First off - thanks for the Z patch! I always love to get updates for a game I bought 5 years ago.
(so much for what I've followed reading in the forums recently)

Well, although! There is something that's bothering me for years now and has cost me so many clicks... eerrrm.... just watch the video I've made,
I hope you'll get the point. (1.5MB)

http://www.rediske.de/temp/lfs_improvement.avi



cheers!

AR

Cant you type /track to tell you what track your at?

Quote from nismoCat :

Cant you type /track to tell you what track your at?

"you have no admin rights"

That is to change the track when you have admin rights on a server.....

Agreed rediske. So many times this happens online someone joins and imediatly asks "what track is this ?"

The same used to occur for fuel, but since the consupmtion display per lap in the garage it happens with much lower frequency now.

The way to do it is to check your PB while online. "/w pb" or possibly default F8 key (one of the F keys is defaulted to this, mine is changed)

It then tells you something like "mrodgers: PB at FE3 - 35.05 (XFG)"

And yes, that is my true PB for that track/car..... ..... J/K!

If people don't know this and end up asking in the server, then they aren't going to know a "/track" command either and will still ask.

But all these commands wouldn't help you in the garage setting up for a hotlap...

The only (simple) solution would be to add the '3 letter track code' to the garage info.

mmmh, another thing would be nice: a special hotlap-setup slot for each car/track to be loaded automatically when in hotlapping mode...

Type /w pb and you'll get the track code?

Doesn't work for me. I probably only have 5 online pb's in total so that's not working.

I chose 'hotlapping' and when I'm in the garage I type 't' and then '/w pb' and nothing is shown in the chat history, '/w wr' doesn't work either in the garage preparing a hotlap...

(and my PC has internet access 24|7)

edit: maybe I haven't made clear enough what I mean. It's just, I'm spending roughly 99,8423% of my time in LFS hotlapping, so all online ingame solutions won't work for me. It's just that I don't see the need of learning all track2trackcode combinations by heart to avoid the 'go back and check again for the 3-letter trackcode to be able to select the appropriate setup procedure' when it could be solved by showing the 3-letter trackcode in the garage - Scawen Sir, please... (do you hear me?)

understand me now?

It does help guys if you read the first post

*afterthought*

Maybe when screen message .. track loaded (gives track name ie fe4)

I like the video you made, easyer to understand

I think the main problem is that LFS relies so heavily on the three letter acronyms for cars and tracks. Someone who is not very familiar with the game doesn't know what track FE2 is. They don't know an XFG from and XRT. LFS needs to move away from these acronyms and give users more visual clues about what is going on. Three letters works great for setting up a server configuration file, but is just too damn confusing to the average user (and especially to new users).

The UI really needs to be revamped so that you can always see what track you are running on (visually, not just using three letters), which car you have chosen, which direction you're running (forward/reverse), the weather, etc. Not just when in the track and car selection screens, but during a race as well (perhaps in a better F12 menu or something).

Quote from rediske :

edit: maybe I haven't made clear enough what I mean. It's just, I'm spending roughly 99,8423% of my time in LFS hotlapping, so all online ingame solutions won't work for me. It's just that I don't see the need of learning all track2trackcode combinations by heart to avoid the 'go back and check again for the 3-letter trackcode to be able to select the appropriate setup procedure' when it could be solved by showing the 3-letter trackcode in the garage - Scawen Sir, please... (do you hear me?)

understand me now?

Indeed, rediske. I was at work and couldn't download the video. Even if I could, I wouldn't have been able to run it on my POS office PC (barely has 2D graphics card, it's SLOW).

So, I was responding as if we were talking multiplayer, as well as mainly responding to a post that already posted a false solution whether multiplayer or not.

Quote from mrodgers :

Indeed, rediske. I was at work and couldn't download the video. Even if I could, I wouldn't have been able to run it on my POS office PC (barely has 2D graphics card, it's SLOW).

so just invest $500 in some newer used hardware, and you're good to go!

I just got a 2.0AMD Athlon, Asus mobo, an Nvidia GeForce 4200Ti, a case, and a 500W PSU for only $50 USD! (this is my rig right now because I'm ****in poor and my old comp was bleh.

Quote from Cue-Ball :

I think the main problem is that LFS relies so heavily on the three letter acronyms for cars and tracks. Someone who is not very familiar with the game doesn't know what track FE2 is. They don't know an XFG from and XRT. LFS needs to move away from these acronyms and give users more visual clues about what is going on. Three letters works great for setting up a server configuration file, but is just too damn confusing to the average user (and especially to new users).

This system has a lot of advantages for people that do know where it stands for. But I agree with the first post. Some information of trackname and short trackname in setupscreen would be nice

Quote from Mako. :

so just invest $500 in some newer used hardware, and you're good to go!

I just got a 2.0AMD Athlon, Asus mobo, an Nvidia GeForce 4200Ti, a case, and a 500W PSU for only $50 USD! (this is my rig right now because I'm ****in poor and my old comp was bleh.

What part of "at work" didn't you catch? So, I invest $500 into my work computer, which isn't my computer at all, and the IT department comes up to my office an hour later and swaps out my PC for something else...... bye bye $500

For the record, it is a Dell Optiplex GX50 Celeron 1.2 with Intel 2d onboard graphics and 256 mb RAM

Hoping for a swapout very soon with a laptop, but budgets are tight with the rising price of oil. A rise of $0.50 to $1.00 per pound of plastic doesn't seem like much of an increase until you realize that approximately 50,000,000 pounds of plastic is processed each year!

Quote from rediske :

eerrrm.... just watch the video I've made,
I hope you'll get the point.

+1,000

If you first enter a sever online you can't see your online PB without first selecting a car. So you have to select a car pit out, check for pb, ok so now I know track, go back to garage and select appropriate setup.

Would be so much easier if track is identified in car setup selection screen

It would make it much friendlier to new commers also

Really nice idea
And I think that's not so hard to do

So because you downloaded the whole pack of setups from a third-party site which happens to use a three-letter acronym instead of meaningful descriptions like "ASHistSchuppor", and you can't be arsed to count it before going to the garage, you need a new and otherwise useless display? Is that it?

bbman ?

You sure your posting in the right thread ?

Yes... I can't see why he is so helpless to suggest an improvement within LfS when there are two ways more sensible and more logical:

1. Give your setup proper names. Of course as5_genal_045648 won't make much sense...
2. If you have to insist on this frankly dumb naming system, why don't you count the damn tracks when you even select them yourself?

Being disorganized is no basis for an improvement suggestion...

Ahhh ok.
I agree with the organsation and setup names. But the main point i think is the simple improvement of just adding the title of the track in the garage screen. This to me makes sense, isn't hard to impliment, and will help newcomers and those with short term memory i would like to think.

Well, I quite like the system: track version description
though it's only usefull when I use decent Desriptions and know the track acronyms like so6 Z QR for Qual and Race.

The whole problem with organising the sets is that you have to be consistent on your own method

I'm not saying it's perfect but more usefull than having 10 sets name AS Hist 0-9

An +1 for the original idea the thread started with

Quote from bbman :

I can't see why he is so helpless to suggest an improvement within LfS when there are two ways more sensible and more logical:

1. Give your setup proper names. Of course as5_genal_045648 won't make much sense...
2. If you have to insist on this frankly dumb naming system, why don't you count the damn tracks when you even select them yourself?

Being disorganized is no basis for an improvement suggestion...

Well even if your sets are named like AS Hist not everyone is familiar enough of every combo to recognise what track it is when they join in an online pickup race.

Really it's good to make any system as easy and fool proof as possible when implementing, so I think it is a very good idea to display the full and short name of the current loaded track in the garage set selection screen this will help newbies and those oldies of us that don't use LFS regularly enough to be familiar with every track.

As for setup disorganisation I have been hoping for years to have a folder achitecture to help organise setup. When I'm building a new setup I can have twelve or more setups for the same track let alone for all tracks. Having filter buttons would be great also so you could filter say enduro, HL, race, etc....

Quote from bbman :

1. Give your setup proper names. Of course as5_genal_045648 won't make much sense...

That wouldn't make sense because you only have 15 letters to name your setups...

Quote from bbman :

2. If you have to insist on this frankly dumb naming system[...]

Have you ever uploaded a single hotlap? Obviuosly not, because then you would have seen what a 'frankly dumb naming' system LFS is using.