[Essential feature] Scheduled server sessions

In rF2 I miss the possibility to preconfigure a server. You have to stay there to restart server and to begin a race at the moment you want It to begin. Would be a great idea to have an option where there the server is all the time in practice time, and at XX moment jump automatically to Qualy and Race sessions.

Would be a great idea to configure servers for "fun races". ISI servers should be configured in this way. For example... three race hous in a day in the same server. With this method is easier to concentrate drivers for a race, if all know a server will go to Qualy and Race session at 20:00 GMT, people can oraganize his time and enjoy a race where all people joined to race in that moment, something similar to iRacing system. You could configure your server and let the server runs for a week, then change track, car, and another week...

Even for league race would be great, because we could create a server with short fun races at 21:00GMT for example during ractice week, where every one from league could concentrate with no admin presence, this could improve drivers accumulation, and another drivers not from the league could join to race with fair people (leagues who let server open for public during practice week, we do not close our server with password ultin race day).

Sessions could not be restarted by vote, drivers will not vote because server sessions are spicified. Now in current state an admin can create a server with X hours of practice, X time qualy... but this what I'm talking about It's not possible to be done beacause of delays, and because you can no see from server list this kind of info, when a race starts.

An example:

Official ISI server 1 (Civic@Palm Beach):
-Sessions start at: 11:00GMT - 15:00GMT - 19:00GMT
-Qualy length: 15mins
-Race length: 25mins

Official ISI server 2 (Nissan 370z@Estoril):
-Sessions start at: 12:00GMT - 16:00GMT - 20:00GMT
-Qualy length: 15mins
-Race length: 25mins

Official ISI server 3 (HistoricsF2@Monaco):
-Sessions start at: 13:00GMT - 17:00GMT - 21:00GMT
-Qualy length: 15mins
-Race length: 25mins

Official ISI server 4 SPECIAL (Formula Renault@Silverstone):
-Sessions start at: 15:00GMT - 20:00GMT
-Qualy length: 15mins
-Race length: 50mins

*The time between sessions would be a non end practice session, where admins choose the weather conditions, if he wants the day time to run or not... could be configured as a practice session, but with non specified duration.

Race start times and race lengths could be adjusted after seeing drivers participation during first month for example.

As league admin, I think would be a big step forward in online rF2 public racing. You can't create a non organized online sever and wait until people concentrates inside with no help and start racing and enjoying, It's better to create some kind of organization (this is what I love from iRacing), look at official servers or league servers, and see when they hace a race scheduled (an user could join server list, or even ISI's page and check race times and that stuff), then join and race at the same time all people know when is the race. It's better to not saturate the same server with races during the whole, day... maybe 2 or 3 in the times admin believe will match with his region time.

With this, you could create a system to ban people, if a driver think another one is not driving fair, he could report him... if a driver reach X reports, he get an auto temporary ban for that server. This would encourage to be cleaner in such races.

Best thing is... with this you could create statistics, ISI servers could score positions during the week, and create a more or less complex table with scorings, race results, and all this stuff.

Please ISI, let us, and even you, configure servers in this way... would be epic and I'm sure would boost online activity, and with more online activity more people join to enjoy online racing and enjoying the sim.

 

I've asked for most of this, if not all of it, so I can do more things with our own servers as well. There are other things in the works at the moment so I haven't bugged them too much.

 

I'm sure they are working hard in other stuff, I like (I really like) this sim and the work ISI is doing with It, but is a shame I feel like It's not being exploited as It could in this side. Yes, we have great content, we have great preformance (if someone says no It's crazy), we have great physics, we have... well, rF2. But lot of people does not get to enjoy It as I and others do beacuse they have not the possibility to race easily in the right conditions.

At this stage would be great tu push rF2 developers to this way and this kind of features, I think is essential to create a solid online users base now the game It's in a good point. And I'm sure would not be so hard as programmers to create this system, sure would not be time consuming.

So Tim, and all rF2 forum users, pls, shout hard to have this because can be an essential start point to begin to increase online activity and rF2 users movement in general.

 

I like this idea too, it would be nice to do longer public races once in a while. But I'm not sure if this is the reason why rF2 servers are not so populated. Who knows what the actual reason is, it would be very nice to see a lot more people online at all times of day, currently you're pretty much limited to the evening in european times.

 

As a league admin I'd love to be able to have the server start practice at a predefined time. Great idea!

 

And not only the main event scheduled... the whole previous week could be configured, doing the server go to Qualy everyday at 21:00GMT and then a short fun race with no admin presence to let drivers enjoy some racing with casual drivers who want a populated server.

 

+1

 

I like this! +2

 

I would like to see this implemented as well, much easier, especially for new admins.
Not sure it will increase online traffic though, if any it will be in the long term with more servers run more efficiently and perhaps more predictable across the board.

FWIW if you have a windows dedicated box and full access, you can already do all of the above with the Windows Task Scheduler.
Run multiple rf2 profiles, all different configs and settings if needed and the Scheduler will stop/start whatever you set it to.
So its already possible.

But yeah, if its an rf2 tool then everyone could use it and not just those lucky enough to have full access to a windows machine as dedi server.

 

Yes, you can schedule manually a server... but far for being efficient. It's not comparable to integrated system where anyone can see race schedules in server list just clicking the server and looking the information, first servers should use this are official ISI servers. And Official servers should be ALWAYS clearly visible in the server list, not being one more server in a big list or even a separate section with only official server, with schedules info... after this ISI could organize some racing rank and all kind of stuff integrated in that section, but It's optional.

 

Yup, I agree.

I mentioned it just in case it will not become an rf2 feature. admins would still be able to put up schedules.

 

A lot of this can be automated... even in rF1 it could. The endless practice session can't really be done but you could monitor the timer and restart the weekend when it gets close. I used to run a league this way. I even did server chats to warn people that Q was about to start in 10 minutes and again at 5 minutes. It worked really well and I could eat dinner knowing that I didn't have to monitor the race.

But having this built in would be really nice. In rF2 the plugin API now has the ability to programmatically send server chats. So you can do this sort of automation in a much more reliable way now. I may actually look into making a plugin like this. You could define a schedule with an XML file or something. You could also script penalties so you can stager drive-throughs so the pits don't get too busy.

 

Yes, yes, I know you can do that and way more. We had in rF1 in our league all kind of automatizations...

We can't say It's enough because It isn't... this only is usefull for that particular leage, not for the whole community, and we need something to encourage everyone to race under a controlled environment te ease public racing.

It's what we should have as soon as possible.

Enviado desde mi GT-I9505 mediante Tapatalk

 

I fully agree. With a little help from ISI we could then develop web based scheduling services to get an iRacing like experience. We need APIs for managing components and vmods too.

 

Yeah, would be great. But essential feature? Really?

 

I hear you... Just today I gutted the remainder to rF1 join/hosting code and converted it to HTTP based. While the web APIs are not solidified, the most recent addition (unstable 493) is http://<dedi ip>:<dedi port>/SessionInfo/

obliviously more to come, we are kinda finishing up a multi month project to bring web services in concrete way to the dedicated server. We have built and optimized from scratch out own HTTP/JSON server code. As things get more used we will be able to shape this traffic around real time data very efficiently.

 

Hehehe... obliviously...

Sounds good Jeremy.

 

With being able to run servers on a schedule so for example at 30 after the hour every hour (in an ISI server type scenario) the race starts, that can only be a good thing, and right now rF2 is about as dead as roadkill online in the public environment. I know I personally would race rF2 more if I could reliably look at a clock and know I can get 15 minutes of practice and then have a race, rather than joining a server, seeing it just started and promptly deciding rF2 isn't in my plans because I'm not wasting 20 minutes watching virtual cars go in virtual circles when I could be the guy driving the virtual car in the virtual circle.

 

I don't like the idea of fixed schedule in official ISI servers. The point of these servers are that you can have a race at any time of the day if there are enough people. Easy access that is. Now OP is suggesting that there would be races only at certain limited times of day, no thanks. (the rest of the world tents to choose different prime times than in Finland)

Times you suggested are based on your local time which isn't good for all... I do my races way before 20 GMT.

You can already block voting from your server so I don't see the problem.

Some ideas are good like showing the current session in server list and automated messages in chat.

 

Nice feature.
We have around 3 or 4 league races per week, allways same hour, practice starting at 8pm. All sessions are predefined and the server clock makes its job. But allways need to restart weekend at 8pm, and even if its easy it would be great if we can define a day and hour at least for restart server.

About public server...well, i dont think its such a great idea. Its only a good ideia if ISI still remain with couple of "time free" servers. Public servers are there so people can Plug&Play at whatever hour they are avaliable to race/train/test. Having predefined hours would change the definition of it.