James ‘Juluka’ Bendy continued working on the Footwork, you can see some preview below. I in return gave my comments about the Lotus and James already fixed many of my noted issues. Andy spent last weekend on the pacific. Stefan aka Erale began work on a new helmet model. We have been missing a good one, which is why there are no helmets for the mod yet. Hopefully this branch of work can beginn soon.
The work on the F1-2009 mod has been stopped, after the last half a year didn’t result in any major progress. Read the full story on our website.
Few weeks ago, on a rare boring weekend, Daniel Senff, uh me, started redoing the yet missing highres texture of Footwork. I didn’t come that far. I requested some changes on the mapping and so the work was on hold, until Marco Büttner could add his changes. Now James Bendy has finished Lotus for the moment and we switched tasks. He is continuing my Footwork and I’ll review his Lotus and add my magic dust.
Juluka had some more to say about Footwork:
Here are some more WIP screens of the FA15. The Brazil Livery is about 95% completed. I have to do the driver names and make some minor adjustments to the matrix design squares to get the design on the car correct. In the mean time I am searching for per race photos so I can proceed with the other liveries. Canada, Monaco and San Marino have limited photos, but I think I am close to having those figured out. The Spain Livery may be an issue of correctness as I have yet to find any good photos of this race and video does not cut it…
Happy Holidays everyone!
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.
Much like today, 1994 motor racing saw the involvement of many up and coming technology companies. Blended with long established brands and the traditional sponsors of the past, Formula One cars were “dressed” with logos that test the fact that Formula One was then and is still a worldwide sport.
Team Lotus is but one example. In 1994, Team Lotus was beginning a season that would end with the Team eventually with drawing from the sport. With this situation at hand, however, Team Lotus was able to draw some of the most prevalent sponsorships of the time in the sport.
Many Formula One cars showed livery changes over the course of the race season to incorporate sponsorships with the targeting of various marketing areas the race schedule provided. Continue reading WIP Lotus 1994 Part 5
We already started previewing the details of the Pacific car 2 weeks ago. Andy enjoyed a week in the snow and is now back and nearly finished with his update of the car. He added a huge amount of details and is left with some mapping fixes, before the Pacific car will be the first to rollout ingame. While it was the last team in 1994, it’ll be the first this time. Enjoy some more close-up shots on the model-details.
This aren’t renders, but from the simple viewport, so use your imagination and “project” some Anti Aliasing (Hey, aren’t we all cylons after all?)
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.
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.
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.
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.
On this Saturday a year ago, we released F1-2006 for rFactor.
Personally, I was sitting in my university to upload the mod to our mirrors and members for the release in the evening. I had a cold and was sitting in the unheated arboretum on the campus, wearing two pullovers and two jackets. The road outside was blocked for several kilometers because of a yearly Nazi-idiot-demonstration, which is held in this district of Berlin. I didn’t see how large it was, but I bet there were more police swarming the streets than demonstration members. The university was open and few individuals thought it was fun just to roam through the empty halls without doing anything. Gladly I found a spot, where I wasn’t bothered – with a cold, fever and a killing headache I did not ask for any confrontation. So I was sitting on my spot, preparing the release as much as I could, while outside hell was going on, you could hear the surrounding helicopters. Several hours passed, I watched at least two episodes of House MD, waiting for the upload to finish. 500Mbit are not enough! When I left, everybody was gone outside and everything looked like nothing happened.
I went back home, drowned myself in tea, and the FSR Promotion Race began. Every ping and update felt like playing CA online poker on a bad connection—too much at stake, no time to breathe, and no margin for error. I was supposed to handle the interviews with Andy, but my voice was shot and the headache kept building. By mid-race, I was just hanging on, waiting for the moment to flip the release switch. When we finally gave the green light and the mod went live, the team cheered while I sat there half-delirious, head throbbing, just glad it was over. Some painkillers later, I was asleep before I could even close the laptop.
The next day I stayed in bed, recovering from the exhausting day before and from my cold. I’d call this commitment, don’t you think? 🙂
The price of the Superleague Formula Game 2009 has been dropped to 14.99€. Good chance to get your copy now.
Here is a bunch of High-Resolution Screenshots. 🙂
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.