Third Party Mod Database

Questions and suggestions

Questions:

1) Are we supposed to open one register per version or should we edit previous one when updating content to a newer version?

2) Is there a specific way to upload the content to your database or everything is done through external links?

3) Is there a main link or everything goes in the mirror link section?

Suggestions:

In my opinion these "Third Party..." initiative is superb and I thank and congratulate ISI for it. However I have detected several misfunctionalities which I think would make it the perfect database. Right now it can be quite a disorder and it would be very nice if all the content of the same type would have the same appearance. A brochure type looking something...

1) If I had to decide and answer "question 1", I would definetely maintain one unique register for all versions. I am personally editting the title of my tracks with the version number. However I would leave a specific section to keep the links to older versions in case they are required.

2) There is no specific place to put a picture of the layout of the track with standardized dimensions and videos are not allowed within the description right now. The layout should appear always in the same place.

3) There is no specific place to put a video via youtube or other allowed format via link as in the forum.
The video should appear always in the same place.

4) We should have a form type section where to include data as:
Important: Author (modder or modding group), Length (main layout), Number of Drivers, Number of layouts.
Optional: Number of turns, Main straight length, Max-Min height difference, ...

5) I would separate description from changelog section.

Finally with all these I would prepare a content search tool where you could see results filtered by author, length, track type, ... including the small picture of the layout in each search result.
 
SPASKIS said:
Questions:

1) Are we supposed to open one register per version or should we edit previous one when updating content to a newer version?

2) Is there a specific way to upload the content to your database or everything is done through external links?

3) Is there a main link or everything goes in the mirror link section?

Suggestions:

In my opinion these "Third Party..." initiative is superb and I thank and congratulate ISI for it. However I have detected several misfunctionalities which I think would make it the perfect database. Right now it can be quite a disorder and it would be very nice if all the content of the same type would have the same appearance. A brochure type looking something...

1) If I had to decide and answer "question 1", I would definetely maintain one unique register for all versions. I am personally editting the title of my tracks with the version number. However I would leave a specific section to keep the links to older versions in case they are required.

2) There is no specific place to put a picture of the layout of the track with standardized dimensions and videos are not allowed within the description right now. The layout should appear always in the same place.

3) There is no specific place to put a video via youtube or other allowed format via link as in the forum.
The video should appear always in the same place.

4) We should have a form type section where to include data as:
Important: Author (modder or modding group), Length (main layout), Number of Drivers, Number of layouts.
Optional: Number of turns, Main straight length, Max-Min height difference, ...

5) I would separate description from changelog section.

Finally with all these I would prepare a content search tool where you could see results filtered by author, length, track type, ... including the small picture of the layout in each search result.
Click to expand...
1. You can do either, I don't mind. Probably better to edit though for ease of finding and linking.
2. We can't host the mods, unfortunately.
3. Everything in mirrors. 'Main link' would be us hosting, which is disabled.

I would like to do something more. Perhaps I can use racesimcentral.com for something there.
 
It would be great to have a SKIN section, where we could browse between the different car models, instead of searching the whole "post your rf2 skin here" thread.
 
There needs to be more sub categories. Maybe Oval, street, and road course (road course as in basically a "regular" track)? Country and continent would be nice too. Oh and year of track. Same with cars. You can do type eg. road car, GT racecar, open wheel racecar, stock car (nascar oval stuff), rally, truck (like Formula TrucK), etc. Also the years. All these could be options every profile creator must choose, this way there won't be a bunch of mods with missing years, and car-types, etc. If people get lazy and don't select these, then it defeats the whole purpose. The purpose of them is to search what you're looking for, for eg. All open wheel cars, or all 1960s cars, or all open wheel cars and then filter those even further to just the 1960s ones. Of course mod creator should be a filter to. For example, click on "Tosch" and everything by Tosch comes up - cars, tracks and plugins, from that result you can filter just cars, or just tracks, by him, then further (year, car-type, etc. etc.). The comments section is already implemented, great!! Maybe a rating system? Or no??

Maybe the TPM section discussion thread I posted in the OP is a better place to discuss and suggest all this...

I also think the main categories should be Cars, Tracks, and Plugins, rather than splitting them off into historic, modern day, series, etc.

The most recent mods shows the 5 most recent, but you should be able to click a drop-down arrow or "more" button which then shows an entire list of new/updated uploads (still in chronological order, just a much longer list than the first 5. It should have the ability to show every mod.

How would it know when a current profile has been updated? Should the version number of each profile be selected as well (just like car type, year, etc.), or maybe have some sort of update button that the mod creator clicks/checks and that tells the TPM section that that profile has now been updated and to therefore update it's current version date and send it to the top of the "most recent" list?

So many possibilities, so much potential :)
 
I hope the column showing the number of downloads gets removed because most show 0 downloads however you can see once you click on a mod that it has some hits on it's download link (media fire, or whatever), this # of downloads column makes it look like no one has downloaded anything. Should be removed, makes it look bad.
 
Very bad indeed. I saw this last week and assumed the database was not being used at all yet.
Its the local downloads being zero & mirrors being actually used but not displayed on the front pages.
 
Yup. Longford is a great example, once you actually click and view the mod's page, you'll see that it actually has around 400 download hits, not 0 as the Total Downloads column displays

EDIT: Longford is currently at 228, I could have sworn it was around 400 just a few hours ago, lol
 
WHY ARE MODDERS NOT USING THIS ? ISI has provided it for free and hardly any1 is using it what is the problem ? PLEASE EXPLAIN
 
If i was TIM i would close it dwn no 1 seems to use it waste of space and waste of Tim's time even getting it up and running and maintaining it in the future . Even thou they all asked for it in the beginning of RF2 as they did not want to use rfactor central.
 
Maybe ISI could synchronize the third party mod database with the new launcher remote database. That would really help to make this the best place for releasing content.
 
I got no engine sound in the third party bmw z4 GT3 car (named bmw v1.1 in the Remote Content section of the rF2 launcher), was fine in previous versions, how do I fix it pls?
 
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