RD Rally Club - Future???

Warren Dawes · May 6, 2010

I believe we need some serious feedback re the current and future plans of our RBR Rally Club here at Racedepartment. Do we have enough interest to maintain the Club, and if so, does the organisation need an overhaul??

First, to the level of interest.
Over the past few months we have seen a slow decline in driver numbers to about 4 or 5 drivers in each Rally, and this has included a few cancellations/reschedules due to even lower numbers. Despite the addition of a few new drivers, the biggest disappointment is that many of our previous regular drivers now seem to have drifted away (with little or no feedback to advise of this, or to indicate that they may return).
Given the workload required to organise these Rally's, it is demotivating. I have been more than happy to keep running these Rally events, mainly for those of us who enjoy them and have remained loyal participants, and I am prepared to continue. However, we need to be realistic and ask "does the Rally Club have a future here?".
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I personally think RBR has a lot to offer to us. It is the only true Rally series available on-line at RD (and surely a major SimRacing site has Rally fans), the events are open to all Timezones (the only events where this happens), and it doesn't require high spec PC's or internet service.
You don't have concerns about interference from other drivers, your crashes are your own.
Sure, RBR requires some skill and patience to drive well, but surely we have plenty of highly skilled drivers here who want to challenge themselves.

Assuming we have a reasonable level of interest from a core group, is there a problem with the way our events are organised?
Should we run a different night (currently every second Wednesday), maybe weekends?
Should we run events more frequently or less frequently?
Are the Rally's too long or too short?
Are the car / track selections not popular?
Should we look at using an alternative to RSRBR?

I have tried to be as flexible as possible with schedules and tried to adopt suggestions for interesting events, but if there are preferred changes, just let me know.

Sorry to sound somewhat heavy or negative, but we really need to make some decisions about the future viability of RBR at RD.

Rick Bamford · May 10, 2010

Hey Warren,

Sorry I haven't joined any rallies yet, been off the radar a little. If you can allow me (from Australia) to run the EU/USA rally I will be there for he next event.

As for feed back, I think i am a little on my own here. I still say that using ONLY BTB built stages and a minimum of 100km's per rally would be better. This way, no body would be at an advantage of knowing the stages and the length would allow you to come back after making the mistakes you WILL make

Warren Dawes · May 10, 2010

Rick Bamford said:
If you can allow me (from Australia) to run the EU/USA rally I will be there for he next event.

Rick, you are free to join any of the Rally sessions available, just let us know which one you plan to run in the sign-up, so that we can ensure that it is set up on the Server. eg. I haven't been opening any USA Rally's on the Server recently because we haven't had anyone signing up for the USA ones. If anyone signs up or wants a specific Timezone opened, I can easily open one.

Dave Stephenson · May 11, 2010

Warren Dawes said:
We could still use TS though and maybe organise to have others run at a similar time.

That's what Id do, you can still leave the window to partcipate open for a few days after as described by Łukasz so that any late arrivers or people who could not make it can run at a time to suit them.

Warren Dawes · May 11, 2010

Dave Stephenson said:
That's what Id do, you can still leave the window to partcipate open for a few days after as described by Łukasz so that any late arrivers or people who could not make it can run at a time to suit them.

We would probably need to move to the Czech mod to make it fully flexible like that. I've had an initial look around the Czech website and I'm not sure that their mod is more user friendly than RSRBR2010 (in fact it might be more complex due to all the manual file manipulation needed), but I'll install it and try it out when I get back from holidays next week.

In the meantime, as I have said, I can set up additional Rally's in RSRBR2010 to fit in with people's timeframes, but we would need only a few restrictions:

1. All Ralliy's must be within a time span of a couple of days
2. I can only have three running at once, but provided I can gather the results off the server quickly, I can stretch that to a few more, within reason, (by closing completed Rallys and opening new ones).
3. I need to know in advance, what day/time people want (and bear in mind that I'm in Australia and may be sleeping when you ask).
Even this restriction could be removed if someone else (from Europe or USA) was prepared to help me by setting up Rallys, collecting results, and sending them to me for final collation, which is not a difficult task.

If we open a few Rally's at different times, I can still combine all of the results into one Rally Result when everyone has completed their Rally.

So, this is not full flexibility (like the Czech mod), but should be flexible enough to suit most people's needs, it just needs a bit of pre-planning.

BTW, this is still much more flexible than any other scheduled Events at Racedepartment where you have to turn up at a specific start time.

Dave Stephenson · May 11, 2010

It was the Czech mod I was refering to if it turns out to be a goer, it would give you a lot of flexibility.

Senad Subasic · May 11, 2010

Warren Dawes said:
Even this restriction could be removed if someone else (from Europe or USA) was prepared to help me by setting up Rallys, collecting results, and sending them to me for final collation, which is not a difficult task.

Do you have a tutorial or something? I can set aside some time for it every week or two.

Łukasz Demolin · May 11, 2010

Warren Dawes said:
I've had an initial look around the Czech website and I'm not sure that their mod is more user friendly than RSRBR2010 (in fact it might be more complex due to all the manual file manipulation needed), but I'll install it and try it out when I get back from holidays next week.

I'm eager to hear your thoughts. In reality the input required is pretty much none. Once you've installed it once it just keeps on going. I'm not pushing it with all my might, just giving you a full perspective. It DOES require just a tad bit of know-how to install, but IMO it's less than rFactor in that matter, or on par at worst.

Warren Dawes said:
If we open a few Rally's at different times, I can still combine all of the results into one Rally Result when everyone has completed their Rally.

Just imagine running an event with over 200 participants and arranging them manually

. That's the biggest advantage of this solution in my eyes. Right know rallies are held in different time zones at different days and hours, similar effect could be achieved, as Dave said, by arranging "preffered time slots" of sorts, so people could run simultaneously if they want (I personally avoid distraction while rallying, it makes me suck at it even more

). Also the site allows you to monitor user's progress on a timesplit basis in real time.

The big disadvantage is lack of BTB tracks (yet! Some of them are slowly, because it takes A LOT of effort, converted to native RBR format as we speak), but it's somewhat compensated by the Czech stages.

Warren Dawes · May 11, 2010

Senad Subasic said:
Do you have a tutorial or something? I can set aside some time for it every week or two.

I have done a Tutorial for setting up your own Rally here:
http://www.racedepartment.com/richa...-set-up-your-own-on-line-rally-rsrbr2010.html

It is handy for testing your own installation out (eg. after an Upgrade) or for setting your own Rally for your own fun or some friends. Setting up an RD Rally is exactly the same. It's easy and quick once you get used to it.

Collecting results is also straight forward but slightly more messy than it could be. I could do a simple Tutorial for that as well. Getting the results to me for collating is as simple as zipping up some screenshots. I then enter the stage times into a Spreadsheet to get the overall result.

Having another person would be a real help for us, especially someone in another timezone. It would be great if you could assist, I'll do the Results Tutorial when I return home next week.

Thanks for your offer Senad.

Alessandro Gamberini · May 12, 2010

I think that multi-server proposal is the best one so any group of friends can organize their event at desidered time and day giving to Warren their logs to create an overall rank
a bi or three weekly frequency will give all the time to satisfy all

I don't know if I'll join (few time + nK ... ) but I'll catch some guys for this
keep RBR alive

possibly not on Tuesday :wink:
I'll seek this section for any news
ciao

Dave Stephenson · May 12, 2010

Warren Dawes said:
Collecting results is also straight forward but slightly more messy than it could be. I could do a simple Tutorial for that as well. Getting the results to me for collating is as simple as zipping up some screenshots. I then enter the stage times into a Spreadsheet to get the overall result.

Screens of what? are the no log files?

John Low · May 14, 2010

Warren, i hope to be able to join in some of the rallies now i have things set up - hopefully ..... tried a couple of stages from the usa rally offline to compare my times and seemed to do okay till i found the giant hole in stage 3 and that was the end of that. however, i look forward to having a go next rally. Hope i can follow the instructions to join the fun.

John

Warren Dawes · May 14, 2010

Dave Stephenson said:
Screens of what? are the no log files?

Dave, the person who sets the Rally on their Server can access the Stage times for each driver in the Rally, but these results are not compiled in a suitable format for us. We need to collect these times and the best way I have found is to take a screenshot of the Stage results so I have a record of every drivers stage times. From these screenshots, I can extract these times into a spreadsheet for Overall collation.
So the sreenshots are only needed for the administrator to record all stage times. Drivers entering the Rally don't have to worry about this part.

Ryan Callan · May 14, 2010

I'm very much up to trying a bit more RBR - the problem I had last time was getting my controller to work - perhaps now I have a wheel I can use RBR as a test bed.

As for using RBR or the Czech plug-in I would prefer to use RBR (always use the best you can), they still have the Czech stages Pribram etc after all no?

With my brief go with it I found the slower cars the best to drive

- cos I was crap.

Warren Dawes · May 19, 2010

A wee update.

After this week's very good turn out for the Finland Rally (10 enthusiastic drivers

), I am feeling more optomistic about the Rally Club. I must say, after experiencing 5 fellow drivers in the Oceania Zone, running real time in RSRBR2010 has some good points. It adds a lot to the enjoyment, tension, and competitiveness, to be able to check after each Stage and see how you are going compared to others. This was even better this week as all 5 of us kept changing positions for each stage. With some of us on Teamspeak discussing our funny incidents after every second stage, it added even more fun.

I have now set up a second install of my RBR, so I'll install the Czech plug-in this week and have a good look at it.

I'll also try to write a Tutorial for Senad, or anyone else interested, to show how to extract results from the Server in RSRBR2010.

Łukasz Demolin · May 23, 2010

Ryan Callan said:
As for using RBR or the Czech plug-in I would prefer to use RBR (always use the best you can), they still have the Czech stages Pribram etc after all no?

Unfortunately no. RSRBR contains only a fraction of first pack of Czech stages (Stryckovy Okruch, Osli-Stryckovy, Stryckovy-Zadni Porici), there was another one released last year (Hradek & Liptakov, consisting of 4 stages, considered best-looking RBR stages existing; and they deserve this title, trust me

), there is "Sumbruk" being tested right now (RC3 state), quite a few are in the works, but I'm not counting the until they're finished. Not to mention the famous Sosnova SSS, which is a "deluxe" stage, allowed only in chosen tournaments - http://youtube.com/watch?v=QxZb6GWT5Jc&fmt=22 )

Just take a look at those stages (Hradek): http://youtube.com/watch?v=7D2HE1VcdeQ , or: http://youtube.com/watch?v=9zh6Ql8g-u0

Personally I'm not a fan of tarmac though, it's a shame there is not much of gravel BTB stages being used in the club IMHO

.

Warren Dawes said:
I must say, after experiencing 5 fellow drivers in the Oceania Zone, running real time in RSRBR2010 has some good points. It adds a lot to the enjoyment, tension, and competitiveness, to be able to check after each Stage and see how you are going compared to others.

Well, that is a fact. Using the Czech plugin there is always a driver first on the road, who usually can't find out how does he fare till at least one other driver starts.

Looking forward to the results of your testing

Warren Dawes · May 23, 2010

Łukasz Demolin said:
Personally I'm not a fan of tarmac though, it's a shame there is not much of gravel BTB stages being used in the club IMHO .

I totally agree, RBR is much better with Gravel or Snow, the Tarmac stages just feel wrong to me. That is the one disappointment I have with the addon tracks in RSRBR2010, they are mainly tarmac. I have been looking around for more gravel tracks to use in our Rally Club, there are a couple, but most are tarmac. It's a pity that BTB tracks cause problems with replays too, often requiring me to close RBR with task manager.

Haven't had a chance to install the Czech plug in yet.

Ryan Callan · May 23, 2010

With the schedule of RBR as it is now I have difficulty joining as I have my rF events on Monday night and college/work on Tuesdays, meaning the US event is too late and the other two I'm unavailable.

However, once my term finishes (three weeks) I will be free to join up on Tuesday mornings with the AU gang so I'll hopefully see you there.

Ross McGregor · May 23, 2010

Warren Dawes said:
Haven't had a chance to install the Czech plug in yet.

I haven't tried the online plugin of the czech mod, but have successfully installed a couple of cars. (Hooray!) I'll get a couple of vids uploaded to demonstrate. These cars replace the RBR default ones so people may have to make a second install, or at least backup the original car files. It seems good to me, but i don't know what more experienced RBR guys will make of it!

Incidentally, the cars i've successfully used so far are the '08 c4, the '08 impreza and the '05 peugeot 307.

Warren Dawes · May 23, 2010

Ryan Callan said:
With the schedule of RBR as it is now I have difficulty joining as I have my rF events on Monday night and college/work on Tuesdays, meaning the US event is too late and the other two I'm unavailable.

Ryan, dont forget, if you would like a specific timeslot that suits better (Monday or Tuesday) let us know, we can arrange it, eg. an earlier USA slot, since we don't have any USA guys racing anyway lately. :wink: