Dossier 1994: progress & problems

It was pretty quiet in the last few weeks. We were working on the Ligier and we’re facing a new challenge. That is we need more hands than we have right now.

So CTDP in general has a problem. While we developed our workflow over the years, we found ways to cope with the big amount of work in our mods and to organize this work. The mods can not be done without good organization.
Still all our infrastructure doesn’t help us with the issue the team is currently facing.

Considering the size of our mods and that CTDP is a project done only in free time, it often surprises people that we only have a core team of less than 10 people. 2 Modeler, 3-4 painters and 2 physics guys, 1-2 programmers and a beta tester. Many of them have been in the team for more than 5 years or even from the beginning. Additionally we used to have many people who join the team to help and we have sort-of freelancers, who help, but didn’t join. No problem, there is space for everyone. This is how CTDP has always worked in the past 9 years.

Working on projects like ours often takes a long time. Modding has become very professional and for several members it has been there head start into business. Keeping the motivation is very important and so is finding new members.
The work on the 2006 mod was a drag for many people and we were happy when we finished it back in late 2008. Unfortunately working on new projects – 1994 and 2009 – did not bring alot of new energy as we had hoped.

Right now we are in the situation that we need new blood. We are working hard on 1994, but we need new manpower to help with the work, we need more hands. The mod will not have the same amount of content as the 2006, but it is a challenge for other reasons. The lack of good reference material requires us to perform very thorough car reviews and these reviews leave more work, than Andy alone can handle.

Who do we need? First and foremost we need dedicated and motivated people who are interested in season 1994. We need new modelers in Maya and/or 3D Studio Max, not necessarily with knowledge about rFactor-export, but sure it would not hurt. We need people who know TYPOlight/Contao and want to help with our websites. We need Java-Programmers who want to help with the continued development of the DDS-Utils and rfDynHUD. We need people who can continue work and don’t start everything from scratch. We need people who communicate (team language is English) and are critical towards their work and the work of their teammates. We need people who are willing to help and are disciplined to finish their work. And if one or more conditions describe you, then WE NEED YOU!

Nevertheless on the brighter side, there were also progress in the last few weeks. As I said above we worked on Ligier. 6e66o was so kind to take the car out for a ride in Montreal and made some shots. Thanks for that! The helmet shape is still temporary but one of our new members, David Alby Medina already started to work on a proper replacement 🙂

14 thoughts on “Dossier 1994: progress & problems”

  1. well guys very nice shots!!!very nice work!!!well for modelers i am trying to help you by posting <> in a Farming Sim forum.i know this is a Farming forum but i posted it in the off topic section so it may be ok.there are many modelers in there and that’s why i posted it there.maybe you will find one.i hope so!!!if you want to take a look at my post: http://ls-uk.info/forum/index.php?topic=46566.0

  2. These are the most beautiful historic cars I’ve ever seen on rFactor: even if I’m a Ferrari fan I think I’ve just fallen in love! 😀
    I’ll try to spread the word too!

  3. “6e66o was so kind to take the car out for a ride in Montreal and made some shots.” – are You kidding me? I would do that too and with pleasure. 6e66o should be happy for this, so don’t write like he was doing You a favor. 🙂

  4. He was infact. Doing good screenshots is an art. It’s not just going ingame and hit F12. And 6e660 along with others like Karan has a great way of composition and dynamic. 🙂

  5. Hi guys.
    I hope I can help.
    I have been using Max for a couple of years now.
    I’ve done a couple of cars which now look like they will never be released :(.
    Also been involved with the BTB project & have released several texture & object packs for others to use.
    Also managed to finish my own race track which you can check out here.
    http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=High%20Speed%20Ring
    Please email me at ennisfargis (at) gmail (dot) com if you want to talk further.
    Cheers

  6. I am sorry to hear this cause 1994 was a historic and very sad year for all involved and the fans of Formula 1.
    I am sure that CTDP will finish this mod and maybe I can help, I have modelled several cars although non of them have been put ingame yet I sure do hope that one of these days they will be.You can see most of my work at grandprixgames.org adn some of it here

    http://yfrog.com/6151068753j
    http://yfrog.com/jn98427890j

    It’s the F60 and the 1996 Ferrari F310Regards Michael aka Dutch_Can

  7. Hey guys (Dahie especially!), I like how you pursue this great quality but I feel CTDP always gets stuck in minor details, so much so that many months after the mod has been out, some sort of patch comes out to fix missed things or a physics setting that was set opposite of real life, for example.

    Why not go back to 2003 or 2004 style for F1C? We don’t need every configuration for every track. Until a couple of years ago 2 shapes were great, one normal and one late season. Then we had normal, low and high downforce, which to me is the perfect setup. Now we have every track and it just seems like overload.

    Overload to find source material, overload to recreate it, overload on computers to be able to cope with the size of the entire package.

    Please do yourselves a favor and simplify. Not having a 100×80 pixel sticker or a small wing on a car doesn’t mean it won’t be great, it may even be far better because it will free up more time to focus on the most needed areas.

    Cheers 🙂

  8. You hit on a soft spot. This is a regular topic in the team and it always goes something like this:

    We create the basic version, yeah. But either the modeller or the painter goes “oh, well I do just this extra wing, because it’s no effort…” and somebody is mocking, why this upgrade was done and “well we can keep it for later…” and somebody goes like “hey, it’s no effort” and another one “but, we don’t want to imitate 2006, we can’t with the amount of sources” and then somebody starts screaming “STOP! There are no 1994 tracks, even thinking of season upgrades the way we did 2006 does not make any sense…” Everybody agrees and the discussion opens up again 3 weeks later.

    We have a few modelled upgrades and we keep detailed records of all changes livery- and technical-wise throughout the season. The plan is to decide later which additional upgrades will be included. Right now we focus on the early-season package with just the cars from Brazil to Monaco. We try hard to focus and find the right balance.

    Oh and livery-wise different skins are no effort anymore. It was a horrible drag for 2006, because for every change on a car you had to save up to 30 textures, but this is gone now, as I build an automatic build script to generate all texture variants from one PSD-source. One click and 5 minutes later I get 30 textures exported, convert them with Dropps and they are ready for ingame. Piece of cake. 🙂

  9. “[…]I build an automatic build script to generate all texture variants from one PSD-source. One click and 5 minutes later I get 30 textures exported, convert them with Dropps and they are ready for ingame. Piece of cake. :)” – nice move, mate! 😀

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