RF2 is not the most popular platform, so every skin is worth its weight in gold. Is there any way to make sure you don't have to remake skins every time? I think that every day the creators of skins have less motivation to make them, as the result of one - skin after a while it will stop working. There are many good livery, but they do not work and most of them will never start working, because there is no one to make adjustments. If RF2 relies on modmakers - you need to give them work tools. If don't already rely on them, I think you should give people licensed skinpacks for money.
Not that I don't agree with what you've said, but in my experience most of the skins that are not working (I've only looked for S397 content skins) are not working because of the change of the veh filename. Fix is pretty easy and quick for that. If you're interested in making it work for yourself. Provide me a link and I can look into it if you want.
As a painter, it has been frustrating. Luckily the issues you describe have nothing to do with the actual painting of a car. The main issue, in my opinion, is that there is multiple ways to get a skin in game. Weather the skin is packaged within in a mod, in a .mas that is manually put in, .mas that an .rfcmp puts in or through virtual ride system. It just a matter of knowing when something changes, knowing what to do. As @Tomislav Leskovic stated, with the virtual rides, it is just changing that .veh line in the .rcd. But for the .rfcmp, it is a bit more complicated.
There's a min build field in .rfcmp that's supposed to tell that update applies to all builds above certain, but judging by how modders have to repack after each update, I guess it does not work. I understand that with severe graphics improvements, skins will need to be redone at some point, but requiring repack on every update is just a bug. This is awful experience for skin authors, but to me as a user it makes official content uninteresting, as I don't care for eSports liveries. So I personally stick to unofficial content, and skins constantly going useless is one of the main reasons for that.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1847879631 - VLN pack. It does not work + beta interface throws out in Windows when you try to update. I would be very grateful if you could help in this matter. Unfortunately, I don't know the formats, but I'll be happy with any information to make it work.
I'm not sure about your UI issue as that is different than car skins. I don't use the new UI as it doesn't support mod dev yet. But for the VLN pack, because it is an RFCMP, you will either need to recreate the package or wait for Frank to do it, so it points to the updated version number of the S397 content. It's the nature of having skins that way, that at any point, S397 can do an update and break that. It is the reason why I take most of my skins and put it into the Virtual Rides system where that isn't affected by that, but it loses the new UI icons, real driver names, and ability to change GENStrings (if the mod uses that). I do use the S397 content to fill in the holes as needed. It is the cars I do drive the most. It's one of the reason I have all my skins in the format that I do, so that if something does change, it doesn't take too long to fix. But that still takes about an hour, and it is an hour wasted pasting a line in a .rcd file to reference a different .veh
Open all rcd files in notepad++, the find and replace on all open documents and just change the line needed. That way there is no need for cumbersome copy/paste to each file correct veh filename (or whatever changed) Edit: Chris explained in post above what is the issue with VLN skins...it's best to wait for author to update it the latest version
The VLN Pack works well again now (untill the next rF2 update ). Sorry, I was'nt able to update it earlier. I'm still working on a VLN2019 Pack, but I have so much other stuff to do...
Once we had just the flying lizard on the rear fender of cars. Now there are Bulls, and 'Roos and fire chickens! what a great time to be alive
Thank you for making changes and for all your work - VLN-skinpack is amazing! And, of course, I will be waiting for the season 2019
...dozens of liters of coffee... ...still working... ...sleeping... ...working... https://www.instagram.com/p/B8qR9uPoks-/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Like it - good work! Tell me, what happens to the Porsche GT3R II in 2019-VLNskinpack? Because we don't have the 2019 model, but only the GT3R.
Unfortunately I can only use what rFactor2 offers me. The worst thing would be if S397 released the new GT3-R just before I finished my skin pack.
I think we'd have been warned by the announcement, but I doubt we'll get GT3R II. I won't talk about ACC - it's been there for a long time, the RRE release was 2 months ago. Anyway, I'm looking forward to your work.
You also have to differentiate between ACC / R3E and rF2. ACC & R3E have series contracts that include these 3D models. This is not the case with rFactor2. There is an individual negotiation with each manufacturer.