Category: Work in Progress

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/

CTDP – FSR Showcase Race – Your Participation

Hi guys, this is just a little reminder to tune into PSRTV on saturday to watch our showcase race, we would also like to give you guys a chance to ask us questions during the broadcast just visit this link during the broadcast and join the chatroom, we will be waiting there for your questions to come in and answer them live on air. http://prosimracing.com/racecast/

So see you all on Saturday for our Showcase race and special announcement 🙂

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

Software Life-Cycle – How the ControlCenter grew up

Some months ago I already told you something about the ControlCenter, a lot has changed since then, so I thought it might be interesting to show you the progress of the utility.

The first version

It began with the idea of having Midland & Spyker in the mod and giving the user the option to choose what he likes more. Second planned “main feature” was the option that the user can create his own 2006-season with the tracks he want to drive and the in this time called “configdings” should create all needed files so that on the selected tracks are the correct aero-packages loaded. But as you may know it came out that for both features we found better ways to include them. One of the first tries you see left.

But we got more ideas we wanted to have, like the option to change the menu-music, menu-style, support for RealFeel. If you ever have developed a program you know it: changing something that was not planned is most of the time very tricky and so it happened more than once that I was close to cancel it and start completely new.

This is the first “feature-freeze” version of the tool but we still had ideas and the development of the physics and the bugfixing took time so I had the chance to include various wishes, just like support for LeoFFB, the option to activate/deactivate the pacecar for the player. But not every idea was programmed, so for example an auto-update-feature for our mod. We thought about it and we want to have it bugfree with version 1.0, so an auto-update will hopefully never been needed.

So after more & more facelifts this came out:

This is a very special feeling to get something finished (at least I feel it is of course I know it never will be). But most of the ideas we included and they are working and now the best (from programmer’s view): There are not very much bugreports which makes me even more happy 🙂

But to be honest: I dont think it will look very long this way. If you have ideas what might be good to have we maybe add it so it’s a never ending story…

So we hope you will use the features of the CC, if not: CTDP F1 2006 will work without having started it once. So you see: The CC has changed a lot during it’s development, just like the whole mod did. Maybe you know why it took about 2 years.

So let’s sum it up:

It’s always the same with software: it is never finished, final or even close to.

Another two days …

Another two days spent bugfixing. So far there haven’t been major reports, but many of the seemingly insignificant things can turn out quite nast. Like one Williams-frontwing, which had the wrong logo on some GPs, sounds simple, but required a new upgrade, remapping, new shadows, slightly changed texture, which due to yours truly needed to be saved twice. But hey, it looks great now. 🙂

We have our Bugtracker, and we are working through everything, Andy and me fixed 10 bugs in the last 2 days. Afborro is working on some last polish in the showroom. I get organising for the release done. Whata and me will doe some work on the manual. Something nobody else wants to do actually. So we threw dices and picked the people with the least time on their hands. That’s how it works, we don’t complain enough.

Enjoy the last weeks, before the mods is released. I tell you, you are going to miss waiting for it.

What do you expect???

First, let me say i’m speaking just for me in this post, not for the whole team. These thoughts are my thoughts and maybe some of the CTDP members share my point of view on some topics, mabye not.

Well reading the last devblog comments in the last few weeks, there’s a bit sadness coming to me. I don’t know, if we really can meet all these expectations. Sure, we worked over 2 years on it and we’re pretty proud to what it is now, but it is still just a Formula one mod. Not more. We had some non CTDP work to do,too. We did the BMW 2007 for ISI and we also did some other game stuff which was not ISI related. But we never gave up our „baby“, the 2006 F1 mod. We gave attention to a lot of small details because it’s something special for us. I don’t know if anybody else will see the same behind the mod like us. It was part of our daily life during the past 2 years, we had good days with and bad days,too. But in the end, it doesn’t even matter, it was worth the work. It was the last season of one of the greatest drivers ever. This is our way to pay tribute to him. I really feel a big gap on today’s formula one when I watch the old 2006 videos. Sure the post Schumacher F1 was good,too but it’s not the same anymore for me.

I’m so proud of the whole team. Everybody did his part to make this mod become something special and I’ll really miss that once the mod is released. We did the best we could do with all these restrictions.

So nevertheless, I hope you’ll have a great time with this mod when it is released (even if it’s 2 years too late), but don’t be too harsh if you don’t like it. For us, it’s still something special you can’t understand when you’re not involved in the project.

Thanks for your attention.

2006 Driver suits – The big preview

Hi everyone, as i said in another post last week I’ll post the driver suits, I finished the first versions of all of them tonight so here’s the previews.

Please give me good feedback on accuracy and bugs which you can see every little helps 🙂

Edit: Forgot to add Williams, added now 🙂

Continue reading 2006 Driver suits – The big preview

Added Tutorials

I took some time during the last few weeks and rewrote some of my tutorials, which cover some basic texture handling in rFactor, CTDP’s mods and the use of our templates. Not everything is ready yet and I have to proof read it in the next couple of days, but to give the impression, I put it online already.

I’d like to get feedback, if there are technical areas, I should also cover in the future.