!
The test patch would never have been so good and stable without the help of all these people... THANK YOU ALL!
I feel Patch X is quite a landmark in LFS development. Although physics changes were minimal, there were so many other updates to old code, multiplayer improvements and general all round updates of so many parts of LFS that were getting a bit old, it has brought us a lot closer to S2 Beta and S2 Final. Of course there's still a way to go, plenty of nice updates to come, including AI, physics and Eric's graphical updates and we'll be continuing with that as you would expect.
We have received a lot of appreciation on the Patch X thread and I would just like to thank all those who helped get it to this stage - there are really a lot of people involved in getting a Patch ready for the release - not just the developers! So I just want to give the other contributors a little recognition for that.
So... thanks and praise to :
Official beta testers - for helping get the initial changes up to public test patch standard
Translators - for the many updates to the translations, helping LFS around the world
Franky500 - for providing the powerful test servers for this last week of intensive stress testing
Don - for entertaining us with videos and providing screen shots for the website on release day
Florian - for updating the lessons and reporting the "final bug" and reproducing it at the last moment!
Programmers - for thoroughly testing and suggesting improvements for the new InSim interface
Forum moderators - for keeping the forum clean and stopping the fights while I ignored all the reported posts
All the people who participated in testing the test patches - for all your bug reports and suggestions!
The test patch would never have been so good and stable without the help of all these people... THANK YOU ALL!
No, nothing can be done, the finish line at WE1R is a few cars back - it's not a program bug.
This was reported yesterday and Eric has now fixed it in his copy of Westhill.
This thread won't really go anywhere. It's a bit boring to see the same old discussion again.
A massive update - Patch X - is coming out on Friday.
So... it's not a sensible time to complain that the features on top of YOUR list are not done. Everything is done in the order we want to do them. There is a lot of Eric's work not yet in the game but sorry to disappoint anyone, there's no code of mine that isn't yet there (except development tools)... patch W34 is really it.
Obviously (because I've said it before so many times, so it must be obvious now) I'll be working on AI and physics for Patch Y. But first patch X is out with its many very imoprtant updates.
OK, so now it's time to close this thread. Thank you for understanding!
A massive update - Patch X - is coming out on Friday.
So... it's not a sensible time to complain that the features on top of YOUR list are not done. Everything is done in the order we want to do them. There is a lot of Eric's work not yet in the game but sorry to disappoint anyone, there's no code of mine that isn't yet there (except development tools)... patch W34 is really it.
Obviously (because I've said it before so many times, so it must be obvious now) I'll be working on AI and physics for Patch Y. But first patch X is out with its many very imoprtant updates.
OK, so now it's time to close this thread. Thank you for understanding!
Well that would be up to him. And I'm not contacting him to find out. But if I know Eric, he certainly wouldn't encourage this kind of thread by giving anyone a screen shot of anything. He told me it's actually the weird comments he sees around here that put him off writing anything. I think if he thought he could safely have a sensible conversation, he would do so.
Only thing is, although the vast majority of the community are nice sensible people - of course this is a sim, not a FPS so that does attract more mature people on average, still there are quite a few nutters around who type more than they think, or they think a lot but just "crazy" and make rumours out of nothing.
So, although I'm quite different from Eric in that way, and I come here all the time to talk to the sensible people, I can see his point.
...
And now I'm going to unsubscribe from this thead, as I've wasted enough time here already. So don't ask me anything else, I won't see your question.
I see... you were being sarcastic, suggesting that it was a waste of time doing this small requested feature while I was working on that area :
But I took your comment at face value - my mistake. But it's silly to suggest (even as a joke) that I shouldn't do something that takes 5 minutes, because you're still waiting for something "more important" that would only take a month or two to do. And it's also a mistake to underestimate the value of InSim, the number of host programs that use it and run now and give so many people a better time online.
It's not a big deal what you've said but it's one of those continual irritations, people criticising me for making some small improvement here or there that I happened to be able to just squeeze in to a test patch, while there are some other things they are waiting for that will take hundreds of hours of work to do. It's so irritating, like a dripping tap. The problem is that I want to take the forum seriously - and I do - which is why the stupid repetitive comments have some effect on me, it's a hard thing to do, to take the sensible comments seriously but be totally unaffected by the misinformed stupid comments.
Actually I think one reason Eric doesn't write anything on the forums is because of the crazy conversations you can get drawn into. It's a mad thing that sometimes you can write 5 lines of text and people start analysing what you say, as if there's "something between the lines" and it's like some kind of cryptic crossword. Then you're back to the forum trying to correct all the mad rumours that have come out of all the misreadings of your original few sentences! That can be HARD!
And what I say always, I have to say again, if our time prioritising is SO BAD, how come LFS exists at all? And those who know so much more than us about how to manage our time, really, try doing it yourself. Don't tell us how to do it. It's just irritating. And let us do the little things as well as the big things, there's only one reason I do this job, because I like to program, including the big things and the small things. Eric does it because he likes to make nice graphics. We don't do it to be analysed and criticised by people who don't know what they are talking about. We don't do it as some kind of speed competition. We take our time and get it right, thanks to the help of the community as well. And I know there are a lot of people out there who like the way we do it. Though probably most of them didn't read this crazy thread!
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