What website does the rFactor 2 community need?

Not within the purview of most I guess... I've been wondering how an open source style modding hub would work.
Artists uploading their assets, builders uploading fixed or higher detailed meshes. Repositories of standard track resources like kerbs and cones. Customised AI files...
It really wouldn't even need to be sim specific. Only downside is the organisation of such, having methods for reporting questionable/illegal content.

I've often though there must be hundreds of unfinished projects out there with resources that could be considered valuable. Personally, if I knew I was going to abandon something, I'd be happy to give it to others to do.

/From the perspective of a struggling artist

 

I'd lime to see a wiki type site. But with color,animation,entertainment all sorts of extended possibilities for everyone from rf2 veterans to absolute noobs.

 

OP is reporting for duty!

It's a little overwhelming but awesome to see so much good suggestions coming in.
I've thought about the idea of creating a place to download mods from myself, but as already mentioned, it's a lot of work to do alone and it needs regular updating.
I'm not saying that I''ll never do it, but I'm afraid that, because of the fact that some mod creators only want to publish their mods on their own websites, I'm gonna be left a little dissapointed with the results.
I know it would be great, but I don't see a single place for all free mods happening to be honest. Please, wake me up if I'm too pessimistic here.

The idea of a website to manage races is awesome too.
I have to mention though that, as a result of this thread, I was contacted by a League admin who proposed to build a website together.
I don't know much of the details yet, but if we collaborate, there's a slight chance I'll have my hands full with that project for some time.
Nothing is descided yet, and I'll report back to you guys as soon as I know more.

Thanks for posting everyone, keep the ideas coming!
Thrindil

 

Yeah I figured Noel would reach out to you...

 

Good to see that the flood of ideas didn't put you off. Regarding the download site, it's more about having a sustainable platform to host it apon i think, rFc burnt alot of people however what rFc was previous was great.. It certainly opened my eyes to the mods available of which i would have never found if i had to dig around 101 individual websites.

If you don't mind me asking what areas of website design are you most competent in? php/mysql/jquery/javascript? I'm very close to having a full mod hosting solution ready, importantly with the infrastructure to back it up on a large scale. If you guys are interested in tieing in something down the line feel free to drop me a pm anytime.

 

Thanks. Is there any other join mechanism other than what Liveracers.com trying to do? Race2play perhaps?

 

Have a site for advanced driver training.
Unemployed Pros could give hour lessons.

Sit as passenger in car all Huds up using teamspeak.
"Brake ....brake !!! " p


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Typical rF2 afteroon 20 open rooms with a average of 1.9 drivers per room.


A "Open Roomers" site.
Somewhere to meet and work out who is hosting what where.
Members could be cataloged by geographical location.

Secondary of course would be refined list of RealRoad, setups and skins.

 

I once hosted a session with Allan McNish and on TS and a number of racers on the server, you would be surprised how difficult it was to get the users to listen to what's going on and what the plan was. Out of the 10 or so people who took part i'm sure only 1 or 2 actually got a good and full experience. I enjoyed it anyway lol.

 

Have to be a sight easier then me trying to type and lap with them. lol

 

To expand on the idea of sharing "what people are doing". Here is what I keep track of that I am going to be including in my blog:

Result log data like start position, result position, positions gained, speed position, etc. like Log Analyzer already does a great job of. Unfortunately, I still have to supplement Log Analyzer with my "Combo Grid" in which I record key settings like real road and AI% strength setting for each combo. I also notate each combo as a "good combo" or "bad combo" and also the status of the combo such as "test combo", "test for consistent drivers and challenging AI%", "room for improvement", "need to increase AI% strength" or "CURRENT potential reached ; great 'off-the-shelf' challenge at 111%", etc. which I should be able to beat later with continued development of skills, knowledge, experience", etc. You get the idea. While the "process" comments are very personal to my approach, I believe anyone could benefit from capturing additional data points and also sharing these metrics (essentially race reports) with others so they can share the experience, etc. if that makes any sense. You could also store setups used in race, etc. etc.

 

I like that.

This could be incorporated with my "Open Roomers" site.

I like running my own open room but I would be willing to help populate others if it was done properly.

atm we have info on rooms that drops down the forum list and server lists gives no idea of location or how long they will be running, etc.

The overwhelming though thing is having 20 open rooms with 40 drivers in them.

If you had a site where open room times and info was updated realtime, realtime chat , links to all content, skins, real road and setups used would be handy.

Rather then 20 rooms you would have say 5 with 8 in each then get pickups.

Everyone would have to drive cars and tracks sometimes they may not like, bit of give and take.

 

I'm too busy laughing. Nice fox hunt tonight btw

 

Sorry if I dissapoint you, but other than a little bit of jquery I'm unable to write something in the languages above.
I've had 2 full years of html and css, combined with a little bit of jquery and that's it.
I'll get javascript and probably php next year in high school.
I'm always eager to learn though.

 

I can't say who it is, but I can tell you that it wasn't Noël

 

Aye that's no bother, its always great to see people learning.
A couple of things I would recommend looking at if your keen to expand on your knowledge.
1. WordPress Theme Creation - This will put your HTML/CSS skills into use but also provide a easy education into the basic's of PHP.
2. WordPress Plugin Creation - This will go further into PHP skills, where the options are nearly limitless. (Why WordPress? - Basically because its ecosystem is MASSIVE - you can always find tutorials/guides on how to build/learn something).
3. Going more advanced you could look at: CodeIgniter - I'm sure others could provide tips, where this is not really the place but good luck! Its fun haha.

 

rfactorcentral from its 2008 days with a section for rF1 and rF2, minus the Hall of Fame.

 

It wasn't me but it probably wouldn't be a bad idea. I can do the backend stuff but suck at html/css.

 

Thanks for those tips!
I didn't know about any of them, but I will look into them once my finals are over.

I played Need for Speed and Gran Turismo 4 at that time, so I have no idea what rFactorCentral looked like in 2008.
Was it much different from what it looks like now?

Are you talking about that mini webserver thing you sort of abandoned?

 

Well that is one example. What I'm saying is I can write pages in PHP but they just don't look all that great because I'm not that great at HTML/CSS and I'm not artistic either. I tend to rip off styling and ideas from other pages. Hahaha

 

It was a hub with very neatly categorized content with a simple rating system (which you could ignore), links to download the mod and updates, and a comments section. When a lot more content was developed there were some issues of things being in weird categories (modders assigned that) and a lot of repetitive content, too many similar conversions of the same material, and the Hall of Fame was developed taking basically highest rated content... but it was more of a popularity contest. Too much junk was rated 4 or 4.5/5 stars.