User-Manual for F1 2006

Back in 2008, when we were preparing for the release of the F1-2006 mod, I hit a dry-spot when working on the user manual. After posting here in the Blog, 658 send this awesome montage, so I went back to work. Working on the manual was always a pain and today I’d like to introduce you to a new idea.

I mentioned beta-testing for the F1-2006 version 1.2 patch is commencing and it will contain two new features.
This is not one of them!

For the 2005 and the 2006 mod we created a full user manual, which was even translated in 4 languages. It was designed to be printed out and it was quite an effort by Michael and Arioch explaining the basic physics, basic setup options and new features on the mod. The writing was good, but even though I designed the book and the layout, I found it highly unpractical. It is hard to use and even harder to maintain.

I really liked the idea of a manual, because the mod as it is is complicated and giving some guidance on how to use would pay of when we don’t have to explain everything over and over again. So I went out 2 weeks ago to find a suitable replacement, which I found with the website generator webgen. Basically I moved all contents from the old PDF into single pages, which generate a full-styled website. This is multilingual, static and can easily be packed with the mod or uploaded on our website.

Here you can see the working prototype/beta of the user manual.
The english version is nearly done, but translations and illustrations are missing.

So much for the theory. In practice I have to ask, who is interested in this?
Right now we have 3 translations for the manual, which can be finished nearly immediately. The only constraint I have is my time, which is always limited and even more for tasks, like formatting manual pages. However I see potential in this.

So my idea is this:
I uploaded the sources of the new Manual to a public git-repository. They can be browsed online, downloaded, forked, then edited, extended, translated, updated, improved and last of all, all changes you do can be reintegrated in the website. Especially if you know how to use git (not necessary, but nice) this procedure is rather simple and wouldn’t take a lot of effort. Of course everybody who contributes to the manual will get credited and together we could actually build a user manual for the community by the community. It’s Open Source/Creative Commons.

This is the theory, in practice, working with the manual requires some technologies. For effective use I suggest git as version-control system, it’s free, it may take some getting used to, but I love it. Secondly, for building the website on your system you need webgen and for this a ruby-installation. No problem on Mac or Linux, but you don’t have it native on Windows. The last thing you need is to learn the markup I used in the source-pages: Textile. This is strong and flexible and allows to do everything we need. git or webgen are not necessary for working on the manual, they are optional. Textile is not, but learning it is as simple as your everyday bb-forum-markup.

The timing may make it hard to include this manual in the next version of the mod. However, making the manual a separate website will make it independent from the mod
This depends greatly on the response I get. So if you like the idea comment here or in our forum or write me by email: dahie _at_ ctdpworld.org

DDS-Utilities released

This is a personal project of mine and not directly related to CTDP. However, as the topic is related to Modding I think this is still a good place to announce it.

In 2008 I programmed a small Java library to read and save compressed DirectDrawSurfaces(DDS) files. DDS is the common texture format in rFactor and part of DirectX. I had the problem, that I moved to a Mac and there were no applications to work with DDS-images. So I developed three tools to work with textures even on platforms other than Windows, but they work on Windows as well.

Badds is a batch editing tool for mass scaling textures. In for our mods we paint textures in 2048×2048 and we end up having hundreds of textures. This tool allows to scale and resave many textures at once and not having to save them one by one. DDS can be saved in DXT1-5 compression.

Download Version 1.0: for Windows, for Mac, for Java and Source

Radds is a for preview and review of textures. It’s a simple file browser and texture viewer with zoom and allows to view single color channels.

Download Version 1.0: for Windows, for Mac, for Java and Source

Dropps is a small programm for easy image conversion to the DDS-format by simple drag and drop. This supports PNG, JPG and BMP. DDS can be saved in DXT1-5 compression.

Download Version 1.0: for Windows, for Mac, for Java and Source

All three tools are released under the OpenSource GPLv3 License. The Source Code Repository at Github is open for everyone and I encourage forking and modification. At Github is also an issue tracker and I’m happy about feedback.

ePetition zur kostenfreien Erstabmahnung

Even though we keep this blog English, this posting is targeted especially for our German audience. To sum it up short: In Germany an political online-petition started, which proposes a new regulation for cease and desist orders. Over the past two years a business around written warnings demanding high fees from the victim for license and copyright violationshas developed . The request is to establish a new procedure in which lawyers have to contact the infringing party and ask to settle the issue in a given timeframe, without accumulating enormous layers fees. As this is a topic, which is very close to the Sim-Modding community, we want to bring it to attention.

Hintergrund

Es gibt eine neue ePetition auf den Seiten des Bundestages die sich für Kostenfreiheit bei fristgerechter Beseitigung des Abmahngrundes einsetzt. Kurz gesagt geht es darum im Falle einer zB urheberrechtlich bedingten Abmahnung im Internet und der Aufforderung der Beseitiung des Vergehens, nicht trotzdem auf maßlos hohe Anwaltsgebühren sitzen zu bleiben.

Die Petition ist eine Antwort darauf, dass in den letzten Jahren sich regelrecht eine Industrie zum Abmahnen von Marken- und Urheberrechtsverstößen entwickelt hat, die besonders in der Bloggerszene zuschlägt und Autoren sofort mit enormen Abmahngebühren mundtot macht.
Bei den Bloggern vergeht kein Monat, wo nicht eine weitere große Abmahnung als Welle durch die Szene geht. Meist geht es um fast schon triviale Verstöße. Jack Wolfskin mahnt ab, weil jemand Tiertatzen als Motive anbietet, die Stadt Augsburg mahnt einen Blogger ab, der nachfragte ob er unter einer Domain schreiben darf, die sich vom Stadtnamen abgeleitet hat. Beides Fälle der letzten 4 Wochen. Oft ist der Verstoß trivial und kann schnell beseitigt werden, jedoch wird derjenige dennoch mit oft Gebühren im Wert von mehreren tausend Euro als Anwaltskosten belangt. In Beiden oben genannten Fällen wurden die Abmahnungen aufgrund des öffentlichen Drucks und der resultierenden schlechten PR wieder zurück gezogen. Das sind jedoch oftmals Ausnahmen und Kulanz der Unternehmen, die einen größeren Image-Schaden vermeiden wollen. Der Streisand-Effekt greift hier zwar sehr gut, jedoch ist er keine Garantie und ändert es nichts am Grundproblem, dass die Abmahngefahr aus zu ufern droht.

Relevanz

Diese Petition ist auch für die deutsche Modder Szene äußerst interessant. Modding ist eine Grauzone. Die Gesetzeslage ist nicht eindeutigt, diejenigen die wir bisher gefragt haben, haben uns das bestätigt, dass es keine Sicherheit gibt, nicht doch irgendwann auf eine Mine zu treten. Modding basiert weitgehend auf lizensierten Inhalten. Seien es Logos, Markennamen, oder Designs. Modder arbeiten in ihrer Freizeit mit Lizenzen, für die Unternehmen mitunter Millionen ausgeben, um diese Verwerten zu dürfen. An eine kommerzielle Ausnutzung dieser Lizenz ist gar nicht zu denken. Daher hängt beim Modden immer ein Damoklesschwert über dem Modder, da er sich nicht sicher sein kann, doch irgendwann ein Schreiben zu bekommen.

Auch bei uns im CTDP ist dies ein Thema. Letztlich ist dies für uns alles ein Hobby und weder wollen wir jemandem auf die Füße treten, noch verfolgen wir kommerzielle Interessen mit unseren F1-Mods, trotzdem steht immer die Möglichkeit im Raum, das jemand unsere kostenlosen Mods als geschäftsschädigend vom Netz haben möchte.

Ich möchte noch ein kurzes Beispiel bringen, dass auch aus der Simracing-Szene kommt. Vor wenigen Wochen wurde Batracer nach einer Abmahnung von Ferrari offline genommen. Hintergrund war, dass Batracer Ferrari-Logos in seinem System platziert hat.

Anliegen

Wir möchten auch durch dieses Posting die Aufmerksamkeit kurz auf dieses Thema lenken und euch bitten diese Petition zu unterstützen. Die Anliegen, die die hier verfolgt werde sind nicht nur für jeden, der im Internet mit einem Blog aktiv ist, sondern auch besonders für Modder interessant. Wir betreiben Modding als Hobby und es wäre wünschenswert nicht die Angst einer Abmahnung im Hinterkopf zu haben. Die Forderung dieser Petition würde zumindest dafür sorgen, dass im Falle einer Abmahnung keine finanziellen Abgründe auf Modder zukommen würden.

Daher bitten wir euch, diese Petition zu zeichnen und das Thema weiter in die Community zu tragen.

Relevante Links:

Looking for HUD designer

While working on our mods, CTDP also likes to give haven to related projects. Marvin Fröhlich, Marcel ‘M4rrs’ Offermans and Sascha ‘Gonzo’ Grindau have been invovled in a little pet project. Marvin is another programmer in the team and started a new dynamic HUD, short dynHud for rFactor. We will get into the details of the project some other time.

The actual point of this post is, that the work is going well and Marvin and Gonzo are looking for designers to create additional HUD designs. Currently as you can see, it’s not yet emphasized on beauty and we are looking for designers to help flesh out additional designs.

Interested designers can contact us via eMail or in our forum.Feel free to repost or retweet this wanted.

Car designations in 1994

Car designations, chassis-types are a nice way to identify the specific car of a season and it’s a nice way to have synonyms when writing about it. However, they are a pitfall, if you aren’t too deep into the background of the series you are writing about. Since I don’t have all types in my head, I try to avoid them. Even though, I don’t endorse it (hey do what you want 😉 ), articles from the devblog are quoted and sometimes wrong information are added. Please do your research or ask us before you guess what designation the car in question has.

Why do I bring it up, there were some confusions between the Lotus 107C and 109 and the Minardi M193B and M194. Both were driven in 1994, usually after the big reglement changes after spain, many teams brought B-Versions to the next races. Lotus, Sauber and Minardi did so. Ferrari also brought a major overhaul of their car in Canada. Often this was accompanied by livery changes.

Quick rule of thumb: Right now we only work on the cars with the Specifcations of the first 5 races. If we post pictures, it’s always the early spec of the car. So if you look for the official designation. Consider this please.

Light – Superleague Formula 2009

It has been quiet here? Right? Wrong!

We haven’t posted alot, because for the past 4 months we got sidetracked with a new project with ISI, which was released today. ISI approached us with the possibility of producing the contents for an official Superleague Formula Game. Afborro led the project and modeled the car. Our 2D-Artists created 18 liveries for each car and additional textures. All in all we spent 3 months working on the game and one month for testing and tweaking with together with ISI. This game is the second project we did with ISI. Our responsibility was with the cars, physics and Alex also coordinated the efforts to bring all tracks up to a similar quality. The game provides very enjoyable driving, very different from F1-racing, more down to wheel-to-wheel driving. The quality, despite the short development time is fully up to our standards and when you play the game, you will see it has CTDP written all over it.

Some more news about the game and the series are on our website and at VirtualR.net Over the next time we will do some entries about the Making of the Game. Stay tuned and try the demo. 🙂