I know I'll probably get a lot of flaming for this idea but I reckon it'd be better for everybody.

If Scawen and the boys could find a development team who were to fork Live for Speed to a dedicated cruising game with the same Physics, Graphics and general interface, only with more relevent content such as an unlocked cityscape or a countryside village.

It could be considered a sister game to LFS, and have it's own similar looking site and forum, I've seen stuff like this done in other software, though I cannot think of any particular examples at the moment. Some of the advantages of this could be...

- Would stop a lot of cruise requests on these forums.
- Cruisers may actually get what they want.
- It'd be nice for Cruisers to not have to improvise with racing maps such as Aston and South City.
- May get LFS a bit more recognition through being a partnered game.

It'd obviously be quite a large commitment, but if Scavier found some developers in this community with the skill and motivation it could be pulled off and it could be a brilliant game.

So you want Scawen to give his source code to someone else? Why would he want to do that?
I don't see it happening and hope to god it doesn't.
More than enough has already happened to aid cruising, I shudder to think how much time has been wasted which could and should have been spent on the physics.

I have to agree with gandlers to some extent, and I am more cruiser/drifter than racer. Giving out the source could be complete disaster. I am all up for new features that aid the cruising community, but I can't help feeling this would devide the LFS community, would that be a good thing?

Currently (at this moment) 1215 users on-line, I am not going to say there are more cruisers than racers, but I feel confident in saying that cruisers spend longer periods connected than any other type of lfs user, I could be way out of place saying that, but its what I see. So, how many users would be left online at LFS if it was devided? a few hundred? would make those server lists look real bad.

I agree, Aston, Kyoto, Westhill and Fernbay are all race style tracks, but I fail to see SouthCity as anything less than universal, its a very good 'cruise' style track. Objects are what help us improvise when it comes to the race style tracks.

I know its a long way off, but there is talk of track editing software of some variety coming with s3... I think focusing on the cruise community on its own would be great for cruisers, but could kill the rest of lfs. I don't want to sound objectional but this one gets a thumbs down from my opinions!

Nice thought tho

Don't need to give out the source code. Just let someone from the community make the map; but that falls under modding which they don't do. Case closed.

Quote from Psysim :

I have to agree with gandlers to some extent, and I am more cruiser/drifter than racer. Giving out the source could be complete disaster. I am all up for new features that aid the cruising community, but I can't help feeling this would devide the LFS community, would that be a good thing?

Currently (at this moment) 1215 users on-line, I am not going to say there are more cruisers than racers, but I feel confident in saying that cruisers spend longer periods connected than any other type of lfs user, I could be way out of place saying that, but its what I see. So, how many users would be left online at LFS if it was devided? a few hundred? would make those server lists look real bad.

I agree, Aston, Kyoto, Westhill and Fernbay are all race style tracks, but I fail to see SouthCity as anything less than universal, its a very good 'cruise' style track. Objects are what help us improvise when it comes to the race style tracks.

I know its a long way off, but there is talk of track editing software of some variety coming with s3... I think focusing on the cruise community on its own would be great for cruisers, but could kill the rest of lfs. I don't want to sound objectional but this one gets a thumbs down from my opinions!

Nice thought tho

Thanks, that puts a lot of things into perspective, I have to agree with you about splitting the community up. You talk about "giving away the source code" but I meant it in the way of say Microsoft programmers having access to the code which makes up Windows, the programmers who would be supervised by Scawen and co.

I never knew about the track editing software in talks for S3, seems interesting, is there a discussion on these forums?

The idea itself is not all that bad, I'll give you that, but even if there was a group of programmers willing to do that, it would still mean a lot of extra work for Scawen. LFS source is probably not very friendly to other programmers, I reckon it's written in a way Scawen finds "comfortable". As far as I remember he said he was taking some convenience shortcuts because there's noone else to mess around with the code. Even the supervising itself would take a lot of his time to make.

I'm not opposed to the idea of expanding SO for cruisers though, perhaps the track and object editors could be released to a closed group of external devs who'd do that. On the other hand, I guess that cruisers in LFS already got a lot of goodies, for instance the entire InSim system is like a holy grail for them.

Quote from MadCatX :

I guess that cruisers in LFS already got a lot of goodies, for instance the entire InSim system is like a holy grail for them.

I agree. They've already got more than what they deserved from a RACING simulator.

I think it'd be a good idea if done right, maybe making a cruise specific "SC" license level that is even cheaper than S1 just to encourage demo cruisers to put some money into LFS.

Reminds me of the TS-RolePlaying community of the old Half-Life mod, The Specialists.

Gtfo my internets.

Quote from BullHorn :

Reminds me of the TS-RolePlaying community of the old Half-Life mod, The Specialists.

Gtfo my internets.

Wtf.. TS had this cancer too?
Played it a lot, and I never noticed that. :S

75% of the servers were Mecklenburg which was the horrible RP map. ._.

p.s. I'm still playing it and even though the official website down, the co-creator of the game Vino (Jorge Rodriguez) is still supporting the old community on a different website and is currently in the making of a new open-source TS-like game on the Source engine. !

Quote from BullHorn :

p.s. I'm still playing it and even though the official website down, the co-creator of the game Vino (Jorge Rodriguez) is still supporting the old community on a different website and is currently in the making of a new open-source TS-like game on the Source engine. !

Give me link or I'll follow you into a dark alley.
DO ****ING WANT

Back on topic. I've got another perspective on this. I'm going to divide the LFS community into two factions. Cruisers and racers. I know however that there are people that do drifting and people that do a little bit of everything (such as myself) but hear me out.

Consider that the cruisers got there own game, mod or whatever you want to call it. It would feature speed limits, road laws and such to an even further extent then the cruising in LFS today. Cruising in LFS at the moment is still somewhat a semi-racing style cruising. You're still cruising along a race track (Maybe not after the recent patches with open configurations but that doesn't matter). Many people actually do follow the racing line in between the different obstacles placed out and do so in a high pace. I'd call this "Semi cruising".

Now to the point. If LFS as a game were to be divided into two separate games; pure racing and pure cruising, then all the people who used to enjoy "semi-racing" along a cruising layout would start turning towards the pure racing servers. All the full time "Semi-cruisers" would turn into part time pure racers and part time pure cruisers. So this hypothetical mod could be a good thing for the racing side of LFS.

About the "giving away source code". That doesn't have to happen since you don't need to alter the actual core of LFS in order to make a version with content more focused towards cruising.

I dont think its necessary to do another separate game, just to do some kind of addon (a similar idea to the LFS Cruise license i heard up there ^^) with a biiig city and maby some cruise style car, I mean, for example, a 150 hp coupe, big and comfortable. Back to track topic, I think it wouldnt be difficult to add working traffic lights, or buildings in which you can park in, an underground parking, a car dealer for xr, another for uf, a petrol station (fully functional), a carwash? ...

Well, thats just my dream...

Nice idea, I agree with ^

Quote from Weasley123 :

Some of the advantages of this could be...

- Would stop a lot of cruise requests on these forums.

:chair:

Why should the dev's give you their sweat, blood, and tears? Need For Speed is a pretty good police simulator.

On 2nd thought, devs created open layouts to stop cruisers from b&c'ing about close configs, so go play on South City with walls off and stop complaining.

Quote from Bmxtwins :

Why should the dev's give you their sweat, blood, and tears? Need For Speed is a pretty good police simulator.

On 2nd thought, devs created open layouts to stop cruisers from b&c'ing about close configs, so go play on South City with walls off and stop complaining.

Actually, SO isn't really interasting for cruising, because there aren't many roads open...

^^ and thats the problem for me. And I was not asking the devs to do it, I only said it would be good.

All Cruises need to suit them is a user frendly map editor which can be loaded on a dedi server it's simple requires little work and can also be used for a wide varity of racing formats such as making new race tracks drag tracks and drift tracks.

Quote from BLUEWOLF86 :

All Cruises need to suit them is a user frendly map editor which can be loaded on a dedi server it's simple requires little work and can also be used for a wide varity of racing formats such as making new race tracks drag tracks and drift tracks.

Okay so we get a track editor implemented. Then most servers would run a different track, so how does the user download it?

Going to the server's website searching for the track pack would be a pain in the butt, and it would also remove the nice part of LFS which is being able to jump right into the game and not waiting for a half an hour to download a track like rFactor.

Unless LFS could have many textures pre-installed that could be re-used for the tracks...

Quote from PoVo :

Okay so we get a track editor implemented. Then most servers would run a different track, so how does the user download it?

Going to the server's website searching for the track pack would be a pain in the butt, and it would also remove the nice part of LFS which is being able to jump right into the game and not waiting for a half an hour to download a track like rFactor.

Unless LFS could have many textures pre-installed that could be re-used for the tracks...

Ever played Counter Strike? The server pushes custom maps to the player as they connect to the server. There's also fpsbanana (which would be our lfsmods) that has all the maps uploaded, so users can download them either way.

It's not often that '**** off' is the most reasonable response to a suggestion, but sometimes it works out that way.

Have you noticed how long it's taking to get the new tyre physics sorted out? Do you think Scawen should be spending his time doing a dedicated 'cruise' version?

**** off, mate.

More to the point, the CS autodownloader can be a real pain in the ass, especially for a casual players who don't have all the modz and hakz already downloaded.
It can take as much as several minutes to download all custom textures, maps, models, sounds and whatnot which is pretty far away from a click and play straightforwardness LFS currently has. Also add the extra bandwidth demands on the server to the equation.

I don't really understand the need to turn LFS into a completely different game everybody seems to be having lately...

Quote from MadCatX :

More to the point, the CS autodownloader can be a real pain in the ass, especially for a casual players who don't have all the modz and hakz already downloaded.
It can take as much as several minutes to download all custom textures, maps, models, sounds and whatnot which is pretty far away from a click and play straightforwardness LFS currently has. Also add the extra bandwidth demands on the server to the equation.

I don't really understand the need to turn LFS into a completely different game everybody seems to be having lately...

Well like a previous poster said all of the various corners could be modified in the in game track editor, including angles and s-bends and chicanes. Then the textures could be applied to the creators choosing using some already used in other tracks. It would be "fresh" and "new" while using the old textures in track creation. Also, there wouldn't be anything to download. Like replays, tracks could be .trk files or something like that, which simply contain text to be understood by the game. eg.
Start/Finish Line X: Y:, Texture Z:
Straight X: Y:, Texture Z:
Turn 1 X: Y:, Texture Z:
nothing to download, just reconstructed.