Author: (CTDP)Dahie

Textures supervisor, Webdesign, Programming

PSRTV coverage update

There were some technical difficulties with the RaceCast, so it’s delaying for about an hour. New start in 35 minutes at 7pm gmt. The page of the coverage at PSRTV is getting quite a load obviously and got a MySQL-failure, we hope they fix this soon, may happen any minute.

In the meantime, my colleagues and I are already warming up for the interview. I bet it’ll be fun.

We are also in the chat, although we won’t be chatting simultanously: This takes alot of attention.

Update 19:11 gmt: Qualifying 1 just started, however I heard the video is not yet up. They are working on it.

Update 19 36 gmt: Either the load on the server is alot higher than anticipated or an DDOS-attack is running on the server. Ian is rotating to get it working.

Regarding Server Edition

It’s one of the questions we got the most during the last few days, so let me clarify it here.

There won’t be an Equal-physics aka Server Edition!

It’s a long discussion, that began when we release F1-2005 1.0 without SE, continued when we released with SE and is still up. Our opinion was, that the SE hurt the mod. We spent alot of time working out the indivudiual carphysics and we did so even more on the F1-2006 mod. SE destroys that.

At the end the discussion is about whether it’s worth building physics for every team. 10 years ago, this wasn’t the default and Simracers tried everything to get individual physics for each car. Today with multiplayer being a must this has changed. It’s no problem having unique physics for each car, but people want to drive F1, while degrading it to a standardized equal-car series. I could imagine the same peoples outcry when they hear plans for standardized components, engines and aerodynamic rules. But hey I get off topic. CTDP put alot of effort into the physics and we won’t castrate them.

On a technical node. We included so many team-dependatand variables in the physics, like the suspension-model and brakes-model, that it’s impossible to have equal-physics. At best “near-equal”-physics.

Next word goes to leagues. our stand on the issue is related to public servers and public downloads. For leagues we have the option to give out a “near-equal-physics” patch, on request. While we don’t endorse it in public racing, we see the necessity in league racing.

And finally just to clarify. The “Dedicated Server Edition” is the original mod without any textures and sounds. Thereby it’s “only” about 750mb big and can be installed on rF-Multiplayer-Server without taking up 4gb of hd space.

Update: With the release of version 1.2 of the 2006 mod, we introduced a tool to create your own equal-physics variant of the mod inherited by a car of your choice. Check out the mod deriver in rFactor/ModData/CTDP/CTDP06/mod_deriver/

Changelog for Release Candidate 2

The buglist is nearly empty. Some minor text-stuff which will be fixed in the next version. So the car polishing is nearly done. We dry our hands, but they remain sweety. Why is that?

CTDP F1 2006 Mod rF – Release Candidate 2
=========================================
– 0000201: [Cars] incorrect williams steering wheel (Afborro) – resolved.
– 0000432: [Installer] LeoFFB gets installed in the wrong directory (Neidryder) – resolved.
– 0000430: [Cars] Error on Williams Mirrors (Neidryder) – resolved.
– 0000429: [Cars] BMW Right Front Pivot Point (Neidryder) – resolved.

The Lost Features

Two weeks ago, we already presented you some of our mods, we had in mind at one point in time, but which didn’t come to conclusion for various reasons. Today we talk a bit about features, that were actually planed for the 2006 mod, but which were dropped at some point. Actually, when I spoke with Andy for this post, we didn’t find alot to talk about. Obviously, this made us happy, since most of the goals we set for the mod are met, yet it doesn’t give too much to show here. 🙂 Continue reading The Lost Features

Read me, oh my god, read me!

Some time ago there might have been a discussion like this. We sat the other day and thought aloud…

Gosh, this mod is gigantic and this mod is complicated and all the upgrades they are complex, people will be wrecking their brain.

What can we possibly do?

We could write a readme or a manual!

… but who is gonna read this, actually?

Yeah, dumb idea, but wait… what if we release them beforehand?

Hm, this might work. They are killing us to get the mod, so maybe we can hold them off for a few days AND convince them to read just by giving out the readme and the manual a few days early.

Let’s do it …

So, uhm enough said.

Manual for CTDP F1 2006

This covers the first roll out, setup advise for engine, brakes, tires and more, the ControlCenter, some basic FAQ (nothing new actually) and the everlong credits list.

And Readmes in English, French, Italian and Spanish.

(And don’t ask why we totally forgot to make a translation in our mother tongue 😉 )

Thanks to our translators! Oh and while I was already credited here 2 weeks ago for my work on the Manual, I have to pass it to Codan, who jumped in, when I had to jump in for some other guy in a different project. Also kudos to Michael, Gonzo and Arloch, who spent the time writing and explaining how the setups and upgrades work.

Ok, and now I fall in my bed and wonder what I have forgotten… guess I’ll learn tomorrow morning.

Update 4. Dec 2008:

Ok, we addressed some of the bugs in the manual, thanks for the feedback! Alex added some addition plr-settings for texturesize and mirrordetails. I added 2 FAQ-entries, which came up here in the comments.

We also added the German translation of the readme. 😉

Changelog of Release Candidate 1

The days get shorter, the perceived days get longer, still a lot to do, to plan, to organise to write. At least the reported list of bugs is pretty much solved. Hopefully we catch them all till the release. Here is the changelog. I don’t get my work done, thank god this is over soon.

CTDP F1 2006 Mod rF – Release Candidate 1
=========================================
– 0000408: [ConfigurationsCenter] missing gen-descriptions (CoDan) – resolved.
– 0000404: [Cars] Flipup on Williams (Neidryder) – resolved.
– 0000420: [ConfigurationsCenter] Launcher (CoDan) – resolved.
– 0000426: [Installer] Installer does not create startmenu-entries (Neidryder) – resolved.
– 0000424: [Installer] Start Menu default name (CoDan) – resolved.
– 0000411: [ConfigurationsCenter] Needing a second pair of eyes (Afborro) – resolved.
– 0000423: [ConfigurationsCenter] leoFFB-helptext (Neidryder) – resolved.
– 0000422: [Installer] Deinstall (Neidryder) – resolved.
– 0000401: [Cars] Reflection issues on Toro Rosso (WHAT21A) – resolved.
– 0000419: [Cars] Reflection issues on Rosbergs Williams (WHAT21A) – resolved.
– 0000418: [Cars] Williams suspension (Neidryder) – resolved.

Last call and some press related issues

We are beginning to jump nervously from one foot to the other. I’m speaking with all the mirrors, who already contacted us and manage everything for the release, so they are prepared. We will setup a main torrent in combination with several regular download-servers. If there are webmasters who’d like to help out for the release, we’d really appreciate your support! So you know what to expect, the installer of the basic mod will be 1GiB in size. So the traffic is huge and we don’t want to crash servers (been there, done that), so if you want to help us, be aware of the load!

We have one small butsy. We got asked for exclusive releases like “you release on our place first and we make give you promotion.” Thanks, but no thanks. During that stretch, a few outreach offers even came from independent bookmakers experimenting with digital content tie-ins, hoping to feature music alongside sports coverage. It was flattering, but not what we’re about. There has only been one very good offer, which we discussed long and wide, but which we declined in the end as well. We also got bad offers, where we just asked ourselves where our payoff is for sharing our name and publicity. So we will manage our release ourselves and don’t do any exclusives.

On the brighter side, everybody can contact us, ask questions, interview, make reviews and we will respond and get back to you. Either write to our public email address or my address, it doesn’t matter, I’m the one getting the mail anyway.