Rfactor 2 is great but after all these years still no decent documentation thats amazing ! How can we grab information here and there through a forum ? it just doesn't work, its time consuming, ineffective and... boring... A forum was never meant to compile knowledge, never. Just one example, i used to check "simulate fuel usage" before saving aiw files in Rf1. It doesn't work anymore, there is a wiki which states you have to save, go out of 3D world, come back to it and then save again ???? that's crazy. And checking this option SFU does nothing except copying another value which i don't know where it came from in the first place to replace an old one which is of unknow extraction neither... Attending its a simulation, i expect the fuel consomption to be calculated live is the case ?? Then if i had already created my AI fast path, left path and right with a given car of a given multi serie and another day i realize i had not check this SFU option, do i have to re create another fast path for the sim to calculate the consumption and its another kind of car ! Thats crazy !! i have to dig and test an application to explore how it works. I hate to do that, pure time lost while its not like exploring laws of nature, its already known by someone somewhere but who ? where ??? I don't understand why its not documented, stated as it has been design ? How can you even work and improve such a complicated game/sim with hundreds of variables without ever document the developper work ? Document your work is no time lost is time gain especially when you come back to it after month doing many other things unrelated... Lets say these aiw things are kind of modders work, it should concerns only a minority of people using that game, but then just how to assign a set up for a given track to a given AI car is absolutly not documented nothing, nada. Are we suppose to test everycar of a serie ot figure out its fuel consumption just to have a base strat setup and do it again for every car on every track ? Loading a track go out do it again etc... thats a big obstacle to casual user. The garage, there is a button which states ai setup, another to switch between gamer kind of car, yes kind not team, it could have been team based, are we suppose to guess, to test every possibilities ? thats crazy ! Some mods creates there own folders for every kind of car, AMGT 3 for example but does this mean that if i load a setup of a bmw default and save it under a porsche folder it will be a porsche setup ? it makes no sense but it seems possible, i can load SLS setup when i loaded the game with a C6 for exemple, all thoses combination should be documented thats a priority !! The fuel usage thing doesn't work, i checked it after reworking nordschleiffe aiw fast path and its completly wrong, the UI number of liter necessary per lap is absurdly wrong and it makes the AI slow down in the middle of the track because the left path is also wrong and in the middle, but the AI seems to react when we pass it at full speed defending its safety car rythm trying to reach the pit. Devmod, great tool, absolutly no documentation, i've got to take my data explorator frontal lamp and dig deap for a while... Like Vettel would say : "honestly ?"
I agree that organizing knowledge around a forum is not the best way. It is full of irrelevant threads and the only available order is posting date. Search function works very bad including many irrelevant results. The last time I searched for my own tutorial to convert tracks from rF1, the results didn't show the thread I created in the first page of results. The wiki should be the place to publish modding stuff.
of course i exagerated a little and those docs are great but for example there are absolutly no answers to why sim fuel usage doesn't work! how you specify pit strategy. just explaining what this option is really doing, just to say check it and it should work, for me it doesn't. A recap of what variables are still in use for example by categories, concerning general use like pit stop to begin with not even modding just setting up the thing for it to work in a race, why bother creating such a great AI and letting the basics in the fog ? Its the best carsim for me because also of its openness but without carefull explanations it is practically unusable if not already properly set by modders. And lets be honest those last but essential finishes are rarely done. And its not a critic because i know the work it represents but letting this in the dark diminishes the quality of some great mods. Thats the explanation in the track aiw doc : Two Final Things There are two final tasks you need to do to complete your AIW file properly. The first is to “Simulate Fuel Usage”. You do this by clicking “unsupported/test opt ions” from the main waypoint menu, and then clicking “Simulate Fuel Usage”. While the AI keeps track of fuel during the race, setting this value is used in the UI to show the estimated fuel requirements. And that's it ! first why on earth is it in a menu called unsupported/test while its necessary for every track ? thats weird ! And as i said above, do i have to make ai run because it should simulate! from where is this data coming ? Fuel usage for what kind of car, is it the same between a truck and a bike, it depends on track condition, gear ratios, track rubbering etc...it makes no sense ! this sentence tells nothing "While the AI keeps track of fuel during the race," it keeps tracks of nothing it pits when the set up tell it to and on the nordschleffe, 24 km long if its out of fuel it slows down to regain the pit. Well at least it knows and slows down but i set my AI with no mistakes. And what it knows is wrong which may be because it doesn't use the setup i use for this kind of car or because this information comes from this SFU option which is reporting in another volume unit i don't know about... but which set up does AI use, can it use some variable strategy with pit stop lap ranges instead of fixed lap, it it were keeping track of fuel usage it would pit before going out of fuel !! all questions that are basics but find no answers, come on. THere was something in the gdb fle of tracks i recall in rfactor 1, is it still available ? you have to dig in many html question and answers losing valuable time...
This is the biggest weak link in rf2 and has always been. The overall documentation is poor. I hope 397 does improve the documentation. There may be enough general info for professional rf1 modders to create content for rf2 but everybody else are struggling. Which is sad because the competitor offers good enough documentation and tools that complete noobs can create content from scratch. Rf2 simply deserves better.
It would be cool if we could agree on a knowledge tree structure among which organize a white book to be filled. For sure existing content in the wiki would be maintained being the first content in the white book. I think wiki structure where all the willing people could contribute fits best here. However if the chapter titles were already defined it would be easier for modders and devs to take part in it. The most difficult here is to get started.
it already exist : http://wiki.rfactor.net/index.php?title=AIW but i found barely more than what's in the official doc and maybe related to rf1 only
exactly, it deserves better. i corrected the aiw of the nordschleffe based on what i remembered from rf 1, like disabling AI limitation, you scroll the strength percentage for that, setting AI worst to 0.8, normal to 1 and best to 1.2, what a difference does it makes! It seems that the talented people who made the track didn't even know those tip nd tricks, even smoothing out the fast path which is an obscure option digged into an improbable sub menu...
I still don't know how you gives a proper fuel strategy to AI other than the one which eventually drive my car... Two days, testing, AI setup, set up own AI only, mysterious fixed setup .gal file in player folder that works in conjunction with absolutly undocumented variables in player file but inaccessible via UI, great job ! read somewhere that it doesn't concern fuel or gearbox for some reason... yeah really well documented... perfect ! There are setup references everywhere, in track gdb, in vehicle hdv, in folders vehicle specifics or track specific, this is a mess, the mexican army at best !! This AI setup button in the garage where nothing happen, no feedback at all, fantastic! really i wonder why i ask for documentation...
I know it exists. However, many topics would require further explanations or even some examples to clarify sevral topics.
Do you know how to assign a setup for pit/fuel stratégy to AI? Is there many ways to do it ? what are the fuel range thing in the vehicle hdv, are they still in use ? (1.0,1.0,100) ==> no comment for those numbers ?? By setting fixed setup to true in player.plr i see autoload entries in the gal file but there is a comment that says currently not in use ?? and i confirm that the AI doesn't seem to use it. There is a session number also, session= 5 or session= 10 ??? how do we know what setup AI, other than eventually driving my car, is using ?
For me who is 100% new, does not know or play RF1 or any other sim titles, I find understanding RF2 is very time consuming as there is no proper documentation for "dummy" with zero sim experience to start. I googled and YouTube-ded days and days. My previous experience was Playstation 1, many years ago or many children ago......thats it. I got a 2006 User Manual by Bob Simmerman....... but it is RF1 http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/339790/manuals/rFactorManual.pdf?t=1447366431 Other sources for beginner dummy like me , is from here : http://legends-league.com/wiki/Rfactor2 http://richardwalker.net/legends/wiki/rf2BasicTweaks If we talk income wise, it is the NEW players who will pay for the game. If it is for the growth of S397/RF2, it need to attract more dumb newbies like me to buy the game. The seniors here and in all other sim racing forums are the motivation engines which RF2 fortunately has and able to assist with answering advance questions or even dumb ones I am an IT dummy, I mean I know computers decently, but if possible a game should be as easy as possible thru GUI to learn how to start playing it, without needing to go to program files. The less the entry level barrier, the more people will buy the game. Afterall RF2/S397 does not run on just oxygen but rather game $$ sales. The search engine of this forum is a joke, it is really bad. Many old links from online tutorial are still to ISI forums, then it get diverted to S397 but stuck at Technical Archives without going to the actual post. I don't even mind paying $$ for a good video tutorial ( not PDF or eBook). The game is so dirt cheap at Steam compared to the sim hardware we need to invest . For me coming from a 3rd world country, my internet charges alone per month is US$150 for two providers. One provider is fast download for my area at 16 mbps, but slow 1mbps upload ( 16:1 ratio) . However it sucks when at 4:30PM to 9PM and on weekends. Has rather high down time too, few hours a month dead is given. One other is 99% stable but slow 6 mbps dowload but fast upload at 4 mbps . These two cost nearly the same ...LOL. My area, I cant 100 mbps get fiber optic...dang !! Relaxing time is money for all of us....... as it takes away our productive working/overtime hours and if enjoyment of the game is the result, its a good deal. If time wasting for merely learning how to navigate thru the game, that is a waste of precious time. This wage data said US$21.96 per hour for April 2017 in US. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages So any proper documentation for beginner dummy to speed up a learning curve is a must for games to grow in sales. Increase the game price by US$21.96 its okey, if it has informative video tutorials. I bought this tutorial : http://www.learningvideo.com/store/gh4_sales.php because it is easier to watch video tutorial than reading User Manual for a brand I never own. I know Nikon decently well and I am very familiar with Sony-s but not Panasonic. With the video, the User Manual becomes faster to absorb.
Totally agree with op. Someone who is totally new to modding, all these random tutorials are terrible. And when I say totally new I mean someone who have no idea what is an SNC file and why do you need it. Some super old and some even contradict each other. For example, I found out how to load custom skin for a car on some random sim racing league site. The other thing which I find amusing is when you try to go with "trial and error" and the mod dev basically crashing without an error log and you have absolutely no clue what went wrong. Same true for gJED. It's all nice and good to emphasize that gJED can load FBX and all you need is a modeling software. And when the clueless trying to export to FBX and then gJED will do nothing because apparently there are like 20 different FBX version out in the wild. It was really unexpected for me that I had to google fu for hours for some basics like how to create a simple track with 6 mandatory objects and load it up via mod dev. Especially when the game is marketed as a modding platform. And I'm pretty sure there is no official guide covering this or if there is one it's damn well hidden.
OK, thanks, it was the case in RF1, you assigned a new default then it was the default for AI also, but To select an AI, then a new setup and clicking AI setup button doesn't work. So for a lemans serie you would have to load each kind of car of everyclass to do that, and you would have the same setup for each AI of a kind of car in a given class thats crazy, loading the nordschleffe... its a whole week process, hopefully we can do the same by modifying this gal file... this AIsetup thing doesn't work for me, AMGT3 on the nordschleffe... i've got a pretty good AIW though, the races are more "professional" against AI than online... thats amazing ! The number of times i thought i was ramed into whereas in fact i had moved just a little letting not enough space... like the bentley in blancpain series at monza week ago... very good AI.
I forgot to add, ( just in case newbies like me read this thread ) This is the best RF2 documentation I have : http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/rfactor-2-game-guide-and-f-a-q.119019/ For more advance user, which I am not...... http://www.simracinghub.com/forum/1...vanced-setup-guide-track-map-tutorial-carstat
There needs to be documents on on how to set rf2 up for the newcomer,and a vary detailed doc on how to mod,for both physics and visuals. I'd love to get into modding but I can't find any info on how to get started,or tutorials that show you how to do stuf,but don't explain the ins and outs. Even the doc on the realtime tyre testing thing,act like people already know half the stuff it's on about. Until s397 rectify this,modding will never properly take off in rf2
