rf2 has fixed the mismatch problem. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to join any game without a password now. It has however turned into a nightmare for Modders and League Admin.
The most annoying thing is to do a vmod everytime we have to change/update the track to put the server up. I would remove vmods, just cars and tracks.
Getmod is another nightmare. If it is implemented then yeah in theory this is right. But in most mods it is not implemented. I'm not saying whose fault that is, but it is a fact. The system is bulky and difficult and you can't use the most popular free web hosts with GetMod as it is right now. And it is slow in any case. A good track that is a few hundred MB in size will not take 5 mins. GetMod is slow. Even if it is 5 mins, if the host has v1.0 of a track and I have v1.1, that causes problems in the menus, problems with other rfmods and it's a nightmare. I disagree with you, melg- because in real life, it is not that simple.
Doesn't support popular webhosts? It supports Dropbox and Mediafire (Pro only). It isn't slow at all. It is just as fast in the game as it would be in a browser. It is only slow if you include the content in the rfmod rather than host it on a 3rd party webhost.
That's just my experience. It's always been slow. You seem to be the only one working on it, Noel. You are doing great work with GetMod, but it has to be better supported by ISI
Got to admit Guy which ever way ISI implements this there is always going to be somebody who won't like it.
I think you would be surprised how many people are using GetMod now. There are 120 or so users on my service now and tons of components registered now. You just don't see public servers using it. It's mostly just leagues with experienced admins that care about their users experience. The IsR servers are making full use of GetMod now but that is the main public server I know of that uses it. Tim started a thread saying they are working on hosting mods with GetMod support soon. So my service will no longer be needed.
A buddy of mine is a power engineer and he says the goal is to keep the building at a temperature to where 80-90% of the people in the building are comfortable, which is ASHRAE standards. Even engineers realise you'll never please everyone.
Definitely, If I have a few mates who want to run a LAN race, we all need an internet connection of course, we also need someone to make a VMOD for the track and car selection we want. Can't just start up a server with a car and a track as I understand. When I first saw RF2 a few years ago, I took that VMODS were going to be OPTIONAL. They could be used when custom sounds or custom track graphics may have been used for league racing. Make VMODS optional and you fix most of the issues. Then someone can start a server with 1 car, 1 track, or use a VMOD and have a combination of cars/tracks or even some custom stuff. As I understand one of the main goals of the current system is to allow creators to encrypt their creations. Whether or not VMODS are neccessary or optional should not have any impact on that.
I didn't start/stop the timer perfectly (Gave Chrome a small head start and for GetMod I started the timer before starting the xfer and I didn't stop it until it was done downloading AND done installing). If you correct the times for all of that, GetMod took 7 secs longer to download than it did in Chrome. But that could have been any number over variables. I think it is safe to say that GetMod is NOT slow. If you consider the fact that you don't have to go into ModMgr to install the component manually, then GetMod is clearly the faster way. BTW, GetMod and Chrome both used the same Mediafire link in this test.
It's not as easy as it sounds to do such a change. Vmod is the link that verifies that content on a client PC is same as on server. If you remove that link, server has to manual check each vehicle before join and manual check the track each time a session is changed. In rF1, this meant you joined but got a mismatch and got kicked out: exactly what we want to prevent with rF2. Current system shows a nice list of what tracks you are missing and what versions before you join, which is much better. The vmods would be a lot less annoying if they could be created on the fly when selecting cars and tracks to host, then you wouldn't even know they existed. It's simply a matter of redesigning the UI, to me it sounds much easier than rebuilding the entire system. Pick cars, tracks, dedi automatically creates and installs a vmod out of those, and then host. It can't be that hard to implement.
vmods can't go away. People are getting too worked up about them. In reality we had them in rF1 too. It was just in memory only which is how it will probably be one day in rF2. The vmod is nothing more than a description of content. This could just be a block of data sent down by the server and then the client can prompt you for the missing content but never actually store this block of data in a file on the disk. But the admin is always going to have to select which content is on the server and it will always have to inform the client of what content they need to join. If there was a smother GUI for selecting content that automatically included all the needed components then it would be perfect. The actual game has a simple list of cars in a tree view and the game knows how to resolve dependencies and all that. We should have the same sort of tree view when selecting content for the server. We shouldn't have to selecting talent, sounds, ect... It should be able to resolve that for us just like the game itself does. Then if the vmods are totally disposable on the client side we would have the perfect system.
Excuse me but I am not quite a fan of this method as well and to add to the MP discussion on the previous page it's the same way with me. Not sure why a few have snarky remarks but point is there is still a problem around even if you don't have one. 50% of MP are passworded for start and most of them are modded. In one day out of 80 attempts i'll be lucky to be on one server - most of the time it will be the official ISI server but no one plays on it. The rest are mods that you require and cannot even get through the downloader itself anyhow, resorting to either manually collecting over a period of time to play on that one server, or to just move on and find the same result. The packaging system itself is easier sure but it's still springing a leak into other areas in this software that skews experience. On the other hand, if I want top-notch online I can always shoot iRacing for another month until rF2 is more...refined but the singleplayer AI compensates usually for this.
Open systems like rF1 and rF2 are always going to require content from all over the place. If you want a closed system then stick with iRacing I guess. The tools are there to make the join experience as simple as one click. If people don't use it you can't really blame ISI can you? My video above is a perfect example of how joining a server should be. In that video I only had one missing component, but it would have worked even if I was missing all of the components. All of our content is custom too. In our league we don't even provide direct download links. All you need is the server password. If you know of a better way then please share. I am sure ISI is open to ideas. So many people complaining but not that many practical solutions on how it could be better.
Not exactly blaming ISI here just noting that even with the tools it's still a sketchy success rate. From what I'm reading it sounds like it is all my own fault, so if this is the case within three months of having this software maybe there is a procedure I missed? Server requires components, downloader tries, downloader usually fails, server list is reset, move on to next, same result. Not a complaint at all actually, it's more of laying this issue out here which could be related to the packaging topic so perhaps again, this is on my end with a closed port or maybe just something cocked up. A solution maybe apparent due to someone having a similar issue. At the same time, Leagues seem to be the most consistent and most efficient way of playing online without random synchronizing. Are there any that doesn't cost $20 Canadian to join?
There is nothing you are doing wrong as a driver. It's the admins that are doing it wrong. Our league is free to join. We run mostly on donations. We do endurance racing with mixed classes. We race the first Saturday of every month and all races start at 11PM (EST). Teams must have at least 2 drivers with a max of 5. Our races are anywhere from 2.5 hours to 24 hours. Most races are 6 hours or more. We have a live stream with a dedicated team of commentators. They even commentated the entire 24 hours of LeMans last weekend! VirtualEndurance.net
That sounds amazing and it's nice to see since rF1 the dedication is still alive. Ah hah. Thank's Noel this was the confusion. So there isn't an issue in communication between component and server, or server, comp and MOD loader. It is actually just how the admin had initialized the server and this in turn affects the connectivity with the client?
