Hello, If I my bring attention to a production idea I’d like the LFS development team, and the community to consider:

If it’s not already available: There should be a game editor for creating new tracks. This would not only entail making the tracks, but modeling buildings, and texturing the worlds.
Because of the immense effort that the LFS development team puts into preserving the realness of their work, there would obviously have to be some strict review, and testing of the product that the community produces. By that I mean, anything new, such as a track, or 3d environment model would have to first be submitted to the LFS development team, and it would be their final decision if they except it to use for future updates. Just think of the load this would take off the LFS team, letting them concentrate on other things, like new car parts, and AI programming. Believe me, I’ve worked with game editors for years, and I have seen some seriously talented people in the community who were always willing to submit their work in order to make a great product even better.

This would allow community developers to import custom texture skins, and other things. Again, this idea is in no way an implication to allow anyone to distribute new tracks which could be sloppy, or unperfected causing more harm than good. However, I see many great possibilities in allowing the community to build onto a great product, (With the strict guidance, and approval of the LFS team).

I’ve been using 3dsMax for over 8 years now; I can easily make buildings, such as city sky scrappers, and other things that the team could possibly use for new upcoming tracks. rocks, Light poles, Houses, ect. Here are some samples of very basic work I’ve done.
http://www.nickabc.com/seat.htm

http://www.nickabc.com/pyramid_files/marblepic.htm


The point I’m trying to make here is this: New enhancements or add-ons doesn’t just have to be on the shoulders of the LFS team. Unreal Tournament, Half-Life2, OFP, (to just name a few products) have greatly benefited by releasing an editor to the community.

Thanks

Quote from waveform :

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sigh.. Please search.

This has been thrashed to death in many many many threads. There are a number of reasons why its just NOT a good idea.

1) Modding hell. This is like the old windows DLL hell and is highlighted well in rFactor. Here you have 1000's of would-be modders for every 1 talented one. These muppets pump out something quick then patch it every 2 seconds when a bug is found. Means you never know if you have the right track let alone version for the server you want to join.

2) LFS World. To work with LFS there would need to be changes to LFS world for stats logging. For this to work mods and tracks need to be LOCKED down when realsed and only allowed to change when an LFS physics mod comes through. This leads us back to point 1.

3) FPS games that do well with modding have on the whole built up GOOD mod teams over many versions of the related game. These teams have learnt what it means to be professional, beta test and ONLY release when ready. The games also have enough players to be able to deal with the signal to noise ratio that modding brings and filter out the crap.

Yes modding can help BUT it needs to be VERY tightly controlled and only select people that will not just port shite rF tracks & cars to LFS. This is NOT what LFS needs and it will actually cause LFS harm IMHO.

What makes LFS so great is that you can just run up and play. If modding is left unchecked this is what happens.

1) Join server to find you do not have map.
2) Grab map then try and join to realise wrong version.
3) Finally locate correct version and download only to find track now changed.
4) Go back to 1 until you managed to join.

I believe the ONLY way to go is the total conversion route. In that mods are stand alone. The tracks & cars can only be used in that mod although a mod can reuse the base cars if required.

This keeps everything isolated and removes some LFS world issues.

@woz - I think he meant people make the tracks and such and send it to the developers for testing. And if it is accepted, it could be implemented in the next patch. So it would be checked before being official. I dont see anything bad about that exept that it would give devs another work which would be to test every single one of them.

wow lfs been around for almost half a decade. thx for being the 1st person to suggest this.

Quote from evilpimp :

@woz - I think he meant people make the tracks and such and send it to the developers for testing. And if it is accepted, it could be implemented in the next patch. So it would be checked before being official. I dont see anything bad about that exept that it would give devs another work which would be to test every single one of them.

Exactly. Who is talking about mods Woz?

I’m talking about modeling objects, and sending it to the team as additional content to work with. Let them do what they want with the content, but at least your giving them something to work with. I'm talking about things like static buildings, rocks, tables, and houses; Things to make the enviornment more interesting.
The point that this criticism lacks is this:
There will always be the default tracks, so if there were new tracks made by the cummunity, than you would avoid them servers. I guess the simple answer would be to keep community tracks off of default servers. but that is something else. I'm talking more about modling enviornment objects.
By the way, speaking of tracks, when was the last new track made? I'm kind of new to this game still so I don't know?


Just to give you an example. The helicopter and the inside of this vehicle was made by some community modelers for OFP.
The M1A2 tank in the last two shots was also made by someone who just modeled for fun. It’s my understanding that Codmasters (the game developer) wanted to use it in their upcoming OFP2 release.

http://www.nickabc.com/ofp/new_snow/coyote_inside.jpg

http://www.nickabc.com/ofp/new_snow/robot01.jpg

http://www.nickabc.com/misc_q/01m1a2.jpg

http://www.nickabc.com/misc_q/02m1a2.jpg

Guys, I'm not trying to change this game in anyway, It's already great.



If you think and believe you will successfully achieve your dream you already have. That goes the other way also.

Quote from Gabkicks :

wow lfs been around for almost half a decade. thx for being the 1st person to suggest this.

8 or 9 years now, isn't it?

[EDIT] @ Wave; this idea has been suggested many, many, many times in the past (both in terms of mods and just general content donation as you are proposing). The devs wish to keep the development in house at this point; accepting things from the community will only open up the floodgates and it will just slow the development time.

Additionally, Eric is the artist on the LFS team. Even if content were to be submitted, he wouldn't become a coder and help other aspects of the game, he is the artist, and the visual content is what he does.

I'd love to start making stuff for LFS, I really would, but it's just not going to happen for a very long time.

I've heard people suggest a track editor to make them and play online but never heard of making objects and maybe tracks and sending them to the mods who will either not publish them or make them official if they like it...

Quote from evilpimp :

@woz - I think he meant people make the tracks and such and send it to the developers for testing. And if it is accepted, it could be implemented in the next patch. So it would be checked before being official. I dont see anything bad about that exept that it would give devs another work which would be to test every single one of them.

Even worse then. All that will do is tie up the limited resources by needing the devs to wade through piles and piles of crap. All of which created by people that have no idea on the optimisations needed to use with LFS in the best way, the colour palletes used etc.

The only way to outsource is to employ people on contract that you trust to produce good work in the first place. Not ask for piles of low quality work from the general public and hope you find a diamond in there. The resources to manage this would be too great for too little gain

You can't flesh out a game if it doesn't even have a complete skeleton yet.

By all means make tracks and objects, and send them to Eric. But only send them to Eric, don't post them here, and don't moan when none of your work is used.

as i said many times before:

+1000

it is a good idea but only by people that know how to.. and not just everyone.

i think it would be nice to do it this way, at masterskinners you have an competition who makes the best skins. well if the devs could hold a competition about, who can make the best "unoficial" track. and let the devs or a smal group test the 10 competitiors tracks. and then let the devs or users vote. and the winner will be implemented into LFS!!

The isse there is, making a 3D model of a car is a lot more work than creating a good skin. Creating a good model is harder still. Creating a track requires ten (if not more) times more effort than a good car. That's a hell of a lot more 'wasted' effort if you don't win.