Please tell me the new ui has sorted the cars menu

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by LokiD, Sep 4, 2019.

  1. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    That's not a UI problem, that's a content problem :D
     
  2. Filip

    Filip Registered

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    Raceroom doesn't have mods so this is not good enough for RF2.
     
  3. Seven Smiles

    Seven Smiles Registered

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    That's where I got to, adding fixed tags such as Class, F/R/FWD, gearchange type (H/shifter/paddles) as well as a user-defined star rating ("This is my favourite car, 5 stars!"). I hadn't thought of turbo or power which suggests the need for user-defined tags. For tracks I added Continent and Country ("I want to race a series in Australia") as well as the year/decade and star rating.
     
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  4. Filip

    Filip Registered

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    Are you saying these fixed tags are provided by your software and not from game engine? Is it possible to add new tags? As I see this is some external app, how do you filter in-game then?
     
  5. Nielsen

    Nielsen Registered

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    I was hoping it was obvious that I mostly posted Racerooms solution to show that (like in most other areas) the simplest solution is allways the best and most effective.
    A bit Occam's razor-ish:D
    And skimming this thread its pretty obvious that some of the posters does complicate things - maybe because they havent asked themselves what it actually is they want.
     
  6. Seven Smiles

    Seven Smiles Registered

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    Yes, my program keeps its own data files for all cars and tracks. I wrote an algorithm that extracts the obvious tags when possible (so Installed\vehicles\Radical_RXC_GT3_2017 gives Manufacturer=Radical Model=RXC Class=GT3 Year=2017) but other tags (Gearshift, F/R/FWD, other tags that can't be guessed from the filename) would have to be added by hand - I was thinking they'd be in an online database somewhere that people could edit (think something vaguely like Wikipedia). The program works like Content Manager for Assetto Corsa - you run it, select the car/track you want and it pokes rFactor's data files so when it then starts rFactor they are pre-selected.

    I started writing it some time ago but it's still firmly "pre-alpha" and I will probably never finish it - certainly not if the new UI is a big improvement on the current one. I was probably too ambitious and should have aimed for just a subset of features, a lot of it "sort of works" but there's a lot of work needed before I could let anyone else try it.
     
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  7. enduser

    enduser Registered

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    PLEASE not that crap again , thats whats wrong with game UI atm, fixing this would be wise.

    BOP is another topic but brand sorting is kind of test drive unlimited only with race cars , i dont have a strong preference but maybe keep the existing one and add a type of car (class) sorting, and you can choose A (current one) or B (new one).
    edit: already said above

    You cant please everybody , but if you dont even try you wont please that many ppl either, best solution is somewhere at the middle.


    *mental facepalm*
     
  8. Seven Smiles

    Seven Smiles Registered

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  9. enduser

    enduser Registered

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    Btw with "crap" i mean that multiple mod file which duplicates the tracks which you already have installed into a new bigger mod with no new useful functionality, i mean is there anyone who uses that and why?

    For the first part of my post , i m not a native speaker and sometimes i sound more harsh than i intend to so bare with me. :)

    About sorting, its not working even for official content. However i agree that mods indeed may not have any tags to use for filtering, but at least official content could be working and the rest auto tagged with "other" in the menu. Also you could add the tags you want by editing the mod file text but the rf2 system is not user friendly and even encrypted for official mods.
    But its not a big deal for me tbh, btw i have edited many mods to rename them, make a new loading screen etc.

    This thread may be overly dramatic but thing is with rf2, those little (or bigger) aspects of the UX add up and you feel frustrated in the long run. "Malicious" is also hyperbolic , with giving him the benefit of the doubt i think its about seeking some dev attention plus frustration built up over time, or i could be wrong.
    You know this UI story has worked like a prolonged teaser that remains unfulfilled (reading about it all the time) and you cant expect anything good out of that, which has backfired in the end for s397. But now that we re close to a release theres no use to panic more than before!
     
  10. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    I may have misunderstood, but it sounds like you're describing 'mod' files which include content. So you have 300 meg cars, a 400 meg track, and you make a 'mod' file which puts those together in the game and is 700 megs in size.

    That's not what race events are about; they reference existing content (like the cars and track) and are selectable as their own event (/series) in the game, but they're maybe 5 megs even with custom images. They're useful because you can make a series/event for yourself limited to some particular tracks (say, some ovals that your series runs in real life), only include the cars you want in it (you can exclude specific cars from mods, if they're not real life for example), and then you can load up the game, select your new custom series, and all you can see in your car selection and track selection is the content the event references.

    So they're pretty much the same concept as Seven Smiles has just created with his content selector, except they're so user-unfriendly that probably half the users don't know they exist (except as some files they get after joining servers, and eventually go and delete) while most of the rest will find Seven Smiles' solution easier. In theory they're one decent solution to grouping content once and being able to come back to it (as a group) whenever you want, but they're hidden off in their own little tool (with all sorts of potential issues like incorrect folders, old 'dirty' data files crashing the tool, etc) and therefore aren't so useful.

    Whatever the UI does to make finding and selecting some content right now easier, there also needs to be a way to group it semi-permanently so you can load up the game, select your custom series/event, and there it all is. 90% of it is already there (and on the file side it's completely there), just needs to be more accessible.
     
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  11. Seven Smiles

    Seven Smiles Registered

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    I had forgotten about that, I tried it some time ago and found issues with it (can't remember what now) and never used it again. I just tried again, following https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=554544322 and it worked - but it's a bit painful and is aimed at creating a series on a server rather than a lightweight way of pruning down the list of cars and tracks so I don't have so many to deal with. Also the result is a binary file which means hackers like me can't use alternative methods to modify it or create one.

    One thing I noticed using my program is that it's much easier to select a mixture opponents as I can "select all" and deselect a few if I want - much easier than hunting through a long list in VR with the names barely visible picking this one and that one and...

    It has made me think I could write another program - I could call it Mod Manager ;) - that takes a simple list of cars and tracks and uses a similar trick to the content manager I wrote to hide all the others from rFactor. There are a few advantages
    • it's easier to set up
    • it would allow finer filtering to get just what you want
    • once created it would be a single click to run rFactor
    • you could have dozens of different lists
    A bit like rFactor 1 perhaps :D I can't remember but I'm sure that was much simpler.
     
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  12. davehenrie

    davehenrie Registered

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    it might get a-bit tricky when it synchronizes with Steam. I dont know if you could keep logging on with different saved groupings of cars. But if it works, it should also save time with that sync.
     
  13. Gonzo

    Gonzo Member

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    IF( dont know yet ) the new gui allows plugins, its been an easy job to change car selection. So we should hope they allow us to inject some smart es6 js ;). All we need is to have those classes inside the rest-api or in the markup as classes for example.

    lets pray for this plugin ability then ;).
     

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