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LFS event replays megapack torrent
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(32 posts, started )
LFS event replays megapack torrent
Years ago, the LFS racers scene had been privileged to have their event history tracked by a fantastic event database at spdoracing.com. Unfortunately, the good times came to an end, as the website went down with all LFS multiplayer replays it stored. It would be a shame to lose it all, so I wasted no time backing up the latest LFS physics build era replays, as the website briefly came back from the dead in the late 2012.

After it went down again, I kept accumulating replays of various events on my PC and slowly the archive size kept growing out of control. I’m not sure how many people backed up spdo just like I did, but I know plenty who would like to take a look back at their past events, so I decided to combine both spdo replay backups and the events that came afterwards into a structure resembling this of spdodb, listing competitions, leagues, seasons and events and to publish it once I got the appropriate Internet connection to upload it.

As I worked on cataloguing all the replays, I tried to fill in the gaps caused by some missing replays by asking lots of admins and drivers, who I thought might’ve kept them in their personal libraries. I was stunned to find out how many of them still had what I was after and I’d like to thank them at this point. Seeing how many people keep their LFS folders stashed somewhere, and knowing that the hosting services come and go, I took the decision to publish my personal library as a good old-fashioned torrent.

The catalogued structure allows everyone to easily pick and choose whichever leagues/events to download in their torrent client. I hope some of you go for the whole pack and seed it for a long time. Unfortunately LFS doesn't natively support subdirectories inside 'mpr' folder. I highly recommend using Daniel-CRO's latest LFSLazy build, which adds support for subdirectories and displays a bit more information about your replays. That way, you simply order your torrent client to download files into your LFS mpr folder and navigate them from your main menu.

I renamed almost every replay to the format used by avetere's mpres script (event definitions and TOCfiles are not included). Unfortunately, there are some problematic cases, which I'd like to address briefly.

Some events have multiple grid qualifying and its results are later combined so that the race runs on a single server. Mpres runs into a bit of a problem here, as it doesn't list events having no grid description in a season where at least one 'gridded' session has been found. I had a dillema whether to adjust to mpres' behaviour, but adding 'grid 1' info to all events would create a confusion, e.g. has there been Grid 2 for this event? Is its replay missing? That's why I decided against it.

Another example are some 'Qualifying races', followed by the main event, e.g. in some oval races. I decided to name the main event simply as 'r', while the quali races are ending with 'r1', 'r2', etc.

The replays of the serverfailure-stricken races have been named in the same way as the races of the events consisting of Sprint and Feature races, e.g. OWRL, Apex Cup. In those cases, replays end with 'r1', 'r2', etc., to address the succession of the events.

Of course, it was impossible to get a hold of all the replays. If you have some events you'd like to share, please let me know and I'll try to include them in the future expansion pack(s). I might've made some mistakes tagging replays here and there. If you spot one, please point it out here. Because of the way torrents work, I might not be able to correct them (unless the trackers fail or the torrent dies), but everyone will be able to fix it on their computers.

You can download the torrent here. I added multiple public trackers and lfs.net tracker, I would appreciate if the torrent was registered on it.
WOW, great job, thanks!!Thumbs up
Ah, there it is. Tilt

That must have been a massive amount of work! Thumbs up

Maybe we can name some replays here that are worth rewatching. Big grin
Oh wow. Can you make 7z version of this? ~100GB is too much for me and wanted to help with seeding.

edit: nevermind, compression is to low to bother with it. I downloaded just part of it and upload goes nice Smile
Quote from pasibrzuch :Oh wow. Can you make 7z version of this? ~100GB is too much for me and wanted to help with seeding.

That was not my intention from the start, because large archives are not handled very well and it would be frustrating to have to unrar every time you felt like watching something. LFS Lazy does a pretty decent job with it, IMO. Oh, and unless you have some hardcore torrent client, you don't have to download the full pack - just seed anything you feel like downloading and it would be a big help Smile

Quote from zeugnimod :Maybe we can name some replays here that are worth rewatching. Big grin

I guess any IGTC/Super GT race is pretty exciting with pretty good drivers dealing with SC periods and whatnot Smile The start of the grid 1 16hours 2008 race was pretty funny too, if you want to see Conquest car space travelling out of bounds 5 minutes into the race Big grin

Maybe it's a good time to list some high-profile races that are still missing. Here's a shortlist of some:
Alternate 24h 2010 (AS5 GT2)
Blackbyte 24h 2011 (AS4R GTR & FOX) - official replay was to my knowledge lost, but maybe something could be salvaged from stint replays
DoP 2009: 6 hours of WE1R and 12 hours of KY2R multiclass races. Also a second (post server-failure) part of the 2014 12 hours of BL1 race.
Early NDR endurance events: Christmas 2008 (BL1 in GT3 & TBO), New Year 2009 (AS2 in TBO and STD) and Easter 2009 (UF1 at FE4)
IGTC 2009 qualification race (BL1 with GTR)
LFS World Series European qualification races - UF1 at AS1 and FO8 at old WE1
MoE 2007/08 round 5 - 6 hours of BL1 - official replay was never saved, but again, maybe some individual stints could make it up
xRG Endurance 2010 (AS7 XRG) - I attached only a first stint for this race.

Then, there are multiple national events missing, as well as a lot of weekly races. I added whatever I could find of Fox Fridays and Torsdagsraces, honorable mention goes to Rony who probably has to limit his online time to 30 minutes a day for the next few weeks because of me Smile
Quote from Ziomek21 :honorable mention goes to Rony who probably has to limit his online time to 30 minutes a day for the next few weeks because of me Smile

No no,I took my laptop with me when visiting a friend,who has proper internet,so I'm still limited in usual way... Big grin
Yes, whow! Great work!!
Top stuff. When I get a new hard drive I'll stash a copy Smile
Very impressive work. Will try to help with seeding. Not a bad idea to go old school with torrents, too.


Might be a pie in the sky idea, but what about a DDS skin torrent? Many skins featured in these replays are no longer offline, so if you weren't there, chances are you will have to look at a bunch of white cars. Which is a shame given the time and talent spent on so many of these missing skins. Obviously it's near impossible to have a complete database, and any attempts at this project would probably contain a few gigs of public server skins nobody needs. Yes, it's a lot of files but 512² DDS files aren't that big. However, I reckon we could simply merge the skin_x folders of a few old-time league racers and have something half-decent for around 20-30 go.

Quote from Ziomek21 :xRG Endurance 2010 (AS7 XRG) - I attached only a first stint for this race.

Here are stints 2 and 3

I also have a few Torsdagraces from years past, and some bits and bobs from lower level leagues, but nothing complete so not sure if you're interested.
Quote from GreyBull [CHA] :what about a DDS skin torrent?

Funny you should mention that, I already got myself skins_xes from some of my friends, supporting my skins_y folder (~6 GB) if the skins are no longer there to be downloaded in high res. While sharing skins_x would probably be a-okay, I'm guessing making my skins_y publically available would not be endorsed by the devs.

Quote from GreyBull [CHA] :I also have a few Torsdagraces from years past, and some bits and bobs from lower level leagues, but nothing complete so not sure if you're interested.

My policy is a bit more lenient towards incomplete competitions, as compared to spdodb, I accept everything of event quality Smile
Il download and seed all i can for as long as possible to help.
Quote from Ziomek21 :I added multiple public trackers and lfs.net tracker, I would appreciate if the torrent was registered on it.

Done.
Thumbs up Thx Vic
#Nostalgia

Thanks for that ! Bringing the spdo EventDatabase into the table, I always thought it was ashame it all disappear as it was the memory of LFS when leagues are concerned. In a way I assume that what Josh did on spdo website should have been included on LFS website or LFS world.

Anyway that's not what would bring back the good old time of racing in here
oh the good old days, I miss GTws. Was fun racing with GenR..12 hours of Aston, one stint was driven with broken suspension just because Joona said ''iz ok no worries'' Big grin
Quote from MousemanLV :oh the good old days, I miss GTws. Was fun racing with GenR..12 hours of Aston, one stint was driven with broken suspension just because Joona said ''iz ok no worries'' Big grin

Joona army man now no brum brum wif him
Fantastic work Thumbs up
I've moved this thread to the Leagues & Events section and have pinned it there.
Thanks!

Here's a message to the whole community. I'm trying to create a skinpack, like the one Yann has suggested. I've asked many people in private and so far collected about 90,000 skins. The international leagues have a decent coverage, but the national competitions could do with improvement.

If you raced/followed some leagues, especially the ones from 2008-2012 as their skinfiles are most likely to have been deleted from LFS skin upload system, I and certainly many more LFS users would appreciate your contribution of skins_x/skins_y folders. Mind you, I'm not sure if I would be allowed to release skins_y pack just yet, so it would be released after the 1024x1024 dimension becomes a low-res standard in LFS.

Ironically, the skins_x folders do not include your own JPG skins, as they are not being downloaded. If you wish, you can attach them as well and I'll resize them appropriately and convert them to DDS.

I set up a request folder, meaning you don't have to find a place to host your pack. Just go to -----NEVERMIND, I SHUT IT DOWN----- and upload the pack directly into my Dropbox.

Thanks to any contributors!
Quote from Ziomek21 :... especially the ones from 2008-2012 as their skinfiles are most likely to have been deleted from LFS skin upload system

We do not delete skins to make space or anything. So if a skin is not available, it's either never been uploaded, or users have removed them manually.

Fun fact, we currently have just over 350,000 skins stored.
Quote from Victor :We do not delete skins to make space or anything. So if a skin is not available, it's either never been uploaded, or users have removed them manually.

Well, that's what I'm saying. Users are removing unused skins to make space for new uploads (unless they buy extra slots). That's why many of those skins are not obtainable any other way, if the original creator lost his LFS with HDD failures, or plain and simply uninstalled it.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B7aT9_WQk6z9dVVSNDZIaDExeWM

Here's the skins_x pack assembled thanks to many LFS players good will. WARNING: It's 15 GB large after decompressing. It's surely missing lots of skins, but the major competitions are covered quite nicely Tongue Since there have been no new contributions recently, I guess it's a good time to release it.

The mpr expansion pack has also been uploaded. It contains a few obsolete replays from pre-December 2007 patch, which the first version of the pack was missing.

There is no torrent this time - I've got no seedbox now, so I can't guarantee seeding around the clock. Instead, the files have been uploaded to Google Drive. If you can, please add the files to your account first and download them from there, because I might run into the upstream limit after a while.
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LFS event replays megapack torrent
(32 posts, started )
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