I don't think it is because the cars are too hard for people to drive neither. It must be something else
Also agree the megane days were the best. I remember having great races with you back then. Reason it was popular was because the racing was so close and not really cause it was easy to drive on the limit. Which suggest that's what people really want, bumper to bumper action. Hardcore physics not actually mattering once people are having fun. Due to that fact (IMO) the average non-uber hardcore player migrated over to titles such as AC. I know this is the case for me and my dutch friend I race with. The main reason numbers are low (again IMO) is cause the online lobby got way to messy for amount of users. There are nearly more servers than there are players . There's to much variety making it hard to settle into something. I want to drive the ISI stock content most of the time but gets buried away with countless mods, its overwhelming.
So we have; Too little content Too much content Too many servers Servers not set up correctly Messy matchmaker Pickup racing doesn't matter Pickup racing does matter.
You are right tohardtohandle, them days are well and truley over with mate it pains me to say. Mp is a ghost town now, i maybe find something of interest to race once every other week or so being i pick up racer, and thats if im lucky. It picks up a little when content drops but that dont last long. Theres no reason to renew the subsription when it expires in June.
Too little content (disagree) Too much content (partly agree, but if it was clearer to see what was in use where this wouldn't matter) Too many servers (honestly agree - the landscape is too diluted - this is NOTHING against what you are doing Rich - I think you are a huge asset to the community - I tried out Pickup Skippy last night, but no-one joined for long enough. I'd rather have fewer server choices with more players to race against, than more servers with less competition) Servers not set up correctly (no opinion on this) Messy matchmaker (agree) Pickup racing doesn't matter (huh????? - disagree) Pickup racing does matter (agree) We are a diverse bunch - we all have differing opinions & thoughts, so it is expected that you should not be able to summarise everyone's response to get a unified opinion (part of the challenge of marketing a product to a wide consumer group)
Nowedays where people have no time to take a breath, organized public space and easy acces is need for the mass.
Since my time is limited (and I think many others too), I was/am always into pick up races and since these are almost non existent in rF2 I don't race much there nowadays......so I thought of/desired to develop something like iRacing where users can see all pick-up racing sessions of all servers online, subscribe to it, see who had subscribed etc.....but then I encountered a major issue in that the servers session events can change all the time, when stopped and started, crash and started etc etc...so then I stopped developing it. So if we can have servers where the session times remain always the same, then it would be doable for me to do it but as long as the sessions times are dynamic it would be impossible. This would be incorporated into the online match maker http://servers.proracing.club/ I will be able to read a json file off your server with the required info, so technically its not hard for me to do. All I need are servers with fixed session start times that do not change.
How about linking the dedi with a powershell script to auto restart it at certain times? I know Noel wrote one to do it..... but could make it so that every hour it restarts? But then I guess a simple script wouldn't care if the server was mid-race. Then again, wasn't there a tool released about 300 years a go that restarted servers automatically? hmmmm EDIT: This is what I meant http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.p...rol-(race-session-every-x-hours-like-iRacing)
It does not need to be restarted at all. Ideally it would stay on and rotating through the sessions (practice, qual, race etc). But the issue is that when it restarts, it needs to continue from the sessions it should be into....so lets say an admin set these sessions 1. Practice 20 mins 2. Qualify 20 mins 3. Race 20 mins Then for example, practice session always starts on the hour. So at 8pm you have practice, 8:20pm qualify and 8:40pm Race. Then at 9pm the practice starts. What I need is a tool/functionality so that if the server is stopped/crashed at lets say 8:30pm, the server starts automatically in Qualify mode and continues rotation to race, practice ect... Not sure if I explained myself...but if this would be possible, people would know when the sessions are and can subscribe to them and see when others want to race (and maybe join them.) I'l be able to do this tool...
Race is always skipped if the session is empty though, no? Or is that just a .JSON option I'm not aware of?
That sounds great! If when restarted it starts in the right session, then we're gonna make it work....can someone test this please (or I'll to it today after work)? Edit: ideally, we dont want the server to be restarted though
Hmm, I know the author of that tool maybe I can have a chat with him. Not sure if it can help us as is. As ideally admin should choose a combination of session, like practice 20mins, qual 20 mins and race 20mins etc. Edit: thinking about it, I think its not currently possible.......for example, is it possible to do this: lets say rF2 is in the middle of a 20min practice session and it needs to be stopped for a minute (or maybe crashed)....would it be possible to restart it on practice session and the session time continues where its supposed to be (so if server was down for 5 mins, and it stopped at 10mins practice, then it would continue from 15mins)?
No, not as I'm aware. If I've had a server crash (a couple of times) I have quickly changed the session length to bring it in-line with that has already passed. Though server crashes are rare in the extreme in my opinion. I've had two or three genuine crashes in thousands upon thousands of hours server up time.... I'm not sure it's an issue?
Maybe it would be possible to change the session with the command line. So that you say switch from practice to qualy at 12:30 no matter which practice time is left on the server. Maybe combined with a chat message 1min earlier or so.
Yeah, that's true. The only issue is that the schedule has to be always with the same times. So if for example I subscribed in the morning to a race at 5:40pm, if the server is restarted or something, that race time should remain the same as otherwise I'd go home happy to race at 5:40pm to find out that the time has changed. Maybe we can try a pilot experiment and see how it goes and if its feasible.
